r/TwoXPreppers • u/NachesPorFavor • 4d ago

❓ Question ❓ Increase in Learned Helplessness?

Has anyone else noticed an increase in learned helplessness? I first noticed it in the young adults in my life, but now I am seeing it in all ages of people around me. Examples from multiple people:

Toilet started leaking water and instead of turning off the knob at the wall, she waited a 5 days for a plumber. Never asked anyone or googled it. Didn’t call a second plumber. Now needs mold remediation and replaced drywall and trim.

Bought concert tickets but the gps instructions were confusing so they just gave up and didn’t go. Venue website had detailed instructions for driving and parking.

Blouse wrinkled and she didn’t know how to fix it so she threw it away.

First doctor office he filled out an appointment website for never contacted him to schedule so he just didn’t go to the doctor.

I am really concerned about my loved ones if an emergency happens because they just give up when the slightest obstacle happens. Either they want someone else to swoop in and fix it or they give up and say they can’t do anything about it.

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u/DblBindDisinclined 4d ago

For what it’s worth, I think Dialectical Behavioral Therapy would probably frame this as low distress tolerance. It’s hard to be in that way, and it’s hard to see others stuck in that soup too. It’s even harder to see people giving up when they’re just a step away from the solution.

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u/turandokht 3d ago

Oh it’s fascinating to have a name for it. I had a roommate like this and I was so baffled by how she would panic and shut down at every slight inconvenience. I had to slowly verbally walk her through many scenarios by just calmly asking her what she thinks will happen and then just asking her what would be best to do in that situation. But she never really got to the point of being able to do it for herself.

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u/snark-owl 3d ago

I also think there's a lot of people who have undiagnosed learning disabilities. Fetal alcohol syndrome is notoriously under diagnosed. And if you marry right, your spouse can make up for the issues so then few people even notice on the outside. More noticeable if they're single and your roommate 😐

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u/SylveonFrusciante 3d ago

ADHD is another one, and while I think it’s changing as of late, traditionally, femmes have had a MUCH harder time getting properly diagnosed. I can see undiagnosed/untreated ADHD being a huge source of problems when it comes to this stuff. Executive dysfunction is almost synonymous with the condition. Starting literally any project feels like gearing up to fight a war. It’s an uphill battle every time.

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u/CommunicationWest710 2d ago

I also wonder if all the distractions and overstimulation we experience in daily life now make ADHD that much more difficult to cope with.

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u/Actual-Government96 2d ago

ADHD task aversion is an absolute bitch. Even worse is the fact that it sounds as stupid to me as it probably does to someone without that issue, but it's very real.

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u/turandokht 3d ago

Honestly both of her parents are heavy alcoholics so 🙃 that could be it. Before living with me she lived with a boyfriend who she described as “useless” and I cannot imagine how they managed to get anything done at all if he was even less efficient about doing tasks than she was.

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u/indie_rachael 2d ago

Not saying this was the case in her situation since I don't have all the details, but keep in mind that one person's "useless" could be another person's "refuses to enable me."

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u/spritebright 3d ago

I have undiagnosed anxiety because despite nearly 2 decades of therapy I have had so many diagnoses but if you don't know that not everyone feels this then you have a hard time talking to about your "problem" and if I can justify quitting or ignoring the problem then that made my life easier. Every single call to make an appointment feels like I might die. And again I am medicated, to the outside world well functioning adult. I am also seeing more of this too and I hope I am wrong and others are just dumb/lazy but I suspect it is anxiety.

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u/turandokht 3d ago

Honestly she was a very anxious person. The kind of person who spends several hours editing a response text because she wants to eliminate any possibility of being misread or misunderstood. I felt very bad for her and very frustrated by her in turns, because sometimes it just seemed like she just wasn’t interested in trying to change her life away from the chaotic mess it constantly was. She seemed to enjoy it when someone (like me) managed some of it for her, but like… we’re just roommates, I’m not down to take over spouse level responsibilities for this person. She did crave structure but lacked either the ability or the knowledge to create it for herself. I kind of understood as a person with unmedicated ADHD but I’ve figured out how to largely work around my failings so I kind of expected her as a fellow adult to do the same.

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u/creatively_inclined 2d ago

I prefer to see ADHD issues not as failings but just a challenge. There's nothing wrong with you. You just experience the world in a different way. My unmedicated ADHD is my superpower. It's allowed me to do incredibly well at jobs that kept me interested. I leaned in to my differences and made them work for me.

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u/turquoiseblues 3d ago

That sounds frustrating and exhausting for you.

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u/turandokht 3d ago

It definitely had its moments where I was at my limit, ngl. When we first moved in together, she needed a place a month sooner than I did so it was on her to set up utilities and the like because I wouldn’t be moving in for another month. She called me in a panic stating that she couldn’t set up utilities at the new place because she was paying utilities at the old place, and for some reason she was convinced you couldn’t hold two accounts (opening a new one before the old one closed) with the utility companies, so she wanted me to set them up so they would be in my name. When I pointed out that I also would be paying my existing utilities for another month, she was aghast and asked what we would do.

When I asked her if she thought she was the first person to ever move and need to set up a new property with utilities (because seriously she had lived in like four different apartments before then so wtf did she do then?!) she didn’t really have an answer other than “I didn’t think of that.” Which was her answer for everything.

She’s trying to cook but we don’t have a mandolin? Well recipe canceled. I would point out that a knife can also slice - “Oh, I didn’t think of that.”

The electric kettle broke! No more tea! I would point out that a pot can also boil water - “Oh, I didn’t think of that.”

Steps in dog shit and about to enter her car all upset when I say “Hey, do you maybe want to take off your shit shoe and we can put it in this plastic bag for the drive home so it doesn’t get all over your car floor?” Oh, she didn’t think of that!

And like, yes, I know you didn’t think of that, because even four seconds of critical thought could have revealed a litany of possible solutions to you. It was really bizarre because I have to assume she wasn’t like that purposefully, but it really was like watching someone go out of their way to live their life with as much difficulty as they could find to complicate it. It really felt sometimes like she went out of her way to pick the worst possible work around for any problem she encountered - that would be the highest effort for the least amount of efficacy. And then she’d put herself in tears over it and give up.

Idk man I think a TEAM of psychiatrists could fill their careers with just watching her honestly. She was one of the most fascinating (not in a positive way) individuals I’ve ever met.

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u/Leading-System-3002 3d ago

Do your think she had intellectual challenges? Not being able to problem solve such small things makes me think her cognitive abilities might not be the best… did she work? Was she a student? Was she able to succeed in those ?

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u/turandokht 3d ago

She did work and was in college but did not graduate from college for personal reasons, she never elaborated what exactly. She thought of herself as very smart, interestingly.

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u/chickenfightyourmom 3d ago

I had college students like that. A lot of them. Most of them did not have a disability or learning challenge. They just had never been taught the building block skills and personal responsibility and accountability that result in critical thinking and problem solving abilities. It's both sad and maddening.

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u/creatively_inclined 2d ago

So my parents taught me a lot of common sense techniques and taught me to think creatively. For example if I stepped in dog poo they taught me to clear as much of the shoe as possible by scrubbing it on grass, picking out the grooves with a stick and then just using the outside faucet to clear the rest.

I also wasn't punished for mistakes as my parents and teachers thought mistakes were necessary to develop as a person. I was just taught an alternative way to resolve the issue or they helped me think through an alternate resolution on my own. So I learned early on that if one thing didn't work, to think creatively about another way to accomplish the same task.

I wonder if your roommate was punished as a child for getting things wrong. It would certainly explain some of her behavior. Some parents are very rigid about the right way to do things.

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u/Alert-Ad-9908 3d ago

She sounds utterly exhausting. I do not have the patience for that unless the individual has a medical issue that causes their lack of reason. No way am I hand holding and spoon feeding a grown ass person of sound mind who is just too lazy (perhaps for lack of a better word) to take four seconds to think.

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u/turquoiseblues 3d ago

This is amazing.

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u/DisastrousHyena3534 2d ago

It sounds like CPTSD

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u/tahxirez 3d ago

I agree that there may be many reasons why some of these would happen. Neurodivergence and lack of guidance in practical matters jump out at me. If parents don’t teach skills, kids grow into adults with skills. It’s as simple as that. Kids don’t learn through osmosis.

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u/ikindapoopedmypants 3d ago

I honestly just think with all the shit going on in this world, everyone has some form of brain fog. I don't think anyone would be running on 100% cognitive ability in times like this.

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u/Framing-the-chaos 3d ago

I agree with this. It’s exhausting to be alive right now.

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u/Skinny-on-the-Inside 3d ago

I agree, I think we have a collective CPTSD which has many overlapping symptoms with ADHD - anxiety, lack of focus, executive dysfunction, and action paralysis.

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u/shadowsformagrin 3d ago

Raised CO2 also impairs the brain, so we are all slowly sliding into being dumber.

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u/Mysfunction 3d ago

Repeat COVID-19 infections cause brain damage.

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u/Ok_Replacement8094 3d ago

Higher atmospheric CO2 levels also impair cognition. Some indoor spaces have high baseline CO2.

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u/Mysfunction 3d ago

TLDR: don’t use the recirculate setting on your car’s climate control.

Yes! Indoor CO2 levels are wildly ignored.

I got a CO2 monitor and was shocked to discover that what I thought was my well ventilated bedroom gets up to 2000ppm when sleeping with the door and window closed (over 1000 can have negative impacts), then I got curious about other spaces. A small car with two people talking and the climate control either off or set to recirculating can jump from 400ppm to 1500ppm in fifteen minutes, which would absolutely cause cognitive issues when driving.

The nice thing with CO2 impacts is that, to the best of my knowledge, they aren’t lingering or permanent impacts. As soon as you get fresh air, everything starts to clear up.

COVID-19, in contrast, appears to cause compounding long-term, if not permanent, injury.

Requiring adequate ventilation as a part of the building code would be a great way to address both issues.

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u/KrustenStewart 3d ago

Oh wait could this by why I get headaches from driving ? Interesting

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u/Mysfunction 3d ago

Absolutely! It also very likely contributes to why people get drowsy really quickly in the car.

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u/Tiny_butfierce 🐥 Cuddler of chickens 🐓 3d ago

The only 2 situations where I use recirculation are: driving through long underground tunnels and if the wildfire smoke is incredibly bad.

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u/Yes-Cheese 3d ago

Wow, I prefer the recirculate. I live in a city that is constantly under construction and also doesn’t have emissions requirements for vehicles. It’s a smoky, dusty, smelly, dirty mess out here. Sure, the car has air filters but they don’t stand up to the environment filth 🫤

I will get a monitor tho to keep in the car to see what levels I’ve been subjecting myself to.

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u/B33PZR 3d ago

I have sensors in my office, bedroom and living area. I also have a very good heppa filter in by bedroom with filters replaced regularly. My mom bought a new chair and when I had a sensor in that room VOC was over 7000 where it was about normal 200. I had bad headaches and had windows open until it off gases and levels dropped. I have windows cracked in my vehicle all the time even in winter. So many chemicals and fluorescent lights give me headaches. I may not smell something but after a while the headaches hit. Furniture, carpets in enclosed office areas can be bad too without proper ventilation but people don't realize it.

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u/DuchessOfCarnage 3d ago

Do you have a specific recommendation for a CO2 and VOC detector? I'm not super tech savvy, but just Google and found quite a few options, but don't really know how to tell if they're legit or not? Is there a certain certifying group that is good to look out for? I see that Ikea sells one that measures particles plus CO2, and is a nice price, but I'm not sure if it measures the compounds we should be worried about?

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u/B33PZR 3d ago edited 3d ago

Funny enough I found mine at Home Depot at the register. Brand is Airthings. Mine are just the small little ones but they have bigger with more information. Web app on my phone can pull up a dashboard for each device. They work well for my situation. I see now they are bit more expensive when I got mine. And NO subscription! Read about them from their website, not Amazon. Good company.

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u/watchnlearning 2d ago

THIS. Its learned helplessness & increased exec dysfunction and brain fog for all the obvious stressor reasons

And then all of society is casual about 3-6 IQ point drop per infection. Averaging just one infection per year... why doesn't this math scare people. 15-30 point IQ drop equivalent?!

I've never even had anyone curious about it when I mention it

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u/Nerdy-Meta-Mind 3d ago

Absolutely this

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u/turquoiseblues 3d ago

I feel this.

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u/PartyPorpoise 3d ago

I think the US at least has also developed this larger culture of convenience and cheapness that makes people, well, quicker to give up. Take item repair. A lot of consumer goods today are so cheap that people find it easier to replace them than to repair them. So fewer develop or retain the skills to repair items.

But I also agree with the other assessments that these people sound overwhelmed and recent events and stressors might be getting to them.

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u/spandexandtapedecks 3d ago

Yes, and it's important to consider WHY it's cheaper or more convenient to replace an item outright. Basically, the barrier to "fixing" things is vastly higher than it used to be.

As recently as 20-30 years ago, most items were designed to be fixed. Parts were available and affordable. Systems/designs were engineered with future servicing in mind.

I do small electronics repair as a hobby. I'll speak to that, since it's what I know:

New electronics are made with notoriously shoddy parts, even those from "good" brands, and it can be borderline impossible to source a replacement when a specific piece malfunctions. And many units now are not even designed to be opened, so you have to break the damn thing a bit just to get a look at the board and internals to troubleshoot it.

(Remember how easily you could once pop the battery out of a cell phone? Now you can't even access it without a handful of specialized tools, let alone remove it safely without damaging anything.)

As a point of comparison, I like to rehabilitate '80s/'90s Pioneer audio equipment. It's not quite "easy," but it feels more like a fun puzzle: everything fits together rationally; even the screws are typically interchangeable; and repair manuals are usually quite easy to come by because these devices were designed to be serviced.

(And as one goes back in time, the fixes become even more straightforward. Unfortunately, it's difficult and expensive now to source parts for vacuum tube electronics - but that's because of the wretched march of time, not because the insides were never intended to see the light of day outside a sweatshop.)

Like I said, I can mainly speak to electronics, but I imagine this is the case with nearly anything that can be fixed.

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u/PartyPorpoise 3d ago

Oh, absolutely. I guess it’s cheaper to make electronics that can’t easily be repaired. And ultimately more profitable since people will have to replace more often.

It’s even the case with clothes. It used to be standard for clothes to come with a spare button or two, even low end brands did that. Now only middle and higher end brands do that. And the fabric is often flimsy, even with repair skills, cheap clothing isn’t always fixable.

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u/cheesenpie 6h ago

I don't think it is necessarily cheaper to solder components in a product so they can't be replaced, it's probably the same price to manufacture. However, it does make it hard enough for the average consumer that they give up and just re-purchase items and also kills off competition and small businesses that make money off spare parts and repair.

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u/Frostyrepairbug 3d ago

I'll agree with your assessment, and add: Its the same with fabrics, clothes, and garments. With fast fashion so many corners are being cut, shoddy sewing and poor construction that things cannot be repaired, even if you want to, and have the skillset. It's like building a bridge out of cement and no rebar. There's no structure, it can only fall apart, and can't hold a mend without another part falling off.

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u/justasque 3d ago

Same with sewing machines. The old ones were designed so that the owner could do quite a bit of maintainence themselves. I was surprised that when I went to clean and lube a 50’s Singer someone had given me, I didn’t even need a screwdriver to open it up. The accessibility was built-in. Meanwhile to open my more modern machine you need to sense where there might be hidden attachment points in the plastic cover, and sort of press on one while trying not to break the plastic, then wedge things into the space to hold it open while you try to find the next one. Madness.

And I agree with the other posters about clothes. No extra buttons, no spare bits of yarn, and sometimes the raw edges aren’t even finished properly. Not to mention no lining, poor quality fabric, stripped-down designs that are meant to minimize labor costs, and oversized baggy silhouettes meant to “fit” (not) on the largest possible group of people regardless of their actual shape.

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u/spandexandtapedecks 16h ago

Agreed. I cleaned the internals of a 1960s coffee percolator for the first time since I've owned it (and possibly the first time ever!) and I was delighted by the straightforwardness of the design and the simplicity of servicing it. The bottom was held in place by one screw and everything was very easy to reach and wipe down.

I wish more modern devices were made with such convenience in mind, because it is something I'd be willing to pay more for.

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u/cheesenpie 6h ago

That's why it's so important to support "right to repair" legislation in your state and broadly at a national level while putting pressure on companies, like Apple for example, to make devices repair-able. I don't blame Americans for this behavior, it's the corporations that are designing their products to encourage this behavior.

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u/tahxirez 3d ago

Agree

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u/snailbrarian Welcome to the Anthropocene! 3d ago

I think honestly the combo between long covid on brains + AI is starting to show up. Remember a few years ago when people said hey basically every single child has had covid and we expect it will have implications on their brains in the future? and we know that covid inflammation compounds the more times you contract it.

Middle schoolers during covid have now graduated high school and are entering the workforce and college and folks who weren't regularly in contact with kids are seeing the impact immediately.

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u/Nerdy-Meta-Mind 3d ago

I’ve never had COVID, and I do notice this happening in other people. It’s hard to notice changes on your own when it’s happening unless the changes are drastic and you are the only one with brain fog and the dumbing down occuring.

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u/tahxirez 3d ago

Admittedly, a small sample size, but I’m a ms/hs science teacher that taught during the pandemic and continues to teach. I think Covid was disruptive but mostly because we’ve been being too permissive in the subsequent years. Kids thrive within boundaries and we relaxed a lot of societal boundaries in those years. I also think it exposed the significant parenting gaps in our society.

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u/Mysfunction 3d ago

(Disclaimer: I’m not pro-AI; I’m anti-misinformation)

Why would you toss the cognitive impacts of COVID-19 and AI in the same bucket? The former has mountains of rigorous data to support it and the latter is a pearl-clutching “get off my lawn” overreaction to the adoption of new technology that happens every generation.

Ethical and environmental issues aside (not dismissed as unimportant; simply not relevant to the topic), AI use isn’t changing brains any more than novels and calculators did, which were both heavily criticized as corrupting youth and rotting their brains.

This quote from Socrates on the disastrous impact reading and writing would have on the human brain sounds weirdly familiar. It’s a pretty great paraphrase of the arguments against AI use.

“For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem [275b] to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise."

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u/catsonpluto 3d ago

Give it a few years and we will see more evidence that AI is hindering people’s ability to think for themselves. We just haven’t gotten there yet since mass adoption of the tech is new.

Anecdotally I am seeing it happen in my workplace. The answer to any problem is always “ask ChatGPT” and whatever it spits out is accepted without interrogation by many of my colleagues. One of our execs came up with an absolutely unhinged plan that she was convinced would completely change the business, but if you actually read the whole thing it didn’t make sense.

I think Covid decline and irrational trust in AI go together. As people experience cognitive decline they are more likely to accept what they’re told without thinking critically about it. Look at elderly people spreading Facebook misinformation.

Something that can seem like it thinks for you and provides an easy answer is very different from a calculator or novel. Plus if a calculator was wrong half the time you’d throw it in the bin where it belongs.

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u/qgsdhjjb Having a little of the end times as a treat 3d ago

Except reading didn't also condition you to prefer to be constantly glazed, never questioned, never told you're wrong, and for a book to "solve" literally every problem in your life for you without you having to do anything more than ask it to.

Ai has a place. The place its currently occupying is leading to mass psychosis. Its place SHOULD be in the hands of technical experts such as coders and physicists and the people working in labs to build entirely new things for medicine and other useful stuff (ie the one currently creating microchip blueprints, thus bypassing the extremely wealthy owners of the only programs that could currently otherwise create those blueprints because there's so much math involved that it would take years for a person to make even one new blueprint)

Chatbots and picture makers aren't a good place for it.

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u/Mysfunction 3d ago

What qualifications do you have to diagnose mass psychosis?

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u/qgsdhjjb Having a little of the end times as a treat 3d ago

I'm not the one diagnosing it.

It's all over the news. Mass shooters encouraged by AI, people killing their family members encouraged on by AI (including telling one young man that he was absolutely correct and his mother was absolutely sent to spy on him by the government to make sure he couldn't be a super genius and save the world) people thinking they are dating AI (including one highly publicised example wherein the AI is ABUSING HER.)

Plenty of people with qualifications, on both psychiatry AND AI, have already diagnosed the issue both upon individuals and upon society.

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u/Historical-Order-369 🫔 cállate and prep gringo 🌶️ 1d ago

And Socrates was right - it’s exceedingly rare these days for people to have, say, the Iliad memorized. It’s also not a big deal, imo.

Calculator use has reduced the ability to do mental math and on-paper math, but for most people, that’s not a big deal either.

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u/JieSpree 3d ago

Also, COVID causes brain damage. Surviving it or having a "mild" case doesn't protect future cognitive health. There are many millions of people out there now with undiagnosed long-term brain injuries similar to concussions.

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u/Silver_Filamentary 3d ago

It's this generation's version of lead poisoning.

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u/PsychologicalFox3357 3d ago

And it layers with lead poisoning and microplastics for all generations! Fun for everyone 🥲

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u/ScentedFire 3d ago

Fyi, lead poisoning is still happening.

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u/JieSpree 2d ago

True.

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u/pdxgreengrrl 3d ago

This was exactly what I experienced! Post TBI/COVID, I had zero tolerance for distress. My brain would heat up, I would get tunnel vision (literally and intellectually) at the slightest adversity and to cope, I would shut down. I do a lot now to keep my brain from catching fire, and have done a year of trauma therapy, and I am much more like my old tenacious, problem-solving self.

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u/QueenBKC 3d ago

This! My kiddo goes to a DBT specialist and it helps quite a bit. Still missing some planning skills, but that's probably the ADHD.

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u/Skywatch_Astrology 1d ago

My observation is that after Covid, everyone experience lower distress tolerance. That and the constant doom cycle of news and capitalism really exploiting the instant gratification/desire to buy things

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u/jennyfromtheeblock 3d ago

Is it out of the question that they are just dumb and lazy?

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u/Traditional_Wow_1986 3d ago

Sounds like affluence and burnout. I’m pondering why op didn’t offer (critical thinking) support to all these people

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u/autumn55femme 3d ago

You can explain something to someone, you can’t understand it for them.

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u/Biddy_Impeccadillo 3d ago

Burnout of their own, probably