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jpnc 7 hours ago

If you create a machine for laziness you're going to get lazy people. It's only going to get worse I'm afraid.

Do you guys think we're going to see a de-evolution of human beings due to technology?

tarkin2 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Arguably we already have, if you concentrate on intelligence rates since 1975: the reverse Flynn affect. Those who grew up about that time no longer had to generate their own entertainment through storytelling, make their own music, calculate things mentally: everyday they had music, entertainment pumped into their homes, a way to avoid athematic, etc. And now we're evening thinking a lot less in our jobs, not even practicing the skills we learnt. Intelligence is only going to decrease.

Traster 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It makes me so angry that an entire branch of "science" gets to just take data and go "I dunno man, maybe kids are just dumber". There's so much of this in social science. Take some measurable thing, and then just wildly speculate about the cause of it in an entirely untestable way, and then test that theory in ways that absolutely do not justify the conclusions. At the very least, the whole field should get a lesson in how to communicate the certainty of their theories and conclusions. You've got some guys hanging around couching their uncertainty when they're banging sub atomic particles together at the speed of light and then you've got some social science bro being like "If you move that checkbox on that form to the bottom it'll be way more effective, trust me bro I've hacked how people think".

marginalia_nu 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah it's as old as time to be honest.

When Plato complains about writing diminishing our faculties for memorizing things, it's sometimes treated as an example of how we've always pointlessly worried about these things, but he was absolutely correct and the transition from an oral culture to a written culture has absolutely demolished those capabilities.

Writing as a technology ended up having strong upsides that mostly made up for that (in particular our ability to communicate across distances and time, to read Plato's concerns without 100 generations of Chinese whispers), but it was a trade-off, as most technologies tend to be.

cm2187 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s tempting to use what engineers were 70 years ago vs now as an analogy. From a technical point of view, I was told we would be struggling to solve the maths and physics exercises our grand fathers took as students in college, and they had to deal with additional disciplines that disappeared like industrial design (ie drawing blueprints by hand) or manual calculus. So it is tempting to think that the level of engineers has gone down.

But a modern engineer has computers, math software, can code, has all the knowledge of the internet at their fingertips. With all that assistance I believe modern engineers are way more productive and capable.

skillina an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> With all that assistance I believe modern engineers are way more productive and capable.

That isn't what was asked. The capabilities of "human + machine" clearly are increasing, but the comments above posit that as a result the average capabilities of "human (sans machine)" may decrease. The relative value of each change is far from clear.

cm2187 17 minutes ago | parent [-]

Yeah but unless you plan to take the machine away, isn’t man+machine what matters? If you had to develop everything in assembly (or worse), you probably had a much deeper understanding of computers than a modern developer. But the modern developer can setup in minutes what would have taken weeks. To me that’s the definition of progress.

But pre-LLM developers were bogged down in mountain of boiler plate code and unfamiliar APIs. LLM enable to abstract away a lot of the unnecessary complexity that made developers improductive

teaearlgraycold 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And I know fuck all about subsistence farming - something most people's ancestors understood deeply. Different worlds, different requirements.

Yiin 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I didn't expect wall-e to become so close to current reality

Gigachad 6 hours ago | parent [-]

The only thing they missed was the invention of ozempic.

usef- 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Similar to physical exercise and machines replacing it, I think we're going to see extremes on both ends.

chicken-stew 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

  Do you guys think we're going to see a de-evolution of human beings due to technology?
The gap between people who are willing to commit the hours to learn something and those who prefer the path of least resistance is getting bigger.

I’d like to add that for hardware development (in my experience) it’s been non-stop double checking because of hallucinations. To the point where I don’t use it for weeks.

jayd16 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

All machines are for laziness.

vouaobrasil 18 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Not exactly. A drawing program could just create a new "blank slate" that substitutes some old skill requirements for new skills. The key point is that SOME machines create a sufficient mass of "blank slate"-like environments for active creativity and others (like AI) only diminish that room for creatvity to flourish. The danger is creating and using machines of the latter type.

cryo32 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is totally wrong.

Some machines are capability amplifiers.

Other machines are shit puking buck passing time sinks.

globular-toast 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think you are confusing machines with motors. Many machines do things that simply are not possible without. A bicycle, for example, is not at any less work than walking, but it enables you to go faster than you can run. Menually operated sewing machines produce stitches that would be infeasible by hand.

Motorising any of those machines could be considered lazy, though.

hk__2 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> A bicycle, for example, is not at any less work than walking

Of course it is, at equivalent distance.

Ekaros 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Depending on speed of course. At some speeds drag will cause significantly more work.

deathanatos an hour ago | parent [-]

… I dunno. Bikes aren't just efficient, they're the most efficient form of human movement. 60 W gets you 3 mph walking or 9 mph biking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_performance

On my own bike, I don't think there is a pace that isn't easier. Even at slow speeds, it's not a whole lot of work. (And you can always change to a gear where it just isn't a lot of work to go slow. The challenge is more remaining upright, but a low gear and the barest of forward momentum will help that.)

globular-toast 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I did not say anything about distance. I said cycling enables you to go faster than you could possibly travel without it (ie. faster than you can sprint). What you do with that speed is up to you, but most use it to get to places in less time or get further in the same amount of time. The point is it's not about laziness, it's about unlocking new capabilities.

If cycling were just about laziness then you'd see people cycling at walking speed everywhere, which you never see.

Since we're kinda talking about LLMs too, it's interesting to note that while cycling really does enable you to go faster than you can run, LLMs do not enable you to type at 1000 words per minute. LLMs are more like a teleport that only lets you describe your desired destination, you cannot simply enter a coordinate to get exactly where you want to go.

deepsummer 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But you could still arrive if you walk instead of using the bicycle. And I am sure you can do the same stitches by hand, it just takes forever.

Same with coding agents. I could do it by hand. It just would take much longer. Often so long that it would be impractical.

globular-toast 4 hours ago | parent [-]

You cannot walk 100 miles in a day, but anyone with a bit of training can cycle that in an afternoon. It's not a matter of effort or laziness, it's simply not possible.

The stitching comment is just pedantic. People don't hand stitch like a machine not because they are lazy, it's because it's ineffective and impractical. It's not impossible to drive screws directly into softwood by hand, but you'd never get anything done that way. It's not lazy to choose another method, it's just being an effective worker.

As for coding agents, it's clearly effective to write software without them because we have been doing it for decades so far. It still remains to be seen whether they are laziness (ie. it's just a motor) or if they are actually enabling new possibilities (ie. we get software that really wouldn't have been possible before).

slfnflctd 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Minor nitpick with your first sentence: I do not believe "anyone with a bit of training" is an accurate way to describe what is required for pedaling a bicycle at 20 mph for 5 solid hours.

At a time when I was in better shape than the average person, the most I ever worked up to was 40 miles, and it was brutal. In my entire middle-aged life, I have met exactly one person who believably claimed to have done 100 miles in a day. I'm sure it's easier than many/most people think, but not 'anyone' easy, with just 'a bit' of training.

globular-toast an hour ago | parent [-]

Well, I should say I live somewhere very flat. I'm certainly not talking about Tour de France style mountain stages. I'm not used to that at all. Also, for 5 hours most people will need to be in a good group/peloton. Doing it solo, like a time trial, is difficult. But I do think most people could get around 6 hours (16.7mph average) within a year of training in sportive conditions (ie. with some drafting, not strict time trial conditions). When I trained my solo average over 50 miles was 18.6mph and I'm not particularly special.

deepsummer 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Can you write 10k LOC a day without a coding agent?

It's the same issue. You can walk 100 miles. Just not in a day. And you can create 10k LOC without a coding agent. Just not in a day.

I don't think that coding agents enable technical possibilities. They just allow things that wouldn't be economically possible without them.

skydhash 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> Can you write 10k LOC a day without a coding agent?

Easily, by writing a code generator. Or disassemble a 1k C program.

> They just allow things that wouldn't be economically possible without them.

It’s not economical to have more code. It’s economical to have correct code and the way to do that is with the power of abstraction. Instead of dealings with opcodes, you have assemblers and macros. Then it’s C, next it’s python, and what would have been a 10k program is now just a few lines.

raincole 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> A bicycle, for example, is not at any less work than walking

What? Have you, uh, ridden a bicycle before...?

globular-toast 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Thousands of miles on foot and tens of thousands on bicycle. Walking is essentially zero effort, so I don't see how cycling can really be easier, unless you are going downhill. People cycle because it's faster, not because it's easier. People drive because it's easier (many people still drive even if it takes longer than cycling).

lukan 23 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

"Walking is essentially zero effort, so I don't see how cycling can really be easier, "

When your bike is rolling also on flat ground, you have literally zero effort to move your position. With walking it is effort, your muscles must work for every meter you make.

monadgonad 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> People cycle because it's faster, not because it's easier

That may be true, but the fact is that cycling is a more energy-efficient form of transport than walking. It takes literally less effort to go the same distance.

rightbyte 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There is no way bicycling is not less effort unless it is very hilly or bad roads? Random people have no problem keeping up with marathon runners on bikes.

hahahaa 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Cycling 2km flat (assume okay bike under 12kg) is easier than walking it. Source: have fibro so I really fell compound effort in every fibre.

4gotunameagain 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What about exercise machines ?

jayd16 6 hours ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

GrinningFool 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That doesn't really make sense. Assuming the effort is the same, how does laziness enter into it? There are myriad reasons someone might use stationary exercise machines over going outside - weather, bad neighbors, etc. Lazy doesn't make sense as one of them.

4gotunameagain 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What about the elliptical ?

usef- 6 hours ago | parent [-]

What about it? You might need to do multiple different exercises outside to mimic it

4gotunameagain 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Which exercise outside mimics that movement while simultaneously being so easy on the joints ?

Anyway this is just silly, we are splitting hairs. A lot of machines have a functional purpose and do not exist for the lazy. The LHC, ships, thousands of examples.

master-lincoln 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Aren't ships just for people too lazy to swim and the large hadron collider for physicists that are too lazy to hand-accelerate particles and make them collide with 13.6 TeV of energy? /s

Cthulhu_ 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not sure about de-evolution (devolution is the word I think), just a change in how people and brains work - but you could already see this happening the past few decades. I can't read a technical book or documentation end to end ever since google results came up with specific answers within seconds.

hahahaa 4 hours ago | parent [-]

A technical book can be so relaxing (unless e.g. too highly technical... think quantum mechanics). Imagine 50k words on an interesting tech topic without a context switch!

64e23275635e 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

it's already happening. IQ is already stagnating or even going down

c048 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What's even more worrying is that I've heared plenty of people defend it as, "Younger generations are just intelligent in different ways compared to older generations."

I'm halfway through my 30's and this downturn started with my generation, halfway through the 80's. I hope I'm missing something, because I still need to see a benefit for lower attention spans, lower comprehensive reading skills and lower critical thinking capabilities.

lelanthran an hour ago | parent | next [-]

You should point out then that "border collies are just intelligent in different ways, too"

Cthulhu_ 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Halfway through 30's means you were born in the 90's though, but other than that you're right, the advent of the internet, google, and rapid fire short form content has messed with our attention spans; the following generation grew up on the internet and saw the advent of high intensity videos and then short-form mobile-only infinite-stream short-form dashed-words videos.

wannabe44 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

To add, less articulate and somewhat overtly anti-intellectual. Why even learn something when you can ask the slot machine?

Cthulhu_ 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The anti-intellectualism is so weird to me, it feels like people get overly defensive and angry (a secondary emotional response to shame) when confronted with their own lack of knowledge / intelligence or when asked or challenged to use their own brain.

drekipus 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The benefits are increased productivity, consumer satisfaction, and shareholder profits

voidUpdate 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

IQ is calibrated so that the average IQ is 100. If the average IQ is going down, something has gone very wrong somewhere

Cthulhu_ 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

IQ is a measure that tests how well people can do IQ tests, I don't think it's an objective measure at all.

Sharlin 2 hours ago | parent [-]

People love to say this, but the whole point of IQ is that it happens to correlate well with many other, more practical measures of cognitive capability. That’s why it is used.

an hour ago | parent [-]
[deleted]
everfrustrated 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

IQ is a relative measure not an absolute one. 100 IQ in 2026 can be massively different in absolute terms to 100 IQ in 1956.

If you look at old test papers - the lack of intelligence in modern times is very stark.

voidUpdate 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, but the comment was about IQ, not absolute intelligence. The median intelligence is, by definition, 100 IQ, so the median IQ cannot be decreasing

debugnik 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There's always a lag, you calibrate the test based on previous results, not future ones. If intelligence is decreasing I'd expect every IQ test to keep scoring a median lower than 100 unless taken immediately after calibration. Once it stops decreasing they'd converge again.

darkerside 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The median IQ of successive generations may absolutely be falling

vidarh 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Look up the Flynn effect. You're right in the first paragraph, but wrong about the direction.

inigyou 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The Flynn effect ended several years ago and started reversing.

vidarh 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Even if that turns out to be true, rather than it starting to hit a ceiling where we can expect it to not consistently go in a single direction it does not alter anything I wrote, which addressed a comparison between 1956 and 2026.

The claim of a "lack of intelligence in modern times" is flat out contradicted by the data. It'd take a lot of regression to get back to 1956 levels.

mrheosuper 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wonder why is that, what the point of having a score that you can not compare them without external context (the day of taking exam)

energy123 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

IQ gets manually recalibrated downwards when people get stupider so it's mean 100 by construction.

vintermann 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Hmm, who does the calibration, and how scientific are they about it? Can we check their work?

dinkumthinkum 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I feel like this post unironically proves the point.

dupontcyborg 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

i’m not doubting this, but do you know if there are any studies on this already?

exac 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

https://phys.org/news/2023-03-online-iq-scores-century.html https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2023.101734

denkmoon 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

US centric data, absolutely useless. This is just measuring american decline, not civilisation changes.

vidarh 5 hours ago | parent [-]

It's also a first time decline afterany decades of steady increases. We have no basis for determining causality - it might just be that we've finally maxed out the possible gains from the causes underlying the Flynn effect.

evil-olive 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

that's a study published in 2023, analyzing data that ended in 2018.

dofm 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Right but the question was:

"Do you guys think we're going to see a de-evolution of human beings due to technology?"

Not LLMs specifically.

Insofar as I believe there is value in IQ tests, this is a technology-driven effect, most likely due to the impact of distraction and search result immediacy on sustained thinking.

IQs used to just rise, year on year, because living in the world required more and more of the thinking that IQ tests measure. And now they don't.

petesergeant 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Hard not to see what you’ve just done here as an analogue of what the article is arguing against

64e23275635e 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I am the lazy human today, but this one is listing a few references:

https://www.pressenza.com/2025/07/the-decline-of-the-intelli...

rglover 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think we're going to see a sort of "intelligence caste" form. People who overuse AI and atrophy their brain's ability to think will be on the bottom, while the inverse of those people will be on top.

This is somewhat good news because it means the end (to some extent) of the Peter Principle. My hope, though, is that this doesn't turn into an actual caste system, but I'm not holding my breath. I think that's where this all goes: we're in the process of the world's intelligence being strip-mined and resold back to the world at a premium. The only ones who "survive" long-term are the ones who refuse to submit all of their mental faculties to AI.

That inevitably leads to a rapid degeneration of the species. Only way to avoid that outcome entirely is to remind people that their brain is valuable and they need to exercise it just like they would the rest of their body.

wseqyrku an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Only in corporate setting.

ryu2k2 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We're already seeing it.

f6v 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Human intelligence evolved without technology, so, no.

6 hours ago | parent [-]
[deleted]
vouaobrasil 20 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Do you guys think we're going to see a de-evolution of human beings due to technology?

A de-evolution of culture for the sake of efficiency, sure. The entire culture will shift to a greater degree of superficiality, not just because of the lack of deep understanding of what they're doing, but because AI will condition (and is conditioning) people to want the more superficial stuff.

This isn't a phenomenon exclusive to AI - but AI is at the apex of it and is the worst we've seen so far because it, much more than anything else, targets the mental domain whereas most previous automations have targeted the physical but the mental as well to a lesser extent.

The end result is a huge amount of technical debt that simply can't be recovered and a huge increase in myopia that will prevent us from truly understanding and solving serious problems that will undoubtedly occur.

Most people can't see this because they're already addicted to the dopamine hit of the tech, but it's one reason I'm 100% anti-AI and I hate it with an immense passion.

Applejinx 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Alcohol has existed for zillions of years, but not literally every person is a useless drunkard.

You could consider it a class of predator on people who have vulnerabilities that can give way to dependence on the LLM and an inability to function. It could be seen in that light. The underlying problem is being described in that light.