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How good software makes us stupid

Salomé

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The architect will only grow more clever to make a better machine. What you really should worry about is a singularity where the human architect becomes unnecessary. At this moment in time, the strength of a system is dependent on the capacity of the human making it.
Most of the technology that we use on a daily basis is already far too complex for one person to understand in its entirety. There is no architect. You have hundreds of analysts and developers each working on a small part of a product and you have integrators and implementors and the architects who pull everything together, but no one person has detailed understanding of the whole thing. We've already lost that level of control. We're already ants in the nest, cogs in the wheel...
 

redacted

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All that happens when technology gets better is that the total amount of human labor it takes to do a task is decreased (on average). Eventually, we may be able to run a sustainable economy with the average person working as few as 5 hours per week.

Sounds like a good thing to me.

Also, people with downtime get bored. There will be a boom in arts/literature/philosophy, etc. It may even stimulate human growth.

I think it's taking the short view to say that we're getting more stupid.
 

Xander

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I think the most important thing to remember about technology is we do the thinking that matters and make the decisions, it just fills in some gaps and extends us so we can think about or do more difficult and complex things.
That's assuming the programming is done correctly and that your task has thinking parts which are essential and cannot be automated. Data entry is mindless most of the time and data processing is almost as bad.

Simplify things enough and the brain does not engage. Similarly you can't call surfing the internet exercise no matter how fast you move the mouse and click.
 

Salomé

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All that happens when technology gets better is that the total amount of human labor it takes to do a task is decreased (on average). Eventually, we may be able to run a sustainable economy with the average person working as few as 5 hours per week.
Source?

Ever heard of Parkinson's Law?
Also, people with downtime get bored. There will be a boom in arts/literature/philosophy, etc. It may even stimulate human growth.

I think it's taking the short view to say that we're getting more stupid.
And I think you're being overly optimistic. For evidence that boredom does not lead to an intellectual renaissance one only has to look at the ratio of intelligent posts:fluff posts on this forum, or any forum, or the internet as a whole, or in fact, any part of the media.
 

LunarMoon

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Technology has been weakening the human species for centuries and the idea that it is isn’t by any means new. If I were you, I would worry more about how the use of firearms and the rise of civilization has led to an under reliance on the intellect that human beings once had to rely on in order to survive. Or how modern medicine has allowed physically weak individuals, who otherwise would have died before puberty, to survive into adulthood and reproduce. Is sophisticated software really going to add anything to this?

Most of the technology that we use on a daily basis is already far too complex for one person to understand in its entirety. There is no architect.
Your average person wouldn't even be able to put together a fire with the use of flint, much less construct a simple phosphorous match. As stated, above, it seems strange to contemplate this problem when it has existed for most of our existence: all 200,000 years of it.
 
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