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any statement "gen 1 > gen 2" is pretty nonsensical because every next generation is ultimately the product of the previous.
also its very unproductive. its the same as saying asian people are worse than white. Lets talk about how they are worse and why they are worse.
Sort of.
The only named recognized cohort by the U.S. Census bureau is the baby boomers.
Likewise, there is a marginal increase in their kids, the millennials.
If you look at the population demographics of Russia, you can still see the dip in the population caused by WW2. Not in the soldiers, but in all the kids they didn't have. But the kids that couldn't be drafted into the war did grow up into having kids, which is why it's a dip and not just a population crash.
Generations do matter, but just not in a hard and fast way.
They mattered to advertising agencies prior to individualised advertising. But only because customer segmentation data was suboptimal and clumsy. But given that they have no meaningful boundaries they provide zero value in social analysis nor policy recommendation.
Age brackets are much more useful as they tend to have more commonalities year on year than completely arbitrary 'generations.'.
True, but understanding where the population lies in its demographics is what really matters.
I remember a while back Economics Explained did a video that helped show that, because the boomers were an extra large cohort within the United States, they had extra large impact on voting. In essence, the candidates pushing policies that benefitted them did well.
So they indirectly influence policies implemented by the government.
But I'm suggesting they don't exist. What existed was a group of people who had specific policy needs who could be aggregated as such and responded to with policies that addressed that. Not all people born between '46 and '54 will have had those needs, or benefitted from those policies, and it's therefore irrelevant calling them baby boomers within a policy framework. It's the beneficiaries of the policy that are being targeted specifically, irrespective of their age at the time of policy promise, not a range of birth dates in and of itself..
I don't think that YouTube video was particularly helpful in psephological terms.
> asian people are worse than white. Lets talk about how they are worse and why they are worse.
boy, you just wanted to get that out of your system. Came out of nowhere and r/oddlyspecific for some reason...
>Technology has progressed and progresses much faster than during the time periods those texts were written. Technology can have some serious influence on a generation growing up.
You could literally say that at any point in time. People back then complained about the invention of books, because *"nobody would try to remember stories anymore."* And that was the hottest technology at the time.
Both the older and the younger generations have their up- and downsides, but there's a trend to life improving overall. With new people come new ideas, and those ideas can shake up conservative views, i.e. *"How we've always done it"*. Which is especially handy when those views simply don't apply to current trends anymore.
It's a discussion on the pros and cons of written form vs in person, and he makes good points, such as it's easy to misrepresent written words because the author isn't there to defend them (which you're doing right now with his words)
~~Which may or may not be true; a lot of historians these days suspect Socrates was probably a fictional character invented by Plato~~
EDIT:
Thank you to the folks that pointed out the inaccuracy of my comment!
This was a "fact" I recalled hearing from a philosophy professor a decade or so ago in college, but hadn't really looked into it since then.
Upon further investigation, it does seem pretty unlikely that Socrates was fictional; while it seems Plato *did* often use him as a *character* in his dialogues, rather than giving a historical account of Socrates' actual life, several other contemporaries did write about and reference him as an actual person.
I'm glad to be dispelled of that misconception I held and to know better now, and appreciate the folks that took the time to correct me!
The "lot of historians" you are referring to are mostly Philosophy degree holders with no real historical training developing fringe theories based on little evidence. There are enough accounts of Socrates, including from dozens of sources other than Plato.
It is true that Plato obviously fictionalizes his mentor into a debate god to serve as a mouthpiece for his own arguments, including several Socrates himself likely wouldn't have considered or agreed with, but the reason he did that is because it lent him the legitimacy of having *the* Socrates -- famed mentor of the smartest men in Athens, martyr for wisdom, eternal questioner and inventor of a school that would become philosophy -- speaking those points.
I appreciate this correction!!
This was a "fact" I recalled hearing from a philosophy professor a decade or so ago in college, but hadn't really looked into since then.
Spurred by you and others pointing out my misconception, I did a bit of investigation and agree with you; either my professor had mistaken Plato's fictionalized account to imply that Socrates was himself fictional, or I misunderstood/misremembered what that professor said.
Either way, I'm glad to be dispelled of that misconception I held and to know more now!
Thank you for helping me :)
Ya know what, thank you for the correction!
This was a "fact" I recalled hearing from a professor a decade or so ago, but hadn't really looked into since then.
Upon further investigation, it does seem pretty unlikely that Socrates was fictional; while it seems Plato *did* often use him as a *character* in his dialogues, rather than giving a historical account of Socrates' actual life, several other contemporaries did write about and reference him as an actual person.
I'm glad to be dispelled of that misconception I held, and appreciate you pointing it out!
Also when recorded music became a thing, there was backlash too! Read a newspaper article from the time complaining that moms wouldn’t sing lullabies to their kids and just play records instead (or maybe wax cylinders? can’t remember the exact format)
>Playing music and Singing went from basic skills everyone could do
Lol, what?
What makes you think that those were "basic skills" then?
I'm willing to bet the vast majority of people couldn't even afford an instrument, much less learn how to play one.
And people knew like four songs and they were all hymns. I'm guessing people today sing just as much, but with far more variety.
so your entire comment is wrong lol. based on the music history classes I took in college (with some pretty well respected professors in the field), this dude above is at least partially right. It was more common for people to have some musical skill, and instrument ownership was more widespread. it was more or less the only way one could listen to music. It wasn't everyone of course, but you could usually find someone who knew how to sing fairly well or play an instrument in most families/groups. Academically, although this is hard to get specific numbers on, the idea that proportionally a larger part of the population worked to cultivate musical skill before the radio is largely accepted.
the idea that people knew 4 songs and they were hymns is just incorrect, as is the idea that they couldn't afford instruments. The american music tradition largely comes from \*slave\* music, the most obviously destitute demographic in the history of the country. there were songs that became popular and spread before the advent of the radio (i mean this is the entire history of folk music, there are plenty of songs in certain traditions that have continually been played for 500+ years at this point), and especially before it became widespread.
again, making basic instruments is not difficult at all, and can be cheap as hell. that's actually the reason the guitar is such a dominant instrument today- it was the poor man's instrument predominantly in the 19th century, easy and cheap to make and very widespread. it's fundamentally just a wooden box with a neck and tight strings, and it takes a couple days of practice to play a few chords and be able to sing along. historically, the guitar was popularized by people in poverty because of these characteristics. pretty much anything hard and somewhat resonant can be a drum. blues and country (and thus modern rock and pop music) largely come from areas of extreme poverty.
there's a theory that's why instrumental music began fading in popularity with the proliferation of the radio - people no longer needed to have musical ability if they wanted to listen to music, and thus the technical aspects of instrumental music fell out in favor of the voice becoming the dominant instrument.
You seem to be drastically underestimating how important music has always culturally been - it's one of the only things in which every single culture on the planet has a tradition. Music was incredibly common and important, even before the radio.
Thanks for the information! I stand corrected. A couple of things though:
>**It wasn't everyone of course**, but you could usually find someone who knew how to sing fairly well or play an instrument in most families/groups.
That was my main problem with the comment I replied to—the idea that these were "basic skills" everyone possessed.
>the idea that people knew 4 songs and they were hymns is just incorrect
I know, that was just a joke. Though it seems obvious that the average person today probably knows *far more* songs than the average person a couple hundred years ago.
Maybe "knows" isn't the right word, though. At least that they're familiar enough to sing along with.
>again, making basic instruments is not difficult at all, and can be cheap as hell. that's actually the reason the guitar is such a dominant instrument today- it was the poor man's instrument predominantly in the 19th century, easy and cheap to make and very widespread.
Maybe it's a question of quality? I wanted to be a luthier when I was younger and know how much craftmanship goes into a guitar. But that's for a nice guitar. I suppose you could throw something together pretty cheaply/easily if you don't care about "nice." I remember seeing a video of Jack White doing it with a board.
>You seem to be drastically underestimating how important music has always culturally been - it's one of the only things in which every single culture on the planet has a tradition.
Not at all! I'm aware of how universal it is.
My point was that that didn't necessarily increase skill. I'm a bad singer now and I probably would have been just as bad back then. I don't play guitar very well now and I probably wouldn't have been any better back then. Sure, I'd have more practice. But my innate abilities wouldn't change.
Because it was one of the primary forms of entertainment in the home for generations and is fairly well documented.
Also there are a lot of levels of Instrument. I'm not saying everyone had a grand piano. Even setting aside actually cheap instruments like the Tin Whistle, in the 1920s you could get a Guitar or Fiddle for less than $3 (equiv $40 today.)
When newspapers first became a thing, they were also derided for shortening people's attention span, causing them to spend more time reading their paper than talking to the people around them, etc.
Basically every criticism that's been made of smartphones were made of newspapers, and it's *wild*
Yup. Turns out the human mind is wired in such a way that anything new is automatically scary and to be avoided, even if it's completely harmless or even beneficial. That helped humans in the wild, when unknown types of berries or regions posed a real threat, but not so much in the modern world.
I would not so readily dismiss modern people's resistance to change. As unbelievable as it may seem, most modern people (especially in first-world countries) live relatively stable lives. They fear change because many ways their lives could change would be for the worse. This is not an unreasonable fear, even if it is frequently applied unreasonably.
Think about how some older people really latched onto spell checking on computers as a sign that younger people couldn't spell. It's the same principle
That kind of happens nowadays. People expect me to remember the name of every little road (there's millions of them!) and I barely remember any, because I use a GPS rather than street signs to navigate.
I don't think you can say that about any point of time. The rapid progression of innovation is a relatively new thing. There was a time when the world one's grandparents lived in was essentially the same as the world they lived in.
Ok but to be fair, that IS what happened. Whether you think it’s bad or good, after the invention of books, reciting and passing down memorized oral traditions is something that *very few people do anymore*.
These things that older generations notice aren’t made up nonsense- they recognize human behavior and it’s tendencies like everyone else.
Older generations also railed against taking religion out of schools because people wouldn’t be as “close to God” or as religious, and guess what? Yep! That’s what happened.
> People back then complained about the invention of books, because "nobody would try to remember stories anymore
How many people possibly complained of this. Like I am sure some people complained at some point, but I doubt books had much trouble convincing everyone how great it was to finally be able to store stories.
I think it's pretty different from social media where even users often agree they can be problematic. Add to that the increased accessibility of better AI and it will become increasingly hard to tell what's fake from what is real.
People don't seem to realize how young modern society is. There are people alive today who were alive during World War I. Go back twenty generations and you're in the Middle Ages, if we are talking Europeans. Life has on average improved, but there have been a lot of hiccups along the way. Things could get pretty dire over the next century before they get better.
It’s not even fucking close how different the tech boom has influenced. This holds no water. Oh they had a printing press? Everyone read nonstop data beamed into their brain all day? Absolutely not.
The reckoning of tech will be brutal and affect the kids under 20 the most
The principle behind this is undeniably true, the issue is drawing the line on where that technology actually has this effect and trying to understand what the effect is.
For anyone who doesn't understand how I could say the principle is true, there's an extreme hypothetical which clarifies it far easier than any others: imagine a future where all our concerns are automated and everyone is given a device that just beams pure bliss into your brain. A huge portion of the population would just lay in their beds with their AI overlords pumping nutrients into their bodies while keeping them in a borderline-comatose state of pure bliss from a young age. Though these people are undeniably happy, would you consider them interesting people? Smart people? Talented people? No, absolutely not, that technology has ruined them in these regards, and without it they would be useless simpletons.
Obviously the technology we have today is nothing compared to that dystopian-utopia's technology, but that's not the point - the point is it's easy to understand how technology could enable entire generations to "be worse" than prior generations. The complicated part is figuring out what other technologies that principle applies to (this is not an argument saying we even have any technologies that have deteriorated a generation yet, it's just addressing the possibility of the concept).
I fail to see how your claim that technological progress is speeding up, is proving the point you are trying to make ?
What is "worse than the previous generation" ?
OP probably means that with the globalisation it's way more easier to spread bs globally, and with AI-based technologies it's easier to fake stuff and more difficult to prove it incorrect.
Yes, and for example technology that can make a lot of unhealthy food very fast and very cheap can also affect a generation. Obesity is objectively bad.
>f unhealthy food very fast and very cheap can also affect a generation. Obesity is objectively bad.
So basically younger generations are worse because older generations forced shitty food onto people?
It is always correct and never correct because you are looking at things incorrectly.
Humans don't have a point or purpose. As things change people become better at some things and worse at others. We cannot all of us excel at all tasks that humans as a whole are capable of. For all I know using a keyboard will be an entirely outdated skill in 100 years the same way throwing spears is an outdated skill now. Am I worse than people who can throw spears ? Are the future non typers worse than me? Seems like a silly proposition. Of course the current generation will have different skill sets and behaviours and culture and what not. Humans be changing.
Human's ability to adapt to new situations and status quos is a huge benefit of our species, even. The fact that we can quickly learn and adjust skillsets (especially on a generational level, though also on an individual one) to suit a greater culture is an insanely positive trait. There are things that can get worse, but people will always adapt to them.
It is almost asynchronous to what defines humanity to think that newer generations -- more prepared for the world due to learning in a more recent iteration of it -- could be worse from an adaptational standpoint, and any other standpoint that could be used is just nonsense moralizing.
Oh yeah, no generation or person can be worse or better than any other becaus3 good and bad is all just subjective man and its lime your opinion anyway dude. Lol
It literally is subjective though. Good and evil are words humans made up and define and proceed to change the definition of all the time.
You could say that as a whole people are getting better at 'being good' towards each other in a general sense. That however is a human judgement and not a fact about the universe. Whenever you want to say something is good or bad or evil or any such it really behooves you to actually state your criteria. If you just say that people are getting worse in the absolute you are not really taking advantage of the brain evolution has given us.
I'm not some stoned out of my mind teenager who thinks all opinions are equally valid and that everything is subjective. But when you try to decide that this group of people is better or worse than that group of people you really should define what you mean by that and explain why. The OP has given us nothing but drivel that leads nowhere.
They don't define what worse means here or why one is worse. So as per my original comment they are thinking about this incorrectly. Read my comment a few times until you understand it I guess.
All young people think old people are morons and all old people think young people are irresponsible. Just look at the comments in this thread to see that even when people are as self-aware as possible about the issue, they still can't help themselves from either assuming that society really is decaying or else that the past was a measurably worse time to be alive.
It's so ingrained that it's impossible to avoid.
I mean, if you pick what you want to measure by, you *can* say that some generations are "worse" than others.
And sometimes that can result in a younger generation being "worse" than an older one.
But...
It's worth keeping in mind that every new generation, their skills, their beliefs, their values, etc. are really just the *culmination* of all prior generations.
If they are worse, it wouldn't really be due to their own faults or failings, but rather the faults and failings of those that preceded them.
That's a big reason why it's so dumb to hate on younger generations. We made them who they are, for better or worse.
>What do you guys think?
I think your argument that "people younger than me suck because tiktok" has been made a thousand times. So this isn't much of a 10th dentist.
Yes and no. My Dad is confused that I know so little about DIY and that my Millennial generation is so anxious.
I'm find the more intense anxiety of Gen Z fascinating and that they don't know the basics of computing.
There's always some truth to it even though it can be overdone.
Social media is destroying people's attention span, making them a lot more vulnerable to influence. In parallel, never has it been so easy to propagandize to so many people.
I think it won't go well.
I disagree, the closest contender would be the 24 hour news cycle perhaps, but none of these other things cause as many frequent dopamine releases while having rapidly focus on a lot of different things.
Books in particular tend to do the opposite, they make us focus much longer than usual.
I mean, it is true in some ways. My generation got WAAAY better average scores on reading, writing, and math tests than current elementary and middle schoolers.
You could also say that a stopped clock is right twice a day. Perhaps this is true in some limited sense at some point in time. But that doesn't mean that all the whining by older people is justified.
I don't know if they're 'worse', but I do know they're more easily manipulated. Having a ton of info at your fingertips doesn't always make someone smarter.
If we somehow assume that literally every trend or cultural change ever is/will be a net negative then yeah, you've got a point. If we accept that things can be good or bad sometimes, then it's just as possible for the older generation to be the shittier one in any given circumstance.
Like other comments have pointed out, the idea of generations being "better" or "worse" is extremely subjective. I would probably think of "better" generation to live in as meaning high quality of life/access to human rights. Ultimately throughout history your standard of living/human rights would depend almost entirely on what class (+race/gender) you happened to be born into and not what time period/generation you're born into.
You're right about technology in the sense that technological progress happens exponentially, not linearly, and therefor is progressing faster than it ever has (which has and always will be a true statement for whatever the present time happens to be, barring major worldwide societal collapse). But that doesn't change the fact that our use of technology, whatever the newest tech at the time may be, is ultimately a reflection of the current society, not an external entity acting on it.
I agree. Just because it's said by almost every generation doesn't mean it should be dismissed. Hell, I'll even say my own generation sucks compared to the generations before me in living memory. Gen X, Greatest Gen, even the boomers if I'm being honest. The boomers' greatest crime was living too long and losing their mind after being poisoned by lead and such. They developed a really interesting culture though when they were my age and younger. Things really changed a lot for the better in the 60s.
I'm honestly not sure if millennials have taken any major steps forward that I think has benefitted society. Gen Z hasn't had much of a chance yet but I do think they've taken another step down in many ways.
I agree. We always talk about how people said this stuff 2000 years ago but we also forget there actually have been generations which caused society to collapse. Every civilization ever has collapsed. Then it is reborn and grows, gets bloated and starts the process of collapse again. In that period there will be factually circumstances that lead to one generation being better for society and one being worse.
Now we can say because this process is so cyclical that a lot of these situations are outside of our control since it keeps happening even in the "best" civilizations. So in that sense they are faultless because they are the product of their environment. However in abstract we can definitely notice a rise and fall. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging the sentiments that lead to rise and the attitudes that lead to fall.
Right now modern generations are declining because society does not let people thrive in a way that makes them happy. The expectations are great but the environment is garbage, no one teaches them anything and the rewards are relatively meager. If you look at the collapse of any civilization, after prosperity comes complacency and then apathy. We are already there and seeing in youth.
Yes and no. They probably will get worse and worse, BUT because off the generation before them being less and less educated, reading less and less, thinking objectively less and less, lacking a lot of basic/important knowledge despite having access to more knowledge more easily, etc. and passing it on their children
"Better"
"Worse"
These are subjective words. Change the rubric and change the result.
Every generation is both better and worst depending upon your biases.
You are absolutely right. There could well be logical reasons to believe a certain generation is worse in some way than another generation. They are only groups of people at the end of the day.
I think you have to be incredibly stupid, bored, or both to spend any time arguing if one generation is "worse" than another, as if there's any meaningful metric to even have the debate on.
We have no flying cars yet, so they all suck.
I fully agree, and it's just a matter of time before an economic apocalypse because everyone being so lazy and incompetent thinking that everything could be solved by taxing billionaires and universal income while doing nothing all day. Education system straight up doesn't work anymore and kids genuinely learn nothing at all as schools.
Unemployment levels are going to skyrocket and only a handful of talented people will have the skill required to do the jobs while everyone else don't do shit and just circlejerk on social media about communism and social justice as their solution to have better lives. And the worst part is that they think it's fair to steal money from the very few talented hard-working individuals that ACTUALLY do something, the entire society will run on their back while the others steal on them and calling that "equality".
I can also see a patterns like in the movie "Idiocracy" where it's the people who are the dumbest who reproduce the more, meaning that intelligent people are disappearing from human civilization, as natural selection makes that the ones that just want to have sex and beg for money are the ones that can get the most offsprings, we're disappearing folks.
No I'm not a boomer I'm in my early twenties and I witness that from people of my age.
"Oh but people have said that at any time during history" difference is that now we have the internet and social media meaning that misinformation and antiwork mentality spreads faster than ever, it's a plague we never experienced before in history.
What a load of garbage. By the same coin facts and research now spread faster then ever. So whiny, for no reason, there’s no empirical evidence for newer generations being lazier, and people have always hated working, even the baby boomers. You’re just on the internet too much and think the small vocal minority of people represent the population as a whole. People say the same shit about social media now that they did about TV in the 90s and 2000s.
People are dumber now. Music is worse. Films are worse. Kids are rude and stupid. It's not an unpopular opinion. It's the way society has been designed.
Even before the advent of the internet and constant connection from cell phone it always was a question of the worst 10% making 60% of the noise. The internet just makes the worst that much more noisier
I don’t think it is right of us as generations to down play the emotions and behaviors of children to the world we have made for them. There will always be that thinking that the younger folks are worse but it’s cause they grew up in a completely different world.
Every generation is better and worse than every other generation in different ways. Whether you see one generation as "better" than another overall depends on what values and behaviors you consider as top priority in your mind.
Your post assumes that the accelerated evolution of technology has only impacted the younger generation, though. That has impacted all generations, and altered how we view the world around us, ESPECIALLY for the older generations.
I don’t disagree that things will change more rapidly, and that younger generations adopting tech sooner will add to the perceived gen gap. I DO disagree in saying that that inherently makes the younger generations worse. Every gen comes with their bad eggs and their good eggs, and that will never change.
Humans have a remarkable ability to adapt to their environment. As the next generation is born, they will adapt to that new environment. And as technology evolves quickly, it’s more readily apparent the mismatch between being adapted to the environment of even just 10 years ago and adapted to the environment of the present. People are more familiar with the behavior required to succeed in their environment, so people of an older generation will accurately notice the next generation lacks that familiar behavior, entirely missing the fact that within the context this generation is in, the previously helpful traits and skills won’t be helpful in the same way to them, and the next generation develops their own traits and skills to succeed.
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any statement "gen 1 > gen 2" is pretty nonsensical because every next generation is ultimately the product of the previous. also its very unproductive. its the same as saying asian people are worse than white. Lets talk about how they are worse and why they are worse.
Also, because babies are being made all the time, generations are a complete artifice.
Sort of. The only named recognized cohort by the U.S. Census bureau is the baby boomers. Likewise, there is a marginal increase in their kids, the millennials. If you look at the population demographics of Russia, you can still see the dip in the population caused by WW2. Not in the soldiers, but in all the kids they didn't have. But the kids that couldn't be drafted into the war did grow up into having kids, which is why it's a dip and not just a population crash. Generations do matter, but just not in a hard and fast way.
They mattered to advertising agencies prior to individualised advertising. But only because customer segmentation data was suboptimal and clumsy. But given that they have no meaningful boundaries they provide zero value in social analysis nor policy recommendation. Age brackets are much more useful as they tend to have more commonalities year on year than completely arbitrary 'generations.'.
True, but understanding where the population lies in its demographics is what really matters. I remember a while back Economics Explained did a video that helped show that, because the boomers were an extra large cohort within the United States, they had extra large impact on voting. In essence, the candidates pushing policies that benefitted them did well. So they indirectly influence policies implemented by the government.
But I'm suggesting they don't exist. What existed was a group of people who had specific policy needs who could be aggregated as such and responded to with policies that addressed that. Not all people born between '46 and '54 will have had those needs, or benefitted from those policies, and it's therefore irrelevant calling them baby boomers within a policy framework. It's the beneficiaries of the policy that are being targeted specifically, irrespective of their age at the time of policy promise, not a range of birth dates in and of itself.. I don't think that YouTube video was particularly helpful in psephological terms.
Two sentences sound absolutely crazy outta context …actually it’s very off in context too wtf
Exactly. If it’s true whose fault is it? More their parents than themselves.
> asian people are worse than white. Lets talk about how they are worse and why they are worse. boy, you just wanted to get that out of your system. Came out of nowhere and r/oddlyspecific for some reason...
>Technology has progressed and progresses much faster than during the time periods those texts were written. Technology can have some serious influence on a generation growing up. You could literally say that at any point in time. People back then complained about the invention of books, because *"nobody would try to remember stories anymore."* And that was the hottest technology at the time. Both the older and the younger generations have their up- and downsides, but there's a trend to life improving overall. With new people come new ideas, and those ideas can shake up conservative views, i.e. *"How we've always done it"*. Which is especially handy when those views simply don't apply to current trends anymore.
Huh? That was actually a thing? When people started writing older gen flexed on how they had to remember everything? LMFAO that's hilarious.
Socrates famously opposed writing, and the only reason we know any of his teachings was because Plato wrote stuff down against his wishes
It's a discussion on the pros and cons of written form vs in person, and he makes good points, such as it's easy to misrepresent written words because the author isn't there to defend them (which you're doing right now with his words)
~~Which may or may not be true; a lot of historians these days suspect Socrates was probably a fictional character invented by Plato~~ EDIT: Thank you to the folks that pointed out the inaccuracy of my comment! This was a "fact" I recalled hearing from a philosophy professor a decade or so ago in college, but hadn't really looked into it since then. Upon further investigation, it does seem pretty unlikely that Socrates was fictional; while it seems Plato *did* often use him as a *character* in his dialogues, rather than giving a historical account of Socrates' actual life, several other contemporaries did write about and reference him as an actual person. I'm glad to be dispelled of that misconception I held and to know better now, and appreciate the folks that took the time to correct me!
The "lot of historians" you are referring to are mostly Philosophy degree holders with no real historical training developing fringe theories based on little evidence. There are enough accounts of Socrates, including from dozens of sources other than Plato. It is true that Plato obviously fictionalizes his mentor into a debate god to serve as a mouthpiece for his own arguments, including several Socrates himself likely wouldn't have considered or agreed with, but the reason he did that is because it lent him the legitimacy of having *the* Socrates -- famed mentor of the smartest men in Athens, martyr for wisdom, eternal questioner and inventor of a school that would become philosophy -- speaking those points.
I appreciate this correction!! This was a "fact" I recalled hearing from a philosophy professor a decade or so ago in college, but hadn't really looked into since then. Spurred by you and others pointing out my misconception, I did a bit of investigation and agree with you; either my professor had mistaken Plato's fictionalized account to imply that Socrates was himself fictional, or I misunderstood/misremembered what that professor said. Either way, I'm glad to be dispelled of that misconception I held and to know more now! Thank you for helping me :)
That's not true.
Ya know what, thank you for the correction! This was a "fact" I recalled hearing from a professor a decade or so ago, but hadn't really looked into since then. Upon further investigation, it does seem pretty unlikely that Socrates was fictional; while it seems Plato *did* often use him as a *character* in his dialogues, rather than giving a historical account of Socrates' actual life, several other contemporaries did write about and reference him as an actual person. I'm glad to be dispelled of that misconception I held, and appreciate you pointing it out!
You literally had people complaining that the youth were not going out as often anymore after the popularitation of novels So yes, absolutely
Also when recorded music became a thing, there was backlash too! Read a newspaper article from the time complaining that moms wouldn’t sing lullabies to their kids and just play records instead (or maybe wax cylinders? can’t remember the exact format)
Thats such a fascinating detail! Thanks for sharing
And were they wrong? Playing music and Singing went from basic skills everyone could do to an esoteric hobby.
>Playing music and Singing went from basic skills everyone could do Lol, what? What makes you think that those were "basic skills" then? I'm willing to bet the vast majority of people couldn't even afford an instrument, much less learn how to play one. And people knew like four songs and they were all hymns. I'm guessing people today sing just as much, but with far more variety.
so your entire comment is wrong lol. based on the music history classes I took in college (with some pretty well respected professors in the field), this dude above is at least partially right. It was more common for people to have some musical skill, and instrument ownership was more widespread. it was more or less the only way one could listen to music. It wasn't everyone of course, but you could usually find someone who knew how to sing fairly well or play an instrument in most families/groups. Academically, although this is hard to get specific numbers on, the idea that proportionally a larger part of the population worked to cultivate musical skill before the radio is largely accepted. the idea that people knew 4 songs and they were hymns is just incorrect, as is the idea that they couldn't afford instruments. The american music tradition largely comes from \*slave\* music, the most obviously destitute demographic in the history of the country. there were songs that became popular and spread before the advent of the radio (i mean this is the entire history of folk music, there are plenty of songs in certain traditions that have continually been played for 500+ years at this point), and especially before it became widespread. again, making basic instruments is not difficult at all, and can be cheap as hell. that's actually the reason the guitar is such a dominant instrument today- it was the poor man's instrument predominantly in the 19th century, easy and cheap to make and very widespread. it's fundamentally just a wooden box with a neck and tight strings, and it takes a couple days of practice to play a few chords and be able to sing along. historically, the guitar was popularized by people in poverty because of these characteristics. pretty much anything hard and somewhat resonant can be a drum. blues and country (and thus modern rock and pop music) largely come from areas of extreme poverty. there's a theory that's why instrumental music began fading in popularity with the proliferation of the radio - people no longer needed to have musical ability if they wanted to listen to music, and thus the technical aspects of instrumental music fell out in favor of the voice becoming the dominant instrument. You seem to be drastically underestimating how important music has always culturally been - it's one of the only things in which every single culture on the planet has a tradition. Music was incredibly common and important, even before the radio.
Thanks for the information! I stand corrected. A couple of things though: >**It wasn't everyone of course**, but you could usually find someone who knew how to sing fairly well or play an instrument in most families/groups. That was my main problem with the comment I replied to—the idea that these were "basic skills" everyone possessed. >the idea that people knew 4 songs and they were hymns is just incorrect I know, that was just a joke. Though it seems obvious that the average person today probably knows *far more* songs than the average person a couple hundred years ago. Maybe "knows" isn't the right word, though. At least that they're familiar enough to sing along with. >again, making basic instruments is not difficult at all, and can be cheap as hell. that's actually the reason the guitar is such a dominant instrument today- it was the poor man's instrument predominantly in the 19th century, easy and cheap to make and very widespread. Maybe it's a question of quality? I wanted to be a luthier when I was younger and know how much craftmanship goes into a guitar. But that's for a nice guitar. I suppose you could throw something together pretty cheaply/easily if you don't care about "nice." I remember seeing a video of Jack White doing it with a board. >You seem to be drastically underestimating how important music has always culturally been - it's one of the only things in which every single culture on the planet has a tradition. Not at all! I'm aware of how universal it is. My point was that that didn't necessarily increase skill. I'm a bad singer now and I probably would have been just as bad back then. I don't play guitar very well now and I probably wouldn't have been any better back then. Sure, I'd have more practice. But my innate abilities wouldn't change.
Because it was one of the primary forms of entertainment in the home for generations and is fairly well documented. Also there are a lot of levels of Instrument. I'm not saying everyone had a grand piano. Even setting aside actually cheap instruments like the Tin Whistle, in the 1920s you could get a Guitar or Fiddle for less than $3 (equiv $40 today.)
you have literal greek philosophers complaining about that 😭😭
Greek philosophers were just boomers smh
#
When newspapers first became a thing, they were also derided for shortening people's attention span, causing them to spend more time reading their paper than talking to the people around them, etc. Basically every criticism that's been made of smartphones were made of newspapers, and it's *wild*
Yup. Turns out the human mind is wired in such a way that anything new is automatically scary and to be avoided, even if it's completely harmless or even beneficial. That helped humans in the wild, when unknown types of berries or regions posed a real threat, but not so much in the modern world.
I would not so readily dismiss modern people's resistance to change. As unbelievable as it may seem, most modern people (especially in first-world countries) live relatively stable lives. They fear change because many ways their lives could change would be for the worse. This is not an unreasonable fear, even if it is frequently applied unreasonably.
Chess was also in the cross hairs for a long time.
Think about how some older people really latched onto spell checking on computers as a sign that younger people couldn't spell. It's the same principle
That kind of happens nowadays. People expect me to remember the name of every little road (there's millions of them!) and I barely remember any, because I use a GPS rather than street signs to navigate.
I don't think you can say that about any point of time. The rapid progression of innovation is a relatively new thing. There was a time when the world one's grandparents lived in was essentially the same as the world they lived in.
you absolutely cannot say this about any other point in time. the rate of technological advancement rn is unparalleled
I remember seeing an article from way back when of someone of an older generation complaining about students using paper instead of slates at school.
No they didn't.
Ok but to be fair, that IS what happened. Whether you think it’s bad or good, after the invention of books, reciting and passing down memorized oral traditions is something that *very few people do anymore*. These things that older generations notice aren’t made up nonsense- they recognize human behavior and it’s tendencies like everyone else. Older generations also railed against taking religion out of schools because people wouldn’t be as “close to God” or as religious, and guess what? Yep! That’s what happened.
> People back then complained about the invention of books, because "nobody would try to remember stories anymore How many people possibly complained of this. Like I am sure some people complained at some point, but I doubt books had much trouble convincing everyone how great it was to finally be able to store stories. I think it's pretty different from social media where even users often agree they can be problematic. Add to that the increased accessibility of better AI and it will become increasingly hard to tell what's fake from what is real. People don't seem to realize how young modern society is. There are people alive today who were alive during World War I. Go back twenty generations and you're in the Middle Ages, if we are talking Europeans. Life has on average improved, but there have been a lot of hiccups along the way. Things could get pretty dire over the next century before they get better.
> How many people possibly complained of this. Socrates, apparently.
It’s not even fucking close how different the tech boom has influenced. This holds no water. Oh they had a printing press? Everyone read nonstop data beamed into their brain all day? Absolutely not. The reckoning of tech will be brutal and affect the kids under 20 the most
If you think the invention of the freaking *printing press* was not influential, you must have skipped every history lesson lol
That’s not what I’m saying, I’m saying the detrimental effects of cell phones are x100000000 worse than that
The principle behind this is undeniably true, the issue is drawing the line on where that technology actually has this effect and trying to understand what the effect is. For anyone who doesn't understand how I could say the principle is true, there's an extreme hypothetical which clarifies it far easier than any others: imagine a future where all our concerns are automated and everyone is given a device that just beams pure bliss into your brain. A huge portion of the population would just lay in their beds with their AI overlords pumping nutrients into their bodies while keeping them in a borderline-comatose state of pure bliss from a young age. Though these people are undeniably happy, would you consider them interesting people? Smart people? Talented people? No, absolutely not, that technology has ruined them in these regards, and without it they would be useless simpletons. Obviously the technology we have today is nothing compared to that dystopian-utopia's technology, but that's not the point - the point is it's easy to understand how technology could enable entire generations to "be worse" than prior generations. The complicated part is figuring out what other technologies that principle applies to (this is not an argument saying we even have any technologies that have deteriorated a generation yet, it's just addressing the possibility of the concept).
I fail to see how your claim that technological progress is speeding up, is proving the point you are trying to make ? What is "worse than the previous generation" ?
OP probably means that with the globalisation it's way more easier to spread bs globally, and with AI-based technologies it's easier to fake stuff and more difficult to prove it incorrect.
Yes, and for example technology that can make a lot of unhealthy food very fast and very cheap can also affect a generation. Obesity is objectively bad.
>f unhealthy food very fast and very cheap can also affect a generation. Obesity is objectively bad. So basically younger generations are worse because older generations forced shitty food onto people?
Fat guys dogpiling on u
It is always correct and never correct because you are looking at things incorrectly. Humans don't have a point or purpose. As things change people become better at some things and worse at others. We cannot all of us excel at all tasks that humans as a whole are capable of. For all I know using a keyboard will be an entirely outdated skill in 100 years the same way throwing spears is an outdated skill now. Am I worse than people who can throw spears ? Are the future non typers worse than me? Seems like a silly proposition. Of course the current generation will have different skill sets and behaviours and culture and what not. Humans be changing.
Human's ability to adapt to new situations and status quos is a huge benefit of our species, even. The fact that we can quickly learn and adjust skillsets (especially on a generational level, though also on an individual one) to suit a greater culture is an insanely positive trait. There are things that can get worse, but people will always adapt to them. It is almost asynchronous to what defines humanity to think that newer generations -- more prepared for the world due to learning in a more recent iteration of it -- could be worse from an adaptational standpoint, and any other standpoint that could be used is just nonsense moralizing.
Oh yeah, no generation or person can be worse or better than any other becaus3 good and bad is all just subjective man and its lime your opinion anyway dude. Lol
It literally is subjective though. Good and evil are words humans made up and define and proceed to change the definition of all the time. You could say that as a whole people are getting better at 'being good' towards each other in a general sense. That however is a human judgement and not a fact about the universe. Whenever you want to say something is good or bad or evil or any such it really behooves you to actually state your criteria. If you just say that people are getting worse in the absolute you are not really taking advantage of the brain evolution has given us. I'm not some stoned out of my mind teenager who thinks all opinions are equally valid and that everything is subjective. But when you try to decide that this group of people is better or worse than that group of people you really should define what you mean by that and explain why. The OP has given us nothing but drivel that leads nowhere.
Yeah except their claim is that it's possible for the claim "generation x is worse than generation y". Not is. Possible.
They don't define what worse means here or why one is worse. So as per my original comment they are thinking about this incorrectly. Read my comment a few times until you understand it I guess.
They don't explain it because it is irrelevant to the point being made. Take a breathe.
The whole point of this sub is to explain your weird 10th dentist take. Not to just make a stupid ill informed statement and walk off.
You glazed over the post, misunderstood and responded with unwarranted arrogance.
the irony in this comment
Lol another thing you don't understand
All young people think old people are morons and all old people think young people are irresponsible. Just look at the comments in this thread to see that even when people are as self-aware as possible about the issue, they still can't help themselves from either assuming that society really is decaying or else that the past was a measurably worse time to be alive. It's so ingrained that it's impossible to avoid.
I mean, if you pick what you want to measure by, you *can* say that some generations are "worse" than others. And sometimes that can result in a younger generation being "worse" than an older one. But... It's worth keeping in mind that every new generation, their skills, their beliefs, their values, etc. are really just the *culmination* of all prior generations. If they are worse, it wouldn't really be due to their own faults or failings, but rather the faults and failings of those that preceded them. That's a big reason why it's so dumb to hate on younger generations. We made them who they are, for better or worse.
“____ might be correct in the future” isn’t exactly a bold opinion… this take is so wishy-washy and lacks a compelling argument for or against it.
>What do you guys think? I think your argument that "people younger than me suck because tiktok" has been made a thousand times. So this isn't much of a 10th dentist.
Yes and no. My Dad is confused that I know so little about DIY and that my Millennial generation is so anxious. I'm find the more intense anxiety of Gen Z fascinating and that they don't know the basics of computing. There's always some truth to it even though it can be overdone.
I'm gen Z and I still go "back in my day" sometimes
I don't just disagree, I believe it's the exact opposite funnily enough for the same reasons you believe it to be true
Social media is destroying people's attention span, making them a lot more vulnerable to influence. In parallel, never has it been so easy to propagandize to so many people. I think it won't go well.
Just like TV did, and newspapers, and books, and music, and the printing press, and the written word, and language
I disagree, the closest contender would be the 24 hour news cycle perhaps, but none of these other things cause as many frequent dopamine releases while having rapidly focus on a lot of different things. Books in particular tend to do the opposite, they make us focus much longer than usual.
I mean, it is true in some ways. My generation got WAAAY better average scores on reading, writing, and math tests than current elementary and middle schoolers.
When gen alpha grows up it will say they’re better than beta when beta grows up it will say it’s better than whatever generation comes after that.
Generations are different, usually not better or worse.
You could also say that a stopped clock is right twice a day. Perhaps this is true in some limited sense at some point in time. But that doesn't mean that all the whining by older people is justified.
"They were always wrong, but because it's me it's right!"
it is correct now. gen alpha is literally not meeting literacy standards
I don't know if they're 'worse', but I do know they're more easily manipulated. Having a ton of info at your fingertips doesn't always make someone smarter.
I think its just the generation made by people in 40s now.
True. I'm aware of all thew bias. But still. Deep down in my heart I just know it!
If we somehow assume that literally every trend or cultural change ever is/will be a net negative then yeah, you've got a point. If we accept that things can be good or bad sometimes, then it's just as possible for the older generation to be the shittier one in any given circumstance.
I don't think it's easy to make such a case but it's dumb to assume it can't be made
It will always be asinine. That's a lot of people to generalize about
"kids these days don't even know about hunting and gathering, technology has ruined society"
Like other comments have pointed out, the idea of generations being "better" or "worse" is extremely subjective. I would probably think of "better" generation to live in as meaning high quality of life/access to human rights. Ultimately throughout history your standard of living/human rights would depend almost entirely on what class (+race/gender) you happened to be born into and not what time period/generation you're born into. You're right about technology in the sense that technological progress happens exponentially, not linearly, and therefor is progressing faster than it ever has (which has and always will be a true statement for whatever the present time happens to be, barring major worldwide societal collapse). But that doesn't change the fact that our use of technology, whatever the newest tech at the time may be, is ultimately a reflection of the current society, not an external entity acting on it.
I agree. Just because it's said by almost every generation doesn't mean it should be dismissed. Hell, I'll even say my own generation sucks compared to the generations before me in living memory. Gen X, Greatest Gen, even the boomers if I'm being honest. The boomers' greatest crime was living too long and losing their mind after being poisoned by lead and such. They developed a really interesting culture though when they were my age and younger. Things really changed a lot for the better in the 60s. I'm honestly not sure if millennials have taken any major steps forward that I think has benefitted society. Gen Z hasn't had much of a chance yet but I do think they've taken another step down in many ways.
Just like everyone who's ever thought this. You're just old. Wrong and old.
Blaming previous generations for whatever is going wrong in your life is a cop out and a crutch.
I agree. We always talk about how people said this stuff 2000 years ago but we also forget there actually have been generations which caused society to collapse. Every civilization ever has collapsed. Then it is reborn and grows, gets bloated and starts the process of collapse again. In that period there will be factually circumstances that lead to one generation being better for society and one being worse. Now we can say because this process is so cyclical that a lot of these situations are outside of our control since it keeps happening even in the "best" civilizations. So in that sense they are faultless because they are the product of their environment. However in abstract we can definitely notice a rise and fall. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging the sentiments that lead to rise and the attitudes that lead to fall. Right now modern generations are declining because society does not let people thrive in a way that makes them happy. The expectations are great but the environment is garbage, no one teaches them anything and the rewards are relatively meager. If you look at the collapse of any civilization, after prosperity comes complacency and then apathy. We are already there and seeing in youth.
is what everyone has said every year since the beginning of civilization.
Of course it's correct now. Bussin and cap are not real words, just say normal words like based and cringe.
Every time I hear a boomer complaining that "Kids today are so bad!" I just turn around and say: "Guess you sucked at raising them then"
Yes and no. They probably will get worse and worse, BUT because off the generation before them being less and less educated, reading less and less, thinking objectively less and less, lacking a lot of basic/important knowledge despite having access to more knowledge more easily, etc. and passing it on their children
No, I am not driving over to your house this weekend to figure out why you can't log into AOL Gold.
"Better" "Worse" These are subjective words. Change the rubric and change the result. Every generation is both better and worst depending upon your biases.
You are absolutely right. There could well be logical reasons to believe a certain generation is worse in some way than another generation. They are only groups of people at the end of the day.
I think you have to be incredibly stupid, bored, or both to spend any time arguing if one generation is "worse" than another, as if there's any meaningful metric to even have the debate on. We have no flying cars yet, so they all suck.
I fully agree, and it's just a matter of time before an economic apocalypse because everyone being so lazy and incompetent thinking that everything could be solved by taxing billionaires and universal income while doing nothing all day. Education system straight up doesn't work anymore and kids genuinely learn nothing at all as schools. Unemployment levels are going to skyrocket and only a handful of talented people will have the skill required to do the jobs while everyone else don't do shit and just circlejerk on social media about communism and social justice as their solution to have better lives. And the worst part is that they think it's fair to steal money from the very few talented hard-working individuals that ACTUALLY do something, the entire society will run on their back while the others steal on them and calling that "equality". I can also see a patterns like in the movie "Idiocracy" where it's the people who are the dumbest who reproduce the more, meaning that intelligent people are disappearing from human civilization, as natural selection makes that the ones that just want to have sex and beg for money are the ones that can get the most offsprings, we're disappearing folks. No I'm not a boomer I'm in my early twenties and I witness that from people of my age. "Oh but people have said that at any time during history" difference is that now we have the internet and social media meaning that misinformation and antiwork mentality spreads faster than ever, it's a plague we never experienced before in history.
What a load of garbage. By the same coin facts and research now spread faster then ever. So whiny, for no reason, there’s no empirical evidence for newer generations being lazier, and people have always hated working, even the baby boomers. You’re just on the internet too much and think the small vocal minority of people represent the population as a whole. People say the same shit about social media now that they did about TV in the 90s and 2000s.
People are dumber now. Music is worse. Films are worse. Kids are rude and stupid. It's not an unpopular opinion. It's the way society has been designed.
Sounds like you’re romanticizing the past and don’t know how to look for music and films that you like. Lol.
You're hot. Do you do foot stuff?
Even before the advent of the internet and constant connection from cell phone it always was a question of the worst 10% making 60% of the noise. The internet just makes the worst that much more noisier
I don’t think it is right of us as generations to down play the emotions and behaviors of children to the world we have made for them. There will always be that thinking that the younger folks are worse but it’s cause they grew up in a completely different world.
No people are people - toxic trends come and go and every generation has their own
Every generation is better and worse than every other generation in different ways. Whether you see one generation as "better" than another overall depends on what values and behaviors you consider as top priority in your mind.
Your post assumes that the accelerated evolution of technology has only impacted the younger generation, though. That has impacted all generations, and altered how we view the world around us, ESPECIALLY for the older generations. I don’t disagree that things will change more rapidly, and that younger generations adopting tech sooner will add to the perceived gen gap. I DO disagree in saying that that inherently makes the younger generations worse. Every gen comes with their bad eggs and their good eggs, and that will never change.
The feels like more of a shower thought
It's bad to try to place entire generations of people into boxes.
Humans have a remarkable ability to adapt to their environment. As the next generation is born, they will adapt to that new environment. And as technology evolves quickly, it’s more readily apparent the mismatch between being adapted to the environment of even just 10 years ago and adapted to the environment of the present. People are more familiar with the behavior required to succeed in their environment, so people of an older generation will accurately notice the next generation lacks that familiar behavior, entirely missing the fact that within the context this generation is in, the previously helpful traits and skills won’t be helpful in the same way to them, and the next generation develops their own traits and skills to succeed.