are we getting dumber?

[xhenia]

first off sorry for my bad english. now to the question are we getting dumber then we youst to be? i mean the human brain has decrisst in size by 13% i belive, so does this have any effect on awer intelegence? also how smart are humens comperd to other animals like dolphines? i'm wery sorry for any typos.

 

this has been bugin me for quite a while so please respond if you know any of thise qustions. this is my first post by hte way.

 

thanks in advance.

[oranphil]

yeah i would say that humans have the capability to de-evolve and i like the idea that some animals are much smarter or seem smarter then us.

[scallywag]

i mean you can see our school systems are getting crummier and crummier, the majority of the public is kinda....dumb....so yes, for the most part humans are probably getting less smart haha

[oranphil]

the education sytem is deteriorating i believe we are made dumber by the use of PCs and calculators and that lead to machines doing all our work and thinking.

heres and article from the BBC that may interest you:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7828121.stm

[Mokele]

i mean the human brain has decrisst in size by 13% i belive

 

I'm very skeptical of this. Can you support this claim, or the claim that we're getting dumber?

[iNow]

A much more likely explanation is that xhenia is getting older and meeting more people. Their "set" of all "people" has increased in size, and with the addition of all of these new people xhenia is meeting as they get older, the median intelligence level is dropping. Basically, at a younger age, xhenia knew considerably fewer people, and I suspect most were reasonably intelligent. Now, as xhenia ages, they are meeting many more people, and those people have an anchoring effect on the median and average intelligence of their personal reality's "set of all people."

 

[/conjecture]

[SH3RL0CK]

I would conjecture that yes, xhenia is meeting more older people. But xhenia now is noticing that in addition to an increase in the median intelligence level, the median intelligence level is increasing with the age of the individual. So is society becoming less intelligent as time progresses (perhaps due to our inadequate educational system), or is it that as people get older they continue to learn?

 

[/ conjecture]

 

I am confused where the decrease of 13% of brain size is coming from. Perhaps xhenia would come back and clarify this point for me?

[ParanoiA]

A brief browse of Myspace would seem to confirm xhenia's theory...

[iNow]

Not as much as Answers in Genesis does.

[SH3RL0CK]

Ah the internet. Truely the greatest creation of Al Gore.

[CharonY]

I feel dumber every day. Does that count against the average?

[xhenia]

sorry i have not been posting in a while, i'm looking at the cow-magnens for the decrisst brain, they had a brin size of 1600 and we now have 1400. i realy hope this is not true as i'm very fond of the human rease, but what i hope is irelevant.

Edited May 1, 2009 by xhenia

[John Cuthber]

Hang on.

"the human brain has decrisst in size by 13% "

Says who?

[Mokele]

Remember that Cro-Magnon brain volumes are mere estimates, based on fossil data.

[GDG]

According to Wikipedia, brain size is increasing.

 

However, the flaw in the premise is to assume that cranial volume correlates with intelligence. It does not. IQ appears to vary with the amount of gray matter (as opposed to white matter) in the brain, and its distribution, and that only about 6% of the gray matter is critical to IQ. Cortical structure appears to be a more relevant measure.

[vosh]

My take on this is in 3 parts. 1. What do you expect will happen if you make kids spend the time between age 5 and age 18 being told what to think and when to think it, which is what education since 1900 amounts to? 2. IQ scores are reported to be higher; but I suspect this is due to everyone in the 20th century being socialized to take tests. 3. I'll bet people have not changed since ancient Babylon... except that in recent times you don't have to be fit to survive, and smart people have far fewer kids than dumb people.

[cameron marical]

Maybe its the case of natural selection playing on the selection pressures of good looks rather than smarts in the modern day human habitat.

[iNow]

That's actually a pretty good point, cameron. It's not that good looks and intelligence are mutually exclusive... not by any means... However, we do tend to have limited resources and the need for intelligence tends to be decreased the more attractive a person is. Through time, we'll select for those traits of attractiveness, and this will generally happen at the expense of selection for intelligence.

 

This, coupled with the fact that less educated people tend to reproduce more often and with higher number of offspring then more educated people, and suddenly we have Idiocracy.

 

It's a good point, and you are probably correct (if we limit the conversation to generalities and trends, that is).

 

 

 

L0yQunhOaU0

[xhenia]

According to Wikipedia, brain size is increasing.

 

However, the flaw in the premise is to assume that cranial volume correlates with intelligence. It does not. IQ appears to vary with the amount of gray matter (as opposed to white matter) in the brain, and its distribution, and that only about 6% of the gray matter is critical to IQ. Cortical structure appears to be a more relevant measure.

 

i admit i was wrong, thank you for correcting me.

[Mr Skeptic]

first off sorry for my bad english. now to the question are we getting dumber then we youst to be?

 

So I smell irony?

 

As far as IQ tests go, they seem to indicate that we are getting smarter, not dumber. On the other hand, we may be losing some skills such as memory and arithmetic, due to relying on writing and calculators.

[GDG]

So I smell irony?

 

As far as IQ tests go, they seem to indicate that we are getting smarter, not dumber. On the other hand, we may be losing some skills such as memory and arithmetic, due to relying on writing and calculators.

 

In the Renaissance, it was common for learned men (sorry, it was mainly men) to literally memorize entire books . Before the printing press, libraries contained mainly books for which only a very copies existed. The point of illuminating manuscripts was not just decoration, but to make each individual page memorable. If you encountered a good book in your travels, you would memorize it because chances were that you would never run across it again.

 

Today, of course, we memorize little. We basically exteriorize our memories, in books and Wikipedia. The trick is to remember enough so that you know what to search for, and where to look it up.

 

If I didn't have a blackberry, I would probably never get to a meeting on time. Speaking of which...