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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   31065 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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Looking at people nowadays they seem neither happier nor smarter. Is the take here supposed to be "brain damage good, actually"?

I read speculation along those lines once somewhere in the SSCverse, that when you look at the behavioral symptoms of CTE in football players, veterans, and boxers they look more or less like severer and maladaptive versions of the traits that we view modern men as lacking. Aggression, risk taking, etc.

And the theory was, the human brain is actually adapted to getting a few concussions. If you look at history, most men would get a few growing up. The human brain essentially comes from the factory with too much risk aversion and doesn't reach optimal broken in condition until getting whacked a few times.

I find it wild speculation, but then I look at my own life and I suffered a severe concussion, and more or less contemporaneously I snapped out of my doldrums and started acting with a bit of ambition.

Sometimes it hard to know where your limits are until you get your bell rung a couple times.

My instinct is that the substitute activities people are engaging with are actually even worse than what happened to teenagers before for your brains.

I’m actually fine with teenagers drinking beer and wine in moderation, I learned to do so because I reached legal drinking age outside of the USA and I had a parent who was very modest in their alcohol consumption. Basically all of my bad alcohol habits I picked up when I came back and lived in the burbs and attached myself to the local party scene.

It may have some negative consequences, but as stated above it’s one of lindy-est things to ever lindy.

Internet brain rot, social media obsession, binge video gaming, and a sedentary indoor life style seems much much worse to me in terms of damage to young people’s brain. Massive spikes in youth depression, anxiety and isolation seem to bear this out.

Pick your poison, I imagine every generation since the first has had to deal with this issue.

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