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Comment by anon23432343 | Hacker News Reader

I hate this kind of blog posts...

Back in the days when people got easy access to books people were thinking that kids reading all day the newest novel would make them only want to live in a dream world...

The avg. human these days is way way smarter then 50 or 100 years ago...

People always fill there brains with junk... Even in ancient Rome they were drawing penises on walls...

Maybe the questions in schools an co. suck for the modern times? Maybe its an problem of the write of the article not a general problem?

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I wouldn’t say they are smarter.

They have more information in their heads and know more ideas, facts, figures, and so on.

But the wetware is still the same it’s been since ancient civilization. We haven’t changed, only stuffed our heads with more information that hasn’t been given any time for processing. Very few have any real free time to allow their brains to wonder and to begin integrating what their senses have collected.

Dare I say this makes us less wise.

If you purely use IQ as a metric, the. Yes we are smarter than 100 or 50 years ago. However this has stagnated/reversed in the last decade.

Is IQ not but a subjective list of attributes to test for that are culturally dependent?

If Native Americans had an IQ test it might encompass being able to navigate and understand geography, weather, and animal and plant behavior without being aided by tools. In that case, most of us would qualify as handicapable and be sorted out by primitive career matching into nothing more than offerings to nature and the cycle of life.

I think by definition the more stable and ingrained globalized culture becomes… the more likely we will select and refine for the attributes it requires to succeed. And by this virtue, we’ve made a self-fulfilling prophecy.

> I wouldn’t say they are smarter.

Nutrition is better than centuries ago. People are stronger. They live longer. All around on that time scale, tech has improved human lives. One would expect that to be reflected in brain health, too.

No one can agree about what "intelligence" actually means. Using synonyms for intelligence but claiming they mean something subtly different (e.g. "wise") is part of that phenomenon.

But there is the Flynn Effect.

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

No lead is a big one as well.

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