Human Intelligence Sharply Declining
No, it's not just you — people really are, per a number of surveys, way less intelligent than they used to be.
I wonder if you could analyze internet discussions for an effect.
What does Chat Gpt say about this?
I can't help but think how much science fiction had stories where a civilization created machines to make their lives easier until there was no one left who knew how the machines worked or anyone who could fix them.
Those stories always seemed so far away yet here we are at the beginning with LLMs and machine learning.
Honestly, I don’t think it is that surprising. Sadly.
Tech companies hire psychologists to behavior modify us to be engagement zombies. That alone must have done a number on intelligence.
One, we’ve off loaded much of our critical thinking and researching skills to Google et al. This will only get worse as we develop stronger AI assistants that perform a majority of the “thinking” tasks. Technology frees the mind in some ways and reduces the need for certain functions. I read an article probably 10 years ago about how Japanese struggle to write because cell phones and computers have taken over much of that skill.
To be fair, the idea that writing has to be this perfect penmanship that will be readable in 1000 years is silly. Write things down in a good enough style for the task at hand.
Microplastic brain
It's not, it's not having to do the math or the remembering. The brain is a muscle, when you have your phone doing all the hard work it doesn't need to be as buff. LLMs will worsen this problem even more. Microplastics? Maybe single digit consequences.
is anyone here talking about the systematic dismantling of public education and starving of teachers and children in terms of learning resources and actual food
also i again have to complain about Idiocracy, the comedy film that suggests intelligent rich people will solve our problems and stupid poor people will doom society, where in reality you have incredibly wealthy and also incurious, unintelligent ghouls hoarding generational wealth, making it a top priority to have tons of children in order to make their 'superior' genes take over.
The fact that teachers need to beg for pencils is disgraceful. Teachers should get paid more and not have to pay for their supplies.
I agree. Idiocracy is a funny movie, but that's it. The entire premise of "stupid people make stupid children" is based in eugenics.
This article seems to be only looking at America based off the sources that I can access without a paywall
So, I've seen a lot of people who were extremely sharp as PhD students become blunted as soon as 9--5 starts.
A lot of decline among adults can likely be traced back to increased cognitive load during working hours, which chips away at intelligence over time as folks burn out.
With kids it's harder to place, maybe it's walking the tightrope that is modern social interactions?
i think with kids it's less attributable to wokedei and more a total collapse of the educational system mixed with higher and higher stress levels as the world loudly strains around them
Corporations have used social media to colonize and profit from our attention spans, including those of children. Our mental capacity and attention spans are limited, especially children's. When the advertisers have had their fill, how much is left for learning?
I can believe it. Physical inactivity, less creative play for children, distraction all the time.
Mind you, in some ways I don't buy it - the two of my kids who were very academically motivated both learned much more in school than I did (I went during a conservative time when the schools were doing "back to basics" which didn't help, but simple research before the Internet was so difficult that I didn't have access to as much as they did, it took more effort to learn less) and those two are whip-smart. So I think the potential to be smart is higher now. Also maybe we have included more people in the measurements now that it's easier to get the data.
But physical inactivity does harm brain health, plastic probably does, the dumbing down again in the schools here (is this some 40-50 year cycle?) certainly does. I do, like @drascus@sh.itjust.works work at maintaining my thinking by trying to learn new things, not just get good at what I am good at already; and do a lot to maintain physical health, meditate, and try to guard my sleep as much as possible within the context of a normal life.
Causes :
long covid ?
micro plastics ?
screen time ?
sedentarism ?
fast food ?
lack of sleep ?
other ?
Technology, specifically short form social media content, has got to be the biggest driver here.
Heavy metal exposure
Sugar
The proliferation of food additives being used that are known to dramatically lower IQ
The gelding of our education system by morons who favor religious dogma over scientific fact
Criminally underfunded schools thanks to political leaders who see investing in future generations as budget waste
Failure to teach children critical thinking skills before exposing them to technology that makes it simpler for them
Being constantly bombarded and overstimulated every waking moment by media
Being chronically overworked and underrested
Climate change
Take your pick. The answer is "probably, yes."
idiocracy intro?
(IE the theory it pushed was in short, smart people do family planning, try to wait for everything to be perfect... and forget to get around to having kids).
Meanwhile on the less intelligent spectrum. Shit I'm pregnant again!!!... Oh and I got the girl in the trailer next door pregnant.
Or for a real world example... look at Lauren Boebert, the 35 year old grandmother in congress.
Short form content like those found on reddit and here on Lemmy have retrained my brain, I'm sure of it. I'm actively trying to fight it, by forcing myself to read full articles, scroll more slowly and try to engage more fully rather than just endlessly scrolling for the next dopamine hit.
It's easy to justify this behavior because "I'm just getting my news and staying informed" and while partially true it comes at the cost of the medium it's provided by. Screen "reading" has definitely changed our brains for the worse and most people have no clue its even happened.
So far I'm liking lemmy more because there is a lot less per post. I find I'm enjoying each thread more fully. It's like I'm not endless scrolling because I can't. I've actually read more articles in the day since I've joined than in my last 3 months on reddit.
Don't forget lead.
It's social media and political manipulation.
All of these and more. Did you know our carbon emissions are changing the ratio of oxygen in the atmosphere as a whole? Guess which species is known to get dumber when oxygen deprived. Don't worry about the warming ocean's increasing acidity, it just makes the ocean a more difficult habitat for the phytoplankton that make 65%of the oxygen in the atmosphere.
I'm sure our normalcy bias will protect us or maybe the invisible space monkey will save his favorite primates if we can commit a few more hate crimes in his name.
That was already discussed in this post :
https://lemmy.world/post/26948801/15738537
::: spoiler copy pasted what i wrote :
Present day atmosphere is about 400 or 450 PPM compare this to :
CO2 poisoning (Hypercapnia) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercapnia
→ Physiological effects :
A high arterial partial pressure of carbon dioxide ( Pa CO2 ) causes changes in brain activity that adversely affect both fine muscular control and reasoning. EEG changes denoting minor narcotic effects can be detected for expired gas end tidal partial pressure of carbon dioxide (...) increase from ((53,000 PPM)) to approximately (...) (66,000 PPM = 0.066 atm). The diver does not necessarily notice these effects.
:::
All this and more!
Right after this message from our sponsors.
In my personal observations less intelligent people tend to have more children.
Therefore population IQ drifts towards bottom.
I suspect that's because they do not fully understand all their future struggles and fates of their children in the world, fucked up by climate crisis and resource scarcity.
dependency on AI can be another
The decline of American intelligence has been ongoing since before AI
Yes it is possible ... but this factor is difficult to measure, as it may go both ways, depending on motivation to learn new things and if that AI is a good teacher or ... is giving ready-made (and bad) answers without helping to go further.
Bored people can now tune into (source of entertainment) instead of learning.
I don't think the capacity for intelligence has dropped significantly, rather we as a society dedicate our time differently.
entertainment
Bingo. We have a winner.
Lack of mental lifting. Critical thinking becomes too hard. Why innovate? The country has become fat, dumb and happy.
Its a lot of work but you have to constantly push. I am 42, but I read a few dozen books a year, I'm constantly learning new languages, new instruments, I write short stories for fun, do creative projects, and meditate. I still feel really sharp but I'm throwing down everyday.
Neat! Tell us more!
You sound like you're consumed by your own ambition. Hope you're happy though.
Sounds like he's living his best life to me.
Not really I mostly do it for entertainment and because I like to see what I can do
Idiocracy keeps becoming truer and truer every year.
Unfortunately, that movie's main message was about eugenics. I am not arguing that anti-intellectualism is not spreading like a cancer, but that movie is not the best thing to reference.
I don't think it ever actually promoted eugenics. It just explored the natural consequences of two facts in a comedic way:
It never tries to push any eugenics-based agenda. It would have if they tried to say that dumb people shouldn't be allowed to have kids, but they never went anywhere near that.
Shit. I know shit's bad right now, with all that starving bullshit, and the dust storms, and we are running out of french fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution.
I fucking believe it.
I’ve heard the climate crisis isn’t helping. More carbon dioxide in the air, the less we think good.
Can't tell if joke or ... gestures vaguely at post
This is one I feel is getting largely overlooked.
Present day atmosphere is about 400 or 450 PPM compare this to :
CO2 poisoning (Hypercapnia) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercapnia
→ Physiological effects :
A high arterial partial pressure of carbon dioxide ( Pa CO2 ) causes changes in brain activity that adversely affect both fine muscular control and reasoning. EEG changes denoting minor narcotic effects can be detected for expired gas end tidal partial pressure of carbon dioxide (...) increase from ((53,000 PPM)) to approximately (...) (66,000 PPM = 0.066 atm). The diver does not necessarily notice these effects.
So, for people who don't get the joke, a quick overview.
Atmospheric CO2 has increased from ~280 parts per million to ~430 ppm now. This causes problems besides global warming; notably ocean acidification. Scientists try to infer CO2 levels in the past from various indirect evidence. It seems that levels have not been this high in many millions of years, much longer than the existence of our or most other species.
That said, direct effects from these elevated CO2 levels are extremely implausible. We exhale CO2, meaning that indoor concentrations are typically much higher than these elevated atmospheric levels. On top of that, you have a lot of combustion, especially in cities. Cities have elevated CO2 concentrations compared to the surrounding area (think about smog). The northern hemisphere has higher concentrations than the southern one. The CO2 concentrations most of us live with have more to do with our immediate surroundings than global levels. Fun fact: Roadside grass can have a radiocarbon date of thousands of years.
The most iconic CO2 measurements (Keeling Curve) are taken on Hawaii, on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. I have heard that Elon and the felon are shutting that down now.
High CO2 levels can become a problem in badly ventilated places. CO2 is slightly heavier than air, so it can build up in wine cellars or cesspits. Fermentation creates the CO2. Typically, that kills more than 1 person. Person #1 goes down, passes out. Person #2 goes down to check on them.
Summary The article describes a decline in human intelligence, particularly among young people. The decline is attributed to reducedk reading habits and the negative impact of excessive screen time on cognitive abilities.
Not really surprising given how all the social information delivery services are designed for a constant wall of short dopamine hits, and the platforms used to access the information are designed so no actual skill is needed to be able to access the information delivery services.
You give a rat a button that's tied into their brain's pleasure center, the rat will push the button until they die.
All computer-tech needs to be made more open. Not just from an observational standpoint, but the act of making disparate systems work together requires learning and knowledge beyond push button, receive good feels. Megacorp one-stop-shop software/hardware platforms need to be broken up. Both from a walled garden echo chamber perspective, and from a user-use perspective. When a company controls the entire experience, it is too easy to ensure their user is always engaging with their products and spending money/time. Making that company's life harder, makes the technology better for humanity.
Algorithms optimized for dopamine hits must be banned. As soon as our machines became revenue generators tuned for consumption, it was game over. Older systems, one used to have to learn at least basic things to accomplish a goal, which promoted the act of learning in general.
Basic hardware/software interaction and learning were useful side-effects of personal compute from the 1970s-early aughts. One was forced to occasionally open or fix hardware, one was forced to understand how the software worked. One ended up with basic understanding and approachability of the machines one used. Devices today are just expensive consumption toys with zero knowledge needed to consume. When they malfunction, the user has no reason or encouragement to attempt to fix them, as they can't see why the device ceased to work.
Big Tech has run amok too long. Governments are barely regulating them. We humans just gotta start saying no.
The FT source seems to be behind a paywall, and this article seems to be jumping between a bunch of possibly unrelated issues (focusing on young adult cognitive decline but looking at whole population reading rates and numeracy ability).
I wouldn't worry about it .... it wasn't that high to begin with
I always remind my friends when we have political debates about so many things ... we aren't that many steps away from the cave we emerged from 100,000 years ago
Every generation will be more intelligent than the last, our exponentially complicating world requires it.
Every generation will be more knowledgable than the previous… but there is no guarantee they’ll be more intelligent.
There's also no real proof that high intelligence is actually a productive evolutionary trait.
We're juuuuuuuuust smart enough to grow like a cancerous parasite and are getting close to killing our sickly host organism.
i'm optimistic enough to believe we'll be like
Since humans have made many horrendous things we will easily agree on some things we would want to change in humanity. Yet, at some point, it's difficult to define exactly what would be better ... what would be more "productive" as you wrote.
