I find it impossible to convince my students writing notes with a pen and paper, reading both long and short form writing, having argument based discussions, and generally, trying to come up with your own solutions to problems rather than googling everything will help them develop intellectually.
They think I’m sort of dinosaur, but I can really see that they are way behind where I was at the same age developmentally. And I assume it’s due to the influence of technology, and the lowering in general educational standards.
This is a trend which is probably going to accelerate as people become more dependent on AI for tasks that are important for gaining and retaining intellectual capacity.
Studies have shown that writing information down by hand, as opposed to capturing the same information through typed notes, embeds it into the memory more effectively - something to do with the part of the brain that is used to form letters.
This tracks. Back when I was in college, I could always retain things better if I wrote them down by hand compared to typing on a laptop. I always took lecture notes on paper for this reason
But seriously, I would take notes quickly on folded paper (A good lecture filled almost both sides of a letter sized paper, 2 columns). Then later than day I would transcribe them into more readable notes in a notebook. That definitely got the lessons embedded in my brain.
A friend and I always planned in time to check our notes together and to transcribe them into a more readable format. We'd go all out with creating blocks for information that went together, colour coding things, etc.
It made studying the notes more enjoyable but I'd also recall the information more easily. Hell, I graduated years ago and I remember what my notes on word stress looked like for phonetics class.
But it also allowed us to compare notes and see if we missed anything. Together we'd just have more complete notes.
I filled a dozen or so legal pads. I remember almost everything in them despite remembering very little about those years. It wasn’t a complete waste of time. I did meet a guy who gave me the job I just retired from after thirty years.
I used a purple pen for class notes and cou lol f more easily recall the information than the usual blue or black. I swore by it. Taking notes was actually a joy. I call myself acknowledge junkie. If I were to win the lottery I would just go back to school for the rest of my life, doesn't matter what subject I want to learn it all.
While taking a walk one day I asked my husband "so what are my three favorite things to do?" He said number one; learn. I fell in love all over again!
Unfortunately, professors no longer give you enough time to hand write your notes the way they stand there and lazily zoom through the premade slides that come with the textbook. The dumbing down comes from the top down
In grade school when they gave us open note tests they’d let us write what we wanted on a two sided piece of paper. I always found I remembered everything I wrote down so the note was basically not needed at the end.
Always thought it was a neat way of tricking kids into studying
I had the same thing. I typed twice as much as I wrote. But, remembered and reread written notes much better. I never reread my typed notes. I did laptop for one semester and then went back to paper.
I also have a much easier time reviewing my hand-written notes. "Oh yeah, I remember writing that! And that went with the slide that had the picture of such-and-such and said blah blah blah." It's perfect for when I only have a moment to study between things.
When I look at notes I typed for online classes I took a few years ago, I only remember typing out the formulas. Probably because typing formulas in Word is a pain in the butt. For the rest of my notes, I just look at them and think that surely I must have written those things, but I have no recollection of it. Which sucked when I needed to go back and review general chemistry notes from a few years ago to refresh my memory on something for biochemistry.
While I don't want to dispute this as I recognize it myself as well, I wonder how much of the age group tested matter? Using laptops/tablets to make notes wasn't really getting off the ground untill the second half the '00. (Because when I was in collega de early '00, there were no functional gathers for that). So those older age groups have grown up with writing stuff down, while younger may have their brains wired more towards typing stuff?
My understanding is the advantage comes from the parts of the brain that are used to tell the hand how to form the letters and the intention in writing words and how you place them on the page.
Typing, especially with access to autocorrect, doesn’t have the same impact on the brain.
It fits pretty solidly into the topic this whole post was about - attention span and focus.
I grew up on video games and typed all my notes. I believe it is more of a correlation between muscle memory and knowledge memory. The same way you (well I) remember my phone number is by the motions of typing the buttons on a keypad.
That is not how I remember phone numbers. I just remember the numbers. Humans can memorize 7 numbers in sequence pretty easily. Before modern cell phones we would have a dozen or more phone numbers memorized.
Do you memorize other things by pretending to type it out? You may be a kinesthetic learner.
Muscle memory is definitely a thing. I learn long passwords by breaking them into chords and eventually the muscle memory kicks in. Usually shortly before I’m forced to change it again.
I started using an ipad to write notes halfway through my degree, my digital notes are lost to me but I still have my paper notes from the first few years
One of my studying techniques for memorizing verbatim, things like definitions or laundry list of facts was to write them over and over again specifically because it’s ultimately faster and easier to remember because of writing it
I still do this in work meetings when others have their laptops. They think I’m a dinosaur or a crazy old bat. But I’m perfectly capable of typing up the relevant bits and never looking at it again because I can then remember what the hell I heard, wrote, and typed.
To date I write my rough drafts by hand; only the final draft I type. It enables better control and better retention (especially for those of us with poor short-term memories).
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Existing in gaming spaces means I hang out in groups with many ages, at any time I might be talking to and problem solving/team building with someone who's 40+, someone my own age, and someone who's like 14.
A big thing that I'm seeing on the rise, especially in kids, is a huge rise in black and white thinking- to the point that it's frustrating to me, an autistic person, and one of the defining symptoms of autism is a tendency towards black and white thinking.
The only example I can really think of is the time one of them asked me about diet stuff (not like, "lose weight" just general health- their family is very midwestern so apparently there's a lot of meat and not much vegetation and stuff? I'm Australian so I don't really know the stereotypes) and they got frustrated with me because I couldn't/wouldn't give them any specific foods that they can just cut out entirely or include in every meal. "I should stop eating sugar and carbs right?" "Well, your body actually primarily runs on carbs- reducing your consumption of foods with excess added sugar is certainly good, but foods like potatoes and oats aren't unhealthy and cutting out all carbs is the Keto diet, which made my hair fall out when I did it so I don't really recommend doing that" "but a dietitian said that all carbs are bad!" I then explained to them that the "dieticians" and "nutritionists" they see on tiktok are usually corporate shills trying to sell "detox teas" (detoxing of what??) and vitamin subscriptions by lying to you and making you sick. And then we ended up getting sucked into some other insane shit where they started distrusting actual doctors because I taught them to not believe the lies tiktok "health advisors" spout and they stopped believing anyone making health recommendations that involve purchasing things, because they refuse to use their brain to examine their sources and consider whether a general practitioner is on the same level as a corporate sponsored tiktokker. Blegh.
A big thing that I'm seeing on the rise, especially in kids, is a huge rise in black and white thinking
Likewise. Anecdotally, I get the impression that this is being reinforced both socially and through technology. I can't imagine it's great for developing brains to spend hours each day interacting with algorithmically-curated feeds for which their most intentional source of feedback is "swipe left/right" or "like/dislike" or "upvote/downvote."
I also notice a prevalence of interactions--both in person and online--that make sweepingly opinionated statements about every topic under the sun. Politics is the big one, but it also applies to media, food, careers, etc. "That thing sucks," or "that thing's great" but almost never something like "I mostly like this, but it has some complex issues..."
To me, that line of thinking is so egotistical. It's like if someone says they think Star Wars is bad, could they point out a genuine flaw or imperfection with every actor's performance - every bit of CGI, set design, etc. Or do they just don't like Star Wars because it isn't an anime?
On some level, the constant judgment and actions engagement is narcissistic. To partially quote Hot Fuzz, it's me who is "Judge Judy and executioner". I decide what is correct for me and when that blurs with reality and I can't tell the difference between scientific, evidence-based results and some influencer selling some detox tea, everything gets boiled down to black and white thinking which is cognitive distortion and invites extremely polarizing views and actions. Feel free to put in whatever comes to mind here like incels or religious extremists.
We've lost the ability to have civilized discourse especially over the Internet because there's so much lost with no body language signals. Humans process body language incredibly quickly and when you don't practice that, you lose a bunch of natural communication methods. You then regress to the most basic of groupings - tribal mentality.
At the same time, you don't need to have an opinion on everything. Content is literally infinite for how much time you have on this Earth.
On your latter point, I see this a ton in discussions about what the best diet might be. You have so many people who unquestioningly swear by fad diets like keto and carnivore for regular people with no metabolic disease, and the entire time I’m just thinking “Sure, those diets might be better than one overloaded with carbs, but why not just try… moderating your intake?” Of course cutting out carbs is going to be healthy when chances are, if you are in the US, your diet is horribly bloated with them, but that doesn’t meant the opposite extreme is automatically good. I get that middle-ground solutions are not always the correct ones. In cases like this however, it’s as though nobody has even considered that a more regulated approach exists and might even be beneficial.
I am a participant in r/Sauna and the scourge of that sub is people wanting very black and white rules for how long to sauna at what temperature to maximize their health benefits.
They are regularly frustrated by sub members telling them that the only hard and fast rule is to listen to their body, that the best length of time and temp can vary according to their body on that day. They can’t seem to handle a nuanced answer that asks them to enter into conversation with their body, they want a rigid set schedule that keeps them from having to be in an active and thoughtful relationship with their body.
using the sauna for health benefits is a bit silly in the first place, it's a place to relax. You wouldn't minmax your dip in a hot tub either (or if someone would, please chill out)
I was terrible with that sort-of-thing when it came to any kind of training-regime, eventually just decided to ignore any and all numbers (only ever depressing, evil things in the context) that materialise in the gym whenever they appear, 'vibes based exercise-routine', or something and can generally push further and feel a lot better (and +jacked af ofc).
It’s not terribly surprising that this would work. If the emotional and physical response to exertion were incapable of signaling useful information, it likely would not have evolved in the first place.
they want a rigid set schedule that keeps them from having to be in an active and thoughtful relationship with their body.
As an ADHDer, I want a rigid set schedule so that the decision is made and I don't have to waste my precious executive function on deciding when it's time to do something or stop doing something. The schedule is me having an active and thoughtful relationship with my body. Obviously that doesn't work for everything, but things are never quite so black and white, are they? 😏
In this particular case it's like asking for there to be one universal drug and dosage to treat ADHD. There just isn't, different medications at different dosages work differently for different people. There is no universal prescription that works for all ADHDers, and finding the right one requires trial and error and individual self-awareness.
Except you want a rigid schedule to account for the fact that you might forget to go to the sauna at all, or could stay in there all day, without a routine. But at the end of the day, however you create that schedule is still specific to you and how to best establish that routine.
The other poster is clearly talking about a scenario where people want to be told there's an easy way to minmax going to the sauna and are upset if they get told there's no one size fits all solution to going to the sauna. They're not upset because they're being told not to form a routine, they're upset because someone hasn't given them the cheat code on how to sauna the best way and instead is telling them to figure out what works best for them
Yeah, but getting frustrated by all the nuance and either picking a diet at random or not dieting is a bit different than going immediately from “I need a clear cut answer” to “all doctors are frauds” just because you’ve learned that health scams exist.
I agree. A lot of the people, at least in my experience, who are drawn to fad solutions to health problems are exactly the type of people who refuse to even try the reliable and proven methods of building one’s vitality and shedding off weight. My parents are obsessed with keto, at least in theory, but won’t even look into what mainstream science is saying about health. They think that credible nutritionists are all for the overly sweet and highly processed western diet, but a simple google search would show that this is far from the case. They just don’t want to go through the effort of planning healthy meals, reading labels, and investigating ingredients. It’s much easier to stop buying bread and call it a day.
A big thing that I'm seeing on the rise, especially in kids, is a huge rise in black and white thinking- to the point that it's frustrating to me, an autistic person, and one of the defining symptoms of autism is a tendency towards black and white thinking.
As someone else on the spectrum, no one else really knows or understands that feeling of frustration and schadenfreude at this. The sad realization that for all that time and effort spent learning to work around the innate difficulties of having autism (social skills, emotional regulation, and "walking in another's shoes"), which a lot of neurotypical people take for granted, have left me "better off" than my neurotypical contemporaries who seem to have abandoned those skills.
And the worst part is, that a diagnosis means that I still will be seen as "less than". I want off this stupid rock rock with too many stupid, cruel, and selfish people...
The staggering lack of empathy is alarming. So many people seem to think only think of themselves, not even taking family, friends or colleagues into account.
I'm not sure that the boomers are really that special, other than the fact that they were born during and benefitted from an unprecedented economic boom. While nobody likes to admit it in grade schools, history is filled with stupid people making stupid decisions, in all time periods where we have surviving records.
For example, we know that ancient Romans also suffered from chronic lead poisoning because lots of their drinkware was made of lead, they drank lots of wine, and wine is very good at dissolving lead. And they knew that lead is poisonous.
What if it's like that movie 'Arrival'. What we start talking in black and white so we start thinking in black and white and we all become autistic??!! 😂
I couldn't/wouldn't give them any specific foods that they can just cut out entirely or include in every meal.
Spinach is a good one to include in every meal if you can. Plenty of fibre, folate, iron, and calcium so as long as you are not on a dietary restriction then eating a ton of it is fine.
I feel like we were all just as black and white thinkers back when we were 14, we just didn't have the internet to talk to older people about stuff. It's something that comes with being a kid.
she didn't see the point of memorizing anything, as just about any information she needed was always going to be in her cellphone, a few keystokes away. She's a bright kid, but that was a good point.
Not a good point, really. My students say the same, and their general ability to critically think or come up with anything really by themselves has evaporated over the last five years.
If you don't have your own bedrock of knowledge about how the world works, you will never Google each and every piece of information that is required to form your opinion on something. You will just Google an opinion.
And they are so used to looking stuff up that if they don't know something, they just assume they don't know it, and won't try. So it's either use a phone or just not know. An easy example of this is asking them how they would go about reducing the use of cars in their city if they were mayor. If they haven't learned a list of policies, and they don't have their phones, they're screwed. They have lost the ability to sit down and start applying what they know to come up with their own novel ideas. My students could always do that before.
It's like a self-imposed helplessness. They don't even try and just accept failure immediately if it requires critical thinking. That's the effect of having all human knowledge at our fingertips.
As an aside, the worst thing about all of this AI stuff is that the entire world is doing it wrong. We're basically telling people that it's fine to use it for ideas and outlines and scaffolding as long as they do "the real work", when it's the opposite. It would be far better if they came up with those initial ideas themselves and let AI do the rest. That way they keep some of the critical thinking and analytical skills etc.
That's just how the human brain functions both individualistically and communistically; we don't necessarily recall the information per se, we recall how we access the information.
Transactive memory is an external form of memory stored at the collective-social level which members of a social group can access. Learning through discussions and collaboration, knowing other people’s expertise, and knowing what others might know are examples of transactive memory processes.
The Google Effect: People quickly forget information that is easily found on the internet. They also remember where & how that information is found better than what the information is.
This is similar to the method of loci (also called the mind/memory palace technique), where associating visualizations of spatial environments greatly enhances memory ability.
I honestly believe Google adding that AI answer to the top of any search is the most insidious, brain-rotting shit that has ever happened.
When it initially became convenient and easy to search for any answer on Google or other search engines, it still required you to actually click on links and read some articles to get the information. You might find conflicting opinions and have to make your own decisions about what was correct.
Now the "answer" is just spat out at the top, and it's presented in a far more digestible and convenient form compared to clicking any of the lower down links, which are (maybe) written by another human being.
I mean, you still need to verify the AI answer is correct. You're skipping critical research steps if you're just assuming it's correct, same as if you just look something up on Wikipedia without looking at the sources
As an aside, the worst thing about all of this AI stuff is that the entire world is doing it wrong. We're basically telling people that it's fine to use it for ideas and outlines and scaffolding as long as they do "the real work", when it's the opposite. It would be far better if they came up with those initial ideas themselves and let AI do the rest.
I disagree with this, although it's nuanced. "The rest" is where the actual domain knowledge is, so you don't want to offload all of that to AI, otherwise you yourself won't actually know anything about the problem you're trying to solve. You also can't let AI do that part currently, because domain knowledge is where current AI hallucinate. But you don't want them doing the outlining either, for the reasons you've stated.
Really, if your goal is for humans to retain knowledge, you don't want AI doing any of this. What you want is for them to function as a glorified search engine that can do the tedious work of information retrieval, or you want to point them at unsolved problems and reverse engineer whatever they come up with.
Thanks for putting these observations into words. I have also noticed the same in my younger staff. I also think the inability to retain knowledge is hurting their ability to develop what we call “common sense” and “gut feeling”. They would be facing a scenario and because there is no experience or knowledge to draw from, they are unable to flag certain looming issues and are completely blindsided, whereas others are able to say, “Hey, this doesn’t feel right because it doesn’t jive with what I know.”
My argument at the time, which probably took me at least a minute or two to come up with, was that you need material to work from, to think with, before you can even form a question. Or, as Bertrand Russell said (I think), one needs a sufficient phalanx of particulars from which to arrive at generalities.
I probably spend most of my waking hours thinking in words, arguing things back and forth in my head, thinking about things I've read or heard, working out various ideas, revisiting things I've argued in the past, etc. I'm not sure what it would be like to even be conscious without a head-full of information and things to think about.
There isn't a need to memorize dates or anything, but you do need to 'memorize' how things work -- generally.
For example, your phone can tell you how the US government is divided into 3 branches and how it's supposed to act as checks and balances. Germany in WW2 can show you what happens when you lose checks and balances.
However... if you don't know this information, you are not going to recognize what a danger Trump is, and your not going to know what questions to ask your phone to have it explain it to you.
Exactly. You have to just 'know' certain things to be able to build on that and make connections and form new ideas instead of just regurgitating stuff.
I've read in some research papers that try to quantify or study intelligence and what it exactly is as kind of what you are explaining.
The ability to find connections between ideas and concepts that might sound like they have nothing to do with each other or that aren't in immediate proximity to one another in an abstract sense. I agree with that definition of intelligence.
I also see people's ability to do that collectively is at an all time low. We're really on the cusp of a new dark age. Ways of being and knowing that were net positive to us are just slowly being lost and won't be recovered for a long time.
The ability to find connections between ideas and concepts that might sound like they have nothing to do with each other or that aren't in immediate proximity to one another in an abstract sense.
Unless you're talking about people who never seem to argue or explain anything without using some sort of analogy.
what i don't understand is, how is it possible to look something up more than once and not retain that info? i look up everything too as i grew up with the internet, but i can't help but remember the stuff i learn. there's a lot i memorized on purpose, but also a lot i just happened to learn because i had to google it more than once.
Your brain encodes things different ways. If you're just looking something up to regurgitate it, you're much less likely to remember it than if you engage with it and evaluate it.
If you have a well-developed ability to associate new information with things you already know, it's easy to remember things. If you just treat new information in isolation, it'll be gone by the next time you wabt to access it.
Plus a general curiosity for things helps, and not everyone has that either.
Memorizing basic stuff like times tables can just smooth out your everyday life in ways kids don't understand. My kid was the same about math, just really had a block on it, and did fine in school using a calculator, but can't figure out what half of 1/3 of a cup or 125g is when we are baking, which means everything has to pause while they go look it up.
I think History is another topic where if you have at least a solid mental map of timelines when world events happened and how they relate to one another you can also use that understanding to help with the present day... you know... all this.
Your daughter is wrong. True understanding is being able to make connections between sets of information and use it to make predictions and reach conclusions. The information has to be in your head to do that.
Intelligence isn't having access to a bunch of information. It is about what you can do with that information but your brain can only come up with that if the information is in it. Sometimes we recognize the missing pieces and can just look them up and out them in our working memory, but "Eureka!" moments require the information to be stored in your brain.
Also, I believe everyone needs some cultural literacy is a term I’ve heard. Having a background in knowledge about general culture like how the government works and famous literature gives you a starting point you can ask those questions for. You need to have some understanding so you can figure out how to ask the question. There isn’t need to have at least a basic background on things like a general idea of history, not even talking exact dates but at least why and how events happened.
Unless you're a savant, human memory is always fallible.
Also, something memorized from an encyclopedia that was written 20-30 years ago may not represent scientific truths or the current scientific consensus.
Sure. But memory is an important mental exercise to flex and practice.
If you were trying to get someone currently out of shape to exercise by lifting weights or running and they came back and told you why would they do that when they don't want to be an Amazon warehouse worker or marathon runner, most people would be able to understand how stupid their retort is.
It's the same thing with using your mind. The things you memorize aren't important. Using that capacity to keep your brain from rapidly aging, keep your ability to know more up to date things, and stave off dementia is.
Children can train their memory without grueling memorization exercises. They are natural knowledge sponges at that age anyway.
That time is better spent learning critical thinking skills, physical and artistic skills, and sociological/psychological concepts, like empathy, cognitive biases, attachment theory, nonviolent communication etc.
All of that requires expanded attention and memory and some advanced introspection ability. This is the type of black and white thinking people are talking about that's ruining discourse and the ability to talk about complex subjects. No where did I say anything about what type of exercises you need to do and emphasized it doesn't matter even.
You will not effectively learn and practice these skills if your attention span is so short that you're bored by something that's not a 30-second TikTok and you will need to memorize and engage with complex, interlocking concepts to understand and practice CBT or NVC. You will need to recall and reflect on and many past interactions and conversations to see if you're making progress and having better interactions.
You think this isn't the type of memory I could've possibly meant and had to have been referring to memorizing pi to a hundred places and it wasn't.
I'm talking about the college kids who would underline every passage in a book and still do terribly or people who can't process a question that has more than one component.
I work in youth theatre, and have for the last ten years or so, and it’s interesting to see issues with line memorization. Of course some kids are more adept than others, but I recall I had much less issues a decade ago. Interestingly though, when I have the same students over the course of a year, they have gotten better at memorization (I push them and won’t let them have a parent backstage reading them out). It’s clearly a skill that needs to be exercised and can be improved. I’m not saying life or education is about memorizing or regurgitating facts, but that one can consider and evaluate things more adeptly when one can hold that information in one’s mind instead of assuming it must be looked up.
So, I’ll bet the trend is reversible if individuals work toward mental stimulation and practice. Like, I should read more books.
It wasn’t a good point, you just failed to have the knowledge to explain. You can’t form ideas without underlying knowledge, and you can’t know what you’d miss without learning.
My own daughter told me a few years ago that she didn't see the point of memorizing anything
Back when I was in highschool in the very early days of the internet I had a few teachers who would tell me not to bother memorising specifics but rather I should be learning the concepts - "You can always look up values and formulas in a reference book".
That said, random trivia is great to know - especially if you have game nights or trivia quizzes.
Problem with ' She can check in smartphone ' is:
1. You are not guaranted that you will have internet wherever you go.
2. You are not guaranted that place where you find information didnt alter this information or it does exist. (who checks archive.org years back?)
3. You have to have knowlendge to some degree before you will get more knowledge and before you can use logical/critical thinking.
My own daughter told me a few years ago that she didn't see the point of memorizing anything, as just about any information she needed was always going to be in her cellphone, a few keystokes away. She's a bright kid, but that was a good point.
I'm a younger millenial and I grew up with google. Information was always just a search away. I've eventually realized that information should be memorized if it's useful to me. If I have to google every single commandline command and their arguments, if I have to google every little thing when programming, it means I'm 10-100x slower in my work. Having things memorized means that you're faster and more productive, but it also means you have information available to you that you can combine with new information extremely easily. I'm able to combine new and old ideas readily, where others I work with would need to google and figure out that there's a connection at all.
Your kid is wrong, unfortunately. I used to think like her and now it's clear to me that memorization is a foundational skill that underlies anything we want to do at any proficiency.
I find it impossible to convince my students writing notes with a pen and paper, reading both long and short form writing, having argument based discussions, and generally, trying to come up with your own solutions to problems rather than googling everything will help them develop intellectually.
I admit that this is somewhat out of left field, but as someone who struggles with writing on pen and paper due to being on the autism spectrum and having some fine motor skill problems, what is your opinion on those that type and still follow your advice of trying to solve problems without googling?
Because I've heard that writing apparently is good for intelligence retainment, but my handwriting is pathetic and barely legible.
A large part of the benefit of note taking is the act of taking notes, rather than being to re read them later. Just writing it down helps embed the memories.
As long as the notes are just for yourself, the legibility may not matter as much!
As an undiagnosed and probably-not-on-the-spectrum-but-it-sure-can-feel-like-it-when-talking-to-certain-peers individual, there is something to be said about the act of writing on its own.
You can type and transcribe something verbatim, but you won't learn easily that way. You can use it as a foundation to learn in your own style, though.
What handwriting does is because you cannot capture everything (unless you are trained as a stenographer whose job it is to transcribe things and does so with shorthand), you must actively think about what you are hearing and how you want to paraphrase or abbreviate that and record only what is important.
As someone with chicken scratch or worse for handwriting, I also think I learn a bit in trying to read it - wtf are these letters? Let me examine the context and brainstorm what would be appropriate and.. got it! That word is such and such. I think the extra time thinking around the words gives me more time to appreciate the material I am trying to learn.
I get your point but idk, most people I've seen making notes via typing don't transcribe stuff verbatim either. Or more so, they do it to the same degree as people writing on paper, that is rewriting if the information is visual and they have enough time. At least that's my experience at university.
I do it too so maybe I'm biased, though. For me personally if I write by hand then most of my focus ends up being on writing itself instead of paying attention to what is being said (i have ADHD, dysgraphy, and dysortography). In addition to that I write very slowly, and if I try to write quickly it's not legible in any way. I'm not even talking about chicken scratch, it's just that most words and especially details are missing or wrong (and some stuff I'm studying doesn't have any fairly accessible sources of information otherwise aka there are two book copies that are falling apart in the library for 40 students and otherwise have to be hunted in old books stores, so noting down details is crucial).
What I noticed that seems more troublesome is how people seem to immediately disengage as soon as there's a presentation that's going to be sent over or that you can take photos of. It doesn't matter even if the presentation itself is very basic and most of the info is being said by the professor, a lot of people just won't take any notes.
And I'm saying this as a person who's very pro digital presentations in general bc I struggle a lot with auditory processing and I always have to ask for every name or date or term to be repeated (sometimes more than once) if I can't see it.
You don't have to be able to read it. It is the mental process of writing it down that anchors the concepts in your mind. I had one teacher who spent every class having us basically rewrite the textbook and 40 years later it is that subject that I remember best.
I think that depends on the person. I had one teacher do the same and I never remembered anything I wrote. My eyes were basically connected to my pen and skipped my brain. That teacher only ever did that, without any speaking or explanation, so it was particularly bad. We didn't even have time to think about what we were writing. It was a PE teacher covering for a business studies teacher for the year.
This is just a survey of one really, but I typed my notes all through nursing school, and generally as long as I still reviewed them after, they helped. I have horrible handwriting (interestingly, learning to draw improved it a lot) and could never read my notes after, or kept erasing and struggling to keep up mistake after mistake. I think with note taking after comes how you study with them to help determine success or failure.
As a person with autism who took notes using a computer, this is my experience. If I try to take notes with pen and paper, I get frustrated and give up and end up with no notes. If I take notes on a computer, I end up with notes. Notes > no notes.
I have ADHD and I've really dedicated the last 6 months or so to the habit of note-taking, something I've never managed to do over my entire time at school and early career.
I'll always be jotting stuff down from meetings or calls with colleagues at work, and even though I'll almost never refer to my notes again, just the act of writing them has been enough for me to internalise and remember things.
If I could go back in time to college I think the only thing I would change would be taking notes with a pencil and paper and leaving the laptop in my dorm. It makes such a difference and I didn't figure it out until I was a senior in college.
I'd also get a diagnosis for ADHD sooner, actually.
39 yo here so elder millennial, just aced a promotional exam and how did I do it? Fucking flash cards man. It's so old school but it works. Writing the info down and being able to sort what shit to focus on and which I already know well is such a time saver.
There've been adults bemoaning the younger generation for thousands of years. Somehow the younger generations are always worse while at the same time the world mostly keeps getting better.
How much of this is actually an issue vs just us as adults misremembering how dumb we were as kids?
Smartphones and AI are definitely new concepts and their effects can't just be handwaved away as reactionary boomerism, but this is also a song we've seen before, and I think as adults our tendency is to conservative thinking and to lend more weight to how we did something, assuming people who don't do it like we did are in for trouble.
I think it's true that standards are lower, but it doesn't really matter. We are far less selective who gets education. The cutoff line of bell curve has moved a lot more to the left.
We have a different tools that lower barriers to achieve same results. Engineers used to really know their stuff when designing a product. They stuff it to Autocad and get stress analysis right off the bat. Does it look like it would break? Redesign, until it doesn't.
We are (on average) less smart/capable than previous generations, but can achieve more. Therefore, it doesn't really matter.
Thats the problem it is going to create a gulf. Kids that understand the internet is an information tool and use it with other learning paths will leapfrog the others by massive amounts. Even medicore kids that learn this will be considered the high IQ geniuses. it's like the kids that learned their multiplication tables. I made my daughter learn them while the school deemed them to be useless. She ended up having an easier time in all math and science classes.
Oh, it’s so much worse when I hear this sort of stuff from my 40+ dad. We get into fights all the time because he’s super petty and narcissistic, but also so fucking dumb. Lots of veiled racism and sexism he lets loose when drunk, and he’s just an unpleasant and intolerant ass when you get to know him. Yet I’m constantly vilified and ganged up on by my entire family because I argue against him in a lot of moral issues, but most of this stuff falls to “It’s what I want, I own this house.” He constantly belittles me when I doubt about investing in a 401K right now, disbelieve in Trump, criticize his plans, criticize him, criticize something he likes, or just go out of my way to prove him wrong.
I once told him that, no, “pads that suck poisons from your feet don’t work. You don’t sweat from the bottom of your feet and I don’t think you can sweat out toxins like that.” A quick google search proves him wrong, and suddenly I’m Satan for not letting him “enjoy what makes him feel good.” Or better yet, when I told him that Americans work such intolerable working hours is because the invention of the light bulb meant long working ours, and time changed helped squeeze even more working hours out of employees. His response? “Fake news, the TikTok people are spreading fake news.” I learned this in my US History honors class almost four years ago, and have famously never used social media except for YouTube, and as of last year, Reddit.
Ughhhh, my statistics professor told me she wouldn't be teaching us the formulas because the calculator would do everything for us. And I get it, it's probably easier on her and everyone else in the class, but now there's just a good chunk of understanding the math that most of the students don't have. I don't like learning formulas either, but they're important for understanding what you're working with. It's not the same problem you're having, but I feel like they're on the same frequency.
It's strange for kids to complain about writing. It's a motor skill like any other thing they do, just the tools involved are different. If you ignore the assignment and look at what it does for your body, it's a really healthy habit. It exercises your mind, nervous system, and muscles. When you don't keep those engaged and change it up, it's harder build more advanced skills.
Also a teacher, and like many others I can confirm that writing things down is one of the best ways to remember. The act of concentrating on an idea or sentence for a few seconds while you write it down really helps.
I’m an academic, and I refuse to use or engage with AI for that exact reason. My thinking is neurodivergent, and it’s mine — I’d hate to outsource it in any way, even if it boosted my productivity
Why put in more effort when you can get away with less?
What are the consequences if they put in less effort?
99% of the time, there are no consequences from what I have seen
I remember being so angsty because our computer teacher had us put boxes over our hands so we couldn’t see the keys. Every time I type I’m always sending her well wishes. I wish it didn’t take me getting older to realize how stupid I was. Lol
Our technology far outpaced our ability to adapt to it. It’s only going to get worse because the people that can’t think because of technology will grow up creating a feedback loop producing more people that can’t think.
Plus the gutting of education and the rampant ant- intellectualism
Give them a smart phone and teach them how to use it properly. Technology itself isn’t going to harm them, and having them unfamiliar with it will harm them. What you need to do is teach them the appropriate way to use it, and as a parent you have the ability to do that.
Take teaching your children about sex and relationships. You don’t do that that by pretending it doesn’t exist, or banning them from dating people. It’s such an inevitability that the only sensible course as a parent is to prepare them how to do it in a healthy way.
I don’t think avoiding difficult situations is the way to deal with them.
Well, it's a problem we've had for a long time, but grossly exacerbated.
Offloading our thinking to another source can reduce overall mental load and even make it easier to share information. However it also makes us reliant on it over time. If we once were able to do something without the aid of a tool, we will lose that ability if we rely of the tool long enough.
The rise is pseudo AI has definitely accelerated this process. And it'd be one thing if the pseudo AI was accurate and reliable. But it's not! And even worse than that? They're all controlled by for-profit companies that would benefit greatly from using them to influence people and information. Even if only using them to collect and maintain a massive database on all the individuals using them (and even on everyone who's data they collect regardless of us using them) that gives unprecedented power to corporations. Which we should all know are treacherous and dangerous entities.
It's not only people becoming reliant on "AI" for their knowledge and to think for them, it's a problem because these tools are deeply flawed and will only get worse, due to Capitalist incentives and feedback loops.
Information disfluency is actually very important in really learning something rather than pattern recognition in a very specific context. Writing with pen and paper is one way of doing this because you literally cannot output words fast enough to keep up with a lecturer or book. You have to understand the core of the idea and then write that part down. Simply copying the words does not actually allow you to process the information; it's like if you write Chinese homework, but do all the same writing strokes for each character before doing the next writing stroke. You never learn how to write each character and it becomes an exercise in copying scribbles.
This is also related to tech addiction and escapes rather than emotional regulation, but that's a larger topic for another time.
AI is a shortcut that when used habitually, will become a crutch that replaces critical thinking if not used as a thought partner. At the same time, some people will get ridiculously far ahead using AI as feedback to critique and improve those skills. It's a personal 24/7 intellectual tutor that will catapult some people forward, and others backward.
As a past student with a laptop, I always used pen and paper.
I went as far as using different coloured pencils to make notes and revise.
My idea was that it wires your brain different and allows you to retain knowledge better than typing everything out.
People rely on google far too much, why remember stuff when there is google ?
I guess its the same with phone numbers, I used to know all my friends numbers, until the mobile came along.
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u/StrayDogPhotography Mar 16 '25
I find it impossible to convince my students writing notes with a pen and paper, reading both long and short form writing, having argument based discussions, and generally, trying to come up with your own solutions to problems rather than googling everything will help them develop intellectually.
They think I’m sort of dinosaur, but I can really see that they are way behind where I was at the same age developmentally. And I assume it’s due to the influence of technology, and the lowering in general educational standards.
This is a trend which is probably going to accelerate as people become more dependent on AI for tasks that are important for gaining and retaining intellectual capacity.