Personally, I blame cheerleaders.

Just think about what a different world we would live in right now if, in school, cheerleaders were focused on the academic achievements rather than the sports...

Go, Matheltetes, go!

http://avconline.avc.edu/jdisbrow/whymath.html

three more words to complete your sentence:

"no longer apply"
That stuff is all nurture, rather than nature

I would say that yes, absolutely, intelligence is a heritable trait. All too frequently, people conflate intelligence with education. Maybe there is a correlation, but not the same things. Is there a limited amount of "intelligence" to go around? No, certainly not. Is the percentage of the population that is not intelligent rising? It appears this is so.

It is supposed to take generations for the genetic lottery to cause significant changes to the species, that is why they use critters with short life cycles, like fruit flies, to study the subject. The upshot of this is, that Homo sapiens sapiens is probably not becoming a less intelligent species, it just seems that way, because stupid people are everywhere in ever increasing numbers and are ruining the world.


Yes, we are being overpopulated by stupid people.

Why is so much of the US population fat? Not because of genetics or there's only so much thinness available, but because we've got an abundance of resources and little need to be physically fit for our daily lives. While everyone can't be a pro athlete, the're nothing stopping them from being more fit than they are, but they don't need to be.

It's the same way with brains. Not everyone can be a genius, but people are as intelligent as they've ever been; we have just created a society where you can get by without using your brains very much, so people don't.

There are plenty of brainless occupations today.

But are there really more than in the 1950s, or 1920s, say? What were the prevalent low-end occupations then - manual agricultural labor, assembly-line manufacturing, small retail stores, etc? Were they so much more brain-taxing than today's low-end occupations? Did walking behind a ploughhorse for 10 hours and then coming home and turning on the radio require so much more smarts (however you define it) than standing behind a cash register for 10 hours and then coming home and turning on the TV? In 1920, 6% of the US population was unable to read or write, today the illiteracy rate is under 0.5%.

I think we're mostly a bunch of snobbish old geezers on the downhill side of our lives, and getting grumpy about it.

+1

And BTW, GET OFF MY LAWN!

that is certainly one factor - hard to say if it is worse now than a century or two ago - the US has always had a very "egalitarian" bent, that in some ways promotes anti-intellectualism

look at the way teachers are attacked here, as vs. the high regard for them in most Asian cultures; then look at who is growing...

BUT, one thing that has changed greatly since the 1950's and esp. the 1960s is the amount of toxins in the environment, many are organic pesticides, neurotoxins, growth hormone disruptors etc. etc.

then there is a huge increase in coal burning, which puts mercury into our air and food, and it is known to damage brain development in children

Interesting point, Randy. There has been a 91% increase in autism in kids in the past 7-8 years, and at least one study linked it to high fructose corn syrup which diminishes certain chemicals needed for brain development. Lots of food engineering may prove to have unintended consequences. It sure is starting to look that way.

Practically everything has unintended consequences.

Again, that is nurture, rather than nature.

The number of intelligent people is not increasing at the same rate as the number of unintelligent people

You conflate intelligence with education. One is something you are, the other is something you get. Overweight is something you get.

It is not the same.

Is it because life is more complacent? Push button remote lifestyle, twitterized communication, computers thinking for us including assisting our mobility or task of driving. The Jackass and reality shows can even draw the intellect, perhaps for just a short time and because they're bewildered that others exist like that.

Then consider the use of chemical's through foods, illegal, legal, recreational or other, and what we might have inherited.

Lastly and thanks to greedy lawyers, the government has become our nanny. I don't want to think anymore about it :)

I've often wondered about both of these things. I have no idea whether there are more "stupid people" now than at some other time. I haven't seen a reliable survey and I've never lived in any other era.

As for the intelligence/education question, I was a lazy student and only delved deeply into the few subjects that really interest me. My education is seriously lacking, even though I attended good schools including a Big-10 university, (dropped out about 1/2 way through). If I could somehow become more disciplined and learn a couple more languages plus some serious art knowledge, (history of different cultures, etc.), maybe some advanced business and economics and throw in a lot of world history---I'd sure feel a hell of a lot smarter!

As for inherited intelligence, I doubt that anyone could seriously dispute that it's a genetic trait. Still, it's not always a perfectly straight line from parents to children and of course anomalies occur. All the time. I have a brother that I've mentioned here before who is brilliant. My parents are both reasonably smart, advanced degrees and all, but in no way can his brain-power be explained as simply inherited from them. I think that he got some of my slice of the genetic pie, (hehehe), but he is simply a lot smarter than anyone else in a family of M.D.s, writers, lawyers, etc.

He also had an inordinate number of head injuries as a child, (I'm not making this up), something like 5 concussions including one really serious one. He was a very rough-and-tumble child. He was a phenomenal student and later scholar, he is extremely well-educated but does higher education make great students smarter? Sort of like a really talented athlete who practices swimming or throwing a football all their life makes them so much stronger and more coordinated? My brother could study anything, no matter how boring, in college and HS. I would just tune-out with ADD in 4 minutes and start drawing Corvettes or 442 convertibles back in grade school. My Dad once said that he could still describe the tree outside the window of his 4th grade classroom in minute detail. That's me.

Sorry for the wander...but it's an interesting subject. :cool:

^^^^ Woooow... 5 concussions including one really serious one and possibly genius. You hear these fascinating stories and it boggles the mind. http://forums.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/wat5.gif

Yeah. Not sure if it was 5, (long time ago), but it was definitely *several/multiple*, it was like a running joke for a while in our house. He had one really serious head injury at about 11 years old.

I only had one real *knocked-out cold concussion w/ vomiting afterwards* as a child, fell off a wall I was climbing and landed about 6 feet down. I was maybe 10 y.o. And I use that as my entire excuse for being a fool who argues with other morons on the internet. :)

Chronically stupid acts aren't punished in the way they have historically been. As a result, irresponsible people hang around longer and longer inflicting their will on the rest over and over. Success depends on recognition of this very thing and then ethically capitalizing on it...as well as teaching your kids the same. YMMV.

everything above is incorrect

1. nurture vs. nature is a dead debate and not even the right question to ask, as we know that these factors cannot be separated in any such fashion - genes show different expressions in different environments for one thing; generally, genes will code for very broad tendencies, not specific behaviors (esp. in mammals)

2. no data supports this assertion

3. this mistakes "intelligence" as a unitary characteristic ("something you are") - again, read Gould's book for a thorough debunking of this concept

a better conception of "intelligence" within humans is as a multi-factorial system, and one where high values in certain areas are correlated with low values in others

modern studies show heritability to be much lower than claimed earlier -- this has been a problem in the 1800's and much of the 20th century - even as late as the silliness of Shockley et al.

That tome does a very good job of not only explaining this subject, but documenting the findings.

it is a very controversial work because of the conclusions it draws (from exhaustive long term study).

Mind you it required significant commitment to reading and absorbing the data, however the conclusions are fairly self evident even by the casual observer in society.

Liberals and socialists freak out when confronted with the data and the mere mention of that title will cause the parasite class to scorn said reader.:eek:

From the Wikipedia entry on "The Bell Curve":

"The book argued the average genetic IQ of the United States is declining due to the tendency of the more intelligent to have fewer children than the less intelligent, for the generation length to be shorter for the less intelligent, and through the large scale immigration to the United States of those with low intelligence. The United States will become increasingly like Latin America, with high IQ whites and Asians living in fortified enclaves protected by high fences and armed guards from "the menace of the slums" below."

try reading things by scientists working in this field instead of that gibberish

Why don't you refute it then with some of your remarkable intelligence instead of the same old liberal bias. I duly note the writers of the book both have PHD behind their name. I duly note you seem to have BS behind most everything you post.