Do humans get smarter "all the time"?

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There is no doubt about it,
Humans get smarter all the time,
Most children are much smarter than their parents and handle intuitively tasks that r almost impossible to the previous generation,
every generation adds another "layer" to the gen pool so the new one born with the capabilities necessary to handle the new reality,
guess the next generations would feel at home on outer space and handling multi dimensional space would feel natural to them.

BTW
Aspies feel and see beyond the 4D space,
that why they have trouble to fit in,
and many of them,
me included,
don't even try/

This is why I subscribe to the Transhumanist notions of Morphological Freedom and Cognitive Liberty. Eugenics is inherently authoritarian, it is based on one ideological group or a tyranny by majority imposing it's subjective beliefs about which traits are good and bad on society. I can't believe a fellow aspie could support such hideous things.

Though I am a Utilitarian of sorts this is why I reject most popular varieties of it; it can be used as an excuse for a paternalistic "benevolent" totalitarian state.

My problem with Eugenics is that it is inherently authoritarian, and authoritarianism invariable leads to increased suffering.

Intellect is not the ability to handle different environments. It took just as much intelligence to do well with the farming requirements of the middle ages as it does to operate a high speed jet aircraft or fight well as a Roman battle officer. The challenges are different but the intellect required is comparable. It's just a matter of recognizing the problems and dealing with them on a level to sustain existence and succeed.
They are still burning witches in Africa and killing rhinos for aphrodisiacs and sending young men off to die for idiotic reasons in meaningless wars. I don't see intelligence in general increasing, but since the population of the world has increased tremendously in the last centuries a much larger actual numbers of very bright people exist today. Humanity has the capacity of harnessing these bright people to the means of culture and this use of intellect is what is increasing.

Yes, but this seems a false dichotomy. It's not a matter of total eugenics vs no-eugenics any more than it is complete authoritarianism vs. laissez faire anarchocapitalism.

Furthermore, the analogy seems flawed. I see no reason to suppose that rational agents operating under selective pressures will work towards an ideally useful genetic makeup for a society, as the fertility gap clearly demonstrates that those who are least useful to society reproduce the most. If the dysgenic fertility of the article I cited holds, then we have at least one instance in which selection is unfavorable to those who are the best suited to a productive society (inasmuch as IQ correlates with any number things which are "positive" to society). I see no actual reason to suppose that a free for all will result in an "good" genetic makeup of the population, and as dysgenia is increasingly compensated for by socialized health care, actual fitness losses will only be the result of severely debilitating disease or simple infertility. The future belongs to the fecund.

Anyway, very well then, I'm not going to press the idea of eugenics. We are still left with the fertility gap between low IQ and high IQ samples. And this suggests that humans will in fact have lower IQs eventually once the Flynn Effect can no longer compensate for the negative selection for the genetic component of higher IQ. The evidence seems favorable to the idea that people will get "stupider" (unless it is compensated for by the so-called "New Eugenics" of biotech.

It is,
The ability to handle different environments is what set Human apart from the rest of the animals,
The extent to which we can understand the laws that drive our environment give us the ability to create new environments,
Essentially,
That what Galileo,newton and Einstein theories and equations are all about,
Each of them improved our understanding and consequently our ability to handle our environment a little better,
And i think they were quite intelligent.
Each generation adopt the previous generation abstractions into intuition and build a new more advanced abstractions on top of the new "reality" or environment,
We all stand on the shoulders of a giants,
and the next generation will stand on ours.

Smarter? I feel like children in america are getting dumber actually.




Either way, am I the only one who believes this thread should have ended with the first 8 or so posts--and then archived?

I'm probably getting dumber. Then I read an article about people..

Who don't even know scientific notation.
Who don't know what a pointer is in computer programming.
Who don't know what recursion is.

At least if I'm getting dumber, you all are coming with me

I haven't followed the whole thread. But on the original topic:

No I don't think humans are getting smarter any longer. Mostly stupid people get many kids nowadays, smart people I know get one kid or nona at all. don't. So it seems 'smart' isn't really something that will improve in the coming generations.

However there is more and more knowledge available so the knowledge of mankind is still growing and will continue. The intelligence might not evolve. Mankind might be like a person, getting older and more stupid after a certain age

Grasshoppers, birds, beetles, moles each handle different environments. It seems unlikely that intellect plays much of a role in this capability.

Yeah, but how many people knew those things 100 years ago? or 50? or even 20?

Plus, how useful is that information outside of computer programming? Scientific Notation has broader applications, but pointers and recursion aren't helpful concepts for most, and so shouldn't be counted as a general indication of intellegence. Most doctors wouldn't know those two concepts, but hardly could be called stupid. Can you name all the muscles in the foot? Or name what medication at what dosage is best for a woman having a stroke? Or diagnose what could be wrong with a person with an irregular heartbeat, cold sweating, and dilated pupils?

Not having the specialized knowlege of a specific disapline != stupid.

No. Not stupid. Ignorant. There is a profound difference.

Fine, not knowing the specialized knowlege of a specific disapline != generally ignorant.

There is simply too much knowlege available for everyone to be expected to know it all, regardless of their intellegence level. Just because someone doesn't know your particular field of interest very well doesn't mean that they aren't equally versed in a different field. Examples like pointers and recusion cannot be used as an indication of ignorance in general.

General ignorance is a rather vague term. Ignorance is always specific. What is disturbing is willful ignorance and that, in the end, works out as stupidity.

Ah, I was really tired when I wrote that. It was in reference to University graduates who studied CS. They had only programmed in Java. I was interpreting the article as a reflection of the broader dumbing down of certain hard sciences. Also, the scientific notation remark was in reference to elementary school teachers, who should know it, I think.

I meant it in a joking way, sort of "Oh my god! How can you not know that stuff and have that position? Is society going..down..stream..." :Flushing noise:

It was meant more as a joke than being a serious contribution, but in all honesty, it really shocked me to hear about Computer Science students that didn't know memory management, and teachers which didn't know scientific notation.