How could madness dominate social media and politics? People are getting stupider. Brain damaging trends are dumbing down the population. Heavy metals, toxic chemicals, COVID, wildfire smoke an aging population, and climate stress all threaten intelligence. Now add…“TikTokfication”. We talk with scientist “Mr. White Orange”. Tune in for unique talk on social media, culture, and our brains.
Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (57 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)
TIKTOKIFY
“Where does my mind go
Who replaces me?
TikTok”
That is from .
Listen to or download my intentionally mindless Euro-dance hit “TikTokify” (Creative Commons) song “TikTokify”.
SIX REASONS HUMANS MAY BE GETTING STUPIDER
ASSAULT BY HEAVY METALS
Just take the metal Lead: a PNAS paper found, quote: “The average lead-linked loss in cognitive ability was 2.6 IQ points per person as of 2015. This amounted to a total loss of 824,097,690 IQ points, disproportionately endured by those born between 1951 and 1980.”
In our January 22nd show, we talked with scientist Ari Feinberg from The Spanish National Research Council about global distribution of another heavy metal – mercury. Mercury also has neurotoxic effects and lowers IQ. Everyone is getting a dose.
COVID
Oh yeah, and then there is brain loss nobody wants to talk about – mass loss of IQ from the COVID virus. A story in the New York Times, 2023 is headlined: “Can’t Think, Can’t Remember: More Americans Say They’re in a Cognitive Fog. Adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s are driving the trend. Researchers point to long COVID as a major cause.” That is by By Francesca Paris.
Here comes another. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine found people, “who recovered from COVID symptoms had a cognitive deficit equivalent to three IQ points compared with those who were never infected, while participants suffering from unresolved Covid symptoms lasting 12 weeks or more experienced a loss equivalent to six IQ points.”
“Brain fog” after COVID is well known. The world suffered a pandemic that is known to lower Intelligence in millions of people. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine in February 2024 found:
“A recent analysis of the U.S. Current Population Survey showed that after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, an additional one million U.S. residents of working age reported having “‘serious difficulty’ remembering, concentrating, or making decisions” than at any time in the preceding 15 years. Whether these changes are attributable solely to long Covid is unclear, but that report represents a change in the cognitive health of U.S. residents from prepandemic levels.”
Other studies found a loss of 3 IQ points in people with lingering COVID symptoms, rising up to 6 points in millions of people with Long Covid, and even 9 points lower IQ for those who were hospitalized in intensive care. We already have stories of University Professors unable to resume teaching after COVID, and countless reports of people no longer to work due to COVID “brain fog”.
People around you may not notice a loss of 3 IQ points. It’s just a bit less brain power. But if we lose 3 points to Lead, 3 to COVID infection, and another 3 from mercury, that is 9 points down. At that point a person might lose their job for poorer performance and find life somewhat harder to navigate.
SMOG
There is more. Don’t forget the brain-deadening effects of smog. Even light smog from industry and traffic can lower IQ points of people living in it. Now picture months in New Delhi India where buildings are barely visible. A gray-black dust fills the air and everyone’s lungs. Other gases and pollutants are held captive near the ground. From Lagos to Beijing, humans are losing intelligence due to air pollution. The science is in. Medical doctors know how it works. There is no mystery or debate left. Smog makes people sicker and stupider.
From Columbia University, Dr. Francisca Perera is a world leader in the study of the effects of smog and heat-related illness on babies in the womb and then later in life. She writes:
“Research has now linked prenatal as well as postnatal air pollution exposure to reduced IQ and other cognitive problems, developmental disorders such as ADHD and autism, depression and anxiety, and even structural changes in the brains of children. Research has also shown how climate-related displacement results in disruption of education and mental health problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression in children. These conditions often persist, affecting health and brain function in adulthood.”
We have not begun to realize so many other insults to our brains. Scientists are finding nano-particles of plastics in the brain – plus forever chemicals known to be neurotoxins. That is a whole new field of medical research to come, but meanwhile you and I are the living laboratories for post-modern changes in the brain and our whole nervous system.
CLIMATE
Now add in the cumulative health impacts of climate-hyped disasters, including cognitive loss and mental illness. For more on that, search out reports this year in the Lancet on climate and health, and my interview with scientist Dann Mitchell in our February 2nd show. In December 2024 I also interviewed Clayton Aldern on his new book “The Weight of Nature – How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains”.
We must include wildfire smoke in the climate-pushed bag. Wildfire smoke is known to have multiple health effects, including an ability to reach the brain and impair neurological functions. Check out my December ’24 interview with with Dr. Joan Casey, Environmental Epidemiologist and from the University of Washington. Breathing wildfire smoke increases risk of dementia by 18%.
The mental health effects of climate change is a huge subject for more shows to come.
AGING POPULATIONS
Most Western countries now have more people with brains declining due to aging. It is natural and well-known that as the brain ages it loses some functionality. Older people may not be a bright as when in their 20’s. Most of the Western world is now experiencing a wave of aging people with the Baby Boomers and the next generation having fewer children. In a population with higher numbers of seniors, the overall population would record a lower Intelligence, due to natural brain decline. There is more of this particular type of stupidity around, and they dominate positions of power and wealth.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Added to that pile of assaults on the brain, experts and parents worry social media is the new force dumbing down millions of people. Readily available, free artificial intelligence may also be stripping brains of former exercise and functions. Some of these developments are too new for long-term studies or data. We suspect but do not know. That is where we begin today: does TikTok make us passive, with lazy brains? Are we de-learning to the point of losing intelligence? Does that explain the wave of anti-science, hostility to medicine, and politics feeding on a yearning to go backward in time? Are we too dumb to self-govern, to dumb to save ourselves from dictators and climate failure?
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TIKTOKFICATION: Giving away our minds
GUEST: THE WHITE ORANGE
“There is a reason TikTok is so good at figuring out what you want to see, and why it’s better than everything else: it’s a weapon, and the best weapon is one you don’t know exists, or worse, one you think you can’t live without.”
– Adam Kinzinger @adamkinzinger.bsky.social posted Jan 19, 2024
The great minds – Newton, Einstein, Nietzsche, Azimov – they all needed isolation and deep thought for breakthroughs that define modern civilization. They did not check their emails or influencers. When everyone is connected to endless outside stimulation, where will new creation come from? Are short posts and videos, served up by algorithms, dumbing us down? Maybe machines are not becoming more like us. They train us to become more like them. Get ready for brain shredding and machine assembly – of the human mind. Are we building “idiocracy”?
Our next guest calls it “TikTokfication”. He is an accomplished scientist recognized in his entirely different field. I’ve looked into his expertise and it is mind-boggling. Though safely out of America, for this discussion we use his Net-name when posting on Medium: “The White Orange”.
Listen to or download this 47 minute conversation with the White Orange in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
This interview is based on two post made by Mr. White Orange in Medium:
Part 1: TikTokfication I: an AI-driven Idiocracy (when AI gets better at distraction)
How long until we consider social media an existential threat? The White Orange Nov 26, 2022
Part 2: TikTokfication II: How Social Media is Leading us Into an Idiocracy
What are we losing as a result of millions of people having their attention impaired to perform cognitively-demanding tasks? The White Orange Sep 16, 2023
BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS INTERVIEW
In the interview (22 min) Mr. Orange refers to a book “The Shallows” WIKI says:
“The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, published in the United Kingdom as The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember, is a 2010 book by the American journalist Nicholas G. Carr. The book expands on the themes first raised in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?“, Carr’s 2008 essay in The Atlantic, and explores the effects of the Internet on the brain. The book claims research shows “online reading” yields lower comprehension than reading a printed page. The Shallows was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.
At 36 min, Mr Orange talks about “Thinking, Fast and Slow” – a 2011 popular science book by psychologist Daniel Kahneman.
“What’s the difference between a gov controlling an algorithm, silently eliminating reach for things it doesn’t like, vs the same gov using its power, to demand that the platform remove the things it doesn’t like? In China they are overt. With TikTok in the US, they control silently.”
– Mark Cuban @mcuban.bsky.social, Jan 19, 2024
A COUPLE OF THOUSAND QUESTIONS ABOUT TIKTOK IN OUR BRAINS…
Alex wants to know:
If I go out for a walk, not a lot happens. I don’t expect any car accidents or come-on from sexy people. It is slow time. Back in the chair, I open TikTok and right away there is more excitement in minutes than half a lifetime in slow world. Real life is just boring compared to continuous blasts of compressed attention.
Does skimming through social media make our minds more shallow, and does that become a shallow culture? Have we reached peak ideas, getting ready to stall out ? Perhaps a few people will generate new knowledge or art but there is no public left with enough focused mind power to receive it?
What happens to our minds when scrolling through everything from close-ups of birds to newly seen galaxies trillions of miles away? Are we conscious? Do we learn anything? Does this change the way our brains are wired?
People scrolling, and doom-scrolling know that time is worse than wasted. They feel bad about giving up their time and life. They call it “brain rot” – and still go back. Maybe this is pornography for the brain?
Forget about well-reasoned arguments that may begin with the background, define terms, and prepare your mind. People demand: speak up, tell me now, or I move on immediately to something else. Some people only watch short film trailers and never complete a movie. All that is shaping every kind of communication, including government communications about your safety, lectures by Professors, and business presentations worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Civilization is becoming more segmented, chopped up, to meet the needs of brains modified by TikTokfiction. Canadian Marshall McLuhan warned in the 1960’s: “the medium is the message”.
THE END OF STRUCTURE IN KNOWLEDGE
Personally I look back at classic education, as taught in the 1900’s. After learning basic tools like mathematics and reading, students were required to build up layer after layer of knowledge. There were structures, like Institutes of medicine or geology, to maintain the edifice.
The computer on the other hand disassembles everything into numbers, and patterns of numbers. These can be like Lego bricks, with built-in connections. The computer then reassembles small pieces, but it can present them in ways outside the frameworks accepted by humans. I think “artificial intelligence” and algorithms are leading humans to compute in the same way as machines. That is partly reflected in the fall of norms, like Democracy, or caring for others. I call this process “shredding” and “chaotic assembly”.
THE ROLE OF EMOTION
I think we will find emotion is a key to social media changes to the brain. Advertisers already know. From studies and field trials, they plot to quickly bypass the slow rational decision-making part of the brain, to get quickly and directly to the more primitive brain, where emotions can trigger a reaction, hopefully to buy something or support their political party. But after we watch a thousand disasters and baby pictures, do our emotions become overdrawn? Do we risk become emotionally “flat” in the real world when the mesmerizing screen relaxes it’s grip?
We also know our brains create alternative experiences and reality when we dream. Although these dreams seem long to us, measurements of brain and eye activity suggest dream videos, if you will, are very short. Similarly in net media scanning, we can recall some clips or posts we just scanned through, or forget them all, like a dream. I wonder if TikTok and now YouTube shorts are tapping into that facility, accessing the dream state in the brain.
CAN WE BORROW YOUR BRAIN?
You hardly need an operating system in a person’s brain at all. Just plug us into a screen and let the video algorithms stimulate our emotions directly, with all the endocrine messages that go with them. We feel excited or angry, or curious without thinking anything at all. It is being directly wired to a corporation, and possibly to a single trillionaire that owns it, and owns you.
We experience a blur of new machine-created experiences, like TikTok short videos. Does our brain store some of them with emotions? Or does the brain serve up emotions it considers appropriate for that image or information packet? Is the excitement of a sexual image attached to the image? That is doubtful.
We presume our brains create the excitement from a repertoire of basic endocrine responses. Over time, as you hover over an image on TikTok, however briefly, the machine can learn not only what interests you, but what generates particular emotions. What can you read or see that makes you happy? What makes you angry? What makes you want to buy things? The emotional attachment is a steering wheel that a machine intelligence, and the corporation or country that owns it, can reach into our minds and change them. At times our emotions can be played like an organ.
Emotions can also help memory formation, or generate behaviors. The machine learns that you did not come to be happy, or simple happiness is not enough for you. The reality is: you may return to certain strings of information because you want to feel emotions, like anger. Advertisers know you don’t like their presentation. When you don’t like the ad, you feel an emotion which helps you to remember the product later – even though you do not remember why or what you felt then.
And when these emotions are registered while watching YouTube videos or TikTok, does the machine image draw from an infinite pool of emotions in us? Does it encourage us to develop those emotions, like fear, more and others less, so we become specialized minds more open to quick stimulation from outside? Or are the emotions taken from earlier memories, like the time you were scared in the dark or the hurricane, so that those real memories become flattened, or perhaps even forgotten?
How are we adapting to the capabilities of AI, to the machine? This is mostly terra incognito, the unknown land of how human minds function, a study most difficult.
NO GUARANTEES TO EVOLUTION
Media and my elders produced an expectation that humans would continue to evolve through culture and cumulative learning. People in the future would be smarter. But there is nothing in evolutionary theory or cultural history making that the only outcome. Are you more worried about Chinese government subtly changing our minds, or direct deterioration of general brain power, to become the “thoughtless herd”?
Does a more chaotic data stream coming, changing constantly in less than a minute, prepare the brain for a more chaotic world, say in the economy, government, weather? In times of Tiktoxfication, should we expect faster social changes – for better or for worse – or both?
If personalized stimulation like TikTok is a drug, like scrolling in Twitter, does the user require bigger and bigger hits to get the same high? People do crazy things to get viral hits, some of them dangerous. Could TikTok fever be a factor fueling more extreme behaviors in social media and then real life? Is TikTok helping shape extremism?
END OF STORY
We are out of time. Getting to the end of a concentrated hour of radio or this endless blog proves you have intelligence, despite everything. We need you now more than ever. Thank you for supporting Radio Ecoshock, for listening and caring about this living world.
In his second post on Medium, this week’s guest White Orange found music also atomized into simple polytones and repetitive lyrics to fit social media. So I wrote him a mindless TikTok song. Here it is, for the White Orange, “Tiktokify”.
Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock song in CD Quality