Ask Lemmy

I memorized my friend's phone number. It's because she's a lawyer, and that seems like a good number to have memorized.

Stored phone numbers and GPS sre reliable though. I never remembered most numbers or birthdays anyway due to ADHD, so those being easily accessible was a benefit.

GPS directions also include construction and more accurate time estimates. I never learned alternate routes because remembering the ones I knew was enough effort and I still learn those. Going to new cities is way easier now!

Spell check is one of those.
Writing our own letters. That was actually a skill

That’s entirely up to you. Do you not have phone numbers for your main people memorized? I also have my library card memorized. This level of memory work isn’t rocket scientist level functioning, it’s a choice.

Do you really want to be in a hospital, after a car accident, with no phone (destroyed/lost in crash), and have no idea how to call your parent, spouse, or child? This occurs more often than you’d think.

Okay, but its also much rarer to get lost and stranded with no way to get help anymore. You really have to go out of your way to be completely isolated.

I continue to remember phone numbers and birthdays. No Google or Facebook for me and I'm waiting for the AI bubble to pop.

Edit: GPS, I thought you meant Google play services. I do use an offline map on my phone if I'm going to an unfamiliar area but I have no problem reading a map.

This is /possibly/ part of a long term trend of decreasing human reliance on brainpower.

Brain size doesn't neatly correlate to intelligence, but it's still kind of used as a proxy, over human evolution. It gets bigger for a long time, then starts getting smaller again, starting maybe 20k-3k years ago.

This has been attributed to group size, agriculture, writing or statistical error. So maybe it's not a thing.

How to be human

In the year 2525

The way it’s going…

AI: Happy Birthday! Other notable people who share your birthday: Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, Charlie Kirk, and many more great historical figures you should hope to praise!

Some people know telephone numbers, some of us don't. 🤷‍♂️ What's the big deal, the point is, you should have an alternate method to access your contacts...

How to hard boil eggs.

The internet makes us dumb. Why bother remembering anything when you can just look it up?

Having to remember a bunch of telephone numbers really sucked. I was particularly bad at it, myself, and had to carry around a little address book. I’m so much more happy now that I can store phone numbers in my phone.