Is human intellect on the downward slide?

The Conversation ^ | 11/19/12

[Tublecane]

No. Culture and learning are in decline, not intelligence, which is innate. Natural selection does not account for decline, if there is such. Human intelligence varies little from person to person. A few geniuses and some regards, but most people are moderately stupid.

[Tublecane]

No. Culture and learning are in decline, not intelligence, which is innate. Natural selection does not account for decline, if there is such. Human intelligence varies little from person to person. A few geniuses and some retards, but most people are moderately stupid.

[Forgotten Amendments]

Are we not men?

[wastedyears]

Moderately to incredibly. You can’t refute the stupidity of Obama voters.

[rfp1234]

That could explain why the Nobel Committee gives prizes to people
like Gore and Krugman. Who’s next, Steven Tyler?

[uncommonsense]

The Romans poisoned themselves with lead lined drinking vessels, probably the Greeks did too since the Romans were prolific copiers. Also, food sources were not as abundant or broad and there were fewer sources for intellectual stimulation, especially in the critical developmental stage of life.

Today
- we have a very broad and abundant source of food (e.g. we get tomatoes in or out of season)
- most responsible parents start stimulating our children's intellect upon birth (some try before birth)
- we have added more knowledge over the last 50 yeas than in all of human history and made it readily available

So I think any degradation would be due to overly processed foods, too many drugs, and toxins from our high tech world getting into our food and air.

[Obama_Is_Sabotaging_America]

NO! (I’m too stupid to know it is) LOL

[Forgotten Amendments]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRguZr0xCOc

[wardaddy]

Only in certain groups because primitive peoples are supplanting the more advanced

And will drag us all down

[clearcarbon]

There was a time, not that long ago, when most people were not as arithmetically challenged as comrade obama, and could add and subtract without a calculator.

[shibumi]

"Are we not men?"

We are DEVO!

[Berlin_Freeper]

Absofreakinlutely!

[Pontiac]

Or take Greg Clark’s data from A Farewell to Alms, with the rich having twice the children of the poor. The link between resources and reproductive success is strong across societies, and assuming a link between resources and intelligence (which if anything appears to be getting stronger), the intelligent have been reaping a reproductive bounty for some time.

Our socialist society has reversed the trend of the rich having more children than the poor. Socialist welfare programs have made it possible for the poor to have many more children than the rich. The welfare programs have put in place financial incentives for the poor to produce more children.

The poor are not necessarily less intelligent than the rich but certainly they are less productive. The poor’s lack of productivity is however some evidence of inferior intelligence.

[count-your-change]

Crabtree is trying to be proof of his own premise. I would point to the Romans rather than the Athenians as examples of intellect, the Greeks talked, the Romans did.

Or maybe some of the peoples of South America, people who mastered their environment to the extent they were able to build cities on mountain tops with a mastery of stone superior to anyone in the world.

But like flowers that bloom for a time they all withered and disappeared without ever understanding why. Maybe they weren't so smart after all.

[Doogle]

[Mogger]

Buy the movie, "Idiocracy". It explains exactly what's going on with the human race right now.

Watch who breeds and who doesn't.

Watch the genealogy chart of the "smart" shrink, while the chart of the "dumb" expands.

Buy it so you can watch it a few times to pick up the nuances..

It is a somewhat vulgar, but very timely movie.

[metesky]

Good point.

I'm almost seventy, driving a cab fifty hours a week (in "retirement" ;O)) and a couple of days a week my relief driver is a twenty-six yo woman.

After gassing up the other night, I glanced at my receipt, glanced at the odometer and announced that I had gotten about 19 mpg from the old pig taxi.

It took about two seconds.

Her response? "That's scary."

[jmcenanly]

We look bad by comparison to what remains from our past. For every Shakespeare, there were probably 100 hacks whose works didn't survive. For every Isaac Newton, there were millions who struggled with arithmetic, but didn't leave any trace behind.
The problem seems worse today because, now, every idiot has a worldwide forum. Look at the comments section of any You-tube video, or in some cases, the videos themselves. I'm surprised that some of these people can type, or operate a camera.

[muawiyah]

In any given generation, statistically speaking, the human population breeds to the average of the species.

In ten generations it's still pretty much to the average, and in 100, or 1000 generations, it's the same old same old.

Even most of our genes are not terribly different than those of our most ancient spongoid ancestors, or even bacteria!

The tools in the DNA that put together a liver, for example, are pretty much the same in every species with a liver.

So, what makes the difference?

The big boys in the new field of epigenetics say it's the extra copies, the sequence and the blanks, and the bypasses (many due to methylation) that make the difference ~ and that's a pretty complex piece of work ~ and neither Darwinian nor any other view of evolution and survival of the fittest can do more than say 'see there, it works' ~ how it works has yet to be determined.

The writer's thesis is that easy eats (agriculture) allow the less fit to survive.

presumably taking their food away will make them smarter ~ (snork/s)