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This comic is stupid, and likely a made to farm comments and up votes, if there weren't enough curious people willing to put in effort to learn we wouldn't have advanced as much as we have today and no doubt Google makes looking things up easier, but look around you, how many people actually bother to even do that, plus it also makes it easier to find results that people can feed into their own misinformation, that they've predecided is the right answer
I thought the comic was supposed to be funny. I found it amusing. Maybe I’m just dumb lol. But I mean, I used to read the dictionary and especially the encyclopedia, go to the library, all sorts of stuff before the internet. It was fun.
I'm actually thinking about getting a full set of encyclopedias for the house so my 12 year old can use them. He just asked me as I was typing, "are moles nocturnal?" Lol.
I think it helps with spelling/critical thinking to look things up in physical books, and more importantly, I don't have to be standing over his shoulder as he looks for information, as my son just can't get the hang of internet safety yet..
He's absolutely spent time reading the dictionary, he was reading it often between ages 6-8. I thought it was super adorable the first time I saw him doing it. I consider myself pretty dumb too, but being able to seek information properly is so important; "I may not know the answer, but I can try and find it" is core critical thinking in practice.
Of course, this doesn't apply in the same way when the child/young mind is just typing the question into a chat box for an easy answer, all the while autocorrect is fixing every spelling/grammar error for them. Books man, the easiest parental control there is for learning imo
For context, this comic was made before Google changed their company motto away from, "Don't be evil". There was a sense that they might not turn evil back then and they were still giving reasonable search results based on your query.
The library is how people learned things before a search engine came and ruined people’s ability to find things on their own. Dewey Decimal, bitch.
And now LLMs came and ruined people ability to think. Idiocracy was a prophecy CMV.
When I was introduced to Google, my relatives were using it to look up video game cheat codes. I think we even looked up walk through for Driver. That tutorial was absurdly fucking difficult. A group of like 10 people couldn’t complete it for hours.
As someone who was definitely born with internet being a standard in my house and school as a child, this is sad. I loved going to the library every week with my dad and older sister, and we both loved encyclopedias and non-fiction books about animals and stuff. Recently I had to use my college library for a practice exercise for my Eng class and once we learned the system they use (it's not Dewey Decimal), my partner and I had a blast looking for books for our papers. It was fun, honestly. It really made me realize that sometimes the internet is less efficient for finding quality and trusted information rather than perusing the library catalogue (which I can do online too obvs).
Libraries, man, don't let the concept die.
I know too many people who do the same thing despite having smartphones.
I had my own head to reach wrong, and life-destroying conclussions with. No AI to break me out at the time.
conclussion
/kən-klŭsh′ən/
noun
When the [probably wrong] answer, or its immediate consequence, hits you like a brick