http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/35057
Mobile Phones Are Making Us Stupid
Mon Jul 16, 2007 3:24PM EDT
Here's a trend that has been years in the making. Since the advent of speed dial on land lines, people have been training themselves that memory is unimportant, placing every phone number you could need at the touch of a button. Now science has proven it: Phones, computers, and PDAs are making us dumb.
The stats: A quarter of UK residents (these studies always come out of Britain) don't know their home phone number. Only one-third know the birthdays of their immediate family. Half use one password, exclusively, presumably because they just can't remember any more.
The problem is pretty simple at heart: The less you use your memory, the study says, the worse it gets. The study indicates, shockingly, that people in their 50s and 60s have generally better memory than people in their 30s.
Why?
The older group was tasked with committing more to memory when they were younger, "training" their brains appropriately. Our gadgets make it simple to offload our memory to electronic devices. That's a good thing when it comes to keeping track of the 1000 people in your address book (each with multiple phone numbers and email addresses), but maybe we're taking it too far?
The good news is that you can exercise your brain without memorizing numbers by rote. Games like Brain Age and Sudoku and other mental stimulation can do just as good a job at keeping your memory sharp (and possibly even ward off ailments like Alzheimer's), the experts say.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
my post on a philosophy forum
[QUOTE=Respondent]Any time a race becomes "enlightened" and tries to be peacefull I'll pick on them too. Once I got bored I'd flush that galaxy and do the benevolence/observance thing. Once I get bored of that I'd pick on them again.[/QUOTE]
(((I have snipped a small portion of "Respondent"'s post responding to a question about what he would do if he were god, here is my response to this portion of his rant.)))
You have stated my theory precisely, and if I thought there were a god, he'd act exactly as you.
Intelligence evolves and the universe strikes it down.
That is why there are no "little green men" or radio signals or contrails between stars.
Space is really really big.
But we've seen no evidence of space faring intelligences in our galaxy .
Space is really really big, it cannot be overemphasized!
However, even given current technology humans could in the not too distant future find our way to multiple star systems or even the entire galaxy...does 10,000,000 years sound a long time?
I would maintain that even a very slow progression of human colonies could conceivably stretch across the galaxy in 10,000,000 years...that is a really long time...
Well, the universe has been around 1000 times that long and there are no little green men visiting us are there!
Evolution cannot tolerate intelligence.
Intelligence (and the technology (think language and all that accompanies our most basic "CULTURE" in the anthropological sense, all that is not biological about us, non-instinctual, nurture, fire, tools, perhaps even consciousness, sentience, etc.)) is SELECTED AGAINST by the universe.
We will be the victims of our own success. Our technology has unburdened us from the vagaries of mother nature, we call anywhere home thanks to technolgy, we have health care and vaccinations, we have agriculture, we have energy, for now...we also are totally out of control when it comes to population, and worse, our impacts on natural systems have damaged them severely.
Chaos is inevitable (if really drastic things aren't accomplished right away) given current trends, no less the trend in human population - 9 billion humans by 2050, 1.5X as many as on the planet today (2007).
We will attempt to have technology save us. It will only speed our demise, as it is the reason we're engineered to fail!
Technology is simply an extension of our human nature. As living beings, our DNA drive us to obtain energy from the environment, and reproduce. Technology allows us to obtain energy from environments we weren't evolved to survive. Without a lot of very delicate and necessary technology people couldn't exist on much of the planet.
Technology has now ((or has already) (or will soon)) disrupted every biozone on the planet. The delicate web of interconnections between and amongst the various species is disrupted.
The web of life is constantly in flux. It is never in equilibrium. However, mankind's disruption allows certain energy niches on the planet to be very much more readily available. So, algae grow in the oxygenated and fertilized ocean water, and then die and suck up the oxygen, creating a dead zone in the ocean for Christ's sake.
There will be massive efforts put human knowledge into cyber minds before the end, or there would be, except the end will be here way sooner than most predict!
We won't be here long
So no need to have children
So they won't suffer.
(((I have snipped a small portion of "Respondent"'s post responding to a question about what he would do if he were god, here is my response to this portion of his rant.)))
You have stated my theory precisely, and if I thought there were a god, he'd act exactly as you.
Intelligence evolves and the universe strikes it down.
That is why there are no "little green men" or radio signals or contrails between stars.
Space is really really big.
But we've seen no evidence of space faring intelligences in our galaxy .
Space is really really big, it cannot be overemphasized!
However, even given current technology humans could in the not too distant future find our way to multiple star systems or even the entire galaxy...does 10,000,000 years sound a long time?
I would maintain that even a very slow progression of human colonies could conceivably stretch across the galaxy in 10,000,000 years...that is a really long time...
Well, the universe has been around 1000 times that long and there are no little green men visiting us are there!
Evolution cannot tolerate intelligence.
Intelligence (and the technology (think language and all that accompanies our most basic "CULTURE" in the anthropological sense, all that is not biological about us, non-instinctual, nurture, fire, tools, perhaps even consciousness, sentience, etc.)) is SELECTED AGAINST by the universe.
We will be the victims of our own success. Our technology has unburdened us from the vagaries of mother nature, we call anywhere home thanks to technolgy, we have health care and vaccinations, we have agriculture, we have energy, for now...we also are totally out of control when it comes to population, and worse, our impacts on natural systems have damaged them severely.
Chaos is inevitable (if really drastic things aren't accomplished right away) given current trends, no less the trend in human population - 9 billion humans by 2050, 1.5X as many as on the planet today (2007).
We will attempt to have technology save us. It will only speed our demise, as it is the reason we're engineered to fail!
Technology is simply an extension of our human nature. As living beings, our DNA drive us to obtain energy from the environment, and reproduce. Technology allows us to obtain energy from environments we weren't evolved to survive. Without a lot of very delicate and necessary technology people couldn't exist on much of the planet.
Technology has now ((or has already) (or will soon)) disrupted every biozone on the planet. The delicate web of interconnections between and amongst the various species is disrupted.
The web of life is constantly in flux. It is never in equilibrium. However, mankind's disruption allows certain energy niches on the planet to be very much more readily available. So, algae grow in the oxygenated and fertilized ocean water, and then die and suck up the oxygen, creating a dead zone in the ocean for Christ's sake.
There will be massive efforts put human knowledge into cyber minds before the end, or there would be, except the end will be here way sooner than most predict!
We won't be here long
So no need to have children
So they won't suffer.
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