Is man smarter now compared to 2000 years ago

[5614]

The school ciriculum has been dumbed down a lot...

 

Calculus [advance(ish) maths] used to be taught to 13 year olds, now 16 or 17+

 

If you look at any school syllabus from 10 years ago they used to be taught soo much more advance stuff than we are taught now.

 

Consequently kids are becoming dumber relative to "olden day" kids... (of course this is a generalisation of kids based on what they are taught at school - independant learning is always seperate.)

[Vladimir]

Stop calling me Vlad.

That is an achievement from teh twentieth century.

Take global warming for example? Recent reseach has shown that we have only ten years left until the damage is irreversible, and how long has the scientific comunity been telling the world about that? Hows that for scientific reasoning.

We have the potential to do so very much more, monks in the dark ages memeorised entire volumes of books in a matter of hours, inorder to rewrite them when the books were burnt.

The only reason that science has progressed in the past few centuries is that it has replaced religion as teh dominant force, science in retrospect ahs become the hand of god.

The curriculum has been dummed down so that it seems that people are getting smarter. If you change a mark from two hard exam papers to two easier ones, the amount of people who pass will improve.

[Flareon]

Okay Vladimir, I won't shorten your name, no offense intended.

 

I think you misunderstand what I mean by "scientific reasoning." Scientific reasoning or scientific method, is a way of gathering and testing information. It is a basic approach to understaning.

 

Here is an overview.

 

Obviously you do not yet understand this concept so it is a waste of time for me to debate with you. Obviously you are not well versed in history either. Please provide a more compelling example than monks memorizing books. In the 80's A Japanese man set the world record by memorizing the first 40,000 digits of Pi. What is your point?

[Flareon]

The curriculum has been dummed down so that it seems that people are getting smarter. If you change a mark from two hard exam papers to two easier ones, the amount of people who pass will improve.

 

I never stated that people were smarter now. If you are attributing that statement to me, first go look at my previous posts.

[Vladimir]

If i could get you on my couch, and crack that head of yours open.

You belive that entire librarys of information stored only in the memorys of a few individuals- individuals who had been trained to do this- is more impressive than one mans ability to recite a number with infinite digits up to its 40,000th?

My point is that we no longer have that ability. Not becuase of some freak mutation, but because humanity simply decided it couldnt be bothered. Look at any cathedral or renaisance work of art and tell me if we could do that today.

[Flareon]

Look at any cathedral or renaisance work of art and tell me if we could do that today.

 

We can.

[Vladimir]

No we couldnt, we dont have the dedication the skill anymore.

[Primarygun]

I'd think we are more unscrupulous to people, to the nature.

[Newtonian]

I think intellegence is represented in scientific, technological, artistic, cultural, political and economic achievements.

Hurrah ...for the Greeks and Romans then.

[Mokele]

No we couldnt, we dont have the dedication the skill anymore.

 

Now, I'll be the first to admit I don't know crap about art, but that assertion seems very odd to me. I mean, clearly in the past there were people with the skill and dedication, so why not in the present? From the purely probabalistic POV, there's more humans now, so a greater chance that there is someone somewhere with the requisite skill and dedication.

 

I'm interested why you assume that modern artists lack this skill and dedication?

 

Mokele

[ed84c]

He has somewhat of a point, i take the following example of the ancient (I forget which nationality) Glass makers, even machines nower days, do not have the skills that they had, nor does any body that lives.

 

I think some skills die out and i think you should watch what you mean by "Art", we think of painting, and Mokele, in that sense you are correct, as wel still do lots of painting, hence it hasnt died out, and your theory applies.

[Flareon]

He has somewhat of a point' date=' i take the following example of the ancient (I forget which nationality) Glass makers, even machines nower days, do not have the skills that they had, nor does any body that lives.

 

I think some skills [i'] die out [/i] and i think you should watch what you mean by "Art", we think of painting, and Mokele, in that sense you are correct, as wel still do lots of painting, hence it hasnt died out, and your theory applies.

 

For every skill that has died out, there has come to being a dozen new ones.

[Vladimir]

Compare teh wonders from teh ancient world to teh wonders of teh modern world. You cant compare teh empire state building to the pyramids.

Why should skills die out, surely that is a fault of man that we should allow a computer to memorize information when given the same amount of traing that it takes to use a computer we could memorize it our selves. It would be far more efficent and i might add impervious to hackers

[ed84c]

Things only improve as knowlage does, a knowlage is different from a skill. Really i wouldnt say the empire state building is any more skill full than an nice picture, we just know more about stuff, and have more resources available.

[Ophiolite]

Compare teh wonders from teh ancient world to teh wonders of teh modern world. You cant compare teh empire state building to the pyramids.

But you can compare the pyramids with the Huygens probe, and vice versa.

[Flareon]

Why should skills die out, surely that is a fault of man that we should allow a computer to memorize information when given the same amount of traing that it takes to use a computer we could memorize it our selves. It would be far more efficent and i might add impervious to hackers

 

But not impervious to forgetting.

[Christ slave]

I can't explain' date=' but it is my opinion that people 2,000 years ago were as smart as we are now. When I look at the artwork and the buildings and what they were able to achieve without the benefit of electricity or computers, I find it amazing.

 

I think the difference between now and then is that we slowly, over the years learned to archive knowledge and build on what others have learned before.[/quote']

 

Summarizing the truth should not hinder one's judgment. That being said, I think that with people being more material 2,000 years ago and opposed to today does indeed qualify to say that materialism (the love of rotting, worthless, unnecessary materials and objects, such as statues and other pieces of trash that people idolize--and the degree of them being trash is based on one's idolization of that object) is less intelligent than connectedness (or, connection).

 

So, whereas before one may have slaughtered a person for destroying their property, today there are many more people apt to forgive them and accept the loss rather than destroy their own conscious path by becoming a monster.

[Callipygous]

i think we are generally more intelligent (potential-wise) than we were 2000 years ago. our modern society is more focused on things that revolve around and require intelligence. back in the day a large portion of the population would be doing manual labor type jobs. farming, fighting, building, etc. whereas now most people have higher level jobs. even those doing manual labor probably still use more intelligence just because of improvements to the industries. as a result i believe we have probably evolved to have more intellectual potential to fit our environment. not much, because species dont evolve much over as short a span as 2000 years, but i think we are a little smarter.

 

my 2 cents.

[[Tycho?]]

This boils down to a more managable question- if you took babies from 0ad (or whenever) and raised them in our society, how would they compare to children born today?

 

I'd say there wouldn't be a signifigant difference, but we have no way of proving or disproving the argument, so its all nicely hypothetical.

[Ophiolite]

We haven't defined what we mean by smarter.

We haven't defined intelligence.

We haven't distinguished between intelligence and its expression

We haven't identified the extent to which knowledge impacts on this expression.

We haven't clarified the role of environmental factors in allowing intelligence to develop

We haven't contrasted the requirements for intelligence in hunter-gatherer, agrarian, and industrial environments.

We appear to be having a discussion built around a couple of ephemeral terms and a bunch of unsubstantiated opinion.

Tycho? has hit the mark perfectly: "its all nicely hypothetical".

[Callipygous]

We haven't defined what we mean by smarter.

We haven't defined intelligence.

 

the op defined what we are talking about in the first post

 

 

We haven't distinguished between intelligence and its expression

We haven't identified the extent to which knowledge impacts on this expression.

We haven't clarified the role of environmental factors in allowing intelligence to develop

We haven't contrasted the requirements for intelligence in hunter-gatherer' date=' agrarian, and industrial environments.[/quote']

 

that would be part of the discussion

 

We appear to be having a discussion built around a couple of ephemeral terms and a bunch of unsubstantiated opinion.

Tycho? has hit the mark perfectly: "its all nicely hypothetical".

 

thats alright... ideas dont have to be substantiated to be worth hearing.

[Ophiolite]

My point, nicely buried beneath my rhetoric, was that the discussion proper can't start until at least some of these points are elucidated with facts rather than opinions. I was surprised that no one (as far as I noticed) had offered any substantiation of their opinions, although I suspect there are reasonable data out there. So I was disappointed that what could be an enlightening discussion of pertinent facts has (in fact) been largely an expression of opinions (I think).

These may be worth hearing, but they are hardly as intriguing as hard facts.