Yes, also see chess which as far as I'm aware is more popular than ever... Despite machines ruling in this cognitive challenge as far back as the 90s.

Athletes, chess, fitness... Have you guys seen regular people? Obesity is worse than ever. Most people are overweight and completely incapable of even basic locomotion without heavy assistance. Most people these days haven't even picked up a book, let alone play chess or otherwise exercise their brains for fun. Sure, a few weirdos might keep exercising their brains, and a few more might find that interesting. A bit like the C obfuscated code contest or something. But most people are going to rot.

> Obesity is worse than ever.

Obesity is actually decreasing today, due to GLP-1 receptor agonists. We are already over peak obesity.

It's just masking the symptoms. I suppose the equivalent for the mind would be everyone on anti-depressant and sedatives. Paints quite the grey picture of our future.

It's a picture that's been painted in a different scifi novel,

     Hug me till you drug me, honey;
     Kiss me till I'm in a coma;
     Hug me, honey, snuggly bunny,
     Love's as good as soma."

Still, I'm optimistic. With obesity, who cares about the underlying cause if you can easily cure the symptoms?

I would prefer not to need an expensive drug for the rest of my life.

Yeah, but I think the price will come down over time. There are already purely oral formulations being developed, which will likely be even more effective than first generation injectable GLP-1 agonists, and much cheaper.

> Most people are overweight and completely incapable of even basic locomotion without heavy assistance.

I'm sorry, what? Heavy assistance? The overwhelming majority of people are completely capable of walking on their own two feet. The number of people relying on "heavy assistance" for "basic locomotion" is overwhelmingly tiny, and primarily limited to the elderly

Most people can't walk more than a kilometre or so. They use cars and other motorised transport for the vast majority of travel.

This is just simply completely untrue. The overwhelming majority of people can walk a kilometer.

What I want to know is what is the "walkable city" of mental fitness? Physical fitness has the athletes, the dedicated exercisers, the unhealthy sedentary masses, and then the people who's day-to-day life integrates enough physical activity that a baseline of fitness is just natural I.e. people living in highly walkable places where both errands and free time incorporates casually moving around.

We should strive for a society where day-to-day life makes a baseline mental fitness a natural outcome as well.

Great question.

I imagine the answer looks something like Wordle writ large: Replacing passive time consumption activities with interactive ones that are as readily accessible (“walkable”).

There’s a fun scene in Star Trek: The Next Generation where LeVar Burton’s chief engineer character is on a long shuttle ride by himself. In addition to sipping a synthehol cocktail, he asks the computer to play a verbal game. It chooses to give him a quiz in his domain of warp field mechanics, and because it’s a smart AI, it calibrates the questions to be just at the limits of his knowledge.

I agree, but it’s equally true access to a broader education where you can actually “strength train” your mental fitness will be needed. We kind of invented a digital telekinesis that lets us summon a vast amount of information on any topic.

We’ll need to build a nose for the right kind of information. Kids growing up in this world already are better at it than older folks who are newly thrown into this environment.

But beyond that I think our agency has already been sapped, as a species. Rebuilding the muscle to exercise our agency as free citizens using the information at our command to make better decisions… we shouldn’t surrender this ability to AI. The best science fiction and science writing already gives us plenty of reason to avoid this. We don’t need to get to the worst of it, and have all out war to correct it.

And that does mean investing heavily in human education. Getting better at teaching things to adults. Making insight easier to gain at every strata of society so true freedom of information when it comes to public works and governance is achieved, which makes the people the watchers and owners of government.

No easy thing to do. Absolutely doable, technologically speaking and in terms of our current biology.

What we have is years of thinking we’re not capable enough. Or cooperative enough. Or rational enough. We can be. We just need the right context, a full belly, and practice in using our voices and shaping our futures actively.