> Knowledge of random shit or trivia has no value anymore in developed societies where every worker
Yeah I mean if your entire existence revolves around your job and what your boss thinks of you we're in for a weird discussion... Life has more to offer than 50 year of work and 15 years of retirement. What a strange and sad way to envision life. Cultivating your mind and knowledge, as well as your body, should be way up in the list of things we have to focus on, you might want to check the etymology (if you know what that means, it's not a very useful term in the workplace) of "education"
> Now you can be a car owner without knowing how to change the oil or how a clutch works. That was not the case 50 or so years ago.
Nice, that's definitely what we want, monkeys pushing buttons without any ideas of what's going on under the hood. Why would you want to know why the earth is round, what gravity is, why braking distances are longer in rain, how ABS works, what is engine braking, why you can't stomp on the brakes for 30min straight while driving down a mountain road, ... People smoke their clutches all the time, run on bald tires, use summer tires in winter, pour oil in their coolant tank.
What's the point of being ultra specialised in a niche field, or even worse, profession, if you're a complete dummy in life
edit: and also, most people aren't even specialised, so now you get the worst of both world
What an entitled and 'holier than though' view. When you can't afford rent, groceries, education or medical bills due to inflation, and don't have a support network or family, what use is it to the Average Joe to be "enlightened" on random shit like pointing Africa on the map.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs (shelter, food, sex, relationships) will always take priority for most individuals over learning random pub-quiz trivia.
All the problems you listed come from the same root, and LLMs won't solve them
> Maslow's hierarchy of needs (shelter, food, sex, relationships) will always take priority for most individuals over learning random pub-quiz trivia.
Time to plug in your brain and ponder why the top economies of the world aren't able to provide basic human needs while generating more wealth than ever before, once again, same root as above, once again, LLMs won't solve any of that.
We could have AGI and immortality tomorrow, as long as we keep the free for all ultra individualistic profit seeking capitalistic system it's not going to change jack shit.
> random pub-quiz trivia.
> Maslow's hierarchy of needs
Wow slow down cowboy, "maslow's hierarchy" IS random pub-quiz trivia, get that off your brain real quick, you wouldn't want to become enlightened do you ?
Democracy needs enlightened citizens, otherwise it's an idiocracy. But we already know in which world we live.
Critical thinking makes one enlightened, not memorizing trivia that anyone can Google on a whim, like where Africa is on the map.
Understanding how democracy, taxes, politics, resources, compounding interest, inflation, lobbying, corruption, etc and ability to connect the dots between these, is more important for society than pointing at foreign continents on the map.
So how do you do this if you have an oracle that answers the exact question you have without any struggle? I find that the most useful things I learnt in life I bumped into after taking wrong corners while looking for something else.
By that logic we should all go back to using an abacus and slide ruler for calculations.
Life is about making progress, not struggling with outdated ways for the sake of it. Struggle isn't a virtue.
If give people the task of banging nails into a wall and one uses his head to bang nails, the other use a hammer, and the third uses a nail gun, which is more productive and valuable, the one who struggles the most or the one who gets it done quickly and efficiently?
You can google these too, why bother learning anything ?
Just press the buttons and get the peanuts, why bother being curious ?
You can google their definitions, you can't google critical thinking.
WTH, Cash registers have already been doing that automatically at every transition for the past 70 years or so.
>Or people who can't locate Africa on a world map.
How does that knowledge have anything to do with their work lives? Does your boss jump in the middle of your TPS reports in Jira and ask you to point Africa on the map within 3 seconds without using your phone or you're fired?
I lived in the 90's Eastern Europe where a lot of people knew where Africa was on the map but society was anything but prosperous. Knowledge of basic geography is no guarantee of prosperity, your ability to get money is, and plenty of people in rich countries can make money without knowing where Africa is since workers in rich countries are way more specialized than before. Now you can be a car owner without knowing how to change the oil or how a clutch works. That was not the case 50 or so years ago.
Knowledge of random shit or trivia has no value anymore in developed societies where every worker becomes more and more specialized in specific niches versus societies where everyone knows a little bit of everything from car repair, a little bit of plumbing, some farming and maybe some medical patch work on the side but nobody is specialized in any valuable skills.