Scott Alexander

Sorry, this is too outside view even for me.

Three links here.

Every generation of Romans worried they were growing decadent and courting disaster.

But eventually, Rome did grow decadent and collapse.

I'm not enough of a historian to know whether everyone was wrong until 476 AD and then they were right all at once, or whether each generation was right that they were slightly more decadent and less stable than the last, until finally the decline became unsustainable.

But the guys in 475 saying, ha ha, we've read Livy, he thought his generation was decadent and about to collapse too, would have been in for a nasty surprise.

So let's at least consider taking this at face value.

There are two lines of evidence that phones are genuinely rotting people's brains in a way past technologies haven't.

First, standardized test scores are down.

Second, teachers are freaking out.

The Financial Times presents the argument from standardized testing.

Have humans past peak brain power?

Link in post.

Student and adult test performances peaked in 2012 and have gone down ever since.

Here's the graph.

Performance in reasoning and problem-solving tests is declining.

Average scores on assessments across different domains in high-income countries, teen and adult scores, use different scales.

So there's teenagers and adults.

We have science, reading and maths for teenagers.

They've all gone down since around 2010.