This gives me hope, because no matter how stupid people seem to be nowadays, they’re not quite as stupid as they were a century ago. It also saddens me about just how far we still have to go.
This gives me hope, because no matter how stupid people seem to be nowadays, they’re not quite as stupid as they were a century ago. It also saddens me about just how far we still have to go.
I think IQs haven’t changed all that much, there have been brilliant minds for thousands of years that prove that intelligence itself hasn’t improved, the question is if people are educated and open-minded more now… I think the jury is out on that. To Godwin this thread, Stalin and Hitler, and today similar dictators like Kim Jung Ill, aren’t ancient history – it’s entirely possible for a country even today, to not only be stupid, but to go bats#!+ crazy. (My apologies to the Parent’s Television Council.)
There’s a lot of evidence favoring the idea that native intelligence hasn’t changed much in the last few thousand years. But with the advent of the Internet, there’s a good chance that could change in the next generation or two, if the main reason has been lack of early access to good information (and plenty of access to bad information).
Yes, the Internet also enables access to bad information, but I believe most of that is self-correcting. Which is why I say it may take a generation or two before it has a noticeable effect, it’ll take that long to weed out the bad information and its proponents — think Young Earth Creationists, for example. If it can be done at all, which is by no means a given.
No comment on the young earth creationists. 🙂