The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder Jun 28, 2025
Monthly Archives: June 2025
Multiple Studies Now Suggest That AI Will Make Us Morons
Are we on the road to Idiocracy?
By Lucas Ropek Published June 26, 2025 | (gizmodo.com)
For the second time in two weeks, a study has been published that suggests that people who use AI regularly may display significantly less cognitive ability than those who don’t rely on it. The studies have bolstered critics’ accusations that AI makes you stupid.
The most recent study was conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and looked at a sample size of over 4,500 participants. The study, which looked at the cognitive differences between people who used LLMs like ChatGPT to do research and those who used Google Search, found that the people who used chatbots tended “to develop shallower knowledge” of the subjects they were researching. Both groups were asked to research how to start a vegetable garden, with some participants randomly selected to use AI, while others were asked to use a search engine. According to the study’s findings, those who used ChatGPT gave much worse advice about how to plant a vegetable garden than those who used the search engine. Researchers write:
The shallower knowledge accrues from an inherent feature of LLMs—the presentation of results as syntheses of information rather than individual search links—which makes learning more passive than in standard web search, where users actively discover and synthesize information sources themselves. In turn, when subsequently forming advice on the topic based on what they learned, those who learned from LLM syntheses (vs. standard search results) feel less invested in forming their advice and, more importantly, create advice that is sparser, less original—and ultimately less likely to be adopted by recipients.
The study concludes that this occurred ironically because of ChatGPT’s advertised benefit—”sparing users the need to browse through results and synthesize information themselves.” Because researchers did not have to hunt for information themselves, their “depth of knowledge” was markedly lower than those who did. “In this sense, one might view learning through LLMs rather than web search as analogous to being shown the solution to a math problem rather than trying to solve it oneself,” the research concludes.
The UPenn study follows on the heels of research produced by MIT, published earlier this month, that showed a similarly problematic cognitive impact produced by AI. That study, which observed the neural activity of college students who were using ChatGPT to study, found that increased AI use resulted in reduced brain activity, or what the researchers termed “cognitive debt.” The study used an EEG machine to measure the neural activity of three different groups of students—one that used ChatGPT to study, one that used Google Search, and one that used neither. The study showed that ChatGPT users displayed markedly less cognitive activity than even those who were using Google Search to find information.
The methodology of the MIT article has since been called into question by AI enthusiasts. Critics have noted that the study in question was not peer reviewed and that a small sample size of participants makes it hardly exhaustive. Similarly, critics have argued that while the EEG measurements show certain decreases in specific forms of brain activity, that doesn’t necessarily mean that participants are “dumber” as a result. Indeed, less mental exertion (and, thus, less activity) can be a sign that a person is actually more competent at a task and doesn’t have to expend as much energy as a result. From a certain perspective, these recent assessments of AI’s cerebral impact reek of a moral panic about a new and not altogether well-understood phenomenon.
On the other hand, the conclusion that using an app to complete a homework assignment makes you less capable of thinking for yourself would appear to be self-evident. Outsourcing mental duties to a software program means you’re not performing those duties yourself, and, as is pretty well established, doing something yourself is often the best way to learn. Of course, the internet has been curtailing human mental activity since it first went online. When was the last time you had to remember how to get somewhere? It really seems like Google Maps collectively robbed us of that ability over a decade ago.
Other evidence for AI’s stupidification effect is even more obvious: the maelstrom of cheating that’s been happening in America’s educational system means that students are making their way through high school and college without learning how to write an essay or interpret a book. While there is clearly still a lot to learn about how AI impacts us, some of its side-effects seem obvious. If a student can’t write an essay without the help of a chatbot, they probably don’t have a particularly bright academic future ahead of them.
The autism spectrum isn’t what you think it is
Chloé Hayden | TEDxSydney Youth
• August 2024
Actress Chloé Hayden is best known for her role as Quinnie on the popular TV show “Heartbreak High” — one of the first-ever autistic characters to actually be played by an autistic person. Now, she’s inviting us to imagine a world where seeing autistic people in any role isn’t groundbreaking, it’s simply expected.
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About the speaker
Chloé Hayden
Actor, author, advocate
Iceberg Sighs Contentedly As It Slowly Lowers Itself Into Warm Arctic Water
Employers, Speak Up for Immigrant Workers
With One Collective Voice, Business Owners Could Change the National Conversation. They’ve Done It Before
By Julie M. Weise June 26, 2025 (ZocaloPublicSquare.org)
This month’s coast-to-coast protests against immigration raids seem to display a country more divided than ever over the place of immigrants in American life. Yet recent history shows one group that, speaking collectively, often bridged the divide between conservatives and pro-immigrant activists: employers.
Since Trump’s reelection last fall, I’ve been curious: what will they do now—and could they reframe the immigration debate away from criminality and toward a broader understanding of economy, community, and America?
The federal immigration raids that began a few months ago appeared at first to stick to a familiar, predictable script. First, raids on agriculture and other industries dependent on immigrants detained many workers and sent the rest into hiding. Then, employers and their professional associations such as the American Farm Bureau and the American Business Immigration Coalition raised hell with their representatives in Washington, D.C., pleading their cases—that their crops would rot in the fields and their businesses grind to a halt. Next, President Donald Trump did what other administrations of both political parties have always done: carved out a little exception so certain industries could return to their “normal” dependence on undocumented workers.
But the difference this time is that under pressure from the hardline anti-immigrant wing of his party, Trump reversed course. The raids will proceed, allowing him to rack up deportation numbers to meet his campaign promises.
Employers have been trying to script their desired, usual ending in meetings with lawmakers and public statements. California farmer Ronnie Leimgruber expressed unfounded confidence that his industry’s support of Trump will spare it in the end. “The only change that we have to make,” said racehorse caretaking industry association director Eric J. Hamelback after a devastating immigration raid on a racetrack last week, “is to get even more aggressive with both the administration and Congress.”
I beg to differ. The only way for employers to have a chance at winning this battle is to speak loudly on the issue in the public square, as they did from the 1990s until Trump’s complete takeover of the GOP in 2020. In those decades, employers could often be found countering this threat to their livelihood not just in congressional offices, but in the national media and their communities.
In my historical research on Mexican migration to the U.S. South, I saw that many employers and their allies in the early 2000s spoke openly and proudly about immigrant workers, even when they faced public blowback. In the conservative farming community of Tifton, Georgia, the mayor, who was also a technical advisor to local farmers, flew the Mexican flag outside city hall for six days in 2005 to mourn the deaths of six local Mexican men who had been killed in a robbery. He kept the flag up despite some complaints on local talk radio. And when state-level anti-immigrant legislation threatened immigrants in Uvalda, Georgia, in 2011, farmers there attended a public meeting where they decried the law’s effects on immigrant children and compared immigration enforcement to the Nazis. Uvalda Mayor Paul Bridges, a dairy farmer and Republican, ended up challenging the law in court with the American Civil Liberties Union. He argued not just for immigrants’ essential role in harvesting his town’s Vidalia onions, but for their value as human beings in his community. “When the Latino community first started coming in,” he explained in a video, “they would meet someone and fall in love and have families. So they became a part of our societal network.”
These very employers have a unique ability to help tell a more inclusive story not just about who does America’s work, but about whose presence and humanity enrich the country rather than threaten it.
Like Bridges, many employers advocated publicly for undocumented immigrants to receive consideration as indispensable workers, but also full human beings and valued members of the community. In my home state of Oregon, for example, agricultural and hospitality employer groups worked side-by-side with pro-immigrant activists from 2013-’19 to make all residents of the state eligible for driver’s licenses, regardless of immigration status. The same coalition worked together in 2016 to preserve Oregon’s status as a “sanctuary” state that prohibits the use of state and local police officers for immigration enforcement. Both efforts succeeded. Jeff Stone, CEO of the Oregon Association of Nurseries, told me his group supported sanctuary status to create a welcoming environment in Oregon, not one based on “fear and racial profiling.” His members need workers above all, but they did not shy away from defending immigrants as people, too.
The power imbalance between employers and their workers often coexists with mutually caring relationships and interconnectedness through churches, schools, and marriages. Today’s agriculture also often requires skills built over years; many employers cultivate decades-long relationships with their employees. These very employers have a unique ability to help tell a more inclusive story not just about who does America’s work, but about whose presence and humanity enrich the country rather than threaten it. That some employers continue to advocate for comprehensive immigration reform and a path to permanent legal status for their workers shows that the potential overlap of interest between employers and immigrants remains real.
But there are also new challenges. In liberal states, clashes between employer and activist groups over wages and unionization have driven a wedge between groups that once collaborated on certain immigrants’ rights issues. In conservative states, speaking in measured tones about undocumented immigrants has become politically perilous. Since January, red- and blue-state farmers alike may fear that speaking out too loudly could invite retaliatory enforcement. Their pleas to Congress and the White House to back off workplace raids remain vigorous, but are mostly confined to closed-door lobbying that centers on economics.
Economic arguments are essential to the conversation, but employers’ recent reticence to move beyond them has ceded the deeper question about who belongs in America to activists on one side and anti-immigrant ideologues on the other.
It is not too late to change course, as a few brave exceptions show. Idaho farmer and Tik-Tok influencer Shay Myers gets thousands of views on his videos decrying heavy-handed immigration enforcement. He speaks both to the fact that he can’t find other workers in a moment of low unemployment and to the “ethical” implications of ripping apart families and causing them to live in fear. Georgia Republican State Representative Kasey Carpenter, a restaurant owner whose district is powered by the carpet manufacturing industry, explained on national news that immigrants were essential to that industry. He also said, “These are kids, that have gone to high school, that we’ve educated, that everybody else’s kids know, that play sports with them.” Though they may disagree on much else, pro-immigrant activists should recognize the value of these voices.
Employers are not wrong in perceiving that defending immigrants broadly and publicly would provoke more drama than it might have a decade ago. But the risk of inaction is magnified as never before: the continued depletion of their workforce and deportation of their neighbors.
Julie M. Weise is a historian at the University of Oregon and author of Corazón de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South since 1910. Her next book, currently titled Guest Worker: Lives across Borders in an Age of Prosperity, is forthcoming.
Tens of thousands march against Hungary’s government for LGBT rights
Guardian News Jun 28, 2025 Tens of thousands of people gathered for Budapest Pride march despite the government’s threat of ‘legal consequences’. The country’s main Pride march was cast into doubt earlier this year after the country’s ruling Fidesz party – led by the rightwing populist Viktor Orbán – backed legislation that created a legal basis for Pride to be banned, citing a widely criticised need to protect children. The move caused outrage from within Hungary and beyond, turning Budapest Pride into a rallying cry against a government that has long faced criticism for weakening democratic institutions and gradually undermining the rule of law. Crowds gather for Budapest Pride march despite Orbán’s threat of ‘legal consequences’ – Europe live Budapest Pride expected to be a rallying cry against Orbán’s rollback of rights
Imagery in Healing with Jeanne Achterberg
New Thinking Jun 27, 2025 This video is a special release from the original Thinking Allowed series that ran on public television from 1986 until 2002. It was recorded in about 1991. It will remain public for only one week. Jeanne Achterberg, former President of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology, was author of Imagery in Healing and Woman As Healer. She discusses the holographic model of the brain and suggests that mental images mediate between the conscious intentions and the physiology of the body. She points out that imagery has been used in healing since ancient times, and cites a considerable body of research indicating that the use of mental imagery can effect body functioning — including the immune system. Now you can watch all of the programs from the original Thinking Allowed Video Collection, hosted by Jeffrey Mishlove. Subscribe to the new Streaming Channel (https://thinkingallowed.vhx.tv/) and watch more than 350 programs now, with more, previously unreleased titles added weekly. Free month of the classic Thinking Allowed streaming channel for New Thinking Allowed subscribers only. Use code THINKFREELY.
Why Most People Never Survive Their Spiritual Awakening | Carl Jung
Carl Jung Wisdom Jun 3, 2025 Why Most People Never Survive Their Spiritual Awakening | Carl Jung Most people think a spiritual awakening is a peaceful transformation — a shift into light and clarity. But for many, it becomes a storm they never saw coming. In this video, we explore why most people never survive their spiritual awakening, and how Carl Jung helps us understand the terrifying brilliance of collapse. A true spiritual awakening doesn’t just wake you up — it tears you apart. It exposes every illusion you’ve built your life upon. What follows is often an invisible spiritual crisis: confusion, fear, loss of identity, and the unbearable silence of meaninglessness. Why don’t most people survive this? Because they resist the very thing that would set them free: the ego death, the surrender of the mind’s control, the death of the false self. The process triggers emotional fragmentation, and the soul begins to shake — violently — against the structure that once held it in. Carl Jung called this the confrontation with the unconscious — and he knew that many don’t make it through, not because they’re weak, but because they try to escape the pain instead of listening to it. This is the moment of shadow collapse, the full unraveling of what was never real. If you’re going through a spiritual awakening and it feels like you’re losing everything — you’re not alone. You’re being emptied, not erased. What’s being dismantled is not your truth, but your illusion. Only those who surrender survive. And through this spiritual awakening, the soul learns how to live — finally — without pretending.
Bad Faith : Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy
#1 Never-Trumper Apr 26, 2025 Zionists, Evangelists, whatever you want to call them, their BLASPHEMY goes so far as to claim that George Washington went through an “apotheosis” when he died. Literally claiming that a slave owning, over taxing Freemason “became a god.” That is what apotheosis means. It is an undeniable and documented fact that the vast majority of all U.S. founders were Deists and Freemasons, with a much smaller percentage of Christians. The patriotic (PAY-tri-IDIOT) crowd would like to keep dreaming that their slave owning Deists and Masons were “Christians” but in educated reality, they are heavily uninformed and massively in need of facts.
‘Enigma’ Review: A Fascinating Portrait of Two Trailblazing Transgender Legends
With the Sundance-launched HBO documentary ‘Enigma,’ director Zackary Drucker shares the stories of Amanda Lear and April Ashley.
Feb 1, 2025 (Variety.com)
With “Enigma,” director Zackary Drucker (“The Stroll”) makes another intriguing film about trans history. From the sidewalks of New York, this time she takes the audience to glamourous Parisian
nightclubs and the fringes of British aristocracy to tell the story of Amanda Lear and April Ashley. The film is a straightforward chronological documentary relying on archival footage and media interviews from that era. Most fascinating is Drucker’s interview with Lear, which gives “Enigma” much-needed tension and conflict to balance out the conventionality of the rest of the proceedings.
Dubbed the “white queen of disco,” Lear was a famous performer and celebrity in the 1970s, while Ashley started as a model and became a pioneer of trans rights advocacy in her native Britain. According to Ashley, on whose book and recollections most of the film is constructed, they met as showgirls in the late 1950s in the Parisian cabaret Le Carrousel. According to the film, Lear was known as Peki d’Oslo at that time. Though Ashley became her mentor, after they both transitioned, Lear was adamant about living as a woman, so she denied her past and cut off everyone who knew her before. Meanwhile, Ashley was outed because of a messy divorce in the British courts, forcing her into years of trying to claim her identity as a woman while being treated as a freak.
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The dichotomy between the two subjects, both pioneers idolized by many contemporary trans women, gives “Enigma” its narrative strength. Using archival interviews, mostly from TV, Lear and Ashley are asked again and again whether they were biologically born male. Lear denies, while Ashley insists that she is “biologically male and socially female.” Both confrontations are tough to watch, especially in the current climate, when trans people are constantly asked to prove themselves. Lear and Ashley just wanted to live their lives and pursue their career dreams. It’s to “Enigma”’s credit that it doesn’t take sides, presenting both paths as valid.
The film also allows the women to show their personalities. While Lear was interviewed by Drucker and Ashley (who died in 2021) mostly appears in archival interviews, both are given ample screen time to show their personalities. April is funny and self-deprecating, seemingly comfortable in her skin despite the constant questioning of her gender. Lear also comes across as confident, though tension bubbles beneath as she denies ever knowing Ashley or having been at Le Carrousel. She also refuses to give her birth name or talk about her life in definitive terms. But would the audience have noticed this if Drucker hadn’t personally interviewed Lear and confronted her with evidence from her past? Lear remains steadfast that she’s always been a woman, but the film keeps cutting away to other people confirming her transition.
The Drucker/Lear interview gives “Enigma” its most interesting talking point. While both are polite to each other and Drucker shows warmth, there’s also conflict and confrontation. That raises questions about how much truth queer pioneers owe their contemporary counterparts. Lear chose a path and managed to live her life exactly as she wanted. The film tries to out her and keeps quoting Ashley’s book, which outed her. Additionally, there are passages written by the filmmakers and narrated by an actor based on Ashley’s life, which seem too inquisitive toward Lear. Still, Lear agreed to be interviewed, and her history — including questions about her gender — are public record. “Enigma” offers no definitive opinion on which path is favorable, Ashley’s or Lear’s. However, the Lear interviews give it a distinctive edge and make it more than the usual documentary recounting some famous person’s life.
Elsewhere, “Enigma” sticks to a conventional format. There are interviews with performers from Le Carrousel and with contemporary historians and performers commenting on Ashley and Lear. The scenes with the contemporary historians are not as strong, as if added to contextualize information the filmmakers weren’t able to do organically. An awkward scene showing two people walking around the Pigalle in Paris while talking of the history of drag performance further proves that point.
Both Lear and Ashley prove to be intriguing protagonists for a documentary. Drucker’s admiration for them comes through clearly. However “Enigma,” an HBO production that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, derives its strength mostly from Lear’s resolve to always be herself. And with that, the film can inspire courage in its audience, whatever their identity.
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‘Enigma’ Review: A Fascinating Portrait of Two Trailblazing Transgender Legends
Reviewed online, Jan. 31, 2025. In Sundance Film Festival (Premieres). Running time: 95 MIN.
- Production: (Documentary) An HBO Documentary Films release and presentation. Producers: Madison Passarelli, Noah Levy, Donovan Lovell, Stephen B. Strout, Doug Banker, Alex Garinger. Executive producers: Zackary Drucker, Dan Cogan, Liz Garbus, Jon Bardin, Kate Barry, Addison Mehr, Edward Sanders, Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller, Tina Nguyen.
- Crew: Director: Zackary Drucker. Editor: Claire Didier. Caméra: Clément Beauvois. Music: Danny Bensi, Saunder Jurriaans with James Newberry.