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http://naturalsociety.com/leading-geneticist-human-intelligence-slowly-declining/

At first I was expecting an interesting theory about genetics and human intelligence. After reading the (short) article, I began to question if this was a parody site like The Onion or others. Looking at other "stories" on the page, I was certain this was a joke. Then I scrolled up to the top and saw the title of the site was "Natural Society" and now I really don't know. These guys might actually be serious.

So, two things. First, is human intelligence really temporary? Are we at the pinnacle of human civilization and on the long gradual slope back to hunter-gathering? Second, are these articles meant to be taken seriously?

The site isn't a joke -- but it has a pretty heavy agenda. These are the kind of folks who rattle on about genetically modified food, the evils of fluoridation, and vaccinations causing autism, among other things.

Surely by that logic the peoples living in outer mongolia without a processed diet etc would be the most potential intellectuals?



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:
The site isn't a joke -- but it has a pretty heavy agenda. These are the kind of folks who rattle on about genetically modified food, the evils of fluoridation, and vaccinations causing autism, among other things.

Don't forget that the pope is a reptilian and he's only stepping down because he needs to regenerate his tail

 Spyral wrote:
Don't forget that the pope is a reptilian and he's only stepping down because he needs to regenerate his tail

Wait a sec... you mean the The Da Vinci Code was about Raptor Jesus? o.O

That website is littered with alt-medicine rubbish.

Have you ever seen Idiocracy? While you laugh at the time you realise that they might in fact be onto something.

I don't understand the question.

I like this comic.

OP, you ask this question, but I only have this to respond to it:

1. Check your Facebook.
2. Browse a popular discussion website (4chan even, though this one is a cesspool.) for a few minutes.
3. Get on the road (Or better, a bus.) and drive out into the world and get some soda for the evening.
4. Come home and play <Insert popular online game here> for an hour.
5. Stop, come back to this thread and tell me with a straight face that you DON'T think human intelligence hit rock bottom and commenced digging.

(Seriously, I don't think the average state of human intellect is in decline...It's just that it wasn't very high to begin with. Not every Roman was engineering aqueducts, and not every Greek was creating mathematical and cultural concepts that wind up standing for ages. This article is lel.)

Widespread use of the internet has brought all those morons around the globe we usually wouldn't have to interact with, and put them right in front of our faces!

Mattman154 wrote:
I like this comic.

The idea that a bunch of people like this exist makes hitler coming to power seem to make sense and it's kind of sad. Just because you were born from stupid or lazy parents doesn't make you pre-disposed to having stupid kids. The same can be said for smart parents. People don't realize that yeah sure if you take somebody's looks and somebody's brains you might get a smart and pretty individual but you also might get the wrong traits. Also just because somebody is smart or etc. doesn't mean they want to use it and even if they came from a spoiled background they might be no more inclined to learn. Really in many cases it's what some of these people choose to do.

Also i find some of this hard to believe that people are getting dumber. Guess what tv and other types of entertainment (yes even books) don't equal what actually happened. It equals somebody's perspective of what happened. I can make a movie about unicorns farting rainbows and men flying but it doesn't make it true. Many things are heavy with a person's bias and only showing how their point might seem valid and not showing all the things disproving their point to make it seem less valid only helps show their supposed truth. Not to mention overall as time has gone by people have gotten smarter (like the importance of educating the masses and getting them to read). I dunno if it would decline slightly but as a society we're learning more and teaching our young what we know so that they can take it a step further each and every time.

I'm not sure about human intelligence declining, but I do think there seems to be a lot more cases of autism, food allergies, and attention disorders than there were just 20 years ago.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
I'm not sure about human intelligence declining, but I do think there seems to be a lot more cases of autism, food allergies, and attention disorders than there were just 20 years ago.

The food allergies I can't comment on, but a lot of the "increase in cases of autism" is people going, "maybe little tommy isn't just a troublemaker, maybe there is something else at play here." So people that in the 70s and 80s would have been called scallywags, now get diagnosed with conditions like ADD and autism.

Mattman154 wrote:Widespread use of the internet has brought all those morons around the globe we usually wouldn't have to interact with, and put them right in front of our faces!

Exactly. Stop and consider that. All those 'morons' around the globe have managed to utilize the greatest piece of information technology in the history of mankind.

So no, human intelligence is not really on the decline. Not by a longshot.

 azazel the cat wrote:

Mattman154 wrote:Widespread use of the internet has brought all those morons around the globe we usually wouldn't have to interact with, and put them right in front of our faces!

Exactly. Stop and consider that. All those 'morons' around the globe have managed to utilize the greatest piece of information technology in the history of mankind.

So no, human intelligence is not really on the decline. Not by a longshot.

People on the internet are anonymous and because of this often feel less of a need to hold themselves back on their opinions or ideas esp. based on appearance and other some such. It's a great freedom of expression. Often times some people would otherwise keep their crazy thoughts to themselves and in some cases some people wouldn't show the same self they do in person. What i see on the internet is often times what i think people really are on the inside without fear of people they know really insulting them for what they like. Of course that also means people can be jerks anonymously. That said a lot of people in real life use looks or muscles to intimidate and sway others. Gotta say the lack of that on the internet is often times a good thing. It's not like those abilities can be brought to bear through the internet. Funny when you see those people look like idiots for not having skills other than that. Of course people which are used to being *ssholes still seem to be able to be them on the internet. It's a sad fact i'm afraid.

All those 'morons' around the globe have managed to utilize the greatest piece of information technology in the history of mankind. *

*Once some extremely smart people decided to make it reliable enough to generally not need repair/reconfig and sufficiently easy to use that all that was required was "Push power button. Wait. Double click Firefox. Type something into Google. Hooray!"

Fixed that for you. Gone are the days (for most of us) where you have to manually configure every aspect of your system and network through DOS to connect to the internet, and back in those days not a whole lot of people bothered with it.

When those times return (Any time a relative/inlaw/idiot acquaintance clicks the wrong checkbox in their browser settings, or accidentally pokes the power button on their router moving it on the shelf, for example.) those of us who lived through those days get reminded of the above fact.

I think its a lowering of standards that is a problem. I have a cousin who has a degree from college. He still spells "Quiet" as "Quite".

 azazel the cat wrote:

Mattman154 wrote:Widespread use of the internet has brought all those morons around the globe we usually wouldn't have to interact with, and put them right in front of our faces!

Exactly. Stop and consider that. All those 'morons' around the globe have managed to utilize the greatest piece of information technology in the history of mankind.

So no, human intelligence is not really on the decline. Not by a longshot.

Never underestimate the power of dumb people organized into large groups.

Just take a look in the suckerpunch thread. There's your answer!

d-usa wrote:

 azazel the cat wrote:

Mattman154 wrote:Widespread use of the internet has brought all those morons around the globe we usually wouldn't have to interact with, and put them right in front of our faces!

Exactly. Stop and consider that. All those 'morons' around the globe have managed to utilize the greatest piece of information technology in the history of mankind.

So no, human intelligence is not really on the decline. Not by a longshot.

Never underestimate the power of dumb people organized into large groups.

I believe that's called 'wisdom of the clouds', or 'crowdsourcing', which is an extremely powerful tool and only fails when compared to *actual* experts.

 azazel the cat wrote:

d-usa wrote:

 azazel the cat wrote:

Mattman154 wrote:Widespread use of the internet has brought all those morons around the globe we usually wouldn't have to interact with, and put them right in front of our faces!

Exactly. Stop and consider that. All those 'morons' around the globe have managed to utilize the greatest piece of information technology in the history of mankind.

So no, human intelligence is not really on the decline. Not by a longshot.

Never underestimate the power of dumb people organized into large groups.

I believe that's called 'wisdom of the clouds', or 'crowdsourcing', which is an extremely powerful tool and only fails when compared to *actual* experts.

So Kickstarter vs. Hedgefunds?

It's becoming less about the retention of knowledge and more about the retention of how to access that knowledge quickly and precisely. Sort of like having something else to recall that information for you, there still must be understanding through the interpretation of that information though.

I do not need to remember exactly how something works, just my understanding of it and some key points to look up to expand on it if needed.

Every couple of years they have to adjust IQ tests to make the average 100 score a little harder to achieve. This is because we're getting much, much better at taking those tests. If you took the average person from the 1930s and gave them the test we have today, they'd be deemed developmentally slowed by modern standards.

So no, we're not getting dumber.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Have you ever seen Idiocracy? While you laugh at the time you realise that they might in fact be onto something.

Idiocracy isn't actually about that. It's just thrown in early on in the movie as a way to justify the future society, so the creater can then get on with the real point of the movie - complaining about modern society. At the end there's even a little speach where the lead character talks about how maybe things got stupid because average guys like him didn't read or apply their intelligence.

It really, really isn't a warning about poor people breeding.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Goliath wrote:
The food allergies I can't comment on, but a lot of the "increase in cases of autism" is people going, "maybe little tommy isn't just a troublemaker, maybe there is something else at play here." So people that in the 70s and 80s would have been called scallywags, now get diagnosed with conditions like ADD and autism.

Yeah, a lot of the rise in autism is due to how much better we are at detecting it and giving them better care. And there's also a likely connectiom to people having children later in life.

n0t_u wrote:It's becoming less about the retention of knowledge and more about the retention of how to access that knowledge quickly and precisely. Sort of like having something else to recall that information for you, there still must be understanding through the interpretation of that information though.

I do not need to remember exactly how something works, just my understanding of it and some key points to look up to expand on it if needed.

^ This. Exactly this. And it's a good thing.

 sebster wrote:
It really, really isn't a warning about poor people breeding.

I don't recall saying it was about poor people, if you can show me when I did I'd appreciate it.

Only in traffic.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
I don't recall saying it was about poor people, if you can show me when I did I'd appreciate it.

Dumb people. Poor people. Whatever.

Point is that's not what the film is about, and complaining about people getting dumber while missing the point of a movie is kind of funny.

I don't know about you, but when i go for a walk, all I see is smart people. Probably doesn't help that I walk through a university.

Wherever you go, you will see what you look for, stupid or smart. I'm not going to look for any studies, but then, I don't think that anyone would make a study on the average IQ of an area. The very thing is bugged because it would be so hard to reduce any error you would get form the location that it is taken in.

 SOFDC wrote:

All those 'morons' around the globe have managed to utilize the greatest piece of information technology in the history of mankind. *

*Once some extremely smart people decided to make it reliable enough to generally not need repair/reconfig and sufficiently easy to use that all that was required was "Push power button. Wait. Double click Firefox. Type something into Google. Hooray!"

Fixed that for you. Gone are the days (for most of us) where you have to manually configure every aspect of your system and network through DOS to connect to the internet, and back in those days not a whole lot of people bothered with it.

When those times return (Any time a relative/inlaw/idiot acquaintance clicks the wrong checkbox in their browser settings, or accidentally pokes the power button on their router moving it on the shelf, for example.) those of us who lived through those days get reminded of the above fact.

He was (or could just as easily have been, at least) talking about written language. Think about that for a second. The vast majority of people have always been angry, illiterate, horny, and drugged half out their minds, and now an unprecedented number are literate, to say nothing of a general increase in restraint elsewhere.

People tend to forget just how low the average person used to be, and while you may look down on the average person today (justifiably or not), the fact remains is that they are significantly better than the average person of a hundred years ago.

 sebster wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
I don't recall saying it was about poor people, if you can show me when I did I'd appreciate it.

Dumb people. Poor people. Whatever.

Point is that's not what the film is about, and complaining about people getting dumber while missing the point of a movie is kind of funny.

Seeing as one of the themes of the film was anti-intellectualism and extrapolating its possible effects on a future society then pointing out a difference between poor people and dumb people is quite important. Unless of course you think that intellect is tied to money.

Well rather than respond in kind with an equally thinly veiled insult, maybe you can tell me what you got out of the film.