Are People Getting Dumber? | Hacker News Reader

Are People Getting Dumber?

nytimes.com

13 pointskrambs9 comments

My personal view on the topic isn't whether we're getting smarter or dumber overall its the mediums we're capable of expressing these traits through.

Throughout history the only people who were given face time on radio/tv (internet wasn't a thing) were people that had gone through various levels of screening. If an idiot interviewed on the news and said irrelevant or hateful things they were simply not aired. The radio was run by professionals with invited guests. Other examples exist too.

However, today we provide the means for anyone to create videos of themselves or write articles and be put on the same stage as anyone else. Often times we see the dumb antics of various people as "entertaining" and it becomes encouraged.

Without diving too much deeper I believe it is simply a case not of smarter/dumber but instead an argument of how visible they are. We've always had "dumb" people but only within the last two decades have we created a medium they are capable of expressing themselves through.

*Obviously just my $0.02. I'm an engineer, not a researcher of the social sciences.

Big Brother, Survivor, and other similar crap (e.g. The Jersey Shore) seem to contradict your idea, I think. I have not had a TV for some years now, and every time I actually get to watch some, I notice that it keeps getting dumber. Of course, you can still find interesting, thoughtful stuff, but it is becoming rarer and rarer.

I think that part of the problem is that being stupid is no longer seen (by society at large) as a bad thing. We're headed for the Idiocracy future...

I don't think they contradict my assumptions so much as hit it from a different angle.

Reality TV is sort of a more professional way of users creating their own content. The cameras/production and the like are still controlled operations but they're seeking out non-actor types who are willing to expose themselves for a chance at riches and fame. This leads more towards people who are inclined to take that sort of route instead of "earning" it through work. (Earn might be poor word choice here)

The other side of the coin to look at too is the type of people on those shows. It isn't a secret that they finely tune who is invited to participate and the show producers will obviously elect to cast people that are more "drama prone" or capable of providing that level of entertainment value.

Maybe if we take a step back and look at it from the meta level we could say that an indication of the general population "becoming more dumb" is the idea that we are willing to suck up this form of entertainment more and more. Is it a sign of being dumber when we more inclined to watching people generate meaningless drama, fight or expose themselves instead of intellectual stimulating programs?

> we could say that an indication of the general population "becoming more dumb" is the idea that we are willing to suck up this form of entertainment more and more.

That's precisely my point. The fact that the shows are dumb in and of themselves, is not the problem. The willingness to watch them, and by doing so celebrate their stupidity is.

I'd like to read about the topic, but various op-eds just lose my interest. I would like to read something that is more conclusive, evaluates what intelligence is, uses facts and real information, and explains perceptions.

Of course the problem is that people are too dumb nowadays to come up with all that :)

I agree. The first one linked is particularly inane.

Psychologists actually have to recalibrate the scoring of IQ tests every few decades in order to keep the average at 100 -- and they need to do this because the scores are going up. I tried to get a psych friend of mine to explain this, because if you follow the implications it means that someone who scored an average IQ in the '20s would now be classified as mentally retarded, which strikes me as insane. But for whatever weight you want to give to this particular measure of intelligence, we're actually getting smarter.

Is it possible to have a smart discussion about whether people are getting dumber in casual, 300-word increments? Perhaps the worst offender is the essay by Erin Jackson, a stand-up comedian, which is neither smart nor funny and relies on phoned-in anecdote and hand-wavy syllogism to prop up her conclusion that people are getting dumber. But even in the essays that extol a more methodical approach to the question, like Steven Pinker's piece, we're left with appeals to evidence that must be taken on faith because there's no room to include them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com