> The problem is that a headline that people want to believe is a very powerful force that can override replication and sample size and methodology problems. AI rots your brain follows behind social media rots your brain, which came after video games rot your brain, which preceded TV rots your brain. I’m sure TV wasn’t even the first. There’s a long tradition of publicly worrying about machines making us stupider.

Your comment reminded me of this (possibly spurious) quote:

>> An Assyrian clay tablet dating to around 2800 B.C. bears the inscription: “Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching.”[0]

Same as it ever was. [1]

[0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IsSpAOD6K8

there's newspaper clippings with the same headlines / lead-in dating back to newspapers, so this has been going on for at least 5 generations, lends a bit of credence.

People have also been complaining about politicians for hundreds of years, and the ruling class for millennia, as well. and the first written math mistake was about beer feedstock, so maybe it's all correlated.