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Artificially Stimulated Stupidity

 


Artificial Intelligence is still a hot topic. After a decade of hype, the launch of ChatGPT has finally given it some credence. ASS (or Artificially Stimulated stupidity, pronounced "A Ess" of course) is what people should focus on. ASS may have more of an impact on AI than its inherent qualities if it overtakes the human race, as many fear.


ASS, while stupidity may be as old as humanity itself and as pervasive, is a relatively new phenomenon. Since the dawn of humanity, humans have tried to combat their innate stupidity through training and education. They also used relatively reliable ways of creating and distributing new information. All have recently broken down, and are still unreformed despite being easily fixable. These breakdowns encourage human stupidity artificially by making rational discussion and analysis more difficult.


Government education


At this point, almost all formal education in the US, K-PhD, is government-controlled, even when technically privately provided. The system fails the majority of students by failing to teach them how to critically think and by instilling falsehoods into their heads. In the process of losing its reputational capital, which was built up over many centuries by former centers for excellence, there has been a negative feedback loop whereby stupid administrators hire dumb faculty who then teach even more stupid students. Those stupid students become faculty and administrators who are even more stupid. This brings the next generation closer to Idiocracy.


Practical skills


Online schools that cater to those who are looking for qualifications in nursing, business or coding offer little education. Many of these students already have full-time jobs and are only looking for a degree. They do not want to take more difficult coursework because they don't need it. Apprenticeship programs are also suffering from the lack of candidates. While many of the occupations that are suitable for apprenticeship training like plumbing pay well, it is necessary to perform physical labor. This prospect is unappealing to many. Many of these jobs, such as waste management, conjure up images of unions or worse yet, organized crime. Many students spend their university years wasting away in the hope of joining the laptop-loving class.


News


It turns out that the claims made about "Fake news" are not true. The COVID epidemic taught viewers, readers and listeners that the mainstream media was not above fear-mongering or outright lies to maintain their advertising revenue and/or promote a politician or party they liked. In 2023, the half of Americans thought that news organizations deliberately misled them. It was not always better to have niche or new news sources. As there was no reliable source for information, the audience began to ignore or even believe anything they wanted to be called "News". This is because it cost too much to investigate on their own.


Government statistics


One thing is to claim that a x-percent increase or decrease in a number isn't a big deal, or point out a better-looking, more accurate metric. It's another to manipulate x. The numbers themselves cannot be manipulated, but those who create them can. When you study government data in depth, the variety of methods that can be used to manipulate or fabricate it is astounding. Macroeconomic manipulation is difficult to detect but easy to suspect, because the results are often a mixture of different levels of incorrectness rather than outright error. The lack of statistical anchors that are widely accepted makes policy decisions difficult.


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