Computers haven’t reached a point where they are increasing our fluid intelligence by much yet, I don’t think. There are programs here and there but they are speciality programs.
However via the internet people have access to large amounts of experience and knowledge that they really didn’t have before (its much more convenient than the library or encyclopedias). When I have car troubles, I am usually able to pinpoint what is wrong just by googling or failing that, starting a thread somewhere and asking mechanics.
So has it been studied to see if individual human crystallized intelligence has gone up any due to the internet?
I know the internet is also full of fake and bad information. Plus that information already exists, its not like humanity got smarter because we learned things we already know. But on an individual level, it seems like people have access to more wisdom and problem solving skills than they did in the past, which seems like it’d improve crystallized intelligence.
But I’m not sure honestly. In a way it seems like people’s fluid intelligence went up by accessing other people’s crystallized intelligence. People are better at novel problem solving because we access the experience and wisdom of other people who have been there and done that before. Personally I notice at least some difference in my problem solving abilities (at least in some areas) due to being able to access the knowledge of other people more easily via the internet. But in other areas, I haven’t seen much improvement. But I’ve had medical problems I was able to diagnose and treat at home, car problems I was able to diagnose and buy the right parts for (I let my mechanic replace the parts though), I’ve dealt with pest control using information other people acquired, etc. Yeah that information existed before the internet, but it was much harder to dig up and utilize. Back in the early 1990s, I wouldn’t have been able to do any of that on my own even with libraries. However I still could’ve visited medical professionals, mechanics, exterminators, etc. to gather useful info.
I’ve never heard the terms fluid and crystallized intelligence before. Google Ngrams reveals that fluid intelligence is far more common a term. That’s probably because fluid intelligence can be learned and people are pushing feel-good methods to improve it. Here’s an article that isn’t complete woo, i.e. it says basic things that everybody always says.
If crystallized intelligence stems from age and experience, then expecting computers to improve that is looking in the wrong direction.
But computers allow us to access other people’s age and experience. Thats the point. I’m not getting wiser, I just have access to a large pool of other wise people now, which makes me wiser (assuming I know how to reach out to them and filter through the good and bad answers).
Yep, it’s allowing us to act in a far more informed manner and share what we learn without having to publish a book. That said there are negatives that take advantage of the same mechanisms, but I think overall it’s a net positive.
I agree, but I don’t know if any metrics have changed to reflect this.
GDP growth isn’t faster. Human health isn’t better (as far as I can tell). Shouldn’t there be improvements in quality, efficiency, etc. that are occurring on a wide enough scale that they can be measured due to having access to so much knowledge?
The terms “fluid intelligence” and “crystallized intelligence” are rather bizarre and IMHO unnecessary. Back in the day, we would just call the former “intelligence” and the latter “knowledge”. And yes, the Internet has phenomenally increased our access to the latter, which is not quite the same as inherently possessing it. But I never cease to be amazed by the ease with which the Internet can inform and clarify on virtually any subject that I happen to think of. That has to be profoundly transformative.
By the limited experience I’ve had with the terms, you’re looking at it wrong. Having access to information is not the same as understanding how to process that information.
I had access to tons of information, as well as wise people, in college. I had no life experience to be able to process this access. Being deluged with a bigger hose wouldn’t have made a difference. Only living another 50 years has.
How would we decide which?
And if the effect is well diversified and/or the net effect in any one of them is small or incremental it would be impossible to show a correlation, it would be attributed to other factors too easily.
Maybe it could be added to the list of possible contributors to the great American crime decline?
Idk, good question, impossible to answer definitively though IMO.
Life expectancy has increased from 65 years to 72 in the last 30 years, and I’d be astonished if one cause of that wasn’t the ease of transferring information, and remotely educating doctors provided by the internet.
In western nations it seems to have gone up 3-5 years from 1990 to the present. However this trendline existed before the internet became mainstream, so I don’t know if the internet has been found to be a factor in it.
Also the majority of the increases in life expectancy tend to be due to public health more than individualized medicine.
No, we aren’t entering that age. We’ve been living in it for a while. And obviously, as Steophan’s link showed, worldwide life expectancy is up 7 years. Non-western countries move up a higher percentage because they are starting from a lower base.
You’re factually wrong on both claims. The world is demonstrably improving with little sign of its slowing down. (Unless climate change destroys living conditions.) I don’t see any way to attribute this to fluid or crystallized intelligence, even assuming those are separate rather than interconnected agencies. Advances aren’t like stones that you can place in one bucket or another.
It’s certainly not just the internet that’s causing this. but technological advances in general - but they are all tied into the internet, and have been for a couple of decades now.
In theory, you’d assume the biggest benefits would be in the developing world where they don’t have libraries, doctors, and various professionals (mechanics, repairmen, exterminators, etc). In the developed world we could just use those tools instead, even though they aren’t as good they’re still decent.
A good chunk of that is from population growth. If we look at real per capita global GDP, the exponential constant comes out to about 0.016/yr. But of course steady exponential growth means, by definition, that the rate is increasing over time. So real per capita GDP increased at $146/year over the past 20 years, but only at $82/year over the previous 20 years.
Life expectancy continues to increase logarithmically. Infant and under-5 mortality continue to fall.