Technology is making us stupid and killing us. Avg IQ down 14 points.

[KurtNYC]

Statistics now show that texting while driving is six times as deadly as driving drunk. The risk of crashing while texting is 23 times greater than just driving. 11 teenagers die every day while texting at the wheel, over 3,000 per year with another 300,000 injured. based on averages, 100,000 drivers are texting at the wheel right now. In other words, presumably sober, people willingly risk the lives of themselves, their passengers and the lives of those in the opposing lane to undertake one of the slowest ways to communicate.

Researchers estimate that average IQs have fallen 14 points since the Victorian era. A loss of 1.23 points per decade.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2323944/Were-Victorians-cleverer-Research-indicates-decline-brainpower-reflex-speed.html

As IQs continue to fall and we become more immersed in high technology, technology becomes the leading cause of death in a variety of areas. In medical technology, interactions between medications are now the 4th highest cause of death in the USA. Add to that, death from drugs (both legal and illegal) is the 2nd leading cause of death.

Deaths from pollution, global warming, and much of modern warfare can all be attributed to "advances" in technology also. To be fair, it is not so much technology itself as how we use it that leads to massive numbers of premature deaths but it is our choice to do these things. That's where the stupid comes into play.

Steve Wozniak remarked recently that "writing (computer) code makes you stupid." You have to think like a machine to do it so there is a kind of tunnel vision that gets rewarded by the process. The real complexities and nuances of life cannot be reduced to decision matrices but that is what computer programming requires. Fine but we rely increasingly on the end of that process. In other words we rely on apps, websites and other output from automated processes that ignore, by design, the flexibility and constant input that real problem solving requires. The best known example is probably all the mapping and GPS software that leads people into empty fields or through a series of convoluted freeway interchanges, exits, turns and highways that the driver would not do without such software.

With every new media that is introduced we lose significant amounts of prior learning, art and culture. Films, books, recordings are all routinely made unavailable by the march of consumer technology. In a world where 140 characters is the limit for a complete thought, would a modern James Joyce or F Scott Fitzgerald be able to show their brilliance?

Copyrights were expanded when player pianos became the rage. 100 years later copyright laws and their enforcement threaten to make us spectators to our own dying culture. Our national anthem is different words laid over a British drinking song -- that would be illegal today. Technology, such as that deployed by YouTube, now makes the enforcement of copyrights much easier. Meanwhile entities like MicroSoft buy up the copyrights for historical photos and film footage and therefore gain the right to stop their publication.

IQ is a measure of problem solving ability and we will need lots of that in the future. 100 years from now our problems will likely require more technology than ever but our average IQ will be about 85...good luck everybody!

[d_r]

1. validity

they compared reaction times. not IQ. See the Flynn effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect


ETA-
"While an average man in 1889 had a reaction time of 183 milliseconds, this has slowed to 253ms in 2004."

Because measures of milliseconds were so accurate in 1889.

[kysrsoze]

3. Thank you for the injection of reality. Were it not reaction testing (sic)...

who would be testing whose IQ (and how) in Victorian times? This is a ridiculous leap, based on a supposed reaction time alone.

"But the scientists were unable to directly compare IQ from different eras as earlier generations had limited access to education, improved nutrition and hygiene, which would have boosted modern results.

Instead, they compared reaction times, which they claim ‘can be used to meaningfully compare historical and contemporary populations in terms of levels of general intelligence’."

[KurtNYC]

5. SAT scores hit four decade low

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-09-24/local/35495510_1_scores-board-president-gaston-caperton-test-takers

In November 2012, Stanford University School of Medicine researcher Gerald Crabtree published two papers in the journal Trends in Genetics suggesting that humanity's intelligence peaked between 2,000 and 6,000 years ago.
...
Another theory holds that humanity's genetic capacity for intelligence is in decline because of a phenomenon called dysgenic mating. Since the mid-1800s, IQ and reproduction have been negatively correlated, studies have found. To put it bluntly, people who are more intelligent have fewer babies. Because intelligence is part genetic, some researchers argue that, if anything, IQs should be dropping.

http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/stories/are-humans-getting-smarter-or-dumber

If Galton's reaction time measurements were based on a falling object, for example, then the millisecond calculations/measurement would be just as accurate as now because gravity hasn't changed. Sarcasm is the least efficient mode of communication.

[Vashta Nerada]

10. Correlation does not equal causation.

We could also say because SAT scores are down, more people are eating meat. SAT scores are down, more people are getting into car accidents. SAT scores are down, more people are dying more from heart attacks.

Same argument.

[cthulu2016]

2. If the entire world were British aristocrats, maybe so. But it isn't.

The average intelligence of the human race is vastly higher today than a century ago.

Nutrition, for starters. Big factor when talking about humanity. (As opposed to incoming freshmen at Cambridge)

Exposure to varied stimulus. Education. Literacy.


Are we to disregard those things in favor of reaction time?

And do we really believe reaction time has taken such a hit? People seem surprisingly good at hitting baseballs, despite them being pitched considerably faster. We do tasks every day requiring faster reactions than were ever required of people in the old days, which suggests something about norms.

And c'mon... it would be odd if video games led to slower reaction times.

The over-argument here is, "technology has rduced our reaction time (and reaction time correlates with IQ). Does that sound plausible?

Has anyone ever actually watched a silent movie??? The clock-speed of people back in the day was not faster. (They appear to have had admirable powers of concentration that we lack, however)

[KurtNYC]

6. Galton tested 2,522 young men and 888 young women from a wide variety of socioeconomic statuses.

You seem to be citing anecdotes to refute science. Why have SAT scores declined for 40 years?

There are decades of studies showing correlation between response times and IQ:

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

ETA: In another study, video games were shown to reduce reading skills and learning:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/blog-post/1597027/video-games-boys-stupid

[cthulu2016]

8. Why have SAT scores declined for 40 years?

Probably because a wider swath of people take the SAT.

video games were shown to reduce reading skills and learning

We were talking about reaction time.

[KurtNYC]

9. Reaction time and IQ are tied that is why both decline with alcohol intake.

Fluctuations in the percentage of students taking the SAT has not been shown to correlate with test scores.

From 2002 to 2003, for example, the number of SAT takers nationally grew by 78,500, which was a 5-percent increase, much larger than the 3-percent from 2010 to 2011). Yet average test scores — for verbal and math, because that was before writing was added to the SAT in 2005 — increased by six points, according to Bob Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest.

And in New York state, the participation rate declined from 89 percent in 2007 to 85 percent in 2011, yet average composite scores for the three parts of the SAT declined by 14 points.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/what-the-decline-in-sat-scores-really-means/2011/09/14/gIQAdUzdSK_blog.html

Both of those are the inverse of the correlation your post suggested.

Btw, on hitting baseballs -- LASIK and steroids are more prevalent now and both are shown to enhance performance.

http://apurvadesai.com/2009/04/22/baseballs-performance-enhancing-surgeries/

[uponit7771]

4. Not having a DoD level of envestment in education would due it too... we should have more high

... school teacher than people in jail IMHO...

Lot's of high school teachers

[Fumesucker]

7. By the time a kid gets to HS it's too late

The Jesuit motto: Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man.

http://drjamesthompson.blogspot.com/2013/05/give-me-child-until-he-is-seven-and-i_20.html

[randome]

11. We went down a wrong path when we decided to make everything visual instead of data-oriented.

Do you have any idea how fast data could be propogated between two points if not for the lethargic processing of unneeded graphics and display of pretty colors?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Treat your body like a machine. Your mind like a castle.[/center][/font][hr]

[hobbit709]

12. We don't have sabertooths to weed out the slow and dumb.

So we invented our own ways.

I keep saying Idiocracy is a documentary.