As a philosophy professor in the US, I would say that at least Americans (though not American students, thankfully) are becoming stupid. I am an evidentialist who holds that people are morally justified in believing things only insofar as the evidence warrants, such that believing underevidenced claims that one simply wants to be true is epistemically immoral. Certainly, since the 2016 presidential campaigns, Americans are believing underevidenced claims at an alarmingly increasing rate each day. The "fake news" phenomenon has profoundly contributed to this rise of stupidity and, I would argue, epistemic immorality.

Are students actually as intelligent? Honestly, many of mine can only be taken so far!

There are other considerations to take into account before answering positively

That being said, I would like to add that most people are choosing the path of ignorance because we have failed them as scientist and technologist.

People have been under the impression since last century that science and technology will solve their problems, and provide better quality of life. Instead it has given gentrification, not a technological divide but a chasm, a top 1% that hold most of the money in the world, medicines that have increased 1500% and so on. Given this state of affairs, it takes a simple ignorant to get the ball rolling and go viral on the Internet with half baked ideas that promises what science and technology have not given.

A good answer, Arturo, although population increase would not account for statistical evidence, such as it is, for decreasing abilities. No, IQ is not reliable as it does appear to measure types of intelligence and perhaps would not necessarily record deep-thinking, the slow, patient unravelling of psychological and philosophical questions. Social media has provided a false presentation of the average certainly but also provides evidence of less desire or ability to hone onto clear ideas. Individual and group concentration may have declined.

The expansion of education, while not necessarily recruiting less intelligent candidates than in the past, has perhaps diluted degrees and teaching rigour-a good teacher is now perhaps a student rather than subject focused one, one that students like rather than one who is difficult and demanding.

How many of us can perform simple calculation without calculator?

How many of the present children (4-12 yrs age group) can dream an angel ?

It is due to dependence on technology. It has effects on everybody and in everywhere in the globe.

But what is the alternative?

Technology has a positive effect on intelligence though, promoting the everyday solving of complex motor problems- and developing complex motor skills-that I as a child would not have faced. Perhaps intelligence is changing form, as in the past intelligence was developed by reading.

The main cause of the arranged marriage between ignorance and globalized ignorants who superbly ignore it is the Media, tele-guided by few greedy and selfish self humanity intelligence destroying circles and interests.

Hello,

This is certainly a thought provoking, inspiring question. The evidential basis upon which you have based your argumentation has been on the rise in seemingly all parts of the world reflecting peoples' attraction to less credible sources of information (e.g., conspiratory theories) for making judgments about the realities of the world. The question is : How can an individual with a high IQ divert to untenable means of establishing the truth of objects based on superstition, black magic, heresy , etc.? Keith Stanovich, professor of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto, Canada, long been working on the issue has reported that such a change in human powers of judgment applies to more people than we might think. As a consequence, are we justified to take this as an index of decline in the world's genotypic and phenotypic IQ ? Since intelligence is an important determinant of scientific and cultural achievement, income, health and various aspects of life quality, should we become alarmed to the deterioration of world's intelligence declining levels? Questions like these support the power of your nice argument and there have apparently been a number of suggestions. One of the main solutions for coping with the problem comes from the new eugenics of biotechnology and artificial attempts to counteract the growing dysgenic fertility through embryo selection. The crux of the matter is that human intellectual growth might have reached its final stages of growth and this is an important issue requiring a more in-depth global attention.

Best regards,

R. Biria

I must point out the argument introducing this subject is not necessarily mine, and in some measure we have false information due to more popular, accessible and expansive methods of communication-twitter,etc-allowing for certain perceptions, good or bad, to flourish and those with less reflective characteristics to also flourish.

There is the tendency for tropes to radiate, buzz-words that carry excluding paradigms that effectively close down discussion.

My concern with the above piece is the idea of scientific intervention. Eugenics? We do not actually know what intelligence is or how it functions in an individual and group manner. A scientist may consider intelligence to operate in certain ways, replicating their own abilities, a writer in another way, replicating theirs. Could it simply be found, if at all, in specific indivuals that handle well the technology and cultural demands of a particular era, thereby coming to the fore in one era but not another?

Technological developments have made our day-to-day life easy, but also made our brain idle resulting in reducing IQ. The technology has negative impacts on our critical thinking skills, hinder knowledge acquisition, and harm our ability to concentrate particularly in case of children.

Regards

Does all technology do that, Asit?

What about the education system, which is functional in its grading system, set against originality and reflecting dominant views? Does that encourage mediocity?

Answering a question by Amir W Al-Khafaji, 'Who is the greatest writer/philosopher'(we should make connections all the time), it occurred to me that there is one clear example of deteriorating intelligence. Einstein's throries on Relativity caused immense changes in perspective, with it a concern with Time and Reality, but Quantum Physics did not have anything like the same effect on modern thinking. It is ignored by and large, in part because it is difficult to adjust to, and instead there is greater reference to religious tropes to understand phenomenon-usually delivered with neither embarassment nor need to justify. Thinking has stopped!

Dear Stanley,

Certainly not. But many - I am not going to repeat, see the remarks of Dr. Shibabrata Pattanayak, some examples.

Happy New Year, 2018

Regards

Dear Shibabrata Pattanayak,

I would want to discuss your phrase: "How many of us can perform simple calculation without calculator? How many of the present children (4-12 yrs age group) can dream an angel ? It is due to dependence on technology. It has effects on everybody and in everywhere in the globe. But what is the alternative?"

I see one of the possible alternatives, of which you are asking. This is "Home education". Now I would want to introduce some phrases from https://nstarikov.ru/blog/88362 (in Russian) which were then translated into English:

Michael Farris (USA), founder of Patrick Henry College and the Association for Legal Protection of Home Education (HSLDA): I have 19 grandchildren, they all study at home, and we are absolutely satisfied with it. Especially in comparison with what is happening in US general education schools in the last 30 years. General education schools are becoming more vociferous, but less effective in their attempts to teach children to work hard and give them the basics. And this is true throughout the United States. And people in all countries of the world need to learn this lesson of the United States, which is that parents should directly participate in the education of their children. The school is forced to replace education by "training in tests". The consolidation of schools and the introduction of standardized tests make individualization even less achievable. Tests, as the basis of the school curriculum, pinch even the best schools in an extremely tight framework and do not allow the use of different approaches to education - the school is forced to replace education by "training in tests."

Bryan Rey (USA), President of the National Institute for the Study of Home Education: Home education has a thousand-year history. And it's only during the last six or seven generations of the world that people have turned to constitutional schooling. Throughout the history of the world, advanced people have used the most effective methods in teaching their children. And the modern movement for home schooling is a return to using the best known training practices. Throughout the world, parents come to the conclusion that family education is perhaps the only realistic answer to the challenge of the constant deterioration of mass education. The right of parents to give education to their children, which corresponds to their religious and philosophical views, is a fundamental human right, and it must be supported and developed in every possible way.

Bryan Brown (USA), President of the National Organization for Marriage (USA): We have eight children with my wife Sue, they study at home and in a private Catholic school. Why did we do this, while more American children go to ordinary general schools? One of the reasons why it is not necessary to give children to general schools is dangerous. Dangerous in the sense of their faith, morality, on all sides is dangerous. In some countries, the education system is becoming a repressive dictatorship. For example, in Germany or Sweden, parents do not have the right not to let their children go to the lessons of the so-called sex education. There were cases of imprisonment of such parents. And this is in the countries of the "victorious Euro-democracy." It happens everywhere. The teacher gets up and says: "Of course, I teach children same-sex marriages. Of course, I teach them on the example of my same-sex marriage, and to think differently is to discriminate against other people. " No one at all thinks or thinks very little about the fact that parents are the main teachers of their children, and the rights of these parents. And all this leads to a huge increase in home schooling and instruction in private schools, in private Catholic schools. I think this is a new mass movement, but not so "new", since the house is that original place where the children were trained. In the United States, this form of education has been actively developing since the 1970s, and today more than 2.5 million of these students.

Dr. Gennady Fedulov,

"No one at all thinks or thinks very little about the fact that parents are the main teachers of their children, and the rights of these parents. ....................... house is that original place where the children were trained".

Highly appreciable comment!!! It is required for children.

Thanks and regards

Gennady, are you saying that parents should/can pick and choose what their children learn?

Stanley,

Just to clear my conjecture on population increase as possible bias is based on the following assumptions for insertion of bias on random samples studies:

• Fundamental principle of economics- resources are scarce, then as population increase access to quality education (at different levels) will be more difficult to acquire
• Regional distribution of money (unless the statistics is made on a worldwide scale). The top 10 % of the riches is concentrated on specific geographical areas
• Technological chasm (today's technology provides an advantage on access to resources)
• Access to education costs (I have seen mixed statistical reporting from studies of MOOC's that are "free" and the success that they have on the diffusion of knowledge. Drop out rate on "free" courses is high on several studies)
• Regional movement of knowledge (while there is global diffusion, I have not seen the coefficient of diffusion calculated in the literature to demonstrate that diffusion is even)
• How the samples are collected- most studies I have seen are on controlled environment such as universities as opposed to non institutional sampling.

If someone has seen a study that takes all these variables into account and states the contrary, please let me know so that I can reassess my conjecture.

Note: this is only one of many factors

Is this not extrapolated from the present , where the majority of these matters already occur? Surely, you need a connection between these factors and loss of intelligence-drop out rates for example might be for many reasons, knowledge also is not necessarily intelligence as it selects particular kinds of knowledge in order to place knowledge and intelligence within the same brackets? Qualifications and acquiring middle-class status, for example, seem to be attached to intelligence, and perhaps are, but not exclusively.

Dear friends please let me contribute to this fascinating and timely discussion with some provocative thoughts going beyond the simplified assumption that "stupidity" or better said "stupid conduct" is the outcome of mere low IQ:

No, stupidity is not lack of knowledge and logic, and, surprisingly, not even lack of intelligence; the blunders of the intelligent and the learned are proverbial. Harbouring false beliefs we consider error or lie is not proof of stupidity. Certainly, stupidity it is not just ignorance, absence of information or of true knowledge; I have met plenty of ignorant people very smart and wise in their familiar environment and very stupid-acting specialized specialists or learned generalists, adorned with high schooling and doctor's degrees. Mine did not make me smarter in the occasions when I misjudged, spoke and acted stupid, neglecting the very psychology I knew so well.http://wisdom.tenner.org/blog/first-person-stupidity-stupidity-part-ii

Mystified by separating with a numerate geometry-based asses' bridge the quick and smart from the slow and bewildered, the educated from the uneducated, we would live in (stupid) denial of a disastruoud kindom of contagious, man-made stupidity that impairs everybody, including the most excellent of us:

-occasion-induced “inexplicable” delusion and impairment of judgement,

ignoring of conspicuous facts everybody knows except the (otherwise very intelligent) person concerned

-the mishaps of the habit not to pay attention to mere people-issues and " local situations",

-the unexamined everyday use of thought-preventing horse-blinkering words and expressions,

-the mind-closing education of pre-judged dogma, taboos, received opinions, dispensed to entire generations

-the spread, like recurrent pest, across the social body, of indefensible ideas of prey and hate,

-the cultivated and complacent public slumber turning people desensitised in full view of violence, iniquity and danger

-the sheep like imitation epidemics of fashion,

-the inexorable persistence of harmful habits like smoking, bad eating, waste, pollution and the like

-the Kafkaesque institutions we perpetuate,

-the utopian laws, the stupid bosses and politicians we obey,

-the mindless corporations eating up the world, incapable to consider end-results of short-term gain

and on top of everything

the enslaving creeds or ideologies, the "causes" we serve faithfully, for which so many fools are ready to kill and die

all the above banking on proven public lack of critical sense, state which can fairly described as stupid.

If we rise from individual to society, how to describe as other than stupid the predictable biased judgement and destructive barbarianism of large groups, the madness of entire nations, the fascination of voluntary servitude, the eternally returning, self-defeating poor judgement of Humanity all together?

Since we evolved so much why do we, "Humanity" blessed with so many bright minds and learned people still behave like a species instead of acting like a Reason, the reason we worship nowadays? Isn't that stupidity of the largest scale possible? But what do I know? The genius of immense stupidity may propose more that that, things I cannot grasp.

Why is it that there is no historic regress of human stupidity - always ready to strike anew in form of war, waste and self-destruction - so little learning from history, in spite of so much accumulation and progress in knowledge-knowing-all and technology-omnipotent in making things?

I loved this to be honest, but I do think you need to define intelligence or intelligent behaviour as from the above it seems as if intelligence is simply everything you approve of and stupidity everything you don't approve of-but great anyway!

Remember that what appears as an error of judgement in the present, can appear the opposite ten years on. I'm of the opinion that we have far less control over what we do, others do and events in the world, distant and near, than we imagine.

@Stanley Wilkin: Thank you for the clarification. My list of various examples of stupidities is not indicating low IQ, many bright people commit and take part in them, we all in fact. The examples do indicate poor and disconnected judgement though.

In fact, conduct which appears in my experience to be preferable, wise, prudent, considerate to people, fit to local context, goal perspective and occasion etc., the opposite of being foolish and appearing stupid, does not require necessarily the person to be highly intelligent. Scores of logic-ignorant, modestly intelligent people behave in this way simply by learned attitudes of humility, respect, patience, systematic prudence and the like. But true, I highlighted one type of "stupidity" as most important among several, the one I call "intelligent stupidity", the instances when people dysfunction blatantly in spite of being normally or even highly intelligent in the measurable IQ sense.

I do not oppose "stupid" to "intelligence" but to "wisdom" and task/situational adequacy instead. Thus, I oppose it to equally complex "constructs" as wise, prudent, or adequate or good taste or considerate a.s.o.

Concerning the term:

Unfortunately, the best dictionary definitions do not explain what something actually is or how it happens and how it works. You will find that the words “Stupidity” and “stupid” are mainly exemplified as being stupefied, incapable to perceive, to feel, to understand and reason properly. The description is completed with gross want of intelligence with a touch of stubbornness and foolishness (ex OED).

If we are to define the word by everyday observation, the qualification "Stupid!" expresses situational, intuitive witness-judgement, relative to locally held standards of adequacy and competency, expressed in the vernacular of common sense: remarks tainted with emotion and disapproval, punctuated with attention marks. In time, stupidity appears also as inability to learn from own mistakes and inflexibility in adapting preexistant solutions to practice. This is not a phenomenon you will measure against some general "IQ".

However we do not stay at defining the word but seek to investigate the phenomenon which is the object the common-sense judgement (which may be itself narrow or mistaken).

To advance towards operational definitions I propose for a start to let aside the vagueness of expressions like "being stupid" - a state of the mind or "anti-faculty" seen as a cause of dysfunction, and consider instead instances of “committing stupidities”- the conduct, the acts seemingly deserving such a depreciative social evaluation. Stupid, is not something we are but something we do or let happen.

What is intelligent stupidity?

I use in my inquiry a lived (experienced introspectively) working definition (which I simplify here for clarity):

stupidity is the manifest rupture with the adequate, expected common sense of conduct in a given situation, place, group of people or with the expected competence in executing a task relative to the information, skills, perspective and means available.

There is some hope for qualitative research in such a working definition...

What do you think? How to improve this approach?

1) Peter, notions of stupidity are of course mainly subjective but I doubt if measurements via IQ tests provide clear definitions. Some people, in my experience, often express intelligence in one or two areas, often related to work, but little apparent intelligence elsewhere.

2) Yes, I have heard a psychiatrist (not necessarily a barometer for intelligent discussion of the human condition) express the idea that since intelligence makes people think (well some) fewer stupid people, as they are more accepting, get mentally ill. Here, as an intelligent person I am concerned with definitions of mental illness, of which psychiatry is really only one, and what are the dear doctor's perceptions of both.

3) I cannot agree with this. I research into the so-called Holy Books and none appear based on historical truth and contain highly dubious ideas.The inability of religious people to notice these factors, is not the sign of intelligence. Do the rounds of Alzeimer wards. People with brains, once intelligent and articulate, reduced to walnuts and everything about them gone except dribbling mouths and useless bodies, then wonder about an afterlife. We are, like all animals, contingent.

Being religious nevertheless is not the same as being unintelligent as the processes of religious belief are complex.

4) Humans have, according to perception, done damage as herds of elephants do widespread damage to trees in their vicinity and any species' excess does damage to other species. Science provides immense complexity and its rejection would leave us prey to worse suffering. The past was not a place I particularly would want to live in.

Dear Stanley Wilkin,

I would want to discuss your phrase

"Science provides immense complexity and its rejection would leave us prey to worse suffering. The past was not a place I particularly would want to live in".

Each year, ecology on our planet is deteriorating for objective reasons due to the development of technology based on science. Someday we can not just breathe fresh air, because all the vegetation can disappear. Already, half of the insects have disappeared in America and Europe, many forests have disappeared, the surrounding reality and the world ocean are poisoned by plastic waste, which at best will partially decompose in 600 years. The process of deterioration of the environment can lead to a real worldwide flood due to the melting of ice. Many people are nostalgic for the past life, when there were cleaner air, water and food. It seems to me that the total degradation of education in the world is indirectly related to the deterioration of ecology, which ultimately can lead to the fact that there simply will not be people who can do science for the benefit of society.

Thanks Peter, but I actually don't agree with this separation of intelligence and smart-surely it mythologises the ability of non-academic people to best academic people. I have, perhaps like you, experienced all areas of life and met all kinds of people (supposedly stupid ones who confound me with the occasional sparkling idea, religious fanatics whose logic is or seems briefly impeccable, scheming politicians whose views of life are different from mine but equally well-considered-or at least I hope mine are).

My 'knowledge' that I have no afterlife, contrary to yours, makes me happy. Live in the moment! Hedonism has many virtues!

Science possessing unitary progression? Well, I don't view science as within anyone's control nor do I personify it. It has a complex existence surely?

There is I suspect no such thing as intelligence as a continuum, effortlessly grinding out insight and objective analysis. Some people may be intelligent but not have analytical abilities, that is able to turn it on or off.

I think we should stop considering intelligence in the same way we do body parts-my leg is my leg and unless amputated will remain mine, that is as distinquished from my neighbour's leg. It will not alter in its perceived characteristics. Apart from anything else, your intelligence interacts with the environment in more ways than any body part.

In addition: consider icons of intelligence. Einstein did not talk until he was 4. Newton was an average student and only blossomed at university. Truman Capote, the writer, was considered so stupid as a child that doctors considered having him committed.

Now, these examples are of course subject to perception-but that is what we are talking about.

Suppose Einstein or Newton were driven (a pun there) to working in a garage, and subsequently were unable to display ability at mechanics. Would they not be considered stupid by their peers; in much the same way if their garage-peers were unable to deal with higher mathematics?

The idea that proof of god's existence is as difficult as non-proof places the onus on proof as being more constant and viable than non-proof. When asked to prove god's existence I think of a book written by a Moslem gentleman whose name I have forgotten-he wrote that he had undeniable proof, as the Qur'an said god did exist. Circular arguments are usually employed which lead back to an assertion-that god exists. If you start with the idea that he/it doesn't circular arguments can still be employed but the arguments for proof of his existence become more rigorous.

Belief in god's existence relies on the books that, like my Moslem writer, say he does exist. If the books disappear, so does god, while my belief in his non-existence or the non-existence of all gods continues.

I did not put that in for serious evaluation but to show how honsensical it was.

My point holds though, Peter. We once again appear caught up in the apparent dichotomy of belief, non-belief-a god or no god. It is not a given. My point was belief, although unsubstantiated except by poor arguments, holds the central ground whereas non-belief, with more plausible arguments, is more sustainable but is required to prove or offer proof. All religious belief, or its believers, need do is declare the reality of god, whereas non-belief is required to contradict that statement.

I disagree that the present religions would survive the loss of their books. Religion in some form might, but not these. Their moral basis is shakey, based more on power than anything else-or power tropes. These religions are constructed upon words, the magical nature of words and their ability to give substance to substantive ideas, making real out of the insubstantial. Look at what they are actually saying, that power is fine and control of others necessary in order to fulfill god's desires. A god apparently unable to produce the same desiresf outcomes without humankind.

The anecdote I gave, yes was/is a product of stupidity.

Although this is another issue, we have become too bothered with not causing religious people offence although their ideas cause me offence. They inhabit a privileged position again churning out all kinds of appalling nonsense.

There is Peter one discussion point on here 'What causes terroism'-I haven't said it but I'm tempted as I've read them all: 'Your book, sir. Your book.'

What at present interests me is their denial of what is actually in their books, and their claim that these books are moral. Does that fit in here? To some extent.

Peter, you claim it is not the books? I suggest you keep on reading. There are ideas offered that, yes with extrapolation, contain the kernal of present thinking. Denial that these words and ideas do not contribute is not helpful.

Read Socrates on the nature of writing. Read my work if you can find it. Writing creates reality, it is not subservient to it. For many people the Bible and Qur'an are real, as real as the furniture they sit on. A statement connected to claims of holiness, or that a book or words are written by the god him/it/herself carry with it immense and powerful indicators. If you cannot find my work on this matter, some of it is on thiis site but as yet does not go into the nature of the written word in depth, look elsewhere.

Dear friends, as a non believer, and sceptic concerning all dogmas, and as a teacher, let me propose that believing or not in God, dedication to an ideology like Marxism or even hateful fascism or other extremism, is not a possible criteria to decide about "stupidity"; in fact it is useless offence and inadequate communication. Bright learned people, great scientists and philosophers did and do chose to believe and rejoin such systems of thought and belief; we may see those choices as error or evil but it would be naive to tax people as stupid because they believe or chose morally differently from us.

If we are to discuss stupidity, having some operational definition is inevitable. Ignorance is not a good definition, I think. Error is not useful (persisting in error, not learning from obvious, proven mistake may be stupid because it shows inability to correct and learn)

My choice is that people are situationally justified to tax as stupid obvious acts of inability to fit situations and people; people appear stupid when that are observably incompetent in what they do, "out of the picture", too abstract and impractical, insensitive to local custom, feeling, human factor, good sense and the like; they are judged stupid because they do not meet justified expectations of common sense and local competence. Excellent thinking spoken at the wrong place in the wrong moment, incomprehensible explanation unfit to the readiness and knowledge of people or the urgency of a task can look and indeed be very stupid in spite of being exact, factual, true, best knowledge, erudite etc.

Does this help? What do you think?

Dear Peter,

re " However, an intelligent person can be seen as stupid, by a less intelligent crowd. " Certainly! I had this feeling when younger and aware that some people, simply ignorant of things I knew well, wouls mock me. Today I nuance that feeling of injustice; a wiser man will feel responsible for coping with the ignorance and with the stupidity of a public. Not being able to handle that is hardly intelligent conduct. You must speak to people in words they can understand, sensitive to their occasions, prejudice and concerns - if you are wiser you lead them from where they are towards where you succeeded to rise.

re: "The link between intelligence and stupid is not really fair, .." I can only agree. To be true, there is a form of poor intellectual functioning which many call stupidity, proven and measurable to be connected with low IQ , with ignorance, inability (and lack of motivation) to learn, brain dysfunctions, mental pathologies etc. That can be opposed to "high intelligence". Even that one should not be confused with "less intelligence".

I found in my inquiry that the sort of stupid interpretations, misunderstandings, inattentions, insensitivities, "blindnesses" practically invalid judgements, cultural gaffes, impaired judgements which we - say that we are normal or clever, educated, even bright - are able to commit are so prevalent that we must consider them as "intelligent stupidity". This wording applies , I find, even more to groups, crowds, institutions (even to the scientific establishment) as a whole. Powerful, influential books can be proven very stupid while composed of noble and bright ideas unfortunately out of touch with human interest. History retains whole nations or civilisations impaired occasionally by incredible political stupidity leading to their own demise.

I am so sorry to be so interdisciplinary but so is stupidity.

Surely, a more complex environment, such as the present, means more complex minds in order to deal with it? Nevertheless, Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel writes that the most intelligent people he'd met were the tribal people of New Guinea.

One problem I see with this, Zbigniew, is that according to recent estimates Homo Sapiens, us, might have been around for an extraordinary 500, 000 years, and yet in most of that time we've exhibited no more intelligence than our supposedly lowly cousins-Neanderthals for example. Isn't it possible that environmental complexity has made the difference?

Intelligence is decreasing in western world because of immigration.

I've come across another writer, who I can't remember, who said the same

if we will based on the smartphones and AI in the clouds also without the writing by hands and only reading on the monitors, without the notes on the paper it will possible.

Zbigniew you are talking about domestication during the introduction of agriculture/farming, whereby not only was aggression bred out of dogs (not completely), cattle, sheep, and other fauna we used for food, it was probably bred out of us.

Ayad Al-Rumaithi there may be something in your chart, but IQ tests emerged as a means of selection during high-levels of immigration to the USA at the beginning of the last century. As they tended to favour English and USA culture many potential-immigrants failed.

Zbigniew,

My supposedly before lowly is evidence of my scepticism not as you appear to believe my agreement. The giveaway here is -supposedly-

I was raising doubts about such ideas on Neandethals, not confirming them!

Zbigniew the role of domestication involves getting humans to gather together in large groups, get on reasonably well, limit aggression with each other as domestic cattle tend to in comparison to their wild relatives. Therefore, we learnt to act together, obeying society's rules. We marry, get jobs, have children. We go to work every day at the same time. We don't hit our bosses should they bother us. We don't injure those we dislike. We obey the law, show due respect to authority.

In ancient Sumeria, cities were referenced, without irony, as sheepfolds. A dichotomy between city life and the wild developed. People became detached from nature.

Are you sure we haven't been domesticated?

No, Zbigniew I don't believe that. I also in all honestry don't know what you're talking about. I have not said anything remotely of the kind.

You continue to musunderstand me because it seems of your somewhat limited English. I appreciate that, but I hope you understand that your inability to actually take on what I am writing and my actual beliefs and thoughts is disarming.

Unless you ask someone to tell you what I am actually saying, I cannot see much movement here. I really do not like being misrepresented in this fashion.

I wish you well, but for the moment adieu.

While I haven't read this thread in detail, I do recall reading peer-reviewed papers that state that the mean IQ in the UK and the USA has both risen and fallen in recent times (i.e. after 1900, when Binet and others first tried to measure it), and frankly I don't think the issue has been resolved. The 'risers' seem to credit better child nutrition, which is a credible argument, and the 'fallers' (or whatever we might term them) argue that we now give more support to the less intelligent to allow them to have children, whereas until the 1950s it was routine (in many countries) to sterilise them. Of course this also assumes that IQ can be inherited ... which I believe is still debated by some. Let's not enter this particular minefield! :-)

Dear @Stanley, your question is good but I partly disagree with motivation. I think that the official science simply ignores many of the important questions, and the development and higher spread of esoteric knowledge (including astrology) or religion (which cares also about the morality of our society) are not responsible for growing stupidity.

I think that the main threat comes from recent development of computer technologies and mass media. In 1990s the users of computers have been mostly programmers. Before they knew some math, and then computers allowed to get some numbers and to do it quickly (I mean the solution of differential and integral equations, that describe natural sciences). Computers did not make their IQ lower.

But for the next generation the emergence of computers and the division of labor resulted in the necessity to know only what to click. Most of users today are not programmers at all. Even people in IT often do not receive the same mathematical knowledge about the equations and their derivation at the previous generation.

Another program is the growing volume of information. One can easily become a person with higher IQ if he/she reads correct articles (even in wikipedia). But computer games and chats (above some minimal level, when they give positive contribution to IQ) take the time of users away. And they remain more stupid. This is my opinion.

I think we are in danger of conflating two concepts here: as I understand it, intelligence as measured (albeit imperfectly) by general (g) IQ is a measure of a subject's potential to learn new skills and concepts, and to apply them. However, a lot of what has been discussed is level of education, the degree to which individuals are informed (or misinformed), which brings in other things, most notably what people choose to do with their intelligence, and the access they have to information with which to become better informed.

I would argue that being better informed doesn't necessarily mean being more intelligent, and being less informed doesn't imply being stupid. But of course there will be a correlation, because more intelligent people will seek to be better informed. And now there is the internet there are fewer access barriers to this. (In my grandfather's day there was no library in the village, and few books in the house. Now we carry the key to pretty much the whole world's learning in our pockets.) So the difference becomes the extent to which individuals make use of what's available. And as Linda Gottfredson showed, that depends to a great extent on g IQ.

Paul, seeking to be informed is perhaps, or should be.

The claim that humans have started reposing greater and greater faith on dogmas, religious rituals,etc is certainly true. I think that ironically it is the information overdose that has brought it about. The human mind can handle only so much of information beyond which it goes blank. All this knowledge has not resulted in certainties but in the dissolution of them, breeding a radical scepticism which man cannot live with for long.

Contradictory, but I know what you mean. But might it not simply be the present Moslem diaspora?

Interesting question. I find the views of Prof. Kirk very fascinating

Sorry, Nazir-but I hope you understand what I meant? That is an impression of greater religiosity because of the greater number of Moslems moving into Europe, which had been secularised.

Just 10,000 years ago humans began to gather in agricultural civilisations and build permanent structures. These people were just as human as us today, yet, if anyone took the above argument seriously, they would not recognisse our recent ancestors as in the 'human class of intelligence'. Worse still, since that time, average human brain size has shrunk. Some explain this as our need for individual intelligence being lowered by the advent of agriculture, the intelligence of the group as a whole thereafter becoming more important to their survival. The point is we underwent a unique transformation after which our accumulative intelligence became uncoupled from that of the individual. Species whose niche prevents them from attaining critical population densities (eg because they are very large animals or because they are carnivores) could never undergo this transformation, no matter how clever.

Can we say that “other animals don't pollute therefore they are smarter than humans”?

In just the same way as we have a collective intelligence that is no reflection of individual ability, so too do we have a sort of collective stupidity that is beyond our control. For the logicians amoung you who are curious as to the mechanisms that explain such a paradox, two of them are the prisoner's dilemma and the tragedy of the commons.

Now comes the big one. Is it true that “because there is no universally recognised definition of intelligence there is no way to measure it, so we can never say if another animal is as intelligent as us.”?

This is exactly the same situation that we have for intraspecific comparison among humans, yet IQ is widely used to predict cognitive performance. The answer to how we can have such a highly predictive measure as IQ, yet no universal definition of intelligence comes from a very important statistical trait. Every single facet of human intelligence (say, your ability at music) is positively correlated with every other (such as your ability at maths or language). Furthermore, such very different fields of intelligence covary in such a way as to suggest that much of that connection is due to their association with a universal factor, rather than due to clusters of ability. Thus, from empirical observation, arises the concept of the general intelligence factor, referred to as 'g' by psychometricians. The relevant question is whether such a universal intelligence factor manifests interspecifically also. Unfortunately, the only group that we have enough data to test this to date is the nonhuman primates. In 2006 Deaner et al, found that it was. This was confirmed with a completely different methodology, dataset, and environment by Reader et al 2011.

So, “can we measure human intelligence in the same way that we measure the intelligence of other animals?”

This is yet another of those questions in which any simple answer will mislead. Was it not for a couple of problems, we could say that any test of human intelligence that did not involve our unique abilities, (such as our extreme dexterity or language) could be equally applied to other animals. Those further problems are

If we could sort all those problems out then we could answers the OPs question properly. Allow me the liberty to attempt that anyway (though we may not have the proper tools to do so for another decade).

regards

Great piece of work.

I had heard before of the possibility of brain shrinkage, but we now have a concept of micro-brains based on the evidence of cleverness in birds, particularly the Crow family. Neanderthals certainly had larger brains than us, but whether that created positive difference in terms of intelligence we cannot know. I see no reason why they couldn't have been more intelligent than us-

We now know we have been around far longer then we imagined. Perhaps, as long as 500,000 years, so in fact we are an old species. Recent evidence came to light of human art about 320, 000 years ago. So, 50,000 may be too recent in the evolutionary apex.

Evidence based:

-heard on the public transport of London, before Covid19 stroke. The female voice had a lovely American accent:

"Oh look Jim, that's the moooon. Is it the same moon as we have back home?"

This is supporting the flat earth belief.

Claim 1 : Every country starts having their own moon.

Claim 2: Viruses have citizenships.

By the way, did you know that the Spanish flu had a father virus from China, and became deadly in America?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

I would not say "the American virus", but it was strong, big, bold, and killed 17 million people.

Since WW1 killed only about 20 million people, you could say the evil little stuff was proportionally more intelligent than the human evil driving the world into WW1.

REF

https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/war_profiteers

Excuse me for not going through all the posts, but my answer is that I have an even more terrifying question: What if we are getting smarter, i.e. what if the previous generations were on average even more stupid than we are? Actually, given the higher literacy rates (access to education improves on average the working of a brain) and better life conditions (malnutrition and exposure may limit mental development), it's more probable that this is the smartest era of humanity. And, yes, it makes you wondering how we even make it so far...

I‘d like to throw something into the mix that nobody has mentioned and everyone has forgotten.

Families used to have one person working while the other person spent time raising the children. They used to have grandparents pour a wealth of knowledge into their children and help take care of them.

Now hyper-capitalism has taken over in the USA and both parents are forced to work full schedules (and some more) in order to pay rent rates which have skyrocketed. Grandparents have been voluntarily locked up in senior facilities on 10 different medications with no access to salt, wine, and different foods with various flavors and other essential nutrients to continue allowing their bodies to repair themselves.

For this reason, children are stuck at home forced to raise themselves.

In France, it is illegal to work more than 35 hours per week. In France, 13 year old children have intense discussions about deep topics while in the USA many adolescents cannot have these same conversations until they reach their 30s. They are rushed out of a dysfunctional hyper-capitalistic household (where there parents are not ever there for them) into getting a job at 16 and being pushed into a a dog-eats-dog world to start the cycle over again.

I believe that even though our society might be getting more book smart, it is losing wisdom through experience which is usually passed down through generations.

I used to strongly believe that the solution was to mandate all students of a US university to study abroad (with exemptions in place for those who couldn’t) in order for our children to be able to see life from another perspective.

Please provide some input on these thoughts. Thank you

We need to deal with more stimuli than previous generations, we live longer and probably have higher incidences of alzeimers than previous generations. Our brains are constantly buffeted by medical drugs, which may cause the alzeimers, and recreational drugs. Do we now require fitter brains as we once needed fitter bodies?

I don't think that we are becoming more stupid, we understand now the world much better than any time before, but with every discovery and every new invention really fast we are becoming more ignorant because we can't handle all our discoveries and adapt at this speed. You can imagine a tree, we are that tree and we are growing and growing but the more branches we grow and the more higher we go, we become easier to break and it becomes harder to adapt.

Renaud,

Millions of soldiers were wiped out in WW1. Young men , some of whom were the best of their generation. A generation died in WW2. Did their genes fade with them? What about those killed by Stalin, many top thinkers were amongst his victims? What about those culled by the Nazi? Would all this not have affected the level of ability now?

Its hard to look around and not believe we are getting more dumb.

The Kardashians and influence culture is the most desirable thing of our generation. OnlyFans is something young girls can’t wait until they turn 18 to open their own accounts - they are actually wanting to do this.

The whole 2016 US elections. Cambridge analytica. The climate deniers. the COVID deniers. Anti-vaxxers.

Capitalism has a lot to answer for - because some people were able to make it to the top and the rest think it’s unfair so find nefarious ways to explain it other than capitalism and just fall down the rabbit hole of conspiracies as a way to feel powerful.

Flat Earth! I met one of those in real life and he didn’t understand basic physics (and he also happened to be anti-COVID).

This shows that these people have been failed by the education system with a lack of critical thinking and science literacy. Conspiracy beliefs are also linked to anxiety and depression and most people today are suffering with a form of anxiety or depression DUE TO CAPITALISM. So in a way, it might not even be that they are stupid, but that they’d rather live in a fantasy that helps they to feel like they are the ones in control, and gives them a sense (although false) of power. This bubble they have to protect with everything they have because otherwise they’d have to face the reality of how shot their life is. And how shit life is objectively: covid is scary, climate change is scary and we rely on each other to solve it.

I think celebrity culture all has a part to play too people putting more emphasis on their appear than on their brains. I do feel like in 10 years time there will be a shortage of doctors/lawyers/teachers because everyone is too busy being a TicTok star - or what ever it will be then.

Who can blame them? If it is free to just download an app and get paid $$$$$$ for taking photos of yourself in lingerie, or making a dumb video about eating TidePods, why would the majority want to actually WORK and use their brains and hard work when it’s easier to not do that and promises a future of megabucks ?

There is a war on academics and smart people in favor of dumb people with platforms on social media.

Arturo is right in that more people express their views because of modern media, but honestly many responses here do not inspire confidence (by here, I mean RG). I was in an almost 2 year intense dialogue over the present war, and Tucker Carlson was used as a point of argument.

For me I witnessed a failure of intelligence on a site that should have headed the way on matters of informed contributions. Also, many scientists came off badly, and posted views that a fifteen year old would have been embarrassed to express.

Kerri good ideas, but I hate to see capitalism arraigned for everything. Trade was in the past an important aspect of communication and acquiring knowledge. Communism proved far worse where suppressing thought, structuring knowledge politically. Worse surely than fascism in this regard? Ideologies function for an elite not to aid the general population.

There was a Russian Jewish writer (name has left me) in the 2nd World War and after who wrote what should of been the most brilliant books of his era, but one that was 'mashed' taking out most of its qualities. One of the Russian writers who helped to do this, to prevent its publication, was a writer of Russian adventure stories that influenced Putin. Gung Ho and nationalistic. It made Putin want to join the KGB. In capitalist societies because of the way they function whereby quality attracts money, or is an accepted means of doing so long term, and where independence of thought is considered worthwhile, such a writer would have been critiqued, attacked and kept out of the constructing of ideologies. Putin would have remained in the Secret Service and lived his life in a continually lacklustre career and died unremarked and unremembered.

Capitalism has indeed badly affected societies but ideological societal positions are far, far worse. And don't get me on religion....

I would say dismissing all "conspiracy theories" and falling into prevailing groupthink and naivete is a collapse of individual intelligence, which can and has created great harm.

Karl,

Being devious, a characteristic that conspiracy theories are based on, consumes individual and institutional energy. You know as well as I do that ideas of individual intelligence are as suspect as group intelligence, but in the end decisions do not need to be based on the construction of facts and motivation but on action and reviews of action. But why conspiracies anyway as religions, as merely one example, have views of the world that are often self-serving and as they do not serve others, we regard them as conspiracies.

Lets take the last bit further. The Pope and Russian Patriarchs views of the world coincide but not as a consequence of the beliefs they equally avow but an understanding of the preservation of power in the world they share, so by looking for a meeting of ethics where there is none we often fail to see their support for power over other group dynamics.

Comic Relief: Regarding the general matter of evolving stupidity, readers might enjoy the amusing 2006 comedic movie Idiocracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy

Karl,

I tried the connection you advised but it comes with many warnings, too many to ignore. I will at other ways though to view it.

Nevertheless, the stupidity evinced by ordinary Russians, indeed a number on here too, has been shocking and clearly convinces me of the cultural and environmental impact on intelligence, or what we imagine intelligence to be. And that may be the point, What we imagine it to be. What we believe it to be. Collective belief systems encourage the acceptance of a variety of ideas, many of which can be checked out easily.

Early human beings developed perception according to their environments and were intelligent within the scope of their environments, but in fact their practices were no or little different to the predators around them. Or different in that they fashioned the weapons the predators possessed naturally thereby not encouraging the latter to bother. I suspect the predation rate on early human beings was high and that although they may have possessed the equipment, suitable brains, they could not access the brain's potential to any great extent-if intelligence prevented predation,

While I take Stanley Wilkins' point, I think in making judgements we must be careful not to confuse ignorance (i.e. not knowing) with stupidity (making poor use of the information, or simply not thinking before 'shooting from the hip' on social media). In the case of Russia that has been mentioned, the problem may be simply of ignorance because of poor access to objective information, as a result of state influences on what information is available. If they are inclined to believe what they see on state-controlled TV, then they will never read challenges to the state-held view, and be able to make any kind of balanced judgement. They will then make statements that we in the better-informed (but not necessarily more intelligent) Western world can see are patently wrong.

In the case of early people, I think it was Jared Diamond who said that he thought that present-day hunter-gatherers who had been studied needed to be more intelligent than we did, simply in order to survive. There are many more lethal hazards in their environments, and if they're not intelligent, they will die quickly. Whereas we are protected from our environments and their hazards by society, deliberately so, and so don't have to think for ourselves so much before doing stupid things. So it's a multi-faceted question – which is what makes it so interesting!

Paul Syms,

actually I was attempting to look at the nature of intelligence and our perception of it. For some, ignorance can be considered lack of intelligence as critical faculties are part of this and lacking them sufficiently to even explore on the slightest level may be, for some, lack of intelligence. Is believing what you are told really evidence for intelligence, and what is ignorance? Surely, not seeking proof is evidence of a 'lack'? I am not saying they are or are not, nor beyond the nature of this question do I care, but a Russian woman living in Germany angry with responses to Russia and Russians in Europe returned to Russia and after a month put remarks on her YouTube site claiming she'd made a mistake and being of even average intelligence in Putin's Russia would cause you problems. Now this is not an attack but looking for reasons for the 'failure of intelligence as a series of characteristics' in the Russia of the present. Does this emphasis the social, environmental and cultural nature of intelligence characteristics? Thousands

of soldiers going to their deaths for the sake of the survival of one seems intensely banal, surely? But why?

Ukrainians who live in a more individualistic culture are regarded as intelligent actors by contrast. Does living in collectives dim intelligent decision making?

Interestingly, I had a discussion with a nice lady who runs a cafe in Tomar, Portugal, but who also happens to be a philosophy graduate who responded to elements of our conversation by claiming that most people do not ask the questions, let alone have an interest in the answers. In line with my two other points here. Is intelligence the same for all or does it rely on other concerns, environment perhaps? Where I live in Portugal the trains are not synchronised with the buses as they tended to be in London, so I might have to wait an hour for the bus to my destination. Does this show (God forbid) less intelligence or a different reliance on synchronised repetitive time? The Portuguese are more laid back perhaps?

Paul, my point about hunters intelligence was more in line with it not being much greater, by the evidence we have, than the predators who nourished themselves on our ancestors. Again, it was meant as a spur to understanding the nature of intelligence and how it is expressed. While Diamond is correct in some ways, in fact he made that point about hunter gatherers in New Guinea in the present, the advances in technology might require greater intelligence, or a kind of intelligence.

In the UK fifty years ago, working class children rarely went on to Universities. One reason is schools holding such children back. Families believing working class children did not go to university and so held their children back. Middle class professional classes with prejudicial concepts of the working class.

But another reason is that writing essays in certain ways was then attributed to, and part of the upbringing of the middle class. Working class children learnt or did not learn the processes of writing essays or passing exams which were second nature to middleclass children. When different means of social climbing appeared, music, writing, technology, working class children soared. So class and environment defined intelligence!

Working class children were not unintelligent but tools of intelligent display changed!