Is Technology Making Us Stupid?

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This interesting article -Psychology Today Link- suggests that we're getting smarter in fluid intelligence while losing nothing in crystallized intelligence, and that kids today are geniuses compared to kids in the '50's.

Far be it for me to disagree with the experts, but I think there's a third aspect to intelligence - meaning. You might be able to know where to find what you need, but that doesn't mean you'll know what it means. There was a time when everyone knew what an inch looked like or how big an acre was or could visualize how much change they should get when they buy their groceries. From that kind of knowledge, people could estimate, perceive, evaluate.

"How far is it to town, Greg?"
"Oh about 25 minutes."
"But what distance is that?"
"I have no idea, Bill."

I once tried to teach a 2nd year apprentice to understand fractions of an inch. "You start with half an inch," I said. Then I asked, "So from there, what is half of half?" The apprentice looked at me red faced and asked, "Three sixteenths?" He had never been taught the old visual trick of cutting a cake in half, then in half again.

I taught a year 11 student who wanted to become an electrician. He wasn't interested in mathematics and didn't understand why it was required. "There's an app for electrical calculations. That's all I need," was his response, despite the entry requirements.

Meaning is more important than people allow for, and I get the idea that it's one skill that's becoming lost.

Just judging by what I read online and if the ages are correct, yeah, many kids are smarter than the ones I went to school with and more mature, too. Once upon a time you couldn't get a twelve, thirteen of fourteen year old to write so much as four sentences in a row. Online, they write two or three paragraphs without anyone asking. When I was that age, it was like pulling teeth from a crocodile trying to get any of us to write paragraphs. So I think the internet encourages them to write more, and it enables them to put their thoughts together while writing so they don't have writers block which I think was the problem we experienced before the internet. It's like training in writing.

Besides the internet, they have to keep journals which was something we were not required to do, and they journals help them with fluid writing, too.

Well, in terms of Raven Matrices Testing FOR fluid intelligence, and Standard I.Q. testing, per rote memory in ways of crystalized intelligence, of course not. That's what mechanical cognition is ALL ABOUT.

BUT IT IS A tiny part of all of human FULLER POTENTIAL intelligences that number in the hundreds, AT LEAST.

One THIRD OF School Age children who are now assessed as pre-type two diabetic...

Almost half of American Adults on some kind of pain killer to get through the day...

And sky-rocketing rates of Depression and accompanying prescriptions for Anti-Depressants among Adults and Children are pretty good evidence that humans are getting ret*d in REAL LIFE HUMAN INTELLIGENCE day by day NOW BY NOW...

WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE, the other STUFF is almost immaterial to what it means to be REAL SUCCESSFUL ANIMALS, WHO CAN even gain AND maintain simple homeostasis through the course of one day.

Many people are chronically stressed all the time, as they do not even understand what physical intelligence IS IN ACTION that drives emotional regulation, sensory integration, cognitive executive functioning that includes working short term memory and HUMAN FOCUS, MORE, than what science SHOWS NOW is about that of A GOLD FISH PER the average human being in our MODERN REALLY 'SMART' SOCIETIES TODAY.

YES, THERE IS LOSS OF MEANING.

HELL YES, THERE IS LOSS OF MEANING.

AND THAT MEANING IS WHAT IT EVEN MEANS TO BE HUMAN BEING.

AND yes, at least some forms of Autism DO REFLECT THIS ISSUE, in not even being able to perform the physical intelligence of non-verbal communication, either, in meaning or form.

There is an epidemic of 'ret*d', per slow, IN THE U.S.

AND RELATIVELY SPEAKING, very few people even have a reference point to what all the misery, even is.

I see it everyday, and it feels a little bit like NEO, IF YOU WILL, at least, from my perspective NOW.

More data, more processing power, but bandwidth is lagging.

Knowledge without application, no ball park idea of meaning.

More information can make less accurate decisions.

We still have a Yes/No Off/On operating system.

Part of the more data are ideas we are being sold.

A potential consumer is targeted with hundreds of ads, All claim their product is best.

Comparing no longer works, trial and error no longer works, data becomes worthless.

Stack Overflow on Line 11, purging memory dump, rebooting into the same excess data.

Meanwhile more ads have spotted the ad cluster, and pile on.

The Yes/No Off/On system has been subject to a Denial of Service attack, overwhelmed by bad data.

It is illegal to do this to a computer, but marketing and politics do it to people all the time.

Maybe this is why people eat more than they should. It is something in their control.

TV ads for pain killers, get loud, use annoying voices, induce stress, our product is the only thing that will keep you from putting a bullet in your head. Take drugs, the only way to quit feeling the pain.

Technology is playing on our weaknesses. It is other people. If they found a way to put ads in air and water, they would.

I do not have TV, turned off the ringer on the phone, but looking up Mobile Wireless Broadband, I got several hundred emails a day for week. All mail not personal or a bill gets dumped. I have anti virus, anti spyware.

Some Stupid, most less functional.

There is a core ability to make decisions that is overloaded. Everything else got bigger, faster, and more invasive.