A few days later, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the trump Putin talk was a failure. War in Ukraine is ramping up, as well as ALL the other conflicts in the world. Israel, Iran, Taiwan...
It may be brinkmanship but then again, as time goes on, it looks more and more like the real deal.
Not only are people going nuts, they are also becoming noticeably less intelligent. Well, AI will help, sort of. Or will it?
Conversely, what kind of government would less intelligent people vote for? The current ones?
The intelligence test was invented 121 years ago.
While IQ scores have historically risen alongside technological advancements, recent years have seen a slowdown—if not a reversal—in intelligence. The rise of smartphones, tablets, and social media may be to blame, and more recently, the phenomenon of the 'TikTok brain' among teenagers suggests peak cognition has arrived.
A new report from the Financial Times cites a test used to measure the IQs of 15-year-olds, conducted by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). This test evaluates students' performance in reading, mathematics, and science literacy. The latest data suggests that IQs peaked in the early 2010s.
Peak cognition fears come nearly two decades after the debut of the satirical sci-fi comedy Idiocracy, which depicted a dystopian future where humanity becomes profoundly dumbed down by the 2500s.
FT's chief data reporter, John Burn-Murdoch, said the timing of this data marks an "inflection point" and is "noteworthy" because it coincides with "our changing relationship with information," which is now primarily online.
Declining math and literacy skills are likely the result of a shift away from text-based learning toward visual media. Additionally, there is a broader erosion in the capacity for mental focus, which could be attributed to 'TikTok brain rot'—with youth spending countless hours each week mindlessly swiping into oblivion. It's clear that digital technologies have impacted attention span, memory, and self-regulation negatively.
A surge in the share of 15-year-olds who reported difficulties in PISA tests coincides with big changes in how information is processed, shifting drastically away from reading to visual content over the two decades.
Peak cognition fears suggest achieving full Idiocracy may happen at a much more accelerated timeline. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence could surpass human IQs by the next decade...
"I think today's systems, they're very passive, but there's still a lot of things they can't do. But I think over the next five to 10 years, a lot of those capabilities will start coming to the fore and we'll start moving towards what we call artificial general intelligence," Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said at a briefing on Monday.
TikTok and other digital technologies that offer instant gratification through swiping left, right, up, or down appear to have made society even dumber.
I don't know if there are really 10 signs but the fact that people are developing closer relations to their mobile than to other people is certainly concerning. And the fact that nowadays people cannot agree to disagree is truly frightening. What's next on this slippery slope?
Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,
Have you noticed that people around you are behaving more erratically? These days, you just never know what is going to set someone off. A person may seem relatively normal, but then the moment you express an opinion that they don’t like they totally lose it. It is almost as if the majority of the population is constantly “on edge” emotionally. If you are one of those people, you need to understand that nobody is going to agree with you 100 percent of the time. If I write something that you don’t agree with, that is okay. And if you say something to me that I don’t agree with, that is okay too. A free exchange of ideas is so important in our society, but a lot of people don’t seem to understand this.
Can you remember when it seemed like most of the people living in this country were relatively normal? I realize that this may be hard to believe, but there was a time when our streets were not filled with nuts and you didn’t have to worry that the next person you run into might flip out for no reason at all.
One of the big reasons why everything has gone so haywire is because we simply stopped developing deep relationships with those around us.
Today, our relationships are with our screens.
According to the American Psychological Association, U.S. teens spend an average of 4.8 hours a day using social media…
4.8 hours
Average number of hours a day that U.S. teens spend using seven popular social media apps, with YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram accounting for 87% of their social media time. Specifically, 37% of teens say they spend 5 or more hours a day, 14% spend 4 to less than 5 hours a day, 26% spend 2 to less than 4 hours a day, and 23% spend less than 2 hours a day on these three apps.
Study after study has shown that heavy use of social media can lead to depression and a whole host of other emotional issues.
So it should come as no surprise that over one-fifth of all adolescents living in America “had a current, diagnosed mental or behavioral health condition in 2023”…
More than 1 in 5 adolescents in the U.S. (5.3 million) had a current, diagnosed mental or behavioral health condition in 2023, according to a new data brief from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).
Among those 5.3 million adolescents, defined as children ages 12-17, anxiety was the most common condition (16.1%), followed by depression (8.4%) and behavior/conduct problems (6.3%). Female adolescents were more likely than male adolescents to be diagnosed with anxiety (20.1% of females compared to 12.3% of males) and were more likely to be diagnosed with depression (10.9% of females compared to 6% of males). However, behavior and conduct problems were nearly twice as likely to occur among male adolescents compared to female adolescents (8.2% of males compared to 4.3% of females).
Wow.
And how many more have undiagnosed conditions?
Many social media communities are breeding grounds for hate. For example, an interactive map that shows the “locations of every Tesla showroom, charging station and the known residences of Department of Government Efficiency employees” is going viral on social media right now…
Elon Musk-hating hackers have doxxed Tesla owners in the United States, releasing an interactive map showing their names, addresses, phone numbers and emails.
The disturbing website, called DOGEQUEST, also provides the locations of every Tesla showroom, charging station and the known residences of Department of Government Efficiency employees.
It even lists FBI Director Kash Patel’s home and uses a symbol of a Molotov cocktail as its cursor.
Needless to say, this map has been put out there in order to get people to take action.
And after they have been fed endless hours of hate-filled propaganda, many of our young people have been perfectly primed to do just that.
Earlier this week, several vehicles were viciously set on fire at a Tesla service center in Las Vegas…
Multiple cars were set on fire at a Tesla service center in Las Vegas Tuesday morning in what authorities described as a targeted attack, and the person responsible is still at large.
A vehicle fire was first reported around 2:45 a.m. at the Tesla Collision Center in the 6000 block of Badura Avenue, near Jones Boulevard and the 215 Beltway, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police said in an email.
“LVMPD Communications received information that an individual had set several vehicles on fire in the parking lot and caused damage to the property,” police wrote.
What you feed into your mind on a regular basis is going to determine how you view the world.
It really is that simple.
Let me give you another example.
At some hospitals in New Jersey, parents are asked to provide “preferred pronouns and sexual orientation” for their newborn infants…
As if coming up with a great baby name wasn’t hard enough.
Newborns can’t even control their own movements, but that isn’t stopping New Jersey hospitals from asking parents for their baby’s preferred pronouns and sexual orientation.
Inspira Health’s “Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Questionnaire” requires new parents to “identify” their babies as either “Male, Female, Transgender, Gender Queer,” or “Additional gender category.”
It further asks parents to select the word that best describes their infant: “Lesbian or gay, Straight or heterosexual, Self-described, Questioning/Unsure.”
Needless to say, infants have no idea what pronouns are, and it will be years before they understand anything about “sexual orientation”.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where many feel a need to inject such cultural issues into everything, because those that are on the cutting edge of cultural change are often held up as heroes…
CNN has honored trans-identified influencer Dylan Mulvaney as its “game changer” of the week, with the social media influencer saying he told his mom as a small child that he thought “God made a mistake.”
Video footage shared by the left-leaning media watchdog Media Matters of America shows that CNN recognized Mulvaney as its “game changer” Friday.
No, God does not make any mistakes.
And God is not a pop star either.
If you can believe it, Democrats in California recently began a meeting “by reciting a prayer to Beyonce using Beyonce’s lyrics”…
California Democrats opened an assembly meeting by reciting a prayer to Beyonce using Beyonce’s lyrics and asking her for strength.
Democrats are making a mockery of God. Sickening.
Are you kidding me?
It is a very dangerous thing to mock God.
Sadly, many of our top scientists are now trying to play God. One company in Texas has announced that it actually plans to bring back the wooly mammoth by 2028…
A biotechnology company whose goal is to bring back the wooly mammoth says its recent small step is big news.
Colossal Biosciences of Texas has said it aims to restore extinct species to the planet. The company made the woolly mammoth one of its first missions, setting a goal of having a mammoth walk the earth in 2028.
Haven’t these people seen the Jurassic Park movies?
Bringing extinct species back from the dead is never a good idea.
Of course it isn’t a good idea to create super-intelligent AI entities that can think for themselves either.
In Sweden, one company has successfully developed an AI dog “that has a functional digital nervous system capable of learning and adapting like humans”…
A Swedish AI startup company has created a robot dog named Luna that has a functional digital nervous system capable of learning and adapting like humans and many animals, the company, IntuiCell, said on Wednesday.
In one of the first-use cases of physical agentic AI, which can make decisions and take actions towards specific goals rather than just perform narrow tasks or generate content, the robot dog would be able to learn like a real dog.
Does anyone out there believe that it is a good idea to create ultra-powerful, ultra-intelligent entities that can think millions of times faster than us?
To me, that is one of the most insane things that we could do.
But we are doing it anyway.
Despite all of our advanced technology, it appears that humanity is more unhappy than ever.
Americans fill approximately 6 billion prescriptions each year.
That breaks down to about 19 prescriptions per person.
Just think about that.
And a very large percentage of the pills that we take are for mental or emotional reasons.
Earlier today, I was stunned to learn that use of ADHD medications is rising the fastest among “middle-aged and older women”…
Prescriptions for ADHD medications have been spiking in recent years, with the sharpest increase among middle-aged and older women. They’re also the least likely to misuse the prescription stimulants, a new study finds.
The rise among women ages 35 to 64 has been substantial. At the end of 2022, 1.7 million women in this age group were prescribed stimulants such as Adderall and Ritalin for ADHD, compared to 1.2 million prescriptions in 2019.
We take billions of pills, but has that made our population more stable or less stable?
Needless to say, the answer is obvious.
We are in the midst of the worst mental health crisis that our nation has ever seen, and that is just one element of “the perfect storm” that is now upon us.
Our society really is coming apart at the seams right in front of our eyes.
Unfortunately, most of us still do not want to admit how far we have fallen, and that is not good at all.
* * *
Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
A fascinating take on the Trump Putin discussion yesterday: No progress whatsoever! Some prevarication but basically there is unfortunately not much to agree upon. I agree that Trump is probably sincere in his belief that a deal is preferable but the forces leading towards war in the West are just too great. This is what gold a 3050 USD per once is telling us. As well as every single European leader.
Now look at it from a different perspective: Within a matter of years, maybe months the financial system is going to crash. How are you going to compel people to tighten their belts? Wouldn't a state of war help tremendously?
A very interesting video which shows how science really works and why we are being bamboozled with Global Warming.
The problem is that there has been some very mild warming for however long we can look back (usually to the 1880s). Then the question is: "How much of that is related to economic activity? And this unfortunately is the question we cannot answer with ANY significant certainly. In most case, what we observe is well within the uncertainty interval. And consequently, governments around the world decide upon trillions of dollars of investments based on... what exactly?
Beyond the competition China vs US, it is clear now that AI agents are at most months away and once implemented there is no turning back.
Looking around, watching forests of skyscrapers going up in Tokyo, I can't help but wonder who's going to work in these high tech monoliths? With agents available, most companies will start trimming their work force by the end of 2025, compounded with the coming recession, the clean up of bad investment will be spectacular.
Whatever happens, war, no war, recession, no recession, financial crisis or not, AI will completely upend our social structure. It was trendy to say that 2 years ago. Now the future is here. tighten your seat belt the ride's gonna get wild!
The reset is not implemented yet that the EU is already salivating on how exactly they are going to use the unleashed tsunami of money suddenly available.
On the one side, there may not be much of an economy to support such an effort. On the other side North Korea has proven that you do not need a strong economy to rearm. Just a silent, or in case it's not, a silenced population.
Still wondering why all the "extremists", anyone who oppose the European Commission these days, must be excluded from "democratic" institutions? Just remember that North Korea too also includes the word "democratic" in its name.
Will the Yen carry trade compounded with the Trump administration's tariffs crash the global financial system? If that's the case, we may be on track for my prediction that the Summer will be "hot"! Stay tuned!
How close are we to a global reset? Probably closer than people think. The only mitigating factor is that it will probably not work. The West, core to the current, broken financial system will do whatever to survive but its share of global assets is probably already too small for it to dictate the terms of the future system.
The key is to understand that these people have no retrain and are readying themselves to crush the existing (bankrupt) system according to the principle of constructive destruction. The risk of course is that we will get only the first part of their plan, the destructive one, especially if it includes a war as the current European leadership is adamant to start with Russia. (But make no mistake, if it wasn't Russia, it would be China, or in the end anybody else. The "how" being secondary to the goal.)
If we do get a recession in the coming months (which may already be with us), we can predict that the Summer will be hot!
Think whatever you want about the video, the question is clear: What's left of democracy when all the representatives in Washington and Brussels are just drones repeating scripted "lines"?
Don't believe it's true? Watch!
"The Art of the Deal?" Maybe but that's the Las Vegas way where Donald Trump learned his trade. Will being unpredictable as...
