Do humans get smarter "all the time"?

Post Reply New Topic

I wouldn't go that far as to reject the concept of 'normalcy'. I mean, if you agree that seemingly random things follow a normal distribution, then there is an average that seems to come about. And most people have a certain general routine, i.e. go to sleep; go to school/work; come home to your family, or if you have no family , just a house; watch t.v. read a book; experience some of the same culture that other people experience because of it's tendency to be right in your face.

Of course, most people on this site don't qualify for the 'normal' people. But we all seem to know what a 'normal' person is supposed to be like. Why else would there be hundreds of threads on the 'neurotypical'- a person of sufficient social knowledge to be competent in the normal world.

You don't just disregard a model because it has some incosistencies here and there. You find its limitations and you specify them. The concept of 'normality' is one of them. It has its limitations.

it does but the concept is also vastly abused. so again, eugenics has its place...just not in our current timeline. normalcy has its place but not to the extent of endangering those on the fringe.

I agree with Orwell on this. You all, who agree with eugenics, just seem to quixotic. This idea is not practical.

I'm not being inconsistent when I say that it might work. I was, and maybe still am, a Don Quixote - it's hard to implement something of this magnitude. It would require people that are very honest, very passionate - too many 'very's. It's just not some that would work in our world. There are too many people that take shortcuts; lie and cheat - steal.

I'm not sure if I can trust the idea of eugenics to another time period, preferably in the future.

Probably the most ideal of them all, the Greeks, did not imagine a society as we have it today. They probably would have had the same faith in our world today that you have in a future time. Human nature probably will never change. I'm not saying that it is not possible, but facts must be dealt with, history must not be ignored. We have hundreds of wars to account for our nature.

This sort of argument is similar to dealing with no friction when considering motion of a tire, etc.. There are just too many details that could be arbitrarily chosen. It's just not plausible - I feel repetitive saying the same thing.

Here it is. From the book Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations.


http://www.eugenics.net/papers/lynnrev.html




Not spontaneously, but gradually. If the less-capable and intelligent are unable to survive in a harsh and competitive environment, then it stands to reason that a softening of evolutionary pressures will enable those individuals to survive and multiply. Thus lowering the average IQ of the population as a whole.

This doesn't mean that intelligent people won't continue to live and reproduce. It just means that they will represent a smaller and smaller portion of society. Eventually the "brains" that build and sustain a modern civilization will be to few in number to sustain the system.

1. He makes claims, but provides no evidence for them, no measurements. He makes claims about average IQs for a time before IQ testing existed. Find a real source please.
2. What is this crap about "genetic potential for intelligence?" That can't actually be measured, we can only measure the end result of genetics and environment.
3. I was using "spontaneously" in the scientific sense, I didn't necessarily mean "quickly." If evolutionary pressures are removed, then there is no selection in any direction and the gene pool would be expected to remain roughly the same from one generation to the next.

to augment what orwell said: the binet test didn't even surface until the late 19th century and didn't receive any kind of mass editing towards a more favorable, less biased standing until within the last 40 or so years. everything before that is pure speculation. not to mention it's putting too much faith in a measurement that still is not very accurate nor does it represent a full picture of what should be measured in reference to what's considered "intelligence".

I don't own the book and there doesn't appear to be an online version. The author, Richard Lynn, is a well established Research Professor at the University of Ulster who has written or co-authored more than 11 books and 200 journal articles. I don't believe Lynn would produce an academic publication without citing the data he used in his findings. Although that probably won't satisfy you.



Sampling different individuals who live in the same environment should give us a good idea as to their genetic potential for intelligence. It is true that no two people can have the exact same environments, but with care close matches can be made. Intelligence research isn't as clear cut of a science as say something like chemistry is. Nonetheless research on the subject does provide us with useful information.



It is illogical to claim that a particular force (in this case the evolutionary pressure of survival) on a subject (in this case a human population) will have no effect on the subject once it is removed. If the gene pool remains the same in the absence of evolutionary pressure then there could never have been any pressure to begin with.

Modern societies are filled with millions of persons who would have no hope of surviving if they were to find themselves in the same place a 100 years ago. Back then life was hard. You worked hard and long most every day just to survive. If you were lazy or incompetent then you died and nobody cared. What a changed world we live in today.

Similar charges can be said when dealing with the implementation of any number of government systems. The real world is a messy place, but a messy place whose messiness is matched only by the convolutions of the legal code.

If you wish to take a deontological stance and say that eugenics is inherently bad then I view this as fine. But the arguments that it would be ok save that it cannot implemented are a variation on the argument from lack of imagination, IMO.

Stick to empirical and peer reviewed stuff. Otherwise it just detracts from credibility. And the article I cited did cite other articles which went into dysgenic trends in genotypic IQ, if someone wants to do my research for me...

A quick Google/Wikipedia search brought me a lot of interesting information about Lynn. Based on what I read, I distrust him. As I said, he is claiming a decline in IQ dating back to a time when IQ scores did not exist. There can not possible be any basis for those claims.


No, it is not illogical. Evolutionary pressures caused humans to develop bipedalism. The pressures that caused that are no longer acting; does this mean we will revert to being quadrupeds or arboreals? Certainly not. Likewise, a removal of the pressures that selected for intelligence won't result in us becoming dumber but rather that we won't become any more intelligent. And really, we wouldn't have become any more intelligent as a whole regardless of those pressures because they only pushed so hard. Please stop with this Neo-Lamarckian dribble.

Well, I view it as deontologically wrong but most do not share such a philosophical outlook so it is necessary to also point out the impracticalities of such a system. From a utilitarian perspective, eugenics vs not eugenics is essentially the same as socialism vs free-market capitalism. Which one works better? In both cases, the latter because it is impossible for central planners to EVER have enough information to run the world responsibly. Rely instead on the "invisible hand" of decentralized decision-making by individuals.

Although I agree that centralized control has lead to disasters the so-called free market with its inclination to stabilize acquired powers of financial wealth is equally inclined to frightful social results as history has well demonstrated. There is a balance between the two where neither totally centralized social nor complete financial control dominated but are carefully modulated by results. Both wrong headed idealism and total market domination have inherent dangers and both must be supervised in the light of basic human decency and general freedom of thought and action.

Eugenics doesn't have to be centralised. If individual companies make and sell various gene therapies, eugenics will simply be part of the free market.

Also, while the free market can be seen as a very large, parallel computed evolutionary strategy, it isn't perfectly optimal. Centralized planning doesn't work well for big communities because humans are too stupid to do it properly. (Socialism has worked fine for some very small communities.) But perhaps with the aid of technology centralized planning could outperform the free market even in big communities.

Some problems I see as having been caused by the free market:

Tobacco companies selling carcinogenic products for decades while covering up evidence of harm.
Microsoft getting a monopoly on school software in the USA through clever marketing ploys. (Luckily third world countries escaped the trap and can use open source instead.)
Delays in alternate energy research because oil was cheap (even though they knew it would almost certainly run out).

The free market acted on these things eventually, but often damagingly late. I hope we solve the energy problem before a crisis occurs.

The crisis is already in operation. No doubt the free market has its uses but in health care it is a terrifying disaster. All the major technological advances save a few which are the basis of the modern economy such as atomic power, the internet, the quantum technology behind miniature circuitry, heavier than air aircraft, and even much of the technology behind the transportation system such as road networks, rocketry and satellite communication and global positioning, much of the basic research behind drugs, are the result of heavy government public investment and not the free market.