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Comment by jononomo | Hacker News Reader

Honestly it seems to me like that quality of "thought" has decreased since technology arrived on the scene. People don't learn Latin anymore, and they can't write letters like the soldiers in WW1, let alone the Civil War. But we do watch a lot more porn and we do drink a lot more sugary drinks. So my advice if you want to improve your thought is to get rid of your computer and iPhone and eat only red meat.

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Do the acts of learning Latin and writing letters truly represent the peak quality of thought?

I'd think that technological ability and thought quality would improve in unison. Better thought leads to technological leaps, which potentially lead to better thought.

Being a luddite hardly sounds like a solution. Thought not unlike meditation do have their place, but I believe they help enhance "normal" thought, rather than completely substitute it.

Nope -- try reading a collection of essays written 75 - 150 years ago and it will soon become clear how stupid people are today. And why do you think technological leaps lead to better thought? The most profound thoughts that have ever crossed the consciousness of Man are contained in the Bible, which was written by technologically inferior people -- men who walked with God.

I do think there's a degree of selection bias, here. Only quality writing from long ago would survive; the C19 equivalent of tweets (or HN comments) will have long since vanished, so not be around for us to evaluate.

> try reading a collection of essays written 75 - 150 years ago and it will soon become clear how stupid people are today.

I read a lot of essays, novels and newspapers from that era. Plenty of dumb, and completely wrong essays were written then.

I invite you to read - for example - "The Case for Spirit Photography" (1920)[1] by Arthur Conan Doyle (yes, the author of Sherlock Holmes) in which he argues photos of fairies are real.

It's well written, and completely stupid.

> The most profound thoughts that have ever crossed the consciousness of Man are contained in the Bible, which was written by technologically inferior people -- men who walked with God.

Au contraire, the most profound thoughts were clearly those of Aleister Crowley[2]. He wrote right in the period you suggest the best writing occurred (75-150 years ago) and because he was in direct communication with the devil via his sex magick they are obviously the most profound. Or did I mean profane?

Take your religious nonsense somewhere else.

[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/59809/59809-h/59809-h.htm

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_magic

…that’s one rollercoaster of a comment.

But why haven’t you gotten rid of your iPhone and computer? Or did you submit this by post?

internet café

But we do watch a lot more porn

Surely porn is preferable to the prostitutes of the past?

STDs are better than computer viruses you get when downloading porn torrents. STDs are part of nature.

It’s likely too early to tell what the instantly and freely available and limitless variety of cartoonishly depraved imagery is doing to human brains. But I have doubts about its benefits.

"Cartoonishly depraved"? The vast majority of porn is just pretty normal sex with more attractive than usual participants. Porn has demonstrable benefits for reducing sexual violence, in fact, that's the strongest non-free speech argument for legalizing distribution of illegal porn (obv. not an argument for the legalization of production!).

In what way is slapping the salami to provocative pixels with zero feedback to the end user, better than real live human being? How did we get to this point where this is even a question?

Better for the women, not the men lol

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