Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It's difficult to quantify otherwise, except via anecdotes of some totally stupid thing we heard person X said while standing in line at Stater Brothers the other day and people's atrocious spelling on social media, and again, both of these can be noted throughout history...not just today. It does show up more as more people write their thoughts (i.e. social media) and as we broaden the amount of people we either communicate with, or listen to (vids, news reports, etc.).
I was saying that we believe people "should" be be bright or intellectual in everyday affairs (and are dismayed to discover they aren't) and that I believe a more universal education is one of the causes of this. We compare our idea of how "smart" a person should be to how people really act day to day and believe people are falling short of that, routinely. But my point is...we always have, as a whole populace, fallen short of routinely intellectual excellence. This really isn't new. As a species, we're smart - but way dumber than we expect people should be.
The other place academics come in is that when people say they can quantify how much more "dumb" we are today, academic scores are generally the measuring stick (though it's already been discussed how this may not be a measurement of actual inherent intelligence).
I'm a case in point. People think I'm bright based on the way I write and speak (usually). I'm uneducated. I still don't even have my BA and may never receive it. By academic measurements, I could either be a genius, average or borderline delayed (this is literal) depending upon the subject, and it's the same with various forms of IQ testing. When the IQ test leans toward math, I literally am below average. On English-leaning testing I'm a genius. In reality I'm neither. I'm average intelligence, I'm sure of that, but if you spoke to me you'd think I was somewhere above "dull and average"...and if you spoke to the kid who sat next to me in English 210 - the kid who can literally do extensive algebra equations in his head - you'd think he was a box of hair.
There just isn't really one universal measuring stick for who's bright and who's not, but believing people are "dumber" today is usually put down to two things: 1. anecdotal "I can't BELIEVE what IDIOTIC thing someone I know said/did today and IT'S NOT THE FIRST TIME!" reports, and/or 2. national averages for school test scores.
Neither, IMO, tells the whole story. But we're shooting ahead technologically at a pretty much exponential rate. It is literally unprecedented over the course of human history as far as we can tell. I'm going to cautiously state that this could serve as evidence that we're not getting universally dumber...the fact that most of us do and/or say really stupid things once in a while (or routinely) notwithstanding.
This is lack of education. My grandparents (born 1880s) both ended school after the 8th grade. But what they learned in those 8 years was more than most young people learn today after 16 years (college grad). I think the teachers and professors have declined along with the students.
Indeed. There's a difference between reasoning ability and fund of knowledge.
My father attended grammar school in the early 20th century. He learned Latin and Greek there. He was still reading various books he had in the original Greek in his 60s, 70s, and 80s.
He also had strong logic skills and the ability to discern. His people-judgment skills were quite acute.
Kids today seem to lack reasoning skills. Their fund of knowledge is almost a null set. They're being brainwashed with feelings and diversity and fake tolerance for all things of a certain stripe only.
With introduction of smart phones, largely, people are losing the ability to remember, or even think for themselves. They often even look up the same information multiple times, since they don't feel the need to remember information anymore, and are losing the ability to access their own memories.
Not far form the implanted chips now, and the majority becoming mindless drones.
With introduction of smart phones, largely, people are losing the ability to remember, or even think for themselves. They often even look up the same information multiple times, since they don't feel the need to remember information anymore, and are losing the ability to access their own memories.
Not far form the implanted chips now, and the majority becoming mindless drones.
See, that's what this idea is all about, isn't it? Doom upon the new generation, which is idiotic, has messed up priorities and is bound to send the globe sinking in a ball of flames and all that.
Just like every generation seems to say about the upcoming generation. I'd drag out the Classical Greece-attributed "youth of today" rant but it's been done to death (hint: it's a millennium old). Yet it always gets shoved aside again because we WANT to believe things really are getting worse this time around.
There's a whole lot of psychology behind THAT too, but that's probably a different thread for a different day. Actually...we have at least two along these lines volleying back and forth right now.
Idiocracy was a hilarious movie and concept but you have to admit, it's ALWAYS been the way the movie portrays: masses reproducing, with only a minority as true geniuses, and those perhaps not having as many children. That's just a given, historically (it doesn't hold for every family situation, but it's been a theme). Yet here we are...more advanced than ever before on a dozen or more distinctly different sectors and innumerable sub-categories. So how is that happening, given how much "dumber" we are? We give up certain things in our conscious, day-to-day thought for other things, much as we began to drop instinct in many ways in favor of intellect as we evolved. That's not really new either, and again, it's hard to quantify which is the actual measure of intelligence, but one thing is for sure, we keep advancing. That doesn't seem like overall dumbing down to me.
People don't want to learn because it's hard. The only reason to learn anything in school is so that you can get the grades and pass tests that will get you into college (because we all know that still is a major pathway to success) so that you can get the good job that makes money that will pay for a fun life. School is simply a means to an end. That's why people who leapfrog education to become wealthy (like Youtube stars, rap singers, etc) are so adored by the young. They have it all without doing the hard stuff. Check out any popular Instagram accounts and the greatest followers and likes are for pictures of excessive wealth or vacations. Unfortunately we have set up this system to where learning for sheer desire or passion is not fostered.
There is very little latitude in today's climate for a quality teacher to "teach up" to their students due to standardized testing. Many kids come from broken homes where the parents place no emphasis on academic excellence. I don't think people are necessarily less intelligent overall, but there are definitely problems out there.
The only reason to learn anything in school is so that you can get the grades and pass tests that will get you into college (because we all know that still is a major pathway to success) so that you can get the good job that makes money that will pay for a fun life.
What you're saying is absolutely true, and ubiquitous. But I have a hard time with it; it's just so shallow. What about intellectual curiosity? What about becoming enthralled with a subject and from early youth, feeling compelled to master the subject?
If you believe some of the Buddhist leaders, every being is the same in that they want to attain happiness and avoid pain. But pursuing an education just so you can earn money to have a fun life doesn't seem quite right to me. How about pursuing something you love, instead. That seems more logical, effective or sensible to me because you short-circuit the useless behavior for something more solid.
Before I could walk, some years before I was five, since we moved house when I was five, mother and I were in a neighbor's living room, and they had an upright piano. I distinctly remember wondering what it was and crawled across the room to it, lifting myself upright by taking hold of the keyboard. The sound the keys made when I touched them just shocked me, it was so beautiful. And I vowed to myself I would spend the rest of my life investigating what that sound was about.
And so I have. Doesn't everyone have some calling or over-riding passion that makes their work life more than a job?
Last edited by KaraZetterberg153; 05-03-2018 at 12:46 PM..
Most serious real science finds a 40-60% correlation between IQ and genetics. Years ago, when life was really brutal, you had to have smarts to survive and provide for your family. It was a matter of life or death. Only the highest-IQ people made it through. Now with advances in technology, medicine, social welfare nets, this old calculus no longer really applies, fortunately.
So, I would say that the average human alive today has a lower IQ than those of earlier generations.
If you look at regions, those countries with the highest IQs (East Asia, Europe...) have the lowest birth rates, while those with the lowest IQs (sub-Saharan Africa) have the highest birth rates. So, this would affect average human IQ.
It's difficult to quantify otherwise, except via anecdotes of some totally stupid thing we heard person X said while standing in line at Stater Brothers the other day and people's atrocious spelling on social media, and again, both of these can be noted throughout history...not just today. It does show up more as more people write their thoughts (i.e. social media) and as we broaden the amount of people we either communicate with, or listen to (vids, news reports, etc.).
I was saying that we believe people "should" be be bright or intellectual in everyday affairs (and are dismayed to discover they aren't) and that I believe a more universal education is one of the causes of this. We compare our idea of how "smart" a person should be to how people really act day to day and believe people are falling short of that, routinely. But my point is...we always have, as a whole populace, fallen short of routinely intellectual excellence. This really isn't new. As a species, we're smart - but way dumber than we expect people should be.
The other place academics come in is that when people say they can quantify how much more "dumb" we are today, academic scores are generally the measuring stick (though it's already been discussed how this may not be a measurement of actual inherent intelligence).
I'm a case in point. People think I'm bright based on the way I write and speak (usually). I'm uneducated. I still don't even have my BA and may never receive it. By academic measurements, I could either be a genius, average or borderline delayed (this is literal) depending upon the subject, and it's the same with various forms of IQ testing. When the IQ test leans toward math, I literally am below average. On English-leaning testing I'm a genius. In reality I'm neither. I'm average intelligence, I'm sure of that, but if you spoke to me you'd think I was somewhere above "dull and average"...and if you spoke to the kid who sat next to me in English 210 - the kid who can literally do extensive algebra equations in his head - you'd think he was a box of hair.
Well, really, as I noted in a previous example on this thread, I'm completing graduate level coursework with a fair number of people who are educated, some highly so, but are not, in fact, knowledgeable, in no small part due to a pervasive mentality that "It isn't critical to actually gain knowledge, because I can easily access any knowledge via a small computer in my pocket." I've worked on so many joint papers, research projects, and presentations, and done so much of the writing and editing for such ventures, and invariably, my teammates remark on how "I'm such a good writer," because to them, writing in a polished and professional manner is never something they've prioritized learning how to do. This is despite the fact that they aspire to (and in some cases, are already in) professional roles. These are people who do not write at what many would consider to be a high school level. Yet, they are easily accepted into higher ed programs in droves.
My writing isn't amazing. It is fairly good (as it should be, given that it's been, at various stretches, my professional employment). But I really SHOULDN'T have professors commenting quite as complimentarily on it as some do (I mean, I'll take it, but it's absurd to me when it occurs). They do so, because it's become rare to see solid writing at the graduate level. And it shouldn't be. That's really, really dumbfounding, to me. Graduate students automatically writing well is not a given. And it's not a matter of not knowing how to write well because you're "dumb." It's because you never learned/never were taught it through the lense of it being an important or valued skill. It's a lowered bar of expectation.
When we talk about "dumb," and "getting dumber," it helps to have a common operational definition from which to work. Because, otherwise, we get hung up on the merry-go-round of "What IS 'intelligence' really? Isn't it just a construct? Can you really say that social intelligence/street smarts/survival instinct/business acumen/is really any better or more important than academic achievement/feats of engineering/brilliant interpersonal analyses, etc.?"
And then you get into the personal biases, where the uneducated but quick-witted person may feel they're treated in an inferior manner compared to those with much education, and become invested in noting and pointing out ways that educated person x in their lives actually isn't so smart, or when a highly educated or technically skilled person is passed over for a promotion that's given to a less educated/skilled person who has put themselves on the radar with more social savvy, and it becomes a "can you imagine why this person who isn't even THAT SMART is reaping the rewards better afforded me?" thing.
Obviously, reducing "being bright" to average scores on standardized tests doesn't paint a complete picture of what it is "to be smart." Same with "who earns the As." But the reality is, you're gonna get as many different definitions of what it means to "be smart" or to "not be dumb" as people you ask.
In the end, I just don't think there's any meaningful way to assess if people are "getting dumber," overall. I do, based on anecdotal experiences, thing that they're largely getting LAZIER/demotivated to learn/gain knowledge, but that, too, has a number of interpretations and definitions.
Frankly I believe that people are more educated then ever before. HOWEVER, it is clear that wisdom has declined tremendously. We have plenty of people that have huge amounts of book knowledge, but have absolutely no understanding of it. I hire many engineering college grads that are no doubt smarter then I was in my 20's... but have never actually built anything. They have absolutely no understanding making something outside of a book.
We have replaced wisdom with smart.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It does show up more as more people write their thoughts (i.e. social media) and as we broaden the amount of people we either communicate with, or listen to (vids, news reports, etc.).
Actually...we have at least two along these lines volleying back and forth right now.
