It’s funny - almost as much stuff was knowable, but we couldn’t be bothered to get the info. I mentioned in a different thread recently that, today, if you’re with a group of friends and someone asks what a platypus eats, someone will whip out their phone and answer in 30 seconds. When I was a teen in that same situation, we for sure could have ridden our bikes to the library to find out, but a question like that just wasn’t important enough. If someone suggested going to the library to look it up, we’d laugh at them. There were gobs of things like this that, if no one in the group knew the answer, we’d just shrug and move on.
They eat worms, larvae, shrimp, and crayfish, by the way.
I’d say 9/10 times when someone looks something up that we wouldn’t have gone out of our way to find out, that info is instantly lost anyway. I’m way more likely to remember something if I have to go hunt down the info, either at a library or something really obscure that takes work to find online
That’s my superpower, I remember that shit. It’ll occasionally come up in conversation where suddenly I look like a genius about some obscure topic and everybody asks “how the fuck do you know that” and all I can say is “see… I looked it up once 4 years ago…”
Or if you had to do research and write an essay about it. And use that fucking dewey decimal system.
the best part about that is that everyone would start discussing the actual answer for dozens of minutes, without reaching any conclusion or the one that looks more fun
You would consult the ancient technology of books. And there were these people who’s sole job was to direct you towards the books that contained the information you needed.
There were these huge buildings just filled to the brim with different types of books.
Just because the internet has a huge quantity of information doesn’t mean the quality has increased.
It boggles my mind how younger people think we lived in some kind of dark-age before google.
Not only did books exist, but they could give you an in-depth answer that could be trusted.
And yes, when the internet was made public, I loved being able to find answers more quickly, but I didn’t just walk around with empty space between my ears
If anything, I feel like people are more gullible and believe more falsehoods than they did when I was a teen
(That said… there is plenty of information that’s been updated, and plenty of stupid shit that went around- like the falsehood that we only have five senses, or that we only use 10% of our brains)
I had a teacher in high school tell us that glass is an incredibly slow moving liquid, and that’s why on really old buildings the glass is thicker at the bottom, because it has flowed and “pooled” like that.
I believed that for a good number of years and even repeated it a few times before finding out that no, it’s not, and the reason some old glass is like that is simply because of the manufacturing process at the time, and that it was simply installed thick side down for aesthetic reasons, and that you can actually find old glass that is thicker at the side or top because it was installed differently.
I remember that one! What about how people thought we could only taste certain flavors with specific parts of our tongues.
That one really confused me as a kid
The taste bud thing is even worse. There are zones of buds which specialize in certain tastes, but they are scattered around the whole tongue. The brain know their pattern and recognize them as you are tasting something.
Thought Emporium made a video about faking taste and between 5-11 he explains in depth.
Don’t get me started on the 5% of our brains thing. Utter bullshit. There’s no way I’m reaching even close to that number.
Thanks for the giggle :)
I used to touch things like salty stuff to different parts of my tongue and get confused about why I could taste them everywhere and wondered if there was something wrong with my tongue.
Same!
When teachers didn’t know the answer to a question, they would just make some stupid shit up.
Which ironically I guess is just what AI does.
I think the gullability of humans have been constant throughout our history. The difference now is that everyone has a way to broadcast their stupidity easier now than before.
Fair. Misinformation spreads like wildfire now
I was there before Internet and I do think libraries are dark ages compared to Internet
And people always blindly trusted books and scientific articles. Including that one article that says that vaccines causes autism.
People were and are gullible. What changes is for efficiently being able to tailor lies to specific groups.
Yeah.
I definitely blindly trusted books and articles as a teen. I feel like standards for publications were higher, though. I suppose it depends on sources. I also had the advantage of being the youngest member of my family, with two older brothers who were both interested in science (in one way or another) and I went to private school as a younin’ with a gap of terrible public school, and then a decent snooty high (also public). What I mean with all that is that my experiences may not be the norm, and for some people the internet may have opened even more doors
Also, to be fair, I was a gullible teen and young adult as well. I’ve always questioned things, but I did carry plenty of false beliefs (hell, I probably still do!)
I tend to forget that, sometimes
Why are you guys acting like books no longer exist? Libraries are full of them. And kids still go to them.
Everything I learned from older people as a kid is the reason why I fact check everything anyone tells me now.
but there are also misconceptions that the internet also teaches us. For example, we are taught that planes fly by using Bernoulli’s law, that is, the shape of the wing causes lift to be generated. I can confidently say, after years of studying in aeronautical sciences at university, that the real reason planes fly is magic.
Aunt Marge was right!
You just caused my to cackle ‘heeheeheehee’ like a mad scientist’s demented servant so thanks for that!
False! My mother bought us an encyclopedia set, and I read that shit cover to cover, A-Z! We also had these things called schools, and these big buildings called libraries.
Encyclopedias exited, and if you wanted to know the population of Greece they were perfect. But, they were terrible for answering random questions like “Why is the sky blue?” The answer was almost certainly in the encyclopedia, but you’d have to know to look up “Raleigh Scattering”, and how would you know that?
What makes modern web searching so good is that it’s amazing at surfacing answers to just about any question. Whether the answer it brings up is true is another matter…
The section about the sky would mention it, so then you go to the index in the R book, find the entry for that phenomenon, and read about Raleigh Scattering. The internet is definitely easier for finding random information though, although it’s harder now than it was like 10 years ago. ChatGPT is amazing for finding random information, but you have to verify what it tells you, since it will just randomly lie for no reason.
It doesn’t “lie” though, it just generates a plausible sequence of words. The sort-of fortunate thing is that facts are often plausible, and it’s going to be trained on a lot of facts. But, facts aren’t the only word-sequences that are plausible, and LLMs are trained to be creative, and that means sometimes choosing a next-word that isn’t the best fit, which might end up meaning the generated sentence isn’t factual.
Calling it a “lie” suggests that it knows the truth, or that it is being deceptive. But, that’s giving “spicy autocomplete” too much credit. It simply generates word salads that may or may not contain truths.
The industry word for it is “hallucination”, but I’m not sure that fits either.
It’s better than lying, but it still implies consciousness. It also implies that it’s doing something different than what it normally does.
In reality, it’s always just generating plausible words.
It’s bullshitting… Faking it till it makes it, if you will.
No, that implies a goal. It’s just spicy autocomplete.
It is certainly more complex than a predictive text machine. It does seem to understand the concept of objective truth, and facts, vs interpretation and inaccurate information. It never intentionally provides false information, but sometimes it thinks it is giving factual information when really it is using an abundance of inaccurate information that it was trained with. I’m honestly surprised at how accurate it usually is, considering it was trained with public data from places like Reddit, where common inaccuracies have reached the level of folklore.
It is certainly more complex than a predictive text machine
No, it literally isn’t. That’s literally all it is.
It does seem to understand
Because people are easily fooled, but what it seems like isn’t what’s actually happening.
but sometimes it thinks it is giving factual information
It’s incapable of thinking. All it does is generate a plausible sequence of words.
I see you have spent time researching the old fashioned way
The internet wasn’t allowed for school reports until after I was through with college the first time around. The World Wide Web didn’t even exist for the first half of my life.
Edit: it’s kind of crazy that my career revolves around something that didn’t even exist when people were still asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Although, “engineer” was a frequent answer to that question, and that’s certainly in my title now, but it’s an entirely different kind of engineering than I meant back then.
But, they were terrible for answering random questions like “Why is the sky blue?” The answer was almost certainly in the encyclopedia, but you’d have to know to look up “Raleigh Scattering”, and how would you know that?
Then you would ask the librarian!!! They would be able to help you find the answer or where to start! And will help you with your research a bit too, in my experience. If you have questions or something. Librarians are super cool and an awesome resource we shouldn’t let fade away.
But yeah I fucking love being able to look up any random question that pops in my head. The image post is like, my actual nightmare I can’t stand being misinformed, but ignorance is fine.
I dunno every time I spoke to a librarian they were either super unhelpful or just plain dismissive.
‘hello, I’m trying to find information on the Inventor of the Volt, Alessandro Volta’ ‘look in the autobiography section’ ‘i couldn’t find anything there’ ‘ok fine I’ll look, here you clearly didn’t look properly go find this book - the life of Voltaire’ ‘that’s a different person though …’ ‘it’s just a different spelling’ ‘no they’re different people’ ‘well that’s all we’ve got so read it and see’ ‘but…’ ‘we’re closing soon sorry I don’t have time for more questions’
Not everyone had access to libraries in the first place and at least half the librarians were awfull at their job or awfull people, and they’d never help you with anything even slightly complex anyway even the good ones. I found more information about Volta while writing this comment to check the spelling of his name than my local and city library had buried in all their many volumes.
Yes libraries were fantastic and important before the internet, but the reason they’re merging into social places and community centres is because we still have use for those (previously forbidden) uses but for research they’re basically pointless now.
You have a valid point but your conclusion is weak. Libraries aren’t pointless for research just because you have anecdotal evidence of bad experiences where they could have been just a shitty person, dumb person, having a really bad day, in a rush to get home to relieve a babysitter… etc, like that’s just human nature shit.
Edit: sorry my tone came off WAY too strong and aggressive. I didn’t mean it like that.
I just think milage will vary a lot more with libraries than the internet, affluent areas tend to have better libraries and better staff which I think can cause a bias in how we think about things. The internet has been an absolute game changer for impoverished areas, especially being available on a fifty dollar tablet or second hand smart phone.
And that’s before you even consider how huge it’s been for under-developed areas, I spoke to a guy from Ghana whos school has about a dozen old textbooks when he went there and now his son plays Minecraft and studies with the same resources and tools we use in the UK.
Yeah, the real difference is the lag factor. Librarians, teachers, parents, etc. were great at answering random questions. But, often you’d wonder something and there wouldn’t be someone around who you could ask. If it was important you could write it down or try to remember to ask later. But, these days you can satisfy any idle question in seconds without disturbing anybody.
I also think misinformation is awful, and in some ways the modern Internet plus AI is making the problem worse. What I hope they do is transition schools from places where kids memorize facts to places where kids learn critical thinking. Some of the key things I learned at some point in school were how to properly estimate something, and how various units work so you can cross check your answer. So, for example, a Joule is a kg m^2 / s^2 . If the units you’re using don’t match up, you must have screwed up somewhere. I also took a course in argument analysis once, that helped spot common fallacies.
I have the impression that as time goes on, being able to remember facts is going to be less and less important. And, learning technical skills (like how to search the web, use a spreadsheet, create a database, etc.) is going to be so easy that it’s not something worth teaching. But, what will be important is knowing how to spot bullshit.
But, often you’d wonder something and there wouldn’t be someone around who you could ask.
More importantly, some people had questions they were too scared or embarrassed to ask and can now ask the internet, like “why do I like boys when I’m a boy?”
I am from a pre-internet era and I would say that for that reason alone, I’m glad we have the internet to answer questions for kids.
Hmm yeah interesting you say that, not to be like toot my own horn or anything but I am DEFINITELY someone who struggles to remember facts and details. I only remember the concept or message whatever that I gathered from the information at the time I learned it. I often feel ignorant and outright stupid if I were to try to discuss many topics with people in person.
The internet is so nice because I can find my sources and double check myself before spouting off lol.
That said I grew up as an older mileneal/gen x? And I do have the benefit of being taught the critical thinking of how to do research which really has do much in common, and then growing up with the internet wild west and all the crazy real and fake shit that happened… idk it feels almost intuitive in ways, like having a bad feeling about someone.
(Sorry that was a long ramble, I am high and got a little excited to talk to someone about this who sounded like they could be my age)
Yeah, the older you are, the more you’ve seen things change over time. In some ways I wouldn’t want to be young today. But, in other ways I’m jealous of the way kids today can grow up with the Internet available at all times.
Yup. Now we (probably often myself included) rather “learn” from some low effort shitpost than getting distracted by that highly researched encyclopedia set.
Wikipedia can still give you some of that though.
We were much better at retaining information too. It wasn’t available at the tip of your fingers, so we put effort into remembering it. Nowadays I don’t remember anything except for old movie quotes, and stuff pertinent to work. I think the constant influx of information we experience now is interpreted by the mind as noise, and it goes in one eyeball and out the other.
In the first grade I got curious about negative numbers in my calculator. The teacher told me it was a mistake and I shouldn’t play with it.
Teacher should have shown you how a number line extends forever in both directions (no reason to think she should have known about imaginary numbers making it extend orthogonally as well)
The teacher probably had no idea what negative numbers were, and if they did, had no training on how to explain that to a six-year-old.
If your teacher was born in the 1800s she would have been right. Negative numbers weren’t accepted as “real” for a very long time.
I had a set of encyclopedias before the internet… They were 20 years older than me though and it wasn’t until I was at least 10 or so probably before I started consulting them for school… Lol
Yep. I was in elementary school in the 80s, so, of course, all of their encyclopedias were from the early 70s and had all kinds of out-of-date information.
Wikipedia may be untrustworthy at times, but at least they try to keep things up to date if there’s a major change- like a country no longer exists- the encyclopedias and our globe both showed Vietnam as a divided country.
Wikipedia updates to use the past tense within seconds of a celebrity death, I trust them to keep up with most stuff.
You’d be surprised at how much misinformation was taught in public schools in the 80s and 90s in Alabama.
I’m in Indiana and have a 13-year-old daughter. You’d be surprised how much misinformation is taught in public schools now. Not just the abstinence-only sex education bullshit and the same old lies about drugs, but just getting basic history wrong because that history makes America look bad. I do my best to educate her on all of these and other subjects where school has failed her, but I have no experience in pedagogy, so it’s an uphill battle.
She did enjoy coming home every day to tell me new lies the anti-drug program in her health class told her so I would correct them.
I stopped to think about this for a second and I am not surprised.
I find this idea genuinely terrifying. Having seen lots of factual information, you start to see where things logically fit in and you’re able to deduce so much more new information, but you’re also just able to tell when aunt Marge is spitting straight horseshit again.
Now imagine growing up in e.g. a creationist household, maybe even home-schooled, where you’re told things just are a certain way, even though it makes absolutely no fucking sense. At no point, you start to see logical patterns. At no point, you develop an intuition for new information. And if someone bullshits you, your only ‘defense’ is whether you trust them on a personal level, meaning aunt Marge’s horseshit is to be considered unquestionably correct. What a dismal and vulnerable position to be in.
My neighbor mentioned at the bus stop that grape ice cream is not found because it’s illegal due to its toxicity to dogs.
He’s a resident doctor…
At least he’s not a vet
LOL very true. I’ve been trying for a while to figure out if it’s 4D chess and he’s trying to see who will challenge him on things. He brings up relatively unbelievable statements quite often that are easily verifiable by a Google search.
I wouldn’t only carry that misinformation but actively spread it like we just discovered a new jesus.
Now i let the internet take care of it and live my own happy life while people worry about wrong info online.
And tomorrow we’ll let GPT fabricate new lies every day.
Tomorrow? Lmao my guy lives in the past
we used to think that glass is actually a slowly flowing liquid.
Opinions seem to vary, but Scientific American is credible enough, right? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-glass-really-a-liquid/
Is…that not true?
It’s not. Part of the myth comes from ol timey glaziers putting glass fat side down.
Didn’t know this has been disproven, I thought it was a “scientists don’t know for sure” type thing
Then eventually you post it on the internet after your grandkid shows you how to make a Facebook account
Yeah I feel like the only difference is now you can find a dozen Marges all copying the same “facts”
There was also those in between few years where we Encarta’ed everything.
I mean, some houses had encyclopedias before this as well. The problem with those is they got outdated quickly for anything current and near past and were expensive. Occasionally, a big archaeology find could shake up a section as well.
they usually weren’t that outdated for most things.
sure new info becomes available all the time, but some things take time to hash out anyway. when i was a kid in the 90’s, we had a late 70’s encyclopedia set. i used to just read them all the time.
was some of the info a bit incomplete compared to more modern methods? absolutely. but at least it gave you a good jumping off point. it might spark an interest in a particular subject, that could be furthered at the school or local library. also by the mid 90’s we had a newer CD-ROM based encyclopedia set.
i always appreciated that my stepdad tried to make sure i had books, but also a healthy dose of practical knowledge as well. i remember having a old Boy Scouts field manual and a few other books, that taught me a number of useful and practical skills.
Yeah, even on Wikipedia, most of the key information is stuff that hasn’t been significantly changed in decades. The stuff in a 30 year old Encarta CD was probably enough to pass many undergraduate degrees. It’s only once you start doing advanced stuff that it matters that it’s 30 years out of date.
What the Encyclopedia Britannica and Encarta weren’t as good for was searching for information. Like, say you wanted to know why the sky is blue, or the name of the bird with a huge beak pouch, you wouldn’t know where to start. One of the things that makes modern online systems so good is that you can ask random questions and get back facts.
I was mostly thinking geography for outdated things. Bit of a shakeup going into the early '90s, heh. Yeah, except in a few domains, things were usually current enough.
The library. We read books.
And microfiche was futuristic as hell! Just hit up the card catalog and find what you’re looking for.
We also had libraries.
We still have libraries.
Unwillingly politicised libraries, but sure, we still got 'em.
Yeah, OP is true for the small silly stuff that you wouldn’t bother looking up but for important things there were multiple ways to look stuff up.
Now instead we have an over emphasis on small unimportant stuff and misinformation is rampant. Not sure that’s better.
