# Are We Getting Smarter Or Dumber? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 10, 2012, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289 "2012-10-10T05:55:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2012, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/21 "2012-10-11T12:17:14Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > Over historical time scales, evolutionary factors are going to be dwarfed into insignificance by social and environmental factors. People never really seem to manage to grasp just how LONG evolution takes. Then again, aren’t we kinda sorta on the brink of directly tinkering with genes for to make designer babies? ---
**Author:** ![Trepa\_Mayfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Trepa\_Mayfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trepa_Mayfield)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2012, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/22 "2012-10-11T13:10:38Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > So I don’t have to buy and read the whole book, can you pull out some useful arguments? > > I read the introduction and the anecdotes about overachieving rich kids vs. kids who spend more time on XBox than homework seemed more like “Get offa my lawn!!” than something I would expect from an actual university professor. Well, maybe a professor of English, but not like a _real_ professor. I took a class under that professor, and as far as I could tell, it was pretty much just “Get off my lawn!”. ---
**Author:** ![solosam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@solosam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solosam)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2012, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/23 "2012-10-11T14:51:06Z")
It’s worth pointing out that you need to define “intelligence.” If IQ tests actually do measure smartitude, then yes, we are getting smarter. What if an IQ test only measures how good you are at taking IQ tests? Does it measure your ability to make wise decisions? Master a skill? Think critically? Learn a new language? Solve problems? My personal opinion is that people are getting worse at thinking critically, examining data, and solving problems. But that’s just anecdotal. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2012, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/24 "2012-10-11T15:10:10Z")
> [@GreenElf](#): > > In the movie Idiocracy, we are getting dumber because smart people are breeding fewer, if any, children, opting to adopt children due to concerns about planetary overpopulation, while dumb people have a mass of children. It doesn’t really have anything to do with concerns about overpopulation. Idiocracy, while entertaining, is really a misrepresentation of known empirical, historical evidence that the wealthy tend to produce less children than the poor. There are a lot of factors involved. Wealthier people tend to be better educated, have better access to birth control, are more secular, often wait longer to have children as they focus on their career, so on and so forth. Mike Judge sort of extrapolated those observations into a tale about dysgenics. Given the timeframe of the film (500 years in the future), a more realistic scenario is that everyone in the future is “dumb” simply because they don’t need to think any more. The world Joe “Not Sure” Bauers finds himself in is large one run by automated machinery and decision support systems that require little to no human intervention. Nobody knows how to do anything because they never had to learn how. Most modern people don’t know how to hunt or fix a car or repair any of the machinery in their home. It just appears or is replaced through the complex supply chain of modern post-industrial civilization. They don’t really even need to memorize much since they can alway Google whatever they need on their smartphone. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2012, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/25 "2012-10-11T17:07:59Z")
> [@GreenElf](#): > > In the movie Idiocracy, we are getting dumber because smart people are breeding fewer, if any, children, opting to adopt children due to concerns about planetary overpopulation, while dumb people have a mass of children. Kornbluth talked about the same thing in “The Marching Morons” well over 50 years ago. The problem is that whoever is on top at the moment are convinced it is because of their superior genes or intelligence or whatever. The rich have always complained about the poor breeding too much. Somehow, though, when the poor get opportunity they turn out to be just as smart as the rich. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2012, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/26 "2012-10-11T17:59:55Z")
It is really not entirely obvious that intelligence has a significant genetic component. One of the things that makes us so smart is the very nearly blank slate we start with, to hopefully be developed in the best way possible, but overall, human mental capacity has not changed notably for millennia. You could take a cro-magnon child from 20000 years ago, dropped into modern society by time-machine magic, would develop to be indistinguishable from anyone else. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2012, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/27 "2012-10-11T20:03:07Z")
> [@For You](#): > > It is really not entirely obvious that intelligence has a significant genetic component. One of the things that makes us so smart is the very nearly blank slate we start with, to hopefully be developed in the best way possible, but overall, human mental capacity has not changed notably for millennia. You could take a cro-magnon child from 20000 years ago, dropped into modern society by time-machine magic, would develop to be indistinguishable from anyone else. Unless you dispute that intelligence is rooted in the brain, it is clear that the particular layout of an individual brain is affected at least in part by genetics. Not just that - the fetal environment clearly has an impact. That would seem pretty significant. If it is \> or \< 50% is another matter. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2012, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/28 "2012-10-11T20:15:42Z")
> [@For You](#): > > It is really not entirely obvious that intelligence has a significant genetic component. One of the things that makes us so smart is the very nearly blank slate we start with, to hopefully be developed in the best way possible, but overall, human mental capacity has not changed notably for millennia. You could take a cro-magnon child from 20000 years ago, dropped into modern society by time-machine magic, would develop to be indistinguishable from anyone else. It is entirely obvious that intelligence has a significant genetic component. That is supported both by common observations and more critical studies of people like identical twins separated at birth and by studies of adoptees who still inherit some mental abilities from parent’s they never knew rather than the ones that raised them. The tabula rasa (blank slate) hypothesis was in vogue in psychology in the 1960’s but has been soundly discredited and disregarded since then. There is an environment component to intelligence of course but not everyone has the same potential at a given cognitive task no matter what environment they raised in. I don’t know if human potential has changed much in 20,000 years but you would have to get the crop-magnon baby early (at birth or well before) to know for sure. A lot of the environment factors of intelligence aren’t just things like how good the schools are. It also includes early nutrition and disease exposure that impact overall health and development. ---
**Author:** ![Yookeroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yookeroo/32/323_2.png) [@Yookeroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yookeroo)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2012, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/29 "2012-10-12T00:40:19Z")
I think we’re clearly getting smarter if you look at the long term. > [@Jas09](#): > > And we aren’t as consistently poisoning ourselves with lead and other toxins, which has to help. This is a huge factor. Getting lead out of the environment is pretty monumental. Maybe the biggest factor. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2012, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/30 "2012-10-12T04:24:02Z")
Interestingly the researcher who the “Flynn Effect” is named after, thinks due to smarter women have fewer children, [the population is gradually getting dumber](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10450313). That is based on NZ demographics, but the trend in the West at least is for more educated women to have fewer children. > [@](#): > > An internationally recognised expert on intelligence warns New Zealand children could get dumber in three or four generations unless women with higher education started producing more babies. > > Otago University emeritus professor Dr Jim Flynn was commenting on census figures that show mothers without a higher education were the anchor of New Zealand’s current fertility rate. > > \*\*“Everyone knows if we only allowed short people to reproduce there would be a tendency in terms of genes for height to diminish. Intelligence is no different from other human traits,” he told the Sunday Star-Times. > > “A persistent genetic trend which lowered the genetic quality for brain physiology would have some effect eventually.”\*\* > > Statistics show women without tertiary qualifications who had reached their early 40s had produced 2.57 babies each. > > In contrast, women with a higher education were producing just 1.85 babies each. Flynn’s observations are consistent with other research showing an inverse relationship between [intelligence and fertility.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence) > [@](#): > > In 1982, Daniel Vining sought to address these issues in a large study on the fertility of over 10,000 individuals throughout the United States, who were then aged 25 to 34. The average fertility in his study was correlated at −0.86 with IQ for white women and −0.96 for black women. Vining argued that this indicated a drop in the genotypic average IQ of 1.6 points per generation for the white population, and 2.4 points per generation for the black population.[12] In considering these results along with those from earlier researchers, Vining wrote that “in periods of rising birth rates, persons with higher intelligence tend to have fertility equal to, if not exceeding, that of the population as a whole,” but, “The recent decline in fertility thus seems to have restored the dysgenic trend observed for a comparable period of falling fertility between 1850 and 1940.” To address the concern that the fertility of this sample could not be considered complete, Vining carried out a follow-up study for the same sample 18 years later, reporting the same, though slightly decreased, negative correlation between IQ and fertility… > > In a 1988 study, Retherford and Sewell examined the association between the measured intelligence and fertility of over 9,000 high school graduates in Wisconsin in 1957, and confirmed the inverse relationship between IQ and fertility for both sexes, but much more so for females. If children had, on average, the same IQ as their parents, IQ would decline by .81 points per generation. Taking .71 for the additive heritability of IQ as given by Jinks & Fulker,[14] they calculated a dysgenic decline of .57 IQ points per generation.[15]… > > Meisenberg (2010) found that intelligence in the US was negatively related to the number of children, with age-controlled correlations of −.156, −.069, −.235 and −.028 for White females, White males, Black females and Black males. This effect was related mainly to the general intelligence factor and was caused in part by education and income, and to a lesser extent by the more “liberal” gender attitudes of those with higher intelligence. Without migration the average IQ of the US population will decline by about 0.8 points per generation.[24] Earlier [historical examples of the opposite trend?](http://infoproc.blogspot.co.nz/2011/08/demography-and-fast-evolution.html) ---
**Author:** ![Blaster\_Master](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cab0a1/32.png) [@Blaster\_Master](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blaster_Master)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2012, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/31 "2012-10-12T14:08:52Z")
I think we’re generally getting smarter, but I think it has very little to do with evolution over such a short term. I think it’s the same sort of effect as to why athletes are just continuing to get better. Medical technology is improving, which means better care from pregnancy through all of the important developmental phases. We have a better understanding of nutrition and more of the population is getting access to it. We have better technology which provides greater access to information. Our education systems are generally better and are doing more to help specialize education for some kids, either challenging the smart ones more or helping the ones that need more. And there’s social and economic pressures at work too, like how we encourage kids so much harder to get into college, being more successful. So it seems like quite a stretch to be looking at genetics over such a small time scale as a century, but not these sorts of things that have changed many times over. ---
**Author:** ![truthSeeker2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7cd45c/32.png) [@truthSeeker2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/truthSeeker2)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2012, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/32 "2012-10-13T02:44:32Z")
> [@Blaster\_Master](#): > > I think we’re generally getting smarter, but I think it has very little to do with evolution over such a short term. I think it’s the same sort of effect as to why athletes are just continuing to get better. Medical technology is improving, which means better care from pregnancy through all of the important developmental phases. We have a better understanding of nutrition and more of the population is getting access to it. We have better technology which provides greater access to information. Our education systems are generally better and are doing more to help specialize education for some kids, either challenging the smart ones more or helping the ones that need more. And there’s social and economic pressures at work too, like how we encourage kids so much harder to get into college, being more successful. So it seems like quite a stretch to be looking at genetics over such a small time scale as a century, but not these sorts of things that have changed many times over. Very valid points. Although, these days there are so many distractions that they might be reducing the average attention span contributing to some dumbing down as well. But overall, people are smarter than before atleast in the developing world. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/33 "2012-10-14T00:51:20Z")
In previous times, even a job as mundane as working in a shop demanded the ability to perform mental arithmatic . Computers even on a basic level have removed much of the need to think. There seems to be more prevalence of semi illiteracy, connected to spell checkers perhaps ? Health and Safety strictures are to some degree making people less aware of potential hazards. So in evolutionary terms I suspect that we’re becoming less intelligent across the board, as in if you don’t use it you lose it. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/34 "2012-10-14T01:38:50Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > In previous times, even a job as mundane as working in a shop demanded the ability to perform mental arithmatic . > > Computers even on a basic level have removed much of the need to think. This strikes me as being ridiculous. In previous times a lot of people were shit-shovelling farmhands who didn’t need to do much arithmetic, and how using a computer requires you to turn your brain off I cannot fathom. > [@](#): > > There seems to be more prevalence of semi illiteracy, connected to spell checkers perhaps ? No, that’s wrong. There have always been people who couldn’t read or write, or who weren’t good at it. There was never a golden age of terrific written English. > [@](#): > > Health and Safety strictures are to some degree making people less aware of potential hazards. Preposterous. Much of modern health and safety management is about making people aware of potential hazards. Unsurprisingly, the result is improved safety. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/35 "2012-10-14T01:52:39Z")
> [@Jim\_B](#): > > Also, there is a certain conventional wisdom that goes with this, historically at least. In H.G. Wells’ [War of the Worlds](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Of_The_Worlds), the super-advanced Martians are basically all brain, with useless limbs. _Will we end up like that some day?_ More likely we’ll just upload our minds into computers. If for some reason we don’t, a brain in a life support casing with neural ports to allow it to be plugged into various artificial bodies would be one alternative. Wells’ Martians in some ways don’t go far enough. And in fact, you are slightly wrong; they had plenty of useful limbs; they were just specialized for controlling machinery. The Martians were basically Wells’ idea of what a species that had evolved to be totally specialized for living an industrial/scientific society would be like. They’ve been pared down to the minimum necessary to control their machines; brain, eyes, “hands”, and a bare minimum of supporting organs\*. Everything else is either gone or vestigial. Writing these days, he’d probably have gone for a direct neural link. - So they feed on blood, because they don’t have much if any of a digestive system anymore. And their ancestors apparently eradicated microbes so long ago the Martians forgot they existed and eliminated their “wasteful” immune system. That didn’t turn out so well though… ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/36 "2012-10-14T02:38:57Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > So in evolutionary terms I suspect that we’re becoming less intelligent across the board, as in if you don’t use it you lose it. Even if we accept everything you say as true, that’s not evolution. That’s society. Culture. Not biology. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/37 "2012-10-14T07:04:27Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > Even if we accept everything you say as true, that’s not evolution. That’s society. Culture. Not biology. Indeed, culture is in some ways changing the way people think perhaps (shorter attention spans?). However, as Professor Flynn notes above - there is also a likely biological trend too as [intelligence is negatively correlated to fertility rates](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15582283&postcount=30) in Western countries. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/38 "2012-10-14T14:49:20Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > This strikes me as being ridiculous. In previous times a lot of people were shit-shovelling farmhands who didn’t need to do much arithmetic, and how using a computer requires you to turn your brain off I cannot fathom. > No, that’s wrong. There have always been people who couldn’t read or write, or who weren’t good at it. There was never a golden age of terrific written English. > Preposterous. Much of modern health and safety management is about making people aware of potential hazards. Unsurprisingly, the result is improved safety. If your brain doesn’t need to use certain processes as a norm, then the ability to use them could possibly atrophy ? As in using calculators instead of thinking, looking stuff up on the internet rather then learning, using spell checkers rather then learning to spell etc. To answer your second point, in the Western world today we probably have the most and longest available saturation of education ever, and yet we are suffering a rash of illiteracy in some parts of the West. Yes in times past there were many people who weren’t literate as they had no real access to learning, and the fact is, there will always be less intelligent people around, whatever face saving title is given to them. As to H&S I am amongst other things a H&S proffessional, and a member of the Institute of Occupational Health and Safety. I have often seen people in non work environments, such as on holiday in Third World countries, literally oblivious to potential dangers, (cliffs, currents, rockfalls etc.)because they automatically believe that anything dangerous will have warning signs around, or be fenced off. The fact that you find it difficult to fathom these things suggests that in evolutionary terms you are the living proof in the decline of intelligence. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/39 "2012-10-14T20:25:31Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > If your brain doesn’t need to use certain processes as a norm, then the ability to use them could possibly atrophy ? > > As in using calculators instead of thinking, looking stuff up on the internet rather then learning, using spell checkers rather then learning to spell etc. You haven’t explained what processes people aren’t using anymore. Everything you’re suggesting is very easily turned around; 1. Using a calculator is something that, to be perfectly honest, I don’t see people doing a lot anymore, but in any event a calculator saves you only from one arithmetic function (longhand addition, subtraction, etc.) and just gives you time to worry about higher order mathematical problems (what to add and subtract, etc.) 2. The ability to look up information does not in any way make you dumber, or else libraries would make people stupid. Would be be smarter without libraries, so that lazy-ass people would have to remember everything instead of just looking it up in a book? How about dictionaries; are people likelier to be better at writing if they don’t have a dictionary toreply on? Are people better cooks if they refuse to use cookbooks and written recipes? Would you trust a lawyer who had no legal references? > [@](#): > > To answer your second point, in the Western world today we probably have the most and longest available saturation of education ever, and yet we are suffering a rash of illiteracy in some parts of the West. Show me the evidence. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289/40 "2012-10-14T20:43:30Z")
I would assume, by the way, that the penis size thing (if true) is probably a result of the obesity epidemic (in other words, penises aren’t getting smaller, they’re just getting obscured by fat.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-getting-smarter-or-dumber/637289.md?page=3)