• ameancow@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Yeah, I’m typically fine with language changing over time, and yeah you’re right it’s just how language evolves.

    I guess my fear here is that the methods and means for changing language right now might not be evolution as much as de-evolution in this particular intersection of culture and technology.

    When kids naturally develop ways to express themselves, it leads to new generations of minds coming up with new art and expressions.

    But I’m not at all sure what the LLM’s and internet culture and the state of politics is going to do to a generation of kids already growing up in an anti-intellectual environment, with growing popularity of phrases like “just put the ___ in the bag” or “I ain’t reading all that” or “the curtains were just blue” etc. It really worries me, because a lot of what makes us special as a species is our ability to take complex sets of ideas and concepts and make them into quantifiable abstractions through language, letting us manipulate complicated topics in our minds.

    If you don’t have adequate language skills, you’re going to have a harder and harder time performing essential human functions, or even just communicating with others.

    • Allemaniac@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      if the Zeitgeist is dumbing down, you as an intellectual will stick out like a sore thumb, and you might lose the ability to communicate your ideas efficiently. So, if you are not actively promoting knowledge, you are just complaining into the void like the rest of us

      • ameancow@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        you are just complaining into the void like the rest of us

        “Just put the thing in the bag”

        “I ain’t reading all that”

        “The curtains were just blue.”