The downside of automotive technology

[Yonadav]

Look at what I said about us losing basic life skills to a degree that is not easily measurable.  We don't entirely understand what skills we are losing. Also, I think that you are conflating 'life skills' with 'way of life'. What are we losing when a freshly graduated high school honor roll student can't convert .85 into a fraction? Sure, she can do math with a calculator. But she doesn't understand rudimentary things about how numbers relate to each other. That makes her a monkey with a calculator. In what other ways are we being reduced to monkeys? We don't really know. And perhaps it doesn't matter. Perhaps we hit a peak in the general population's literacy, mathematical, and scientific literacy, and the norm is for most humans to not understand these things. Most of us were illiterate until pretty recently in social evolution, and perhaps most of us are going to be basically illiterate again.

Ok, so she can't convert decimals to fractions.  Unless she's going to be an engineer or a mathematician or sommat, what does it matter?  Why would a pastry chef or an auto mechanic or a trauma surgeon need that particular skill?  Why would a poet need to know how to smelt ore?  Why should a radiologist need to know iambic hexameter?

Boru

I'm not necessarily looking for agreement from you.  I'm just pointing out that we can't be sure of what else is lost when rudimentary mathematical literacy is lost. When I was young a lot of rebellious teenagers who didn't like to go to school and were thinking about dropping out, asked questions exactly like the questions that you are asking here. I guess those mid-20th century rebellious teenagers were ahead of their time (even though they could convert a decimal to a fraction).