Just as the title asks I’ve noticed a very sharp increase in people just straight up not comprehending what they’re reading.
They’ll read it and despite all the information being there, if it’s even slightly out of line from the most straightforward sentence structure, they act like it’s complete gibberish or indecipherable.
Has anyone else noticed this? Because honestly it’s making me lose my fucking mind.
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Yes it’s just one of the many signposts on the road to Idiocracy
ironic considering you failed at reading comprehension just two days ago :(
Can we start making fun of people who invoke Idiocracy the way we do people who invoke 1984?
I don’t see why you would, as they are both highly relevant to the shit sandwich our world has become with dumbasses breeding more dumbasses everywhere, and authoritarian surveillance systems watching us everywhere.
The biggest thing no one notices in Idiocracy is that they were still smart enough to find the smartest man alive to fix the problem.
Have you seen the documentary Idiocracy? It explain exactly what the cause is.
The problem with that is they were smart enough to find the smartest man alive to fix the problems
They did try to kill him first. Multiple times.
It’s the Crocs!
No my eyesight is fine, what are you on about?
I have noticed it, but it’s not happened suddenly.
It may have something to do with a change in how we teach kids to read in the USA about 20 years ago.
https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading
Yep. I’ve noticed this in maybe the last 3-4 years. I’ve actually wondered if i’ve started getting dyslexia.
I think realistically it’s more to do with the way I use the internet. I scan articles rather than read them unless it’s something i’m really interested in. Google search results, half of them tend to be bullshit so i’ve gotten good at scanning them at insane speed.
Yeah, I literally began typing this response before finishing your post.
…
It’s like with increased information we’ve learned to scan for relevance a lot better, but at the expense of overall comprehension.
Like it gets us by, and gets us through the excess in time.
But, when emotions fly? It’s getting volatile.
Massively! I used to read loads of books now I struggle to get through them at all.
I find it easier to listen to a podcast and scan the internet barely taking any information in from either. I have to really concentrate to do either now. I am working at it. Treating reading articles/podcasts as more of a hobby where I try dedicate some time to it where that’s my only focus.
It’s also possible that the method of communication is just changing. I’ve found that often I have more trouble communicating in written form than conversationally, and I wonder if that’s because of zoom and video essays, not to mention shorts / TickTok becoming more prevalent. I’ve also had my writing degrade just because I don’t have a place or reason to exercise it as much. So what I’m writing is perhaps less comprehensible because it’s more like a stream of consciousness.
Or more likely it’s both - people don’t do long form or even “hard” reading anymore, and so find more complex text incomprehensible.
Wow that genuinely was a struggle to read
Somebody get this man a doctor, I think he’s had a stroke.
Oh good. I thought it was me.
Anyone read like comprehensive reading numbers of memory such as
This comment is psychological warfare.
They don’t think it be like it is, but it do.
Hey, 1970s baseball slugger Oscar Gamble is in da house!
You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve been further even more decided to use even go need to do look more as anyone can. Can you really be far even as decided half as much to use go wish for that? My guess is that when one really been far even as decided once to use even go want, it is then that he has really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like. It’s just common sense.
This feels like reading a language that you only kinda know.
Is this what it’s like to have a stroke?
Depends on where really.
Oh thank goodness I thought it was just me. When I read that I thought ‘dang covid messed me up’
Been a few years since having covid, but my wife and I both feel like we lost some memory and brain power from it, even though we were both vaccinated and had less evere symptoms than others.
In our 30s by the way
nah its a copypasta internet meme from waaay back in the day. Probably like around 2004.
This☝️ so true
Such as, the Iraq.
Good evening Ozzy !
when hits you with the ozzy stare 😬
Fuck this is actually funny
As a lot of people have already pointed out it’s mostly prevalent in arguments. Like a comment I made on a video about lane splitting on motorcycles.
The video was explaining why lane splitting is safer for cyclists and shows a cyclist get rear ended at a stop light. The title of the video was “Most people don’t understand lane splitting”
I simply commented “No we understand this specific scenario but to continue driving between stopped traffic is completely different”
All the replies to my comment were about lane splitting at a stop sign/stop light. The very thing I specifically stated I understood.
I agree with those replies, your message is not clear.
Well that’s sort of a bad example. What your explaining are two separate things. Filtering (moving to the front of a stopped lane by moving between vehicles stopped or by stopping) and lane splitting (moving between lanes at highway speeds).
Iirc filtering is safer but splitting is like way more dangerous but I’d have to look it up.
Legally they are the same.
Depends on where you say legally.
I have to say I find it ironic that all replies here are about the lane splitting too.
lane splitting is legal on the highways in california, I don’t know about on all streets. it sounds like maybe you shouldn’t do it on streets where you’d run into stop lights, or generally anything more complex than the interstate. personally I’m always careful whenever I see a motorcycle.
why is lane splitting safer? intuition suggests that treating a motorcycle like a car and giving them the same space or more would be safer, especially since you could predict what they’d do better since it would be the same as a car
One reason I’ve been told lane splitting is allowed is because motorcycles are air cooled and stopping for prolonged periods in a traffic jam can be bad for the engine. Also by allowing motorcycles to move forward it frees up space for more cars, though that seems like a small impact.
I’m not trying to be rude but did you understand what I said? Lane splitting at a stop light/stop sign/stopped traffic is safer for the cyclist. Lane splitting and continuing to drive between the lanes of stopped traffic is not.
When all the cars have stopped, that’s the safest time for the cyclist to slither up to the front of the line. At 20 mph on a crowded freeway, it’s a little more dangerous but legal in CA as long as they don’t go more than (iirc) 20 mph faster than traffic. At 65 mph on a still-crowded LA freeway, having a bike race past you doing 90 can be disconcerting to say the least. At least you know if they cause an accident and you’re injured, they’ll probably be your organ donor.
I don’t quite get your meaning here, could eli5
This IS NOT new, and IS NOT a sign of bad things.
100 years ago, conservatives could barely even read.
The only thing that has been on sharp incline lately is logical fallacies coming out of them. They’re literally regressing, though they’ve always been hyper-judgemental idiots who are fundamentally afraid of reality.
Rampant untreated adult-onset ADHD
I don’t think there is such thing as adult-onset ADHD, people can (and often do) discover it later in life, but they have signs of it all throughout their life.
ADHD symptoms suddenly appearing in adulthood are likely symptoms of another issue, most likely mental and/or neurological disorders, such as depression, traumatic brain injury, MS, etc.
ADHD is present all your life. You can’t not have it, then just acquire it. That said, there are quite a few disorders that can be acquired that have similar symptoms.
Well, technically it’s a disorder which can emerge from any number of different causes. Yes, generally ADHD emerges as a developmental issue, but you could arrive at the same physiology through sufficiently specific neurodegeneration or brain trauma and these things would still be diagnosable as ADHD and even effectively treated using ADHD medication.
Saying that might seem like a stretch, but consider the fact that we can consistently visually identify an ADHD prefrontal cortex in brain scans. When reduced volume is observed, it’s even possible to predict to some extent the symptom severity by how much appears to be missing. For several decades of research, the precursor to the modern ADHD diagnosis was even called “minimal brain damage”.
All of the scientific literature that I have ever read on the topic has strongly stated that there is no way to identify ADHD from brain scans or anything like that.
Also, no, any situation you describe wouldn’t be diagnosable as ADHD, one of the requirements of an ADHD diagnosis is that the condition is present from birth.
What you’re describing sounds like what I wrote above, and it’s not ADHD, it’s traumatic brain injury, or MS, or what have you. And they may or may not be treatable in the same way as ADHD, because the symptom’s cause is likely totally different.
All of the scientific literature that I have ever read on the topic has strongly stated that there is no way to identify ADHD from brain scans or anything like that
Identify =/= diagnose. You also cannot diagnose ADHD with a genetic test, despite genetics being a strong indicator. I alluded to this by following up with “when reduced volume is observed”, but you’re right in saying that it would have been less misleading to state directly that brain scans are never in and of themselves used to diagnose ADHD.
Also, no, any situation you describe wouldn’t be diagnosable as ADHD, one of the requirements of an ADHD diagnosis is that the condition is present from birth.
If we’re talking DSM-5, the criteria is actually that the onset of symptoms occur by 12 years of age. Even if you take the DSM-5 as gospel, it’s entirely possible for a 6 year old to experience a traumatic brain injury to the prefrontal cortex, heal from the initial trauma, continue to demonstrate symptoms, then receive an ADHD diagnosis. You might call that a misdiagnosis, but I don’t see much of a difference if the symptoms and treatment are the same. There are also recent studies which explore the development of ADHD secondary to traumatic brain injury in adults which I think could eventually warrant further broadening the diagnostic criteria.
Would you share some academic sources for brain scanning being able to identify or diagnose ADHD, please?
I’m posting a source for my original claim: “we can consistently visually identify an ADHD prefrontal cortex in brain scans”. This is not the same as a source which proves that brain scanning is able to identify/diagnose ADHD itself. The order of operations is reversed, because the only way to diagnose a disorder like ADHD is through observation of symptoms, not physiology.
To be clear: what I claim is that you can compare brain imaging of an average individual (oxymoron notwithstanding) diagnosed with ADHD against the brain imaging of an average individual not diagnosed with ADHD and visually see a difference.
Source for this claim, w/ attention to table 4: https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2006.06.011
I think many people can show similar symptoms as in ADHD because of our current lifestyle.
More and more people have short attention spans, trouble concentrating, trouble directing their focus, procrastination, etc. because our brains aren’t made for how we currently live.
- English not the first language for about 7.5 billion people on this planet.
- More people with English as a second or even third language have a higher reading and comprehension level than the average USAian
- Many people simply do not know how to write correctly, which only exacerbates the problem
The average American reads at the 7th- to 8th-grade level.
https://www.wyliecomm.com/2021/08/whats-the-latest-u-s-literacy-rate/
Talking about the 3rd option I think that’s the opposite problem actually. People adhere to the formal rules of the English language so strongly that a slightly incorrect sentence becomes incomprehensible to them.
Me can create word lines by using wrong words.
That sentence should not be hard to understand if you’re actually fluent in English. Yet I see more and more people being completely lost and confused like they never even tried to understand in the first place.
Kinda like a spelling error in their there and they’re. Contextually you should understand which one they meant regardless of mistakes.
There is no way they’re being too formal with their writing.
It’s not that they’re being too formal it seems that they’re thinking too formal.
Like they can’t decipher things like a multi use word or an obvious autocorrect mistake.
If we were talking about birds and I suddenly started using the word bards you should be able to figure out contextually that I’m still talking about birds.
Edit: also formal isn’t the right word. I specifically used fluent because fluently speaking a language means being able to deduce the meaning of a word through context.
Formal is not the word your looking for. Literal. People interpret the words literally. The can’t/ don’t understand figurative language like sarcasm, symbolism and metaphor.
To be fair, sarcasm specifically can be VERY hard to convey via text or even voice, which is where a majority of communication happens nowadays.
54% of US adults only have a sixth grade competency level in reading. 21% of US adults are functionally illiterate.
