ED: EEG, not fMRI.

And again, that's not to imply that they have any particular "mastery" in this specific case. Obviously, if they just typed "write the essay for me" into ChatGPT and submitted it without reading it, then they're not going to have learned much of anything from that. The question is, however, what did they do with their time instead? Because their brain was learning that instead.

The correllary to "use it or lose it" is that the brain isn't just going idle, it's refocusing its efforts on other things that you are "using" instead.

The average person today could hardly identify all the wild edible plants in their area, change a horseshoe, or build a proper barn, like their ancestors hundreds of years ago could.

By contrast, their ancestors hundreds of years ago probably couldn't read.

Brains don't just go idle; they just refocus on different things. A wealthy Victorian often pursued a life of a polymath, seeking varied intellectual pursuits and sometimes making great discoveries, but they could probably scarcely tell you how to mend a shoe or even change a nappy - that was their servants job.

Also, it's quite the spin to present low MRI activity as "reduced function". It's commonly literally the opposite. If you present a novice with a task they're not used to, and an expert with the same task, the expert will tend to show much less activity than the novice, as the novice has to think harder to accomplish it, whereas it's become rote for the expert. Low activation on a task is commonly a sign of cognitive efficiency.

From the summary:

A former Google worker (laid off more than a year ago) says he's still job hunting, according to the article, and "he's learned it's not enough to just apply in this competitive market. Workers really need to network and leverage their connections to get seen by hiring managers and stand out."

---

Thank you, Captain Obvious. There's bots screening resumes and bots submitting them. If you want to have any chance at all of getting noticed, you absolutely need to leverage your network. Simply applying online is a fool's errand.

I'm going to work a few more years and then "retire" early (from technology work) and do something else. I have zero interest in participating in this jump into the abyss of AI mindset.

There are PLENTY of other things to do with your time that don't involve living in a closet, paying high taxes, and dealing with all the social ills of the Bay Area. There are other types of work and other areas of the country that are growing. Widen your net.

I wouldn't read too much into this. AI is too new for it to have much of an effect here, and it could be measurement error. I've known kids who were supposedly bad at reading, but it turned out they were just bad at reading aloud and got bored with the material the school gave them because they were reading Lord of the Rings at home.

It's also possible that this anecdote is about a really bad article. 20 pages is quite a lot, and if they are losing track of what it is about then it suggests that it doesn't have a very good abstract or introduction that lays out its case before getting into the details.

We don't buy video games or mobile devices for our middle school aged children. They get to study, read, exercise and participate in athletics. That seems to be working out for them as they are both at the top of their class and in the high 90'th percentile for pretty much every topic in standardized tests. I see other parents using phones/tablets/gaming devices as a mock baby sitter and/or letting their kids doom scroll on youtube for hours at a time. Those kids are not doing very well and and many seem to have the attention span of a goldfish. Seems like a lot of parents are raising a generation of baristas.

It's more complex than one controls the other. Israel stated the war with Iran before the US was ready, and the US was forced to join in. Netanyahu will continue to annex parts of Lebanon, and break whatever ceasefire is agreed, and the US can't do anything about it.

There are some limits, lines Netanyahu can't yet cross, but he's definitely got the upper hand when it comes to forcing the US to do what he wants.

Iran won. Before the war, few believed that they could survive a direct attack by the US, but now it's very clear that they control the Strait, and can bring the global economy down whenever they like. The US can't stop them, nobody can.

The only winning move is to get off oil as fast as possible, which is the opposite of what the US is doing.

Meanwhile Israel continues to do whatever it likes, and the US has no control there either. All they can do is send more free stuff to the Israelis. Doubtless the ceasefire will last only hours before Israel breaks it.

It's actually kind of astounding how badly this has turned out, for everyone except Iran and Russia.

Indeed. One can have legitimate concerns with damp in the house, but the solution to shitty tradies doing a bad job isn't to set fire to the house (while yelling racist epithets).

No only do you still hold a torch for the EM drive perpetual motion machine scam, and utterly fail to do even the most basic of middle high school physics calculations, it seems you have a real problem with geography as well, never mind basic reasoning.

Do you deny saying this:

[...]all people that enter the future EU where "the British Islands" might be a part again[...]

Do you not understand how nonsensical that is? The ROI is part of the British Isles and is still part of the EU.

The British Isles is NOT the UK. Learn some fucking geography before you start trying to double down on claims about it.

Yes, you're the second person to point out the typo, which would have been edited within seconds of me clicking "submit" if we had an edit button.

What is your point?

It's nonsensical to talk of the British Isles (or Islands as you incorrectly write) "being part again", because the British Isles aren't one country and part of them is still in the EU.

I fail to see it.

I'd expect nothing less from you.

In fact, the government has to print more money if there is economic growth. Ideally, the money supply would grow exactly as the economy grows.*

*Unless the velocity of money changes.

I agree with your points completely, but just as a pedantic note, when the value of a currency increases, this is deflation, not inflation. Inflation is when the price of goods, measured in currency, increases. So if the price of currency goes up, that's negative: deflation.

Deflation turns out to be actually very bad, because it means people would rather hold currency than spend it, and that kills the economy. Fortunately, the deflation of bitcoin doesn't kill the economy because people simply use other things as currency.

(William Jennings Bryan's famous "Cross of Gold" speech of 1896 was in some ways about deflation: the supply of gold, which underlaid the dollar back in 1896, couldn't keep up with the growth of the economy, and the fact that the currency was increasing in value was killing farmers.)

And also an inflationary currency is a very bad thing.

For one, it screws over debtholders (aka, most people), as the value of the debt owed grows instead of declining. If you work for a company making lumber, and a given board sells for $10 now, but 20 years from now sells for $5, and you sell the same number of boards per unit labour with the same relative margin, then all else being equal, your salary must be half in 20 years what it is today. But that mortgage that you took out today for $200k is still $200k (adjusted for interest and payment of principal). Which you have to pay on with a salary that is half what it is in dollars. That person is totally screwed.

Secondly, it discourages spending. The more you delay purchases, the more you'll be able to buy in the future. So everyone is encouraged to not spend. Which screws over your economy. It also screws over your tax base when taxation is based on taxing spending. Meaning you have to raise your spending-related taxes, which further discourages spending.

Third, it worsens wealth inequality. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you have no savings. If you're a billionaire, you have a lot of savings. The billionaires see their assets grow and grow, and it comes at the cost of the working class. Also, said billionaires are encouraged to keep their money as cash rather than investment, which further ruins your economy.

This is no way to run an economy.

Another thing you REALLY don't want in an economy is instability. Aka, Bitcoin's fundamental nature, because it has no fundamentals and no attempt at monetary policy. Economies are fundamentally unstable. If you do not regulate them, they swing wildly. The faster an economy moves - and economies keep moving faster as technology advances, it no longer takes half a year for goods to arrive on a sailing ship or weeks to communicate with the other side of your country - the more unstable it is. This is terrible for both individuals and businesses.

What you want in an economiy is:

* Stability
* Low and steady inflation - a couple percent, to encourage spending, slowly devalue debts, and encourage investment. Too much is bad. Too little is bad.

Yet, silver is valuable as both a monetary metal and industrial metal.

Unlike bitcoin. You summed it up nicely right there.

Right now, I want to buy tin-silver alloy, to use in casting. But the prices of both tin and silver are insanely expensive right now. So I'm not buying now. If the prices go down? I'll buy. If they go down a lot? I'll buy a lot, perhaps even to sell on my sales website. And this buying is to *use* it. Which takes it off the market. There are fundamentals behind silver.

There are no fundamentals behind bitcoin.