Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ghostrider]

Since dumb people are more likely to reproduce their genes are more likely to be passed on to the next generation. Over time there is a significant decline in average IQ. I wonder how long it will take us to get down to the intelligence level of chimpanzees.

[joelove]

It does seem that dumb people are more likely to have kids, or more kids, than smarter people. You'd think smarter people would have an easier time attracting a mate though. I don't think being a geek or nerd is as bad as it was socially a few decades ago, if it ever was really that bad, or was that just in movies? But there is still a lot of anti-intellectualism, or whatever it's called. It's almost like you're expected to be smart but never sound like it.

I was of the impression that people were getting smarter actually. It just seems like younger people know more than when I was a teenager, before the Internet. We have easier access to information at least, but also I guess people don't read as much as they used to either. In some ways the world has become more complex, it seems.

I have a feeling people were saying all these sorts of things 20, 40, 60, ...
years ago as well. A bit of "oh, the past was better" kind of thinking, forgetting all the troubles that were present then, remembering simpler times or whatever it is people do when they think of older days.

[Died By Bear]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80lEy-iYGTY


Lornsome night, babbits bawlin', wind bitin' the bone. Wind like this, full of voices. Ancestry howlin' at you; 'you bring the stories'. All their voices tied up into one. One voice different, one voice whispering out there, spying from the dark. Now, find you devil, Old Georgie himself. Now you hear up close and I'll yarn you about the first time we met eye to eye.

[young_clinton]

[World Traveler]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icmRCixQrx8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8rhIZJAdd0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvIweCIgwk

[FMPJ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

[Julius]

[schwa]

[joelove]

We have some support for claims of people getting smarter and some who can back up claims of the opposite.

Has the average attention span decreased? Are people less patient? Why all these diagnoses of attention problems in recent times? A real problem that was previously unnoticed or just a way to sell drugs?

Has the vocabulary of the average adult decreased as well? That sounds strange if more people have more education. It seems to me most people hate hearing or using big words in everyday talking. I'm not sure why this is. A lot of very smart people seem to use the simplest words though.

[Times30]

Intelligence is hugely subjective. If anything, the "stupid" people who manage to procreate versus the "intelligent" who don't, creates a real quandary...

Who is the most intelligent creature if we're following evolutionary objectives? Technically as animals our objective is to pass our genetic lineage. That's essentially the only purpose we live for at it's most basic. The failure to do so could be considered "stupid".

[Steelrails]

The culture of ignorance. Somewhere between 1960-1990 (It wasn't an abrupt event but rather just a rising phenomenon), we started to treat being smart, having a strong vocabulary, and having a strong educational background as objects of derision.

This isn't the apologist in me saying this- I think a large part has to do with the decline in rote memorization, the increasing emphasis on grades, and the rise of the essay as the means to evaluate students. Rote is not the key to educational aptitude, but it is important to have a base of knowledge stored in your brain. If you lack that base, it is impossible to make intelligent decisions. In an effort to give more "opportunity" and to balance schools, we've emphasized grades (which often reward doing homework) over test scores- which if structured correctly, will show that you understand the concepts. Lastly, the rise of the essay as a means of evaluation, while good in theory, has in practice turned into 30 students handing in 8 pages of BS each. Add to this the emphasis of citing sources rather than exploring the concept often results in papers that have the requisite number of sources with little connecting them and no coherent conclusion.

When out with people under 35 or so, it is shocking what their level of ignorance is. People over 35, even anti-intellectual types, tend to still be rather cogent about history, literature, and subjects that are outside their disciplinary range. They also understand how to acquire knowledge outside of a wikipedia search and have the patience to sit and read a book. These are people that still did things like write letters, use rotary phones, listened to whole record albums straight through, went to libraries and used the card catalogue, and such. People 28-35 tend to be in a bit of a grey area. But with people under 28 there is just a stunning drop off in the average knowledge of each person. You get people who have no knowledge of history outside of their lifetime, who have almost no knowledge of figures and events from Classical Antiquity, The Bible, to Shakespeare and the Romantic Age. In fields such as chemistry and physics they lack knowledge of basic concepts and components. Then you get a large swath which have a generally contemptuous attitude towards mathematics.

What skills do they have?- Social interaction and sensitivity in the area of diversity, computers, Good Enuf paper writing, speech, cynicism and criticism (not critical-thinking), and perhaps some knowledge in their field of study, though even that tends to be low. Strangely enough, the people that tend to not be as ignorant are people in fields like engineering, math, and science, though they still tend to be below previous generations in their breadth of knowledge.

[blm]

I saw a documentary about this..... Idiocracy.

Look it up

[KimchiNinja]

It's interesting, this idea that people are getting dumber has come up on three different msg boards I visit.

Agree that people are getting dumber, and agree that some of it might be smart people not breeding (Idiocracy theory). But I believe a large part of it is nutritional-driven degeneration; the modern processed foods that make us fat, break down our hearts, and give us ADD also make us stoopid.

Koreans who don't have this nutritional problem to the degree Westerners do, don't seem to be getting stupider? Or at least if they are they have IQ points to spare I guess...

[Leon]

[Leon]