Human Intelligence:

[speeder]

I found this article interesting and I mostly agree with it. Discuss if you want:

https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2023/09/right-now-smart-humans

[GH85Carrera]

I figured out long ago, intelligence comes in different forms.

We have all met some "book smart" college educated people than could never change the spark plug on their lawn mower. My brother can take apart and fix about any all mechanical item from a fork lift to a mini bike. Rebuild engines, and make it like new or better, same with woodwork as he worked as a trim carpenter for years at a mill work.

Hand him a computer and he is lost. He is an analog man.

IQ tests have been the test for intelligence for years. Now there are lawsuits that say the math part of the test is racist because Asians and white people do better than some races. For math!

Numbers are the same for everyone. I always hated math. Way back in the stone ages when I was in school, the first day of Algebra class the teacher gave us a pop quiz on algebra to test our base knowledge before any teaching. When she called out the name of the top score she said Glen. Honestly I looked around for the other kid named Glen, but it was me. It was pure logic to figure out what X was. It was really easy for me and some in class thought it was impossible.

[john walker's workshop]

I got an A in 9th grade algebra, never used it again. It was just like figuring out a puzzle, mostly common sense.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by john walker's workshop

I got an A in 9th grade algebra, never used it again. It was just like figuring out a puzzle, mostly common sense.

Yep, but to some people, it a total mystery.

No doubt you have lots of stories of customers having a Porsche towed in to your shop, and it was a simple 2 minute diagnostic and fix.

[herr_oberst]

[speeder]

Everyone knows that some people have more mechanical aptitude than others. That's not what the article is about. Did any of you read it?

[McLovin]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Yep, but to some people, it a total mystery.

Just like to some people reading and comprehending a sentence or paragraph is a mystery.
As is writing a coherent sentence.
Or balancing a checkbook.
Or figuring out to come in out of the rain to not get wet.
We used to have a name for those kinds of people.

[911 Rod]

"cultural brain"
Thanks for posting this.
Sort of explains how schooling works. Sharing knowledge.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by speeder

Everyone knows that some people have more mechanical aptitude than others. That's not what the article is about. Did any of you read it?

You say that but the point of the article is that we are intelligent because there are more of us sharing. And on and on. Aptitude or not, influence is what is at play here. So maybe I don't even know what a spark plug is or does, if I see you unscrew it with a tool then I will too.

Crows can do that. We call them intelligent. I don't necessarily agree with the article but from an evolutionary standpoint it is indisputable.

OTOH, IQ tests deal with abstract. How is our shorter colon because of cooked food for millions of years abstract?

[oldE]

The article was a bit of a broad statement. Yes of course things advance faster if there is a sharing of ideas and knowledge. As Milt pointed out of, crows do it, as do wolves and many other predators. Anyone foolish enough to hold on to the idea that non-white races struggle with math would benefit by aquainting themselves with NACA and NASA.'s history.
I sometimes feel one of the underlying reasons many of us are here on Pelican is the exposure to experiences and ideas that rock through this site each day. For many years we have spoken about the "Pelican brain trust ". It is real and might stand as an example of support for the article linked by the OP.

Best
Les

[Bill Douglas]

I had a GF who thought she was ever so smart. Multiple uni degrees etc. She could quote anything she had ever been told but couldn't think of anything herself.

This image immediately comes to mind.

[Tobra]

Did any of you read it?

Did you, what do you think it is about?

[speeder]

I thought that the article was very good and said several things, none of them contradictory. One of my favorite paragraphs was this:

One of several corollaries to the cultural brain hypothesis is that larger, more interconnected populations amass cumulative cultural know-how at a faster rate. Evidence for this idea is abundant. Henrich cites studies of traditional tool technology in Polynesia and Oceania, which have found that larger, more populous islands (those with a bigger collective brain) had more sophisticated tools for marine foraging and fishing. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, when the government simplified the postal system in 1840 so that anyone could mail a letter for a penny, “There was a spike in innovation, because a lot more letters were zooming around.” In the early 20th century in the United States, IQ scores in rural towns “increased dramatically” whenever investment in schools, roads, and railroads connected these communities to the larger national “cultural brain.” Prohibition provides a counterexample: the shuttering of saloons led to a drop in innovation. That discovery was “non-intuitive,” Henrich notes, because one might expect that people would be “cognitively healthier without alcohol. But people were swapping ideas” and conceiving new ones in the saloons, leading to “a lot of innovation.”

The place where this theory hits the wall is with the advent of the internet, where in theory, everyone on earth has access to all information at the click of a mouse. The problem is that the web created communities within the larger community of country or town where people with similar pre-formed ideas were able to reinforce each other, no matter how factually challenged or ignorant those ideas might be. A large portion of the world actually got dumber watching cable news and sharing their crazy ideas online. It was a hotbed for bigotry and conspiracy theories that persist to this day. No one seems to seek out verification or contrary opinion to their pre-formed ideas, regardless of which end of the political spectrum they land on.

It's like the old joke; "I have a device in my pocket with all of the accumulated knowledge in the history of the world on it and I use it to watch cat videos and argue with strangers."

[Bob Kontak]

I read somewhere the expansion of the human brain came from less need to have brutal teeth and jaw strength which lessened the muscle squeeze on the skull.

I don't remember the basis.

So does more brain mean higher functioning or does higher functioning trigger brain growth in a skull that can get bigger?

Originally Posted by McLovin

Just like to some people reading and comprehending a sentence or paragraph is a mystery.

Not if they take lessons.

[herr_oberst]

Originally Posted by speeder

The place where this theory hits the wall is with the advent of the internet, where in theory, everyone on earth has access to all information at the click of a mouse. The problem is that the web created communities within the larger community of country or town where people with similar pre-formed ideas were able to reinforce each other, no matter how factually challenged or ignorant those ideas might be.

The internet is very much a nascent technology, with the smartphone as it's primary portal.
Who's to say that in the future humans won't get beyond the hit of dopamine that currently drives the need to seek these 'like communities', and find a compelling and satisfying reason to harness the collective intelligence of billions of people possessing all manner of strength and weakness, and evolve that awesome power into a single collective undertaking doing unimaginable things.

[GH85Carrera]

One of my friends was discussing his teenage daughter, and he obsessive texting. She would stay up almost all night texting fiends, and then fall asleep in school.

He made her plug her phone into a charger in the kitchen thinking that would stop it. She had the entire community brain of other teenagers to help her figure out to pop out the sim card, and to put it in her old phone to keep texting.

He finally realized he was up against the brain trust of teenagers.

Most of us have taped the brain trust of Pelican OT, I sure have many times.

[Baz]

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by speeder

I thought that the article was very good and said several things, none of them contradictory. One of my favorite paragraphs was this:

One of several corollaries to the cultural brain hypothesis is that larger, more interconnected populations amass cumulative cultural know-how at a faster rate. Evidence for this idea is abundant. Henrich cites studies of traditional tool technology in Polynesia and Oceania, which have found that larger, more populous islands (those with a bigger collective brain) had more sophisticated tools for marine foraging and fishing. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, when the government simplified the postal system in 1840 so that anyone could mail a letter for a penny, “There was a spike in innovation, because a lot more letters were zooming around.” In the early 20th century in the United States, IQ scores in rural towns “increased dramatically” whenever investment in schools, roads, and railroads connected these communities to the larger national “cultural brain.” Prohibition provides a counterexample: the shuttering of saloons led to a drop in innovation. That discovery was “non-intuitive,” Henrich notes, because one might expect that people would be “cognitively healthier without alcohol. But people were swapping ideas” and conceiving new ones in the saloons, leading to “a lot of innovation.”

The place where this theory hits the wall is with the advent of the internet, where in theory, everyone on earth has access to all information at the click of a mouse. The problem is that the web created communities within the larger community of country or town where people with similar pre-formed ideas were able to reinforce each other, no matter how factually challenged or ignorant those ideas might be. A large portion of the world actually got dumber watching cable news and sharing their crazy ideas online. It was a hotbed for bigotry and conspiracy theories that persist to this day. No one seems to seek out verification or contrary opinion to their pre-formed ideas, regardless of which end of the political spectrum they land on.

It's like the old joke; "I have a device in my pocket with all of the accumulated knowledge in the history of the world on it and I use it to watch cat videos and argue with strangers."

I guess I should get an honorary Ph.D. from Harvard, they are just down the street so that would make it easy. A brief synopsis of what I have posted here 10-15 years ago, and on a regular basis. Have about 20 pages more of notes that someday I'll put together into a proper thesis:

Stupid people are one of the greatest threats the U.S. faces today. Back when we were young, stupid people were harmless. Generally, they kept themselves and had zero impact on society and culture.

The Internet changed that. The effect of the web, specifically online forums and social media in general, allows stupid people to have a voice, one with near unlimited volume. And they can build communities of like-minded stupid people that self-reinforce stupidity through conspiracy theory mythology, pretty much the same as early Man creating myths to explain things they didn't understand like the sun rising every day. Their "facts" are authenticated by sheer volume alone.

The Web as welfare for stupid people applies in the same way a government handout does for lazy people. It makes you feel intelligent and your opinion valued without ever having to do the work/research/reading to earn those qualities. In the process, truth is marginalized in favor of artificial self-esteem, so you have a positive reinforcement for negative qualities.

Opinion media has turbocharged this effect exploiting stupid people for massive profits. Talking heads create entire soap opera style narratives and storylines that allow stupid people to be part of a distinct Us vs. Them community and culture. It mixes reality TV with soap opera with news creating a groupthink culture where like-minded people fit in and feel comfortable in their echo chamber. It's more participatory, which is really a key attribute, than as portrayed in the movie Idiocracy relying on a continuous cycle of peer reinforcement that makes a group think it is one thing (intelligent with a significant depth and breadth of knowledge matched with critical thinking abilities) that it clearly is not.

[Jeff Higgins]

I can't believe that article passed muster at Harvard. Er, uh, wait... I guess I can...

Mr. Shaw conflates intelligence with knowledge. The two are most emphatically not the same thing, although the more of the former one possesses, the more of the latter one can accumulate.

The examples he cites (increased correspondence via cheap postage in the U.K., rising I.Q. scores in rural America through increased connectivity, drop in innovation during Prohibition) are absolutely no reflection on increased (or decreased) intelligence. They merely represent a greater spread of knowledge (or a decreased spread in the Prohibition example).

The rising I.Q. scores in the example cited bear further comment. At the time in question, I.Q. tests were notoriously terrible, measuring one's knowledge of cultural norms and standard practices more so than intelligence. In other words, they tested knowledge, rather than intelligence. Modern day I.Q. tests have been developed to largely surmount these deficiencies.

His analysis of European explorers inability to find food in strange lands, where the aboriginals had no problem, is similarly flawed. The aboriginals' abilities were based upon local knowledge, and the Europeans' failures were due to their lack thereof. Intelligence played no role.

Very, very disappointing article. I guess "smart" can be "intelligent" or "knowledgeable", but please, let's not confuse the two. Knowledge is learned information. Intelligence is the ability to learn. Related, but two different things entirely.

[Zeke]

You guys just explained the American political situation perfectly.