Quote: Original post by speciesUnknown

People now see that people are losing the ability to use S. T is the cause.

If you were put into middle of a forest, naked, with not a single thing in your possession, could you:
- Find something to drink
- Catch an animal/forage some food
- Be able to avoid natural hazards
- Build a shelter
- Start a fire

Ergo: post-hunter/gatherer society is Bad Thing and should be abolished.

Quote: Original post by Antheus

Quote: Original post by speciesUnknown

People now see that people are losing the ability to use S. T is the cause.

If you were put into middle of a forest, naked, with not a single thing in your possession, could you:
- Find something to drink
- Catch an animal/forage some food
- Be able to avoid natural hazards
- Build a shelter
- Start a fire

Ergo: post-hunter/gatherer society is Bad Thing and should be abolished.

Yeah, except the same post-hunter/gatherer society makes it increasingly rare to find yourself in such a situation. At least it hasn't happened to me, or anyone I know. OTOH, ending up hungry in a big avenue with no idea how to get to the nearest McDonalds, is a far more probable situation,no? :)

Quote: Original post by mikeman

Yeah, except the same post-hunter/gatherer society makes it increasingly rare to find yourself in such a situation.

When was the last time you found yourself without Google?

Quote: Original post by Antheus

Quote: Original post by mikeman

Yeah, except the same post-hunter/gatherer society makes it increasingly rare to find yourself in such a situation.

When was the last time you found yourself without Google?

When my laptop charger died.

Quote: Original post by Oberon_Command

Quote: Original post by Antheus

Quote: Original post by mikeman

Yeah, except the same post-hunter/gatherer society makes it increasingly rare to find yourself in such a situation.

When was the last time you found yourself without Google?

When my laptop charger died.

To newegg! ... oh wait...

Quote: Original post by Antheus

Quote: Original post by speciesUnknown

People now see that people are losing the ability to use S. T is the cause.

If you were put into middle of a forest, naked, with not a single thing in your possession, could you:
- Find something to drink
- Catch an animal/forage some food
- Be able to avoid natural hazards
- Build a shelter
- Start a fire

Ergo: post-hunter/gatherer society is Bad Thing and should be abolished.

Yea I would likely be able to all of those things. Most energy would likely be spent on fire and food. Though, unfortunately for me to some degree, I've never had to use that knowledge/experience. I wouldn't say everyone could do this; mostly with the fire bit, that can be the challenge - but over looked as one of the more important things that you can have while alone in the environment.

The problem with this kind of idea is that why should it (Google in this case) make us stupid while all the preceding things didn't (presumably)?

i.e. many would argue that television made us stupid yet it's largly thanks to television that I'm doing what I'm doing today - it made it possible to discover entire realms of endevour that can be hard to find otherwise unless you already know to go looking for them.

Most people think books are a good thing (on the scale of "does it make us stupid"), but I have to wonder if earlier people objected to the raise of cheap book printing on the basis that people wouldn't have to exercise thier memory as much (making them stupid) or interact with other people (making them antisocial loners) to get and keep thier knowledge.

Maybe it was the development of social structures in general that made us stupid. If we were forced to learn everything ourselves (from scratch) we'd probably be super-geniuses.

Quote: Original post by Antheus

Quote: Original post by speciesUnknown

People now see that people are losing the ability to use S. T is the cause.

If you were put into middle of a forest, naked, with not a single thing in your possession, could you:
- Find something to drink
- Catch an animal/forage some food
- Be able to avoid natural hazards
- Build a shelter
- Start a fire

Ergo: post-hunter/gatherer society is Bad Thing and should be abolished.

You assume I have an opinion one way or another - I simply abstracted the problem and provided no actual opinion. Perhaps this is because I was starved of oxygen at birth or something.

Books are the S, and search engines are the T.

This is the same problem I've noticed with many other systems; Some people dont want kids in school to use a calculator because they will lose the ability to work out sums on paper; pen and paper is the S and the calculator is the T. There are endless examples of this logic. Sometimes its valid, and sometimes its not.

Besides, Bear Grylls has taught me to fend for myself in the wild, on the discovery channel. So all is well.