What really prompted this is an add that popped up while I was on this site, it had this IQ test thing, now I know those aren't official but the average was 85. That's 15 points below average. Now, to put this into perspective, your considered to be smart with an IQ of 110, that's just a 10 point change. It seems to me that so many things lately have been caused by, quite frankly, people just being stupid. Like when a person holds up a bank while he has a plastic bag over his head and doesn't cut airholes in the bag. Things like this make me wonder, are we truly getting smarter or are we going the opposite direction. From what i've read, studies show that people are becoming smarter, but is this true? Perhaps it's just that we know how the human mind works better than we used to, thus our education has been changed to fit how we learn. However, even when people pass a test or quiz in school, they forget the information by the next day. I have a very good example of this. In chemistry, we were learning polyatomic ions, and we took a quiz. The majority of the class did well. We retook the quiz the next day because our teacher really wants us to know about them and the majority of the class failed. Is temporairily memorizing something considered learning? Does anyone else have some examples or research that could help on this subject?
Isn't it a proven fact about evolution that over time unused organs change or deteriorate through generations? Our tail bone for instance, what came before us had a need for it, but we don't. Other organs have the same such thing, we have them, but they aren't neccecary.
This was part of a theory before evolution, and it was cast down. The same part of the theory was "used organs and limbs will develop, while ones that aren't used will deteriorate. Will be passed on to other generations". Of course we all know that's a bunch of bull.
Well, what I should have said is stop using the brain entirely. Of course we can't stop using the brain entirely, it's a survival mechanism! But those that are in a higher intelligence will give us the information, goods, news, all of this, while the common masses will just do the services that are required and get paid while doing so. That's their survival strategy. They don't have to use their brains as heavily as those that have to research and provide theories.
Not if the vast majority of couples are stupid, then general intelligence will decline. Also, it's hard to fit in when you try to make jokes at things no one else gets or when you laugh at something that no one else comphrehends, or when people just plain dislike you for knowing more than them. I've experienced this all in school, I get ostracised because I quite simply don't fit in. I have 2 real friends that I can hold a conversation with about physics or theoretical things without them getting lost. Other people I know I talk to yes, but I don't consider them a friend even if they consider me one because it gets tiresome explaining what im talking about or re-iterating what I just said. Finding people that I can relate to is very hard, thus, I believe it would be hard as well for someone smart to find another smart person of the opposite sex and reproduce and have the human race evolve. I mean, if you have 1 smart person and 1 not so smart person fall in love and have a kid, the kid, genetically, will have a chance of inheriting the "smarter" genes from one of the parents, or the "less smart" genese from the other.
Not that I'm dissing this, because I've been there before, but the text you quoted me on was the result of what would happen, not the effort to go there.
If the 100 were to change, it wouldn't be 100 anymore, or do you mean the amount of people catogorized under the 100 IQ?
100 is the base line for I.Q. , like zero is the base line for positive and negative numbers. If you were smarter than the average person, you would have higher than 100, and not so smart, lesser than 100. Having the chart literally shift to the right or the left is silly. The only thing you can do is "raise the average".
This was just common thought, no one had yet proven against it. Back when the romans and other cultures were around, they still thought the earth was flat. This wasn't because they were stupid, it was because there was no way yet to really prove it or disprove it, thus public opinion became the accepted idea.
and it had to take heavy research from very brave individuals to disprove that, because the Church was hot on their trail. Same thing to the researcher that proved that the Earth revolved around the sun, not vice-versa. The latter was in the Bible! The church hunted and executed the brave researcher, but that just made others rebel against it. See, if you literally stop those from thinking outside the box and research, knowledge will decline, and individuals will not think as much as they should if they are being spoon fed to them.
Einstein was theorized to be so smart because he used more of his brain.
Everyone uses all of their brain, unless there is damage. People say you only use a certain percentage, but what they don't realize is that it is only that that much is used at a time. If our entire brain was active at once we would be overwhelmed.
Isn't it a proven fact about evolution that over time unused organs change or deteriorate through generations?
Everyone uses all of their brain, unless there is damage. People say you only use a certain percentage, but what they don't realize is that it is only that that much is used at a time. If our entire brain was active at once we would be overwhelmed.
fun fact: Mathematics uses 80% of the brain, and word problems uses 70%. Television uses 5% and idle thinking uses 1%.
Same thing to the researcher that proved that the Earth revolved around the sun, not vice-versa. The latter was in the Bible!
Cite a source. I have read the Protestant bible many times and it just isn't there. I personally don't know all that is in the Apocrypha.
Genesis 1:
14And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Ya, not seeing the sun revolving around the earth...
I took a realistic IQ test, the only thing wrong with it was that it was not timed, and my score was 127.
If the 100 were to change, it wouldn't be 100 anymore, or do you mean the amount of people catogorized under the 100 IQ?
IQ proves how much a person applies what they learned in school to a test on a sheet of paper. This shows intelligence, but should not be used to measure intelligence in general.
Isn't it a proven fact about evolution that over time unused organs change or deteriorate through generations?
No. Traits that hinder human's abilities to successfully reproduce disappear over time. Traits that serve no purpose don't disappear, not necessarily.
Intelligence is not passed down to offspring. Comprehension of how the world works is passed down, and that's only half of it. The other half of what makes a person smart is through experience. Nature vs. Nurture.
Vestigal organs do happen, so what if our brains are slowly being turned into something that doesn't use part of the brain that generates cognitive thought. We would litterally turn into mindless zombies. Now im not 100% serious, but it's a good example that fits my point.
Though not impossibly, highly improbable. For evolution to successfully occur, you must have a stable environment. The last time humans lived within a stable environment was before the stone age. Now that we control our environment, and almost everyone with any combination of traits can live long enough to reproduce, it is very hard for us to evolve. Yes, we are slowly evolving, but the direction we are involving is is unclear and happening at an even slower rate than it did before the stone age. Humans have always been one of the slowest evolving species, but the process is at a crawl.
Even if we did live in a stable environment, the stone age was roughly 10,000 years ago. 10,000 years is next to nothing when it comes to evolution. It would take millions of years for humans to have a very noticeable change. But considering the unstable environment we live in (where traits play less of a roll in survival), it could possibly take billions of years for a noticeable change to happen.
We are more educated today, than we ever were in history. Though we are smarter than our ancestors in an educational way, our brain functions almost exactly as it did 10,000 years ago. People are not growing more stupid due to genetics. In fact, we are more educated than any generation before us. We are also more stressed out and mentally unstable than any generation before us as well. This could explain why people tend to act dumb or do poorly on tests. Either people can't focus, or they neglect to learn due to how demanding education is today along with a bunch of other variables.
Intelligence is not passed down to offspring. Comprehension of how the world works is passed down, and that's only half of it. The other half of what makes a person smart is through experience. Nature vs. Nurture.
umm,when is the tuesday meeting?oh,yeah right...sorry
Oh, that kind. Well what your calling environment is just man-made enviornment. But even that we don't really control. Like what about the technological environment? Humans don't control that, except for the inventors, the rest of us just have to figure out how to use the new stuff, like iphones. And what if you can't figure it out? Then you can't communicate with anyone. So maybe you're better off just to go back to using the environment that GOD controls. So I don't think it's even stable, whatever environment you want to call it.
Oh, that kind. Well what your calling environment is just man-made enviornment. But even that we don't really control. Like what about the technological environment? Humans don't control that, except for the inventors, the rest of us just have to figure out how to use the new stuff, like iphones. And what if you can't figure it out? Then you can't communicate with anyone. So maybe you're better off just to go back to using the environment that GOD controls. So I don't think it's even stable, whatever environment you want to call it.
In that theory god lost his power the moment man gained fire.
Environment is a very simple and vague thing which only involves physical circumstance to a certain point, It mainly implies point of view and how one takes the actions they are subjected to by others points of view. So if you are still following me here, by you implying that god dictates our environment is implying that god dictates my actions as well as yours.
As for are people becoming 'less smart', after reading this thread im a bit more worried than i was before. The pure and simple fact is that we now equate worth to time and money, when single individuals are what make this whole world go round and round. While man hides under convoluted theory and rhetoric of times of old, we feast and get fat on the cow that will not give milk forever. Intelligence is but a point of view that is given to you by your environment.
[quote]Humans are never in control of their environment, GOD is.
Two words. Air conditioning. We might not be able to control the weather (arguably), but we can control our environment. But all that is beside the point... [/quote]
but we cant control the survival of the environmrnt...kinda sad and pathethic
People seem to definitely be getting stupider. (id like to add that theyre getting more gullible to) I think its due to how often with schools you learn one thing the next day and move on to a completely different topic the next day. because of this it makes it harder for the kids to get the information into their heads and the teachers believe that they can dump piles on homwork on the kids to get them to remember it. This often dosent work and makes the kids forget even more stuff as they are bombarded with homework from every teacher until they are so confused that they cant even tell that the earth is a sphere and not a circle.
In schools, to try to get every kid to reach an adequate level in each subject, the standards of learning are being lowered. In the words of my history teacher "the world cultures class today would not be able to take the same exam as 5 years ago and pass." So I do believe that people are getting less smart (at least in the U.S.)
