RE: The intentional miseducation of society
This does not shield you from criticism my friend
damn.
That however does not mean that people are broadly skilled.
It is like only having a hammer, only useful in some circumstances. We are narrow and the skills we have are likely easily programmable (future) for a narrow AI to do.
People are also much smarter than they were in the past, and that's set to modestly increase.
How fast are we going to evolve? I would suggest, not fast enough.
Could it not be that the mechanism by which the consumerist drive you speak of operates is a lack of, or a controlling of imagination?
Indeed. People are highly unimaginiative and becoming less imaginiative as the global view and popular products, shows, fashions, culture etc gets spread equally to all. Equality might be reached eventually, as we will all think identically.
However some people are just fat.
Where were they 12,000 years ago before farming? How many of the Australian aboriginals (no farming - not malnourished) were fat? it has become a genetic disorder through poor nutrition (too much carb) that is now transferrable to the next generation and exacerbated by the fact that body types tend to cluster for relationships.
It's only by real information that the smart can become useful to themselves and others.
I can agree with this yet, (to defend my position) real information is also the information that comes from alternative possibilities through imagination. For every correct thought, how many incorrect did it take to reach that point? The problem I see is that people work under the assumption that it'll all work out and become complacent and leave the details up to others. Introduce alternate theories and possibilities (even incorrect ones [unlike mine]) and there is more food for thought to build a better, more informed path forward.
Read them fairytales.
It's never easy taking you to task, I should have known better 😇
Regarding skill, the fact remains that your statement is incorrect (people are less skilled) and requires qualification if you mean "less broadly skilled" or "less usefully skilled". The implication as it stands is that people are stupider, which is also not true.
We are and have always been "programmed". There's a less biased word for it too, it's called culture. It's the reason why someone will commit suicide for shame. Not only that, but as long as there are guardians of culture (which there mostly has been everywhere for thousands of years) these are systems of control. This control can be a good thing (stopping people from killing each other too much over disputes for example) and a bad thing (causing people to kill each other even more over disputes, lol). It is the kind of control which is internalized and makes up the very stuff of your mental world. We cannot do without it, even as we try to escape it.
I would argue it's not the programming itself that is the problem, that is, we can't remove culture. I would say however that improving the culture is worth doing. The bad news is that culture has huge inertia, but the good news is that things do change. Again, information is key, and I agree with you that imagination and all of that can be information too.
Regarding the fat question, I really don't know enough about it. I know that people several hundreds of years ago who were farmers have been discovered to be what we might call "fat" today. It is also my recollection (we'd need to get some citations here) that hunter gatherers did not have an abundance of food and were often hungry in a way that we would find very difficult today. But I bow out to the information, whatever it is.
By the way I think this is one of your incorrect thoughts that may hopefully lead to a correct one 😉I can't remember what this kind of speculation is called, but in any case it is not supported by your previous statements.
I lost track of the chain. I am an idiot :D
😂