Controversial study suggests human intelligence peaked several thousand years ago and we've been on

Originally posted by ErroneousDylan

Thoughts?

www.independent.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

As a scientist who studies thought and information, I'd say the geneticist is comparing peanuts to fractal geometries (or any other two incompatible objects.)

It's quite one thing to have a beautiful memory and elegant thoughts in a simple society that lives in relative isolation. It's quite another to deal with these same issues in a very complex society, connected to the entire world and fed a virtual firehose of information each day. In addition to "thinking beautiful thoughts", we also have to negotiate hundreds and thousands of messages, deal with larger social circles than your average Athenian, and we read more information (good/bad/opinion/false/true) and have to evaluate and truth seek or path-seek to a goal.

The average ancient Greek would have to have a good lie-down and a lot of jars of wine to begin to try and deal with the chaos that we deal with.

We see this when people from tribal areas come into our society -- it's overwhelming, it's confusing, and they deal very poorly with the multiplicity of choices.

reply to post by Byrd

...when people from tribal areas come into our society -- it's overwhelming, it's confusing, and they deal very poorly with the multiplicity of choices.

Goshdarn, seems to me the multiplicity of choices is dealt with poorly by most everyone in our society, starting around about adolescence.

S&

reply to post by Byrd


Have you ever looked at the pattern on a peanut shell?

reply to post by antonia


I tend to agree with the proponent of the idea, that as a race we are in decline in regards to genetically potential.

Human society as it is structured (and as the proponent states) removes many stressing factors that would keep us dynamically more fit both mind and body (even extending the potential for us to live longer, look on the recent finds regarding nutrition, especially in regards to fast). There have been positive aspects but in the general balance I think we are worst genetically and environmentally by the discovery of agriculture and what we made with it, I wouldn't bet as he did as I suspect that the effect is not as significant as he proposes (at least in the intellect part).

There is a greater risk in regards to the propagation of negative genetically deficiencies or unwanted traits, medicine today permits the survivability and "repackaging" of many that wouldn't be able to reproduce in the past (due to death or exclusion).

Gene therapy will probably help us resolve this problem but in regards to the unseen, like mental faculties and ability to handle emotions it will probably take longer, but hopefully the decline will not be as significative as it was proposed...

Originally posted by TiM3LoRd

Hate to be that guy that bursts your bubble......BUT....Humans murder, pillage and rape now more than ever..you must live in a very quiet neck of the globe. But I doubt half the planet would say things are less violent now than they were thousands of years ago.

Steven Pinker makes a good case for a decline in violence -




Worth a watch .

Well, thats no surprise. Although i think their timeframe/cause/explanation is generally way off the mark.

A lot of scientists and researchers think that this evidence showing for species wide brain damage due to separation from the extremely neuroactive and hormonally rich biochemistry of the african tropical forests holds together very well: leftinthedark.org.uk...

I guess i should just make a separate thread.