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?
What is intelligence? If intelligence measured by academic achievement, common sense, puzzle solving ability, abstracting thinking, logical thinking, emotional control, time management skills, multi-tasking ability, productivity ratings, how does our society gauge intelligence? Is intelligence how verbose a person is, or how simply they can translate complex theories into simple ones that everyone can understand? Are the intelligence the ones that are rich, or can even the simpleton be intelligent?
I believe that intelligence is the ability to adapt to your surroundings. For instance, if I am required to learn several tasks for a job that I will be going into, I need to learn those tasks and gain those abilities within a reasonable amount of time. Does that mean I will have mastered such things by then, most likely not. Mastering something has been proven to take 10,000 hours (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4969415.ece)
Then there are other aspects to intelligence like how easily can I use those learned processes and apply them to something abstract or physical and become useful to me or others? And then can I go back and reanalyze to see if indeed my progress is actually progressing me towards something worth while. Can I as a human adapt and learning to realize where I am within reality?
Additionally, can I communicate things to others in such a way that they will understand. And when they do not understand can I break the topic down even further and explain it so that they do understand what I am trying to make them grasp? This is called teaching and I believe you need to be intelligent in order to be able to teach because you need to be able to break a larger concept down into smaller bits for others to understand. I could say LAN, or I could explain what a modem, router, switch and hub are so you would gain a better grasp of the idea on how information travels from outside to inside your network.
However, to answer your question: are people becoming more intelligent or less, let us look at it. I don't think intelligence can be measured with an IQ reading because there are savants that can draw magnificently, can play the piano in such as way you'd think they were Mozart, but they cannot tie their own shoes. There are also individuals that are magnificent at mathematics, a very abstract idea once you get into higher levels of math, that cannot spell very well. So intelligence cannot be measured in one singular plain, intelligence has to be measured in a multitude of plains.
Intelligence is at it's core, the ability to adapt to the environment and change it, or create something, in order to better adapt or put us in favor. After all, we would not exist if it were not for our ability to out think other animals because we do not have very good natural defense. We have no claws, teeth, and we don't really run that fast.
So are we becoming more intelligent or more ignorant? I think this is too complex to cover here, but let me try. Society is becoming by mass, dependent on technology. This is ignorant in my opinion because technology is a good push forward, but without learning how to do things without technology we are fooling ourselves. What happens when one day technology is just gone? The power goes out, and your food spoils? What then? Do you know how to cure meat, or make an underground cold hole? I don't think so. What about hunting without a gun, or tracking an animal? Probably not.
Additionally, we are so focused on our careers that we delude ourselves of what is really important. Who do you come home to every day? Most likely your family. And when you get older you will come home to the family you have made with the one you love. But how often do you see them? Really, you are at work more than you are at home! So why are you paying 1200 a month for a house that you are only living in 2-3 days a week? Pretty stupid in my opinion. I think what would be intelligent is that if a person would make more personal goals, start up their own business, invent something, to make strides to spend time with the ones they love, and not their necessity for money. Of course this is a very narrow view from a Westerner and I do know of very intelligent cultures in the East, I am not ignorant in this regard, but this is a limited view, else this response would be an entire book.
To summarize, I think we are gradually becoming more intelligent in some aspects of life, such as technological advances, medical, mechanical, etc. however, I believe we are becoming more ignorant in regard to disregarding what matters to the individual, and what happens when these advances fail.
