how is "worse at reading" evaluated?

test taking is not a valuable skill. it's mostly pattern matching against the question

people need new skills in a new age. the education system hasn't even kept pace with the existence of the internet, let alone AI

▲

lelanthran 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> how is "worse at reading" evaluated?

I cannot believe you're seriously asking that question.

> people need new skills in a new age.

If it's a skill that is picked up in minutes, it's not really a skill.

▲

mkl95 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You read a text. Then, you are asked a series of questions to assess your reading comprehension. Rinse and repeat for a school year to get a solid idea of each student's proficiency.

This skill has been declining steadily since the 1970s, but the decline has accelerated since the mid 2010s. Eventually the productivity boom should take a hit when newer generations struggle to understand basic tasks and the older generations retire. AI is probably orthogonal to the solution space.

▲

spongebobstoes 5 hours ago | parent [-]

my point is that evaluating reading comprehension is typically done as a test, and test taking is not a valuable skill

the evidence is that individual workers are more productive than ever, and this trend has continued since long before the 1970s. this is despite any measured decline in reading comprehension

the older generations are obviously not propping up the world economy through their singular reading skills

▲

iamnothere 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Find a way to test informally, like taking metrics on the number of times that someone misunderstood written questions, instructions, or requirements at work. If it was possible to measure that cleanly, I bet you’d find a similar trend.

I often find that people simply don’t read anymore beyond a sentence or two, which makes it impossible to communicate complex ideas. If it can’t be expressed as a bullet point, it may as well not exist.

▲

pixl97 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Individual workers is a rather nebulous statement without citing how the measurement was taken. Like if you have 9 people with zero money and 1 person with a trillion dollars, on average everyone is a multi billionaire.

The vast majority of our production comes from more and more highly automated tools. The concentration of skills to build those things can skew the results in the short term and lead to new and interesting problems long term.

	▲	parineum 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> The vast majority of our production comes from more and more highly automated tools. That fewer and fewer people operate. Hence the people are more productive. Additionally, instead of everyone being unemployed, we just raise the standard of living and demand more stuff that employs just about everyone.

▲

mehrzad 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Your comment reads like satire.