Intelligence in the Internet Age 304
ErikPeterson writes to tell us about an article on News.com that takes a look at technology versus intelligence of the general population. From the article: 'Is technology making us smarter? Or are we lazily reliant on computers, and, well, dumber than we used to be?'
Average intelligence is a constant (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:3, Funny)
At least, that's the theory.
right- (Score:5, Interesting)
exactly... it seemed like it was written because some editor really needed a technology article, fast, and just pulled first thing he could find out of his butt... it didn't really offer anything at all, and when it did, it was all obvious
anyone who grew up in the last 30 years probably remembers wanting to use a calculator in school, and being told we couldn't because we had to learn how to do it first. that's basically still the case, isn't it? technology isn't going to make anyone dumber, unless we opt not to learn things any more.
but really, those people have always been around, and there have always been geeks who want to learn everything anyway. i don't think anything is going to change, except there will be more toys to play with.
Re:right- (Score:2)
Re:right- (Score:5, Insightful)
i don't know... i've had bad teachers, and i've had good teachers. I think if a student is really interested in a subject, he or she will find a way to learn it.
algebra is a funny example, becuase the number of people who would put in the effort to learn algebra despite a bad teacher is a small group of people. that's us, the geeks. we like algebra, we think it's pretty. we're a minority.
i think that with the kinds of people we (geeky slashdot people) like to hang out with, and with the kinds of jobs we get, it's easy to get a skewed perspective of how people really think and what they are in to. it's like in college. i went to a small liberal arts college, and i would meet kids all the time who would say stuff like "how do these conservatives get elected? *i* don't know anyone who would vote for them"... well... there's a big america out there that i just don't like to be in touch with...
the same is true for technology... when we invented calculators, people who would never have leared math in the first place could now do it... that didn't stop anybody who would have learned it anyway from still learning how it's done
Re:right- (Score:3, Funny)
I want that on a t-shirt. ThinkGeek? You Listening?
My trig teacher (Score:2)
would allow us to use programmable calculators providing that we wrote the programs for them. This was in 1983 so pulling code off the net really wasn't an option so it was pretty legit.
Re:right- (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't that a crazy thought? My parents still have an old TI calculator from the late 70s. They spent a relatively significant amount of money for a simple electronic calculator that would do basic math. Now calculators are everywhere, computers, cell phones, whatever. I'm all for kids learning how to do math by hand, but can you imagine a world without electronic calculators? I think that is probab
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:5, Informative)
Does that tell us something about your intelligence in the internet age?
Seriously (didn't want to be mean, but couldn't help myself), were you maybe thinking of Alfred Whitehead [brainyquote.com], who said:
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:5, Insightful)
What's going to be harder in the future, and can be hard right now, is knowing how to verify and sift through the information you find on the internet. A "smart" person will be the one who can do this, and a "dumb" one is the one who gets their information from a bogus website full of crap.
That would have been a better and more interesting direction for the article to go.
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:4, Insightful)
That little insight is what made Google what it is. Anyone who figures a good way to really automate that is going to get far richer than they did.
Intelligence is so ill-defined that I feel a little foolish talking about it, but it's more or less correlated to lots of good things, like success in school, ability to write page ranking algorithms, and so on, so we do all keep talking about it, whatever it is.
I do think that over-reliance on technology can keep folks from using their brains, and thus keep them from developing their intelligence. Even someone who is reasonably shrewd about finding factual facts won't gain much by it if he can't analyse those facts.
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that reality is perversely the exact opposite of this. Witness the evolution of Google's PageRank or of any set of spam filters.
What happens is that you have people with bad "stuff" (spam, ignorant ideas, marketing hype vs. facts, or whatever.) And these flat-earth people are filtered out by effective spam filters, or left behind by legitimate search engines. So what do they do? They rig the game. Spammers start quoting Jane Austin in between pictures of Vl4GR4. Casino operators place spam-links in unrelated blogs. Homeopathic quackery is disguised as "medical" advice. And all these idiots have to do is figure out how to splatter spam all over until their Google PageRanks show them to be the world's leading authority on "all-natural cures for cancer" or whatever.
Google tries hard. They really don't want quack medicine to show up as the first hit for "cancer treatments," but they've provided the ultimate testing ground for the shysters. All the flat-earthers have to do is keep trying until they look legitimate.
Already it's become hard to convince my wife that the top hit on a search engine isn't necessarily the most honest or accurate place to get advice. Looking at Google's results, even I might get caught by a sham site at the top named mayo-clinic.com (the real site is mayoclinic.com) Fortunately, many of the stupid sites (alternative-medicine-and-health.com, for example) are self-announcing.
On the bright side, it's possible that intelligence is going to be subject to evolutionary pressures. If the people who fall for the flat-earther's scams run out and try to cure their cancer with laetrile (or whatever the 2000's equivalent is,) then Charles Darwin's theories suggest that they are going to be a self-limiting lot.
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is though that the idiots usually manage to reproduce before they knock themselves off, so hoping Darwin will save you won't get you anywhere.
This is the geeks misunderstanding of natural selection - intellectuals love evolution because they think their superior brains will win in the end. This works in the work world to some extent, but on a species scale it's different.
The reality as far as evolution goes (and remember that evolution works on a macro scale, not in your lifetime or the foreseeable future) is that stupid people are at a distinct advantage. While intellectuals tend to have two or one children, the stupid masses are going at it like rabbits. Intelligent are at a selective disadvantage, because we don't pass our genes on as often as the trailer trash chicks that drop out of school by the time they are pregnant at 14 and have 8 kids by their 30th birthday.
*They* are the evolutionary giants, not us. We live side by side now, but when society breaks down in a few hundred years or whatever, the billions of big dumb kids will finish us off very quickly.
Of course, it's even less of an issue for most /.ers, because sitting at home by yourself with your 20 gig porn collection isn't gonna pass your genes on to anything but your keyboard...
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:3, Interesting)
yeah, the human brains of your typical genius and your average sheeple aren't actually all that different. in fact with the exception of those who've used alchohol and drugs to damage there brains they're usualy identical. so what is the difference? it's the software. The intelectually superior have through t
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:5, Interesting)
An Asimov essay made a point apropos to TFA, and that points out at least one major gaping hole in the "here's an eighth-grade test from a 19th century elementary school; could you pass it?" meme. The Asimov essay dealt with a math book of 18th or 19th century vintage, and pointed out how much of it was spent on things that aren't studied today--because they're of minimal worth in today's world. The example Asimov gave was mixed-base arithmetic (adding shillings and pence and pounds)--the eighth-grade test was chock full of similarly antiquated and now-worthless units of measure.
That said--there is a core of information that people should learn well enough to not need to consult Google, lest one spend one's time looking things up rather than doing something worthwhile. The question is, what is that core?
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:2, Interesting)
And how do we let the curriculum gatekeepers know that the 'core' has moved? A cabinet-level 'Core Identification Officer' like the french have for grammar? If we did identify today's core, how much of that core would we have to toss out once 2020's bigbrain.google.com takes questions like 'how many dissertations on cold fusion in the last thirty years failed to take into account doping irregularities of the palladium annode?'
(Answers google; "3. Shall I place them onto your iPo
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:2)
Would you believe that many kids do not learn to tell time with an analog clock until 7th or 8th grade. I wonder how long until they become obsolete.
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:2)
I wish. Unfortunately, the US, while sane enough to make the switch to "decimal money," hasn't gotten around to switching to a sane system of measurements.
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:3, Insightful)
And when I look at at the VW uk site they give the fuel economy in MPG but I think it is in imperial gallons. They also include the liters per 100 km value.
It would seem that the US isn't the only country to have some horrible mixed base systems.
And then you have the wost mixed base system of all, time. I mean 60 seconds to the minute, 60 minutes to the hour, 24 hours to the
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:2)
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:2)
I dunno. I'll uh...look it up on google.
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:2)
And how many nuclear bombs will it take to jump-start it?
Many aspects of humans intelligece is obselete (Score:2)
I think human intelligence is going to go obselete sooner or later once we know and understand how the human mind works computers, advanced measuring sensors and AI's will do the heavy lifting because lets face it, humans have horribly slow processing and memory systems compared t
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:5, Interesting)
Each person has their own core of knowledge that's essential to them in their lives, but much of that isn't shared. As a trivial example, I need to know the layout of streets in my neighborhood but not in yours, while you need to know your neighborhood but not mine. If I ever want to visit you, I can use a map (though you'd need to provide your address first). An auto mechanic needs to memorize different things from a surgeon. To a considerable extent, we wind up learning those kinds of things without necessarily trying. I find that I'll wind up memorizing things incidentally when I've looked them up enough times.
The things that everyone needs to know are essentially how to get along in society- the three Rs, the basic structure of society, and how to coexist with others without fighting. Add in the ability to learn new things as you discover that you need to know them, and you've come to the end of what everyone needs to know.
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a really interesting question at that. I was in a book store a while ago and asked a young clerk there where I could find books written by Plato. She looked questioningly at me and said "is that a poet or something?"
I was a little shocked by this but when I told the story to my mother, who was a teacher, she pointed out that the amount of knowledge that we have available to teach just keeps getting greater and greater and who is to say that the things we once tho
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:2)
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:2)
Re:Average intelligence is a constant (Score:5, Interesting)
It remains an open question as to the cause. It's far too fast to be genetic. A combination of better childhood nutrition and lower disease burden may explain most of it. There has been some suggestion that the Flynn Effect is mainly concentrated on the lower-half of the Bell Curve, but this is contested.
Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
You're asking this here? Can't wait to see the answers.
Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree, infact Lazy people, being lazy try to find ways to cut corners, and find smarter ways to get things done so they don't have to work as hard as others.
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
"If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy man. He'll find an easier way to do it."
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
In a way, it is. Using your neocortex more leaves you more "intelligent" than using it less.
But, with intelligence tests measuring many of the skills that technology increasingly performs for us, it's unavoidable that we'll eventually start to look pretty dumb. The fact is, though, that we (non-lazy folks) have, in all likelihood, merely migrated to a different skill-set.
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Assuming that by 'lazy', one means a tendency to avoid work, then being lazy requires one to use their mind more, not less.
A truly lazy person will work out how to achieve the same results with less effort. Necessity being the mother of invention, most innovations come about from people trying to reduce the work they have to do.
We? (Score:2, Funny)
When you say "we" do you mean just Slashdot editors, or the rest of us too? Arrrrr.
Re:We? (Score:2)
Intelligence (Score:2, Interesting)
Is technology making us smarter? Or are we lazily reliant on computers, and, well, dumber than we used to be?
I don't think it makes us smarter or dumber. What we are smart about changes. We can use technology to do things we could never do before. But there are things we could do in the past that we can't do anymore.Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
As a General Rule (Score:2, Informative)
sounds like "Feed", by M.T. Anderson (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/076
Good question! (Score:5, Funny)
Nope [google.com]. It looks like that's all background noise.
Clearly we is just as smarter as we used to was, and can did our stuff just as much as we used to could.
For the lazy... (Score:5, Funny)
"are we more stupider than we used to was?"
Both (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Both (Score:2)
Precisely (Score:2)
Science itself is the perfect example. The only difference here is that, instead of "standing on the shoulders of giants", we can also "stand on the shoulders of things giants have built".
Also, as someone else noted (Score:5, Insightful)
Now his motivation for this was laziness, basically. He was sick of dealing with a massive rush of students the first week and having to have the whole computing staff bust their ass on meanial shit. So he found an intelligent solution to the problem. This year, the first day was hardly any different from any other.
Lazy, perhaps, not dumb.
Re:Also, as someone else noted (Score:3, Informative)
I've done a similar thing with registering MAC addresses for our students. Like you've observed, a little laziness and some clever thinking can make everyones life easier.
Re:Also, as someone else noted (Score:2)
Re:Also, as someone else noted (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Also, as someone else noted (Score:5, Interesting)
If there's a job that would take the same time either by brute force, or by writing a program that does the actual work quickly, I'd choose the latter. I'd probably choose it even if it took slightly longer than the grunt route, because of the fun and the experience/education gained. There's also this weird sense of inherent wrongness/evil in doing grunt work, if a clever alternative is available.
Re:Both (Score:2)
Instead of people saying "I don't know.", which only makes them, "ignorant", they'll google for a quick answer. But quick answers are not always the right answer, especially when the topic is complex.
Re:Both (Score:2)
Yes, but the ways in which we waste the resources of earth, are the same.
IQ scores go up every generation (Score:2, Insightful)
Did you score 100 on your IQ test in 1980? Well guess what, by today's standards that's below average.
Barely crack the top 2% 25 years ago? Sorry to disappoint, but you're not a genius anymore.
Re:IQ scores go up every generation (Score:3, Informative)
Not so. If you were to score 100 on 1980's IQ test today, then fine -- because the average score today on that specific test would be over 100.
By definition, an IQ of 100 on a normalized, current test is the statistical average.
Re:IQ scores go up every generation (Score:2)
However, as Rushton noes: "Principal components analyses show that whereas the IQ gains over time on the WISC-R and WISC-III do cluster (suggesting they are a reliable phenomenon), these are independent of g factor loadings..." So the rise in IQ scores (which varies greatly by country, is primrily evident in non-verbal tests and which is mostly due to increases in the lower end of the ability spectrum) is not
Re:IQ scores go up every generation (Score:2)
Did you ever see the Darwin Awards?
Re:IQ scores go up every generation (Score:2)
There are a host of other possible causes of the Flynn effect, but extrapolating IQ to intelligence in general is problematic.
If we were to measure intelligence as the ability to adapt and thrive to our environments, as in my OP, then we wouldn't see the Flynn effect, I'd bet. Practical problem-solv
another hypothesis: language is evolving (Score:4, Interesting)
The flimsy basis for this argument is that when babies are young and don't know any language, memory and intelligence seem very rudimentary, but as they learn language, they gain the ability to store, categorize, recall, and cross-link concepts and ideas to form intelligent behaviors. It stands to reason that it is quite possible that the more efficient the language, even if the symbolic processing capability is constant, the more apparently intelligent the resultant behaviors can be. Language (and the ability to process more complex information) is something that is constantly developing/evolving and can do so faster and independent of other forces like DNA evolution, possibly explaining how this effect has been going on in the past and also allowing for this effect to continue for the forseeable future.
One of the leaps of faith that has to be made to adopt this philosophy is that intelligent behavior is something that is the result of language (or more generically, symbolic processing), not any "magic" phenomena of the brain that requires evolution and genetics to change. This includes not only the behavior of test taking, but the more "real-world" behavior of surviving in an increasingly complex world.
As a cheap example, the invention of a language to express numbers has allowed humans to become more intelligent in mathematics than before that improvement has occured (e.g., "one" vs "many" vs a counting system). It allows us to organize our thought about math better and allows us to exhibit seemingly more intelligent behavior about math related things.
As a possibly future example, wouldn't it be great if we had a language to communicate musical queries better than "humming" to your friend to try to get them to remember the name of a tune? Seems to me that years from now when we look back we'll see how dumb we were that we had to use humming and grunts and groans to communicate and organize our thoughts about music. What morons we are
An analogous ideas is how "compression" has allowed a constant amount of digital bandwidth convey an increasing amount of information/per-unit-time, as improved compression techniques have evolved. Sometimes the improvement in compression has been low-level (oversampled uart vs binary manchester coding vs 8/10 coding vs PRML) medium level (MNP5, LZW) or high level (mpeg/jpeg video/picture compression). Even with a fixed capacity, the improvement in language has brought great increases in throughput (although improving throughput isn't the same as improving intelligence, it's still something to ponder).
This idea of evolution of language allowing improved representation of abstract ideas and resultant apparent increase in cognitive behavior has always intrigued me as I've pondered the difference between "chinese" ideographic style language vs "european" alphabetic style language. Is there any inherent advantage to either?
Re:IQ scores go up every generation (Score:2)
Reliant on computers... (Score:2)
A person's average intelligence is going up while a person's average knowledge is going down.
Sounds like a good opportunity for under-achievement!
Meh (Score:2)
Not an amazing revelation (Score:5, Insightful)
During the dawn of agriculture, humans had to work their butts off every day tending to fields or getting ready for the winter or they would die. These days you can work a mere 8 hours a day in a cushy office job and have all of the food and shelter you need. Modern man looks a lot lazer--he only works half as much time wise--but due to technology he's actually contributing more to society than his primitive ancestor.
Ah, the 'more leisure time' myth (Score:4, Insightful)
The Khoi-San bushmen live in a near desert and yet compared to modern Western societies, once you've factored out all the activities required for survival, they literally have more leisure time than we do. It is a myth (propagated by who?) that "primitive" societies have to "work their butts off just to survive". We are the ones working our butts off, just to survive and "keep up with the Joneses".
OK, granted, more primitive societies do not produce the kind of 'excess wealth' and R&D environments that allow us to create and afford things like hospital care, roads, modern medicine and cool gadgets. But nonetheless this still seems like a counter-intuitive result, and it should very well make you wonder why, for all our technology, we are working as hard or harder than ever before, and why our stress levels are higher than agrarian or hunter/gatherer societies.
This is not a technology problem, it's a cultural problem - somehow we are willingly enslaved by the "modern work ethic" ('wave slaves'), driven perhaps by the ruling class, who implement systems that result in massively uneven distribution of wealth. It is possible to create enough "stuff" to allow us all to work fewer hours, but something else is wrong with the system that prevents this from actually ever happening. We've been conditioned to think eight hours a day is normal and is not much, but really, think about it, who came up with this "eight hours" concept anyway? Eight hours a day is nearly your whole life, as most of the little remaining time goes to sleep or "administrative" tasks like grooming, eating, buying groceries, etc. What do you have left, maybe an hour or two a day on average?
Re:Ah, the 'more leisure time' myth (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a trick. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's a trick. (Score:2)
That's flamebait
Yup, and he wouldn't survive today either! (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, on the other side of the ruler, put that same economist from 40 years ago w/his slide rule knowledge into today's world and watch him be as equally worthless.
Computers, the Internet, and the information available to us nearly instantaneously has made us a completely different culture all together. There is no use comparing us to those in the past. It's just not the same... I remember when I was learning about cells and my father said to me, "When I learned about cells we knew of the cell wall and the nucleus. Look at what you have to know." Now students probably don't even have to know that - Google tells them everything they need to know. That doesn't make them dumb - that makes them have room to learn TONS more.
I am honestly looking forward to the day when wireless Internet is combined with Internet mapping software (i.e. GMaps) and an online collaboration. Say goodbye to speed traps (your autorouting will know the locations of the traps and route you around it or warn you to slow down).
The possibilities are endless and the creative factor is incredible!
Re:Yup, and he wouldn't survive today either! (Score:2)
A nice outlook, but probably not accurate. In all probability, your GPS link to google maps will also submit data to a local "saftey enforcement" group and when your speed exceeds the limit, you get an automated ticket printed ou
Re:Yup, and he wouldn't survive today either! (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't see how that's conceptually different from saying that books made knowing things obsolete.
Obvious? (Score:2)
one way technology hasn't helped intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
It used to be you had to conceive your entire essay/story/etc., then have each paragraph, and each sentence, held in your head to some extent before you started writing. Think once / write once (edit once) and then type it out. Now you can start a paper/paragraph/sentence with nothing in your short term memory, just kind of roll it out and go back a million times to edit/redu/rethink/rework it until it's all coherent.
Basically, for certain tasks, the more that's stored in the electronic memory the less is (needed to be) stored in your brain.
Re:one way technology hasn't helped intelligence (Score:3)
Personally, I think the word processor encourages people to write essays in a colossal brain-dump 'cause maintaining multiple document files is bothersome (versus my unruly bundle of scribbled notes I can cram into a folder).
IMHO.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:IMHO.... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's because our knowledge builds on top of the last generation's knowledge, and along with writing those ideas down, humanity's knowledge base becomes exponentially larger.
Re:IMHO.... (Score:3, Interesting)
No, it's because our knowledge builds on top of the last generation's knowledge, and along with writing those ideas down, humanity's knowledge base becomes exponentially larger.
Fair enough, but it seems to me that there is a difference between knowledge and intelligence. Knowledge is stuff we know, whereas intelligence is an aptitude to be able to apply it. Sure, the human race as a collective can now build devices that fly to space or build atomic bombs, but I can't. Not smart enough. Even if you la
Look it up (Score:4, Informative)
which you can look up here [kgb.com]
For example (Score:2)
Double Edge Sword (Score:2, Interesting)
(a) Not long ago (10 yrs), I had to go to library to look up for technical papers. It used to be a pain to brush the dust in library to find your paper, xerox on the old photocopy machine. Often I would be coming out with thick stacks of bound journals. Thanks to good searching capabilities and online publications, I don't have to leave my desk and can access papers dating back to 1930s. Also with keyword search I can look at more papers in the same time. Just because
Yes. Wait, no. Let me check my calculator (Score:2)
If you do not change your intelligence-measuring criteria, then yes, we is more dumber.
If you use this definition of intelligence, and you change your measuring criteria to fit the current environment, then no, we have not lost any measure of intelligence.
Am I less smart because I can no longer do 14-digit long division in my head, like I did when I was young? No.
Am I smarter beca
Re:Yes. Wait, no. Let me check my calculator (Score:2)
i really like this approach- a kind of societal or community intelligence, where if the individuals can not achieve the desire result because they don't know how, BUT, can use technology to get the answer, then we d
Dibs! (Score:2)
Re:Dibs! (Score:2)
Not seeing the downside. (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see the downside of the Internet, instant communication, computational power etc as far as intelligence goes. The example they give of a financial analysis: the modern analyst uses computers to build models and compute massive numbers of "what if" possibilities. The old analyst would be force to spend an immense amount of time and effort to compute one of these.
Likewise, I have on tap an immense number of resources on administrative tips and such. I could keep it all in my head, but why when I can search for solutions, bookmark them and document the least amount to be able to do it all again in the future?
Re:Not seeing the downside. (Score:2)
I don't think it nessesarily makes people dumber, (Score:2)
30+ years ago, most people of nominal to below average intelligence generally kept low paying jobs, stayed in their locales (often for their entire lives), and stuck with jobs that suited them, and of course, were not on the internet. Like the middle class' dirty little secret (much like how the autistic were treated), you didn't hear very much about them.
Of course, since many of
Some do ... (Score:2)
I'd guess that writing did. After all, now you could learn from dead white males (or dead Chinese|et cetera males). That lets you develop more of your natural abilities than you would if you never talked to anyone but the dolts in your village. When you read, you can use you brain.
I'd guess that TV didn't increase intelligence. You can't use your brain while you watch. You have all those pictures flooding your mind, and they come much too fast to sort, consider and file away. You might
I don't know... (Score:2)
I don't know, lemme google for it.
Way dumber. (Score:4, Funny)
Of course I have no actual evidence for this. But that's cuz I'm dumber now than I was yesterday when I'm sure I had the proof bookmarked someplace. It keeps getting worse, too. By this time next week I'll probably forget how to form sentences and have to google each word in order to build up my thoughts. That'll probably suck. Of course since I'll be dumber I won't notice anyway.
Good Quote (Score:2, Informative)
Intelligence versus knowledge and skill (Score:4, Insightful)
Today modern farmers know more or less? They certainly know different things. The article is redundant because it doesnt define intelligence.
Certainly people are more free thinking today, and have been educated in how to learn things (I would hope, judging by teh intarwebnet masses this isn't so). So peoples intelligence (natural free thinking, ability to push their minds) is up, so is knowledge, such as random facts from wikipedia.
Why? 200 years ago there were only 112 music, documentary cultural and shopping channels available on cable, not there are more. You get it.
Information is flowing like quick silver (most of it is like shit, like engaydget blogs), we are at a time where for the FIRST TIME in history free, mass communication is available to all (potentially) unrestricted and secure, globalized and revolutionary.
First thing that happens? it all starts getting locked back down again... anyway... people don't truly appreciate the internet until their own mum buys something from china, without realising.
No, I don't mean made in china, I mean a chinese company, selling internationally.
Each day I speak to almost 30 nationalities, and I try and get something from each of them. Who did that 200 years ago?
The fact that there is a hetrogenous level of education now is great, and I see that when this moves globally, and EVERY child on earth gets a good, competative education, we will realise we are no longer breeding hatred into generations but understanding.
Or some crap.
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please type the word in this image: kidnaps
random letters - if you are visually impaired, please email us at pater@slashdot.org
I blame Microsoft for my stupidity (Score:2)
Listen: Many years ago, when I was in grade school, the calculator was totally verboten. This led me and my age-mates to learn all sorts of things, like long division and multiplication tables, by heart. Imagine that!
Almost 2 decades later, it seems that whenever I need to do a calculation, there's always a silly Windows computer in front of me with a hotkey assigned to the built-in calculator applet. It's quick, easy, accurate, and completely precludes
I say it's getting better. (Score:3, Interesting)
And then you read example essay material from students today in universities and you think, "holy shit, they're right, these people are dumber than a sack of hammers".
But as far as I'm concerned, the *sum* is much higher today than ever before. More people are literate than ever before, more people have some basic math skills than ever before. More people get some basic schooling ( even if they don't want it, or use it ) than ever before.
Perhaps in the old days ( up until a couple centuries ago ) you might have had a situation where 95% of the population were illiterate in every way. No reading, no math, no geography. No knowledge except how to do their respective jobs. And the remaining 5% might have been, by our standards of thoroughness, quite well educated, with serious teachings in history, language, rhetoric, natural philosphy, etc.
Today education is better distributed, even if it means that we have some fairly dumb people coming out of our universities. The fact is, more people are getting an education, or at least the *means* for an education. If they should fail at it, it's their own damn fault, not society.
And the smart people today, by god, they're astonishing. Just pick up any book on some specialized field, say, physics, literature, GPU shader programming, biology, whatever. The work these people do blows my mind.
As far as I'm concerned, it's all A-O-K. At least the responsibility for success (or failure) lies progressively in our own hands. I'd say that's a step in the right direction.
Its all back assward... (Score:3, Interesting)
The act of programming is inherently of incorporating the mindset of the programmers and then subjecting the users to it by forcing the users to have to think in the terms the programmer layed down in the users operation of the program.
Microsoft intentionally applies this fact and is why most users don't have a clue about the shell (and those who have used microsofts shell find it discouraging).
There are other places where the programming is not very intelligent but subject the users to its dumbness... Earthlink Webmail has been such a place, where not so long ago you had to individually select which mail you wanted to delete. But where 80% or better is spam and in the amount of at least 100 a day.
After communicating to them like a child, they finally put in a "select all" allowing you to then deselect the few you wanted to keep (the effects of that must have been enormus on the reduction of spam in general held on Earthlinks servers -- maybe thats where they got the additional 90 megs of email stirage space they now give me without my asking)
But the point is, when you have an industry that can only see as far forward as
Does this make users dumb?
Probably doesn't help the intelligence level of the users to improve, but intentionally "makes users need
Users aren't stupid, the software industry is and what choice does the users have but to be subjected to such bullshit?
Things don't have to be this way, but are currently, just as the Catholic Church promoted the Roman Numeral system of math, even when they were presented with a simpler and more powerful system of the Hindu-Arabic Decimal system.
Intelligence is the difference.... (Score:4, Insightful)
A little off topic (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:yes or no question? (Score:2)
I'm confused...
Re:yes or no question? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's based on mostly memory specific tasks (like speling, for xampl), then I'd say the information age, with spell checkers and the like do make us 'dumber.'
But if its based on reasoning ability, the information age has probably raised average intelligence. I may not be able to spell, but I can handle many different kinds of systems and adapt to new ones in ways that people 100 years ago probably couldn't. And the fact that I have to constantly learn new tech (how to upgrade this software, how to program my new VCR, etc.) plays into that.
Cause or Effect (Score:5, Interesting)
Why do we have remote controls for our televisions and garage doors? We could very well get out of our chairs and cars, walk the 5 feet, and do it ourselves... but no, we have a machine to do it for us. I could drive down to the library and look up some information, but now I have the internet on a PC in my den to answer my inane questions.
I don't bother driving out sunday morning to buy a paper, or even getting one delivered. Too much work, when I already have the computer to serve it up. Or if I'm real lazy, I could get digital cable, where I just push the "Guide" on the remote control, and it tells me what's playing in the next X hours.
Are these really things we "need" (ala necessity) ? Perhaps, perhaps not. But they are all labor saving devices. I'd draw a conclusion here, but I think I'm just too lazy to finish.