Is The World Progressively Getting Dumber?

Technology can even make a dunce cap look progressive

In our disposable world of high technology getting ever cheaper year by year, we feel a lot smarter than our forebears ever did. We have access to greater tools and more information in less time. I was just reading a June 1969 issue of LIFE magazine and an entrepreneur was talking about creating terminals that would allow you to ask any question and get the answer back on your screen, all ready to go by 1975. It took a lot longer than 1975 to get there, but now that we’ve arrived, all of can gloat at the 1969ers or 1975ers for how primitive and uneducated they were.

Scientists can back that belief up to some degree, with what is known as the Flynn effect. It has been observed that scores on IQ tests throughout the world have been going up continuously over time. Ulric Neisser, author of The Rising Curve: Long-Term gains in IQ and Related Measures, says that relative to the average IQ levels of today (100), the average IQ level of the United States in 1932 was only 80.

Cultural factors aren’t the reason. The IQ improvements are noted with infants and preschoolers at equal rates to older students and adults who’ve already had plenty of time to become acculturated. Perhaps nutrition and a change in cranial vault size lead to the improvements, yielding the IQ boost at the very youngest ages which is then maintained throughout the person’s lifetime. More stimulating environments and better schooling help, too. Even terrible schools of today would’ve had to benefit from more advanced learning materials and techniques compared with terrible schools of the past.

[Click the picture to read the rest of this superb article]

Related posts:

1. Finding The Point In An Increasingly Pointless World
2. Friendships In The Post Internet World