Category: BrainRot

Sophia Sarafova, an associate professor of biology at Davidson College, notes that at the start of her teaching career, 18 years ago, new students were able to synthesize and summarize information from multiple lectures on a topic to extract general principles they could apply in new situations.

“Not anymore,” she says.

“Note-taking now requires specific instruction on what to write down and how to organize it. Also, a lot of students are unable to rephrase a statement without changing the meaning, often in drastic ways that clearly contradict the core of the statement.”

https://www.chronicle.com/article/is-this-the-end-of-reading

The letter cites a November report from UC San Diego’s Senate-Administration Workgroup on Admissions, which concluded that the number of students whose mathematical abilities were below the typical high school level had increased thirty-fold in the past five years.

“The SAT/ACT mathematics requirement is not an obstacle to equity; rather, it is a prerequisite for it,” professors wrote in the letter. “Failing to measure preparation gaps does not remove barriers; it moves them into the classroom, where they become harder to overcome.”

Jazz reached peak complexity in the 1950s – the era of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk – before steadily becoming simpler from the 1960s onward.

Complexity of classical music increased and decreased at various points before 1900. Compositions in the genre have become noticeably simpler during the 20th century.

The researchers point to some technological and cultural factors which may be at play in this shift from more complex to simpler music.

“Platforms like Spotify and YouTube not only offer listeners personalised recommendations but also act as hubs for discovering and promoting new artists, effectively functioning as the ‘new radio’ of the digital age,” they write.

“However, this interconnected landscape is not without its drawbacks. Previous studies have suggested that content circulating in fast, interconnected and algorithmically curated environments is subject to simplification processes, as seen in the case of song lyrics and social media comments. This raises an important question: is a similar trend occurring in the musical landscape?”

https://connectsci.au/news/news-parent/9259/Think-pop-music-is-basic-Even-classical-and-jazz

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-42872-7

[https://musicmachinery.com/2014/05/02/the-skip/]

Overall, the analysis revealed that songs now use more rhyming words and choruses. “Across all genres, lyrics had a tendency to become more simple and more repetitive,” Eva Zangerle, the study’s senior author and a computer science professor at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, tells the Agence France-Presse (AFP).

With more music than ever being listened to on apps and streaming platforms, capturing listeners’ attention has moved to the forefront of many artists’ consideration—and the trends revealed in the new study may reflect that.

“When people are faced with lots and lots of choices, they tend to prefer things that are easier to process and more straightforward,” Michael Varnum, a cultural psychologist at Arizona State University who did not participate in the research, tells Scientific American’s Lauren Leffer.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/song-lyrics-have-become-angrier-simpler-and-more-repetitive-scientists-find-180984061

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55742-x

Using algorithms and mathematical models, researchers examined the evolution of pitch and rhythm in hit melodies over the past seven decades. Their results, published last week in the journal Scientific Reports, suggest that both elements have become steadily less complex.

“Conservatively, they have both decreased by 30 percent,” lead author Madeline Hamilton, a computer scientist at Queen Mary University of London, tells the New York Times’ Alexander Nazaryan.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/pop-music-melodies-have-gotten-simpler-over-time-180984695

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-64571-x