If People Are Getting Smarter Then How Come….
Posted on January 3, 2008
Filed Under What's New |
Reading the Economist’s Intelligent Life magazine I came across the Flynn Effect, proof of a kind that people are getting smarter from one generation to the next. Interesting magazine Intelligent Life. My impression is it has become more intelligent and less possessed by luxury as its core lifestyle theme.
The fascination of the Flynn Effect is not just that people are getting smarter but that they are getting much smarter - if IQ tests are to be believed. The difference is such that someone born in 1980 whose parents had average IQ scores is now likely to score in the top ten of its parents generation. I hope that conveys it properly - of course because everyone is getting smarter they may still have an average score - just that the average is going up by 20 points a generation.
The explanation is that we actually get much, much smarter in a limited range of core abilities - the last generation became much better at abstract reasoning, hence Intelligent Life says, we get TV programmes like 24 that ask viewers to retain huge amounts of narrative clues.
By the way, I got interested while writing this in how many other people are talking about smarter people - this technorati tag page shows about fifity discussions going on under smarter people and seventy under “smart people”. They range from this which summarises lots of very pointed information such as the number of cases of radioactive smuggling averted by the Russian authorities (over 500 in 2007), and predictions like “The U.S. could lose top talent “With Congress gridlocked on immigration, it’s clear that the next Silicon Valley will not be in the United States.” And this record of achivements.
I guess the whole cause and effect chain is complex - it seems to me fifty years of television alone could be responsible for us developing quite complex visual grammars that are innately abstract. It also augurs well for the future of virtual worlds which are one degree more abstract than television.
Having said that television and newspapers are two connected media that have both dumbed down so in an age of enhanced inteligence we are getting dumber media.
An intricate relationship between media and reader/viewer clearly needs to be better understood. If I was to hazard a guess I’d say the current generation is becoming more emotionally intelligent and what dumber media are doing is feasting on the desire for emotional discovery and learning. So highly contentious politics such as war, paedophilia, greening become understood through their emotional impact rather than through the abstract issues of right and wrong - which are of course highly complex.
Anyway that’s my stab at what’s happening.
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