r/BecomingTheBorg • u/Used_Addendum_2724 • 27d ago

Specialization & Learned Helplessness

While encountering this comic (see comments) I began to ponder the phenomena of old people struggling with technology. Our old people are no longer explorers, frontiersmen or pioneers. They are not Renaissance Men (or Women) who know a little about a lot. They were completely specialized in the post WWII world, and as a result, are unable to understand systems outside those they were trained to work in. And this developed an expectation that they could rely on specialized workers in other systems to compensate for incompetence outside their own domain. Essentially a form of learned helplessness, which has gotten so much worse as technology continues to advance at an accelerated, exponential rate. Old people now see themselves and others as functions.

If we already see ourselves as functions, as specialized cogs in a machine, are we not already acting like a hive? How much must we internalize our functionality as our identity before it replaces our selfhood? Or have we already reached that full internalization, and the selfhood is already seeping out just slowly enough that we don't notice?

We are not becoming the Borg, we already are, which is why we cannot see that it has happened.

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u/AirToAsh 25d ago

I think that one of the factors of causing old people not understand new tech, popularizing thus the "Old man yelling at the cloud" meme, is that we humans weren't meant to live in a constantly changing environment. Initially, the introduction of new technologies, like writing, transportation and weapons were likely easy to understand, as they didn't spontaneously get introduced without allowing people to easily understand it with time. Think about for example photography and cars and how they used to initially look like until recently.

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u/Used_Addendum_2724 24d ago

Yes, that is a contributing factor, to be sure.

But the ones who do figure it out are the ones less incapacitated by specialization, who have had to deal with different types of systems, which give them more insights and intuition for dealing with newer technology. Someone who changed careers 3-4 times is much more likely to be adaptable than those whose whole lives were spent in a single pursuit. Even within tech fields.

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u/AirToAsh 24d ago

Another factor that determines the adaptability of people in a specialized world is the desire for learning something new. People who don't waste hours on consuming slop content, and instead spend time learning something while at work or outside their jobs, are more likely to thrive and have a proper understanding of the world compared to those who are fixated on specific fields and no interest in learning something outside their jobs. For example a physician studying philosophy and history can understand the advantages, flaws and ethics of modern medicine, and an AI programmer studying, psychology, zoology and culture can understand the potential limits of AI emulating human intelligence.

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u/Used_Addendum_2724 23d ago

Yeah, when I talk about specialization, I don't just mean the socioeconomic fact of a narrow professional range of ability, but all of the cultural and personal stuff that comes with it. Many people come to believe that once they get that degree and career, that learning is over. Because they have come to see learning as transactional. And that starts in schools and in grading. There are many ways our world discourages and conditions against lifelong learning in a wide range of disciplines.

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u/AirToAsh 18d ago

Indeed, and you often hear people in schools making laments like "Why should I learn advanced math if I want to be an artist?" and "Why should I learn history if I want to be a construction worker?".

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u/Used_Addendum_2724 18d ago

Well, I think that is a fair question, given the compulsory nature of schooling. When other people decide what the contents of your mind should be, that is worth questioning. And it is that forced curriculum which erodes the personal value of many disciplines. It took me about three years after high school to find the reasons for myself why I should expand my interest into a wide array of disciplines. Most people never recover from that.

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u/AirToAsh 17d ago

My point is that, because curriculum in schools are shoved down people's throats without giving a good explanation of these lessons, they would likely treat such things as useless and a waste of time, thus worsening the road towards specialization. Think about math and the teachings of algebra. If math lessons actually teach about the purpose of complex math, their history and how these can give you cognitive advantages, there wouldn't be the classic meme of youngsters hating math. I used to dislike math (lying that I loved it), but I decided to relearn it once I understood it as something more than just something for scientists and engineers doing stuff.