Human Intelligence Sharply Declining
Human Intelligence Sharply Declining
No, it's not just you — people really are, per a number of surveys, way less intelligent than they used to be.
I wonder if you could analyze internet discussions for an effect.
So, I've seen a lot of people who were extremely sharp as PhD students become blunted as soon as 9--5 starts.
A lot of decline among adults can likely be traced back to increased cognitive load during working hours, which chips away at intelligence over time as folks burn out.
With kids it's harder to place, maybe it's walking the tightrope that is modern social interactions?
i think with kids it's less attributable to wokedei and more a total collapse of the educational system mixed with higher and higher stress levels as the world loudly strains around them
Corporations have used social media to colonize and profit from our attention spans, including those of children. Our mental capacity and attention spans are limited, especially children's. When the advertisers have had their fill, how much is left for learning?
Bored people can now tune into (source of entertainment) instead of learning.
I don't think the capacity for intelligence has dropped significantly, rather we as a society dedicate our time differently.
entertainment
Bingo. We have a winner.
Lack of mental lifting. Critical thinking becomes too hard. Why innovate? The country has become fat, dumb and happy.
is anyone here talking about the systematic dismantling of public education and starving of teachers and children in terms of learning resources and actual food
also i again have to complain about Idiocracy, the comedy film that suggests intelligent rich people will solve our problems and stupid poor people will doom society, where in reality you have incredibly wealthy and also incurious, unintelligent ghouls hoarding generational wealth, making it a top priority to have tons of children in order to make their 'superior' genes take over.
I agree. Idiocracy is a funny movie, but that's it. The entire premise of "stupid people make stupid children" is based in eugenics.
The fact that teachers need to beg for pencils is disgraceful. Teachers should get paid more and not have to pay for their supplies.
Idiocracy keeps becoming truer and truer every year.
Unfortunately, that movie's main message was about eugenics. I am not arguing that anti-intellectualism is not spreading like a cancer, but that movie is not the best thing to reference.
I don't think it ever actually promoted eugenics. It just explored the natural consequences of two facts in a comedic way:
- Intelligence has a hereditary component to it.
- Stupid people have more kids.
It never tries to push any eugenics-based agenda. It would have if they tried to say that dumb people shouldn't be allowed to have kids, but they never went anywhere near that.
Shit. I know shit's bad right now, with all that starving bullshit, and the dust storms, and we are running out of french fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution.
I can believe it. Physical inactivity, less creative play for children, distraction all the time.
Mind you, in some ways I don't buy it - the two of my kids who were very academically motivated both learned much more in school than I did (I went during a conservative time when the schools were doing "back to basics" which didn't help, but simple research before the Internet was so difficult that I didn't have access to as much as they did, it took more effort to learn less) and those two are whip-smart. So I think the potential to be smart is higher now. Also maybe we have included more people in the measurements now that it's easier to get the data.
But physical inactivity does harm brain health, plastic probably does, the dumbing down again in the schools here (is this some 40-50 year cycle?) certainly does. I do, like @drascus@sh.itjust.works work at maintaining my thinking by trying to learn new things, not just get good at what I am good at already; and do a lot to maintain physical health, meditate, and try to guard my sleep as much as possible within the context of a normal life.
Tech companies hire psychologists to behavior modify us to be engagement zombies. That alone must have done a number on intelligence.
One, we’ve off loaded much of our critical thinking and researching skills to Google et al. This will only get worse as we develop stronger AI assistants that perform a majority of the “thinking” tasks. Technology frees the mind in some ways and reduces the need for certain functions. I read an article probably 10 years ago about how Japanese struggle to write because cell phones and computers have taken over much of that skill.
To be fair, the idea that writing has to be this perfect penmanship that will be readable in 1000 years is silly. Write things down in a good enough style for the task at hand.
Its a lot of work but you have to constantly push. I am 42, but I read a few dozen books a year, I'm constantly learning new languages, new instruments, I write short stories for fun, do creative projects, and meditate. I still feel really sharp but I'm throwing down everyday.
Neat! Tell us more!
You sound like you're consumed by your own ambition. Hope you're happy though.
Not really I mostly do it for entertainment and because I like to see what I can do
Sounds like he's living his best life to me.
This article seems to be only looking at America based off the sources that I can access without a paywall
I fucking believe it.
What does Chat Gpt say about this?
There's also no real proof that high intelligence is actually a productive evolutionary trait.
We're juuuuuuuuust smart enough to grow like a cancerous parasite and are getting close to killing our sickly host organism.
i'm optimistic enough to believe we'll be like
Summary The article describes a decline in human intelligence, particularly among young people. The decline is attributed to reducedk reading habits and the negative impact of excessive screen time on cognitive abilities.
Not really surprising given how all the social information delivery services are designed for a constant wall of short dopamine hits, and the platforms used to access the information are designed so no actual skill is needed to be able to access the information delivery services.
You give a rat a button that's tied into their brain's pleasure center, the rat will push the button until they die.
All computer-tech needs to be made more open. Not just from an observational standpoint, but the act of making disparate systems work together requires learning and knowledge beyond push button, receive good feels. Megacorp one-stop-shop software/hardware platforms need to be broken up. Both from a walled garden echo chamber perspective, and from a user-use perspective. When a company controls the entire experience, it is too easy to ensure their user is always engaging with their products and spending money/time. Making that company's life harder, makes the technology better for humanity.
Algorithms optimized for dopamine hits must be banned. As soon as our machines became revenue generators tuned for consumption, it was game over. Older systems, one used to have to learn at least basic things to accomplish a goal, which promoted the act of learning in general.
Basic hardware/software interaction and learning were useful side-effects of personal compute from the 1970s-early aughts. One was forced to occasionally open or fix hardware, one was forced to understand how the software worked. One ended up with basic understanding and approachability of the machines one used. Devices today are just expensive consumption toys with zero knowledge needed to consume. When they malfunction, the user has no reason or encouragement to attempt to fix them, as they can't see why the device ceased to work.
Big Tech has run amok too long. Governments are barely regulating them. We humans just gotta start saying no.
The FT source seems to be behind a paywall, and this article seems to be jumping between a bunch of possibly unrelated issues (focusing on young adult cognitive decline but looking at whole population reading rates and numeracy ability).
I can't help but think how much science fiction had stories where a civilization created machines to make their lives easier until there was no one left who knew how the machines worked or anyone who could fix them.
Those stories always seemed so far away yet here we are at the beginning with LLMs and machine learning.
I wouldn't worry about it .... it wasn't that high to begin with
I always remind my friends when we have political debates about so many things ... we aren't that many steps away from the cave we emerged from 100,000 years ago
Honestly, I don’t think it is that surprising. Sadly.
🙄