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Are humans getting smarter?

willow11 said:
Smarter then past humans, yes. I guess the question is: is there a reason why intelligence (perhaps intelligence as an increased capacity for comprehension of complexity) would increase? Is there a selective pressure which pushes towards greater intelligence? Is the state of our current civilisation/s evidence of increased intelligence?
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First of all, yes, I believe humans are getting smarter. It's for two reasons. First of all, our primary evolutionary advantage that we've been pursuing since we discovered fire and began to be able to consume higher levels of protein/nutrition is our brain development. Without our brains, we would not be the successful species we are.

I think it's transformed, however, into more of a culturally-motivated evolutionary process. The fact that we don't have to spend all of our time surviving anymore plays a big role. With the advent of structured society which allows our basic needs to be met more easily, we have more time to dedicate our energy to thought. This exercises our brains and allows us to generate and practice more complex ideas, which we pass on to our offspring. A human living a physically challenging life of survival may have the same capacity for higher intelligence, but they may not ever fully develop that because it's not advantageous to their survival beyond functional intelligence. We have the ability to pursue higher tiers of intelligence because we're not fearing our death daily and scrabbling to have enough food to eat (well some people certainly are but that used to be the way humans lived, like the other animals).

Additionally, with the advent of the Internet, we have a much larger and more constant stream of information available to and coming to us. IMO, this serves to increase our ability to multi-task and take in and retain information. Over time this should lead to an increased innate ability to do these things. It used to be, if you wanted to learn something, you had to go to the library and research. But now you can google it and instantly gain new information. When my friends and I are having discussions, and we realize we don't know something, we do just that, and now we know something we didn't before. Given we have been intelligent for a long time, and given the newness of this new ability we have through the Internet, it seems to me that there is going to be a relatively rapid (evolutionarily speaking) increase in innate intelligence or at least processing power we will see in the near and long future.

This is a cultural force of evolution, but at this point, humans mainly evolve due to culture. Culture is our power as a species.
 
I'd forgotten about "the sexy son" hypothesis. That is quite well known. It's supposed to influence female's attraction to men, they want someone strong who can give them sexy sons (I think it's more about power than physical attractiveness, as woman go for that more, or look for a protector-type in a dangerous world).

My aunt certainly had a preference for her (sexy) son (who ended up in a bad way, he's dead now), and didn't care much for the daughter in comparison. Then again I think people tend to prefer their children of the opposite sex, the father likes the daughter, and the mother likes the son, because of the element of romantic love between them.

While my dad had 3 daughters, with a preference for me for many reasons - I was the first, the one who loved him the most, the one most like him, etc. Although my sisters haven't caused him any problems in comparison, but I think he likes it or likes feeling needed, it's almost as if I never grew up. I guess I'm the great love of his life, but we have a pretty strained relationship.

There's also no man who have come close to the love I had for my father in the first years of my life. I guess we are all trying to recapture that, with disappointing results, as no one can be for us what the parent of the opposite sex was.

Although my sister has given him grandchildren, who he loves, but the relationship between them was always more chilly as she wasn't as easily affectionate as I was.
 
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As a father I can assure you I have no desire to fuck either of my children.

I love my daughter for her fierce killer instinct and weapon skills, while my son makes me laugh and constantly amazes me with his wit.
 
.....

That's not what I was referring to - there's just an element of romantic love between children and parents of the opposite sex.
 
You don't get it - it's generally acknowledged that mothers prefer their sons and fathers their daughters. Not because of a literal romantic form of love between them. But the parent-child love, going both ways, might feel a more special kind of love with the child/parent of the opposite sex.

I remember having feelings of being in love with my father in early childhood, for instance, and I think boys also go through those feelings. Every little boy is in love with his mother, right.

Before we hit puberty and it all changes. Nothing sick about those first innocent childhood feelings.
 
Ninae said:
You don't get it - it's generally acknowledged that mothers prefer their sons and fathers their daughters. Not because of a literal romantic form of love between them. But the parent-child love, going both ways, might feel a more special kind of love with the child/parent of the opposite sex.

I remember having feelings of being in love with my father in early childhood, for instance, and I think boys also go through those feelings. Every little boy is in love with his mother, right.

Before we hit puberty and it all changes. Nothing sick about those first innocent childhood feelings.
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you have gotta be outta your fucking mind to state a psychodynamic theory as fact. Especially one by freud.


in the case that you never actually looked up claims which defeat this theory i suggest you do so.
 
My little sister went through a stage when she was like 2 where she got jealous of my mom and started calling my dad by his first name and saying she was going to marry him when she grew up. It was cute. :)
 
^Ha, that is cute Xorkoth :D

Ninae said:
Nothing sick about those first innocent childhood feelings.
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Nothing wrong at all, but I don't think its correct to call it romantic. I think its almost like the relationship humans develop with their gods. A child see's the parent as the source of all things, of comfort, food, safety, discipline, anger, control, etc. The parent controls all aspects of a childs life; from them, all things come. I think that as we grow up we see that our parents are, indeed, fallible and we begin to see them as humans.
 
Xorkoth said:
First of all, yes, I believe humans are getting smarter. It's for two reasons. First of all, our primary evolutionary advantage that we've been pursuing since we discovered fire and began to be able to consume higher levels of protein/nutrition is our brain development. Without our brains, we would not be the successful species we are.

I think it's transformed, however, into more of a culturally-motivated evolutionary process. The fact that we don't have to spend all of our time surviving anymore plays a big role. With the advent of structured society which allows our basic needs to be met more easily, we have more time to dedicate our energy to thought. This exercises our brains and allows us to generate and practice more complex ideas, which we pass on to our offspring. A human living a physically challenging life of survival may have the same capacity for higher intelligence, but they may not ever fully develop that because it's not advantageous to their survival beyond functional intelligence. We have the ability to pursue higher tiers of intelligence because we're not fearing our death daily and scrabbling to have enough food to eat (well some people certainly are but that used to be the way humans lived, like the other animals).

Additionally, with the advent of the Internet, we have a much larger and more constant stream of information available to and coming to us. IMO, this serves to increase our ability to multi-task and take in and retain information. Over time this should lead to an increased innate ability to do these things. It used to be, if you wanted to learn something, you had to go to the library and research. But now you can google it and instantly gain new information. When my friends and I are having discussions, and we realize we don't know something, we do just that, and now we know something we didn't before. Given we have been intelligent for a long time, and given the newness of this new ability we have through the Internet, it seems to me that there is going to be a relatively rapid (evolutionarily speaking) increase in innate intelligence or at least processing power we will see in the near and long future.

This is a cultural force of evolution, but at this point, humans mainly evolve due to culture. Culture is our power as a species.
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+ 1
 
I don't know if humans are getting smarter. But there seems to be a higher surge in people interested in more complex topics and philosophies. People are questioning the status quo more than ever before.
I was talking with someone before, and they mentioned this was because of the change in ages. Going from The Age of Pieces to The Age of Aquarius. Each Astrological age lasts about 2,150 years.
The reason why I wouldn't say "smarter" is because I would define it as we're growing with a positive intellectual development which we've always had. But because of spiritual and astrological reasons,
It seems like we're getting smarter. It's just that our bodies, through connected consciousness, are wanting to question and learn many things.
 
How can we be sure whether our advances in science and technology are a result of us being more intelligent than we used to be, rather than simply having more available information than we've ever had before.

I remember one cringe worthy video I saw where the AmazingAthiest claimed to be smarter than Thomas Aquinas. Not factoring in the fact that he had more access to information and knowledge that flat out didn't exist back then. Being more knowledgeable isn't the same as being more intelligent. For all we know, there could have been cavemen who were smarter than all of us, but simply lived before modern science.

Are you smarter than Descartes? you probably know more about science than he ever did. But do you think you could have invented the carteisian plane if you lived in the 17th century? What about Pythagoras? Could you have invented the Pythagorean theorem? Do you think you could have invented the wheel? Are you smarter than the Aztecs who build these south american pyramids simply because you have more knowledge available to you than they did?
 
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^^ That's a good point. But I still stand by my post, I think that the greater access to information is going to result in an increased ability to process information. This may not lead to greater wisdom, but it should lead to greater processing power.
 
But don't you think that the CPU's hardware will also advance over time, much like how a muscle builds when taxed? Or like how teeth and jaws will become stronger over generations when more tooth and jaw strength is required?
 
^ I tend to think the opposite. Why memorise shit when you can simply google it on your iPhone? Your taxing analogy does not work, because current technology makes our access to information less taxing than before.

Encoding is a central process to memory. If you can get an answer in 2 seconds with no little to no effort, and know you can again in future, I would argue that you are less likely to pay enough attention to encode the memory effectively.
 
Maybe some humans are getting smarter. Maybe computer programmes and technology are allowing an elite to get smarter. And maybe those just below the elite, those truly interested in learning and bettering their knowledge, have the ability to get smarter quicker than before.

However. In my experience working with the general student population I see far more evidence, overwhelmingly more evidence, to back up Drug Mentors second paragraph above re getting the answer quickly with no effort leading to not paying enough attention to encode the memory effectively.

And speaking for the UK, as teaching methods change, the ability to do basic arithmetic and spelling, both affected by calculators and spellcheckers, leads me to banging my head against a wall several times a day at pupils complete inability to do basic tasks that were expected of their much younger peers just a few years ago.
 
Xorkoth said:
But don't you think that the CPU's hardware will also advance over time, much like how a muscle builds when taxed? Or like how teeth and jaws will become stronger over generations when more tooth and jaw strength is required?
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The thing is, you don't need to understand technology to make use of it. I can use my computer and have no real idea why or how it operates. In a sense, reliance on technology could lead to atrophy of particular mental abilities. Comprehension becomes less important then 'working knowledge'.

More to the point, the proliferation of technology probably doesn't represent an evolutionary pressure to gain a skill or attribute. It could represent a form of pressure under which intelligence could potentially atrophy.
 
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