Ask A Genius 1321: The Impact of AI on Human Intelligence and Modern Entertainment
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/03/25
Rick Rosner: So, Carole is a little nervous. She’s been reading about people getting deported or denied entry for expressing pro-Palestinian views—which is disturbing. But we’re not at the point where they’re deporting citizens, at least not routinely.
I told Carole to keep that in mind. We’re not there yet. But if she thinks we should get a gun, then we’ll get a gun—something small—maybe a .22 calibre automatic. There’s not much recoil because you’re firing low-velocity rounds. Not pellets—bullets. But still, they’re teeny little bullets.
If it comes to that, get a Walther PPK .22 LR. It weighs about a pound. You can put it in your pocket—though, if you’re careless, you could shoot your balls off.
Anyway, yes, there are studies. And from personal experience, too—are people getting dumber?
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Yes. But it is not very easy. At the same time, people are smarter in certain domains. Literacy rates are up globally. But the sophistication of our dumbness is also up. We’re more aware of stupidity as a phenomenon.
Rosner: So maybe it’s an art of artifice—a kind of meta-dumbness. I read an article in Vox about the “baby shortage” but framed it more accurately as a coupling shortage. People are forming fewer long-term relationships, especially in their 20s and 30s.
And couples are, statistically, the main source of babies. The Vox piece touched on hyper-engaging entertainment and digital isolation. A large portion of the population—especially young people who, biologically speaking, should be out trying to mate—is content to stay home and be entertained. I looked up some data.
Back in the 1980s, a typical episode of network TV—say, The Love Boat—might cost between $300,000 and $500,000 to produce. You watched it on your cathode ray TV, which might’ve had a 27- or 32-inch screen. Pixels per inch weren’t even a concept then.
The writing was formulaic, so they had to crank it out quickly. There were only three major networks—ABC, NBC, and CBS—so options were limited.
Compare that to today. Take Severance, one of the most critically acclaimed streaming shows, produced by Ben Stiller. Season One premiered in 2022. It’s high-concept, beautifully produced, and slow to release. Season Two reportedly took nearly three years due to production delays and the Hollywood strikes. Each episode is estimated to cost around $15–20 million.
Yes, inflation plays a role—but one episode of Severance costs as much as roughly 40–50 episodes of a 1980s network show. The quality is undeniable. It’s compelling, layered, cinematic.
If that’s not your thing, there’s Wicked, which is coming out in two parts. The first part is scheduled to premiere in November 2024. Universal Pictures is reportedly spending around $145 million on Part One alone. It’ll likely stream on Peacock after the theatrical release.
We’re paying $150 a year across all streaming services? And when a major movie drops on a platform you’re already subscribed to, it feels free. I tried watching Wicked but couldn’t get into it. It’s a musical, operatic. Not my taste.
Then there’s Red One, a holiday action-comedy starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Chris Evans, produced by Amazon MGM Studios. It was originally slated for release in 2023 but got pushed. The reported budget? Around $250 million. That’s Marvel-level spending—for a holiday movie.
This is high-level entertainment—on your TV right now. Occasionally, you’ll see a big-budget film that’s good. But add to that: AAA video games, endless porn, algorithmic social media content—and people want to stay home. Also, real people suffer more than your friends in the digital sphere. Real life loses to the spectacle.
There are roughly as many OnlyFans models as there are doctors—about 1.1 million of each. It’s not a perfect comparison because the doctors are mostly counted in the United States, while the OnlyFans models are global. But I still feel that the U.S. hosts many of those creators.
So you’re comparing the booty of someone you might meet if you ever go outside—to a club or the grocery store—to the curated, highly-toned, tanned, trained bodies of the best of a million models on OnlyFans.
It used to be, back in the bad old days—the’ 70s—people sold books on how to meet women. They were bad because, well… they mostly sucked. But they often gave one piece of advice: “Go where the women are.” So you’d cruise the aisles of the supermarket. I guess that’s a start.
But those “how to pick up girls” books didn’t give you any useful next steps—except “walk up to her and talk to her,” which isn’t revolutionary advice. Still, imagine you’re following that strategy today. You’re trying to meet someone at the grocery store but mentally competing with the surgically optimized, algorithmically promoted bodies of top-tier OnlyFans creators. People in real life can’t compete with that kind of curation.
So, fewer couples form. Fewer babies get made. That’s what makes guys like Elon Musk throw up their hands and say it’s the end of civilization. Or white supremacists claim it’s the end of European civilization—because not enough white babies are being born.
But we have 8.2 billion people on the planet. For 99.9999% of human history, we had fewer than 8 billion people. We can probably get by.
It’s economically easier if the population grows—more consumers and workers are paying into systems like Social Security. We discussed this earlier on one of the morning yelling shows: Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Later contributors fund the benefits of earlier ones. So yeah, a growing population props that up.
But a stable or shrinking population helps in other ways—especially with climate change. Our per capita carbon footprint decreases over time as technology gets more efficient and people travel less, thanks to remote options.
And even more than that—a non-increasing population directly helps. It would be fantastic to cap the global population at 9 billion instead of letting it climb to 10.5 billion. It would ease the pressure on ecosystems, energy use, and water. But of course, “Whitey” likes to whine about that kind of thing.
Once you start noticing that people are getting dumber, you can’t unsee it. But let’s say we’re wrong. Let’s say we’re just cranky assholes who assume the worst about people. Even then—it doesn’t matter if we’re wrong. Because relative to the smartest things on Earth—besides humans—we are getting dumber.
The smartest things on Earth now are AIs. They’re still not super smart, but they’re getting smarter. And we’re not. Even if we stay the same, we’re getting relatively dumber because AI is accelerating.
So, we’re getting relatively stupider.
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