Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> It's a trope to say that our "best minds are working on ads".

"The last generation was better because they read _books_ and had _discipline_ and didn't waste their time on frivolous garbage" is also a trope.



Doesn't mean it's wrong.


It probably is though. Sure, they didn't have as much distractions, but they also didn't have the sum total of the world's knowledge at their fingertips in the same way we do today.

People having been saying "this next generation is inferior to the last one" since the ancient Greeks. If that was consistently true we would already be in an Idiocracy scenario.


> If that was consistently true we would already be in an Idiocracy scenario.

Been on Twitter, Facebook, or Hacker News lately ?

More seriously, I really fear this kind of stuff is, to some extend, new : https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/dopamine-smartphones...

(Although, maybe it's comparable to the "opium epidemics" of the 1800s ?)

Ironically, I should stop having this kind of conversation... On social network.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: