The Anti-Social Evolution

I had a note from 3 years ago.

I often think about when the human brain will face another evolution.

While I was due to write more then, I know I had just read The 1000 Brains Theory and the book lived in my head rent free for several weeks. There was a section within the book regarding how our brain has had to expand its capabilities due to the ingrained complexity of the modern world.

Yes, we’ve replaced a lot of the hunter-gather survival expertise that I’m sure was massive on it’s own, but the alternative has been far more information and exponentially more possibilities considering technology.

Even when it comes to the transfer of data between platform, the most “lossy” part of information going from user to user is the literal phase of expressing and interpreting content from the human to a device. The cross device part is almost done perfectly, but the true exchange of ideas losses fidelity when it’s leaving or entering a human brain.

And in light of this, the more ingrained we become with communication technology, the lower that threshold tightens. With that, our brains are going to naturally evolve to fit that medium, but at what loss? We’re already seeing people become more antisocial. There’s enough studies out there to prove the “tech-mindset” is at a cost of our true interpersonal skills. Ironically, when the purpose of some much communication tech allegedly is for exchanging thoughts.

While we’ve gotten better at communicating via tech, we’ve gotten significantly worse a communicating in the first place! It’s becoming net-negative at the end of the day.

People don’t talk like they used to, and we’re seeing the outcome of that.