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Comment by jgbmlg | Hacker News Reader

It's ironic that machine intelligence is advancing during an era when human intelligence is declining.

It's not. Everytime there's a new form of media or communication there's an uptick in "bad actors". Think yellow journalism or any of the moral panics around TV programming. Even back when the printing press was invented there was an uptick in troll behavior. One of the Green brothers posited that martin Luther was really just a pamphlet troll.

With social media and the Internet, stupid just got louder. I don't think people got stupid.

Not just louder, it got in power

Yes. Exactly right.

Also well documented. Anyone interested, read the book: Attention Merchants by Wu.

Yes and no. In swaths of the world, we're actually observing a reverse Flynn effect and IQ has been dropping, in some places for decades.

Eg: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-...

This started long before the internet.

Started in 2006 in Denmark and seemed to start a few years ago in the U.S… coinciding with smartphones (which I think will make us even dumber).

IQ tests are administration-sensitive and have changed dramatically since the beginning of such a Flynn effect study. The population makeup of many countries has changed in recent years to include many immigrants for whom the study would make exceedingly little sense to include. IQ tests do not cover and do not claim to cover a comprehensive view of human intelligence, famously lacking verbal and social components entirely. It is possible past IQ tests were simply overtuned and we’re now seeing the natural correction.

Amplifying stupid can be very deadly, though. In some sense, the printing press caused the 30-year war, and radio brought us World War II. Eventually, society will adapt. I just wish we could find a way to adapt faster than the bad actors do.

(continuing in that vein, and taking the liberty of making a giant oversimplification):

...and TV brought us Ronald Reagan, and the Internet gave us Trump as POTUS.

i think it’s consensus that yellow journalism directly led to the spanish-american war via hearst

> In some sense, the printing press caused the 30-year war,

Well the 30-year war definitely showed technology-driven speed-up. Before the printing press we had wars that lasted for 100 years [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War

Just to be clear, that "speed-up" is not a good thing: Those 100 years were a lot less deadly in total. The World Wars were even shorter and much deadlier still. A possible next full-blown conflict between major powers will only last hours -- and end civilization.

Maybe machine intelligence only seems to be advancing from the perspective of human intelligence

I like that thought.

> when human intelligence is declining

It's not. It's just that previously we were unaware how stupid people are, and now we're starting to understand this.

I feel like declining human intelligence is a result of advancing machine intelligence. Computers are a force multiplier and societal pressure towards building intelligence is reduced.

So the AGI/ASI problem might solve itself: we slowly become incapable of iterating on the problem while existing AI is not nearly advanced enough to pick up the slack.

It’s quite beautiful. Once a civilization tries to build machine intelligence it slowly degrades its own capacity during the process thus eventually losing all hope of ever achieving their goal - assuming they still understand their goal at that point. Maybe it’s an algorithm in the Universe to keep us from being naughty.

The human brain optimizes for efficiency, if that extra intelligence doesn't confer survival benefits it'll be lost. I can't imagine that intelligence doesn't confer survival and reproductive benefits though, it's more likely that the gradient of survival and reproduction between the most intelligent and least has shrunk. In a sense civilization is coddling the weak, and humanity is getting weaker for it.

Is there scientific evidence for this statement?

> era when human intelligence is declining

is it ? i am listening to most beautiful music that was ever created. it was created in 2024.

would citing lebron james explain away the obesity epidemic?

Yes, the strongest man who ever lived is alive today. The best player of every sport is alive today . It absolutely supports the theory support the theory that the smartest person ever is alive today, etc. etc..

what music??

Maybe on average, but I think it’s probably correlated to inequality. The kid of two Oxford professors will probably be smarter than a kid that grew up in poverty. The school system is aimed at mitigating these differences, but if on average everyone gets less intelligent maybe the school system is working poorly.

Eh, or there is a massive effort to push as many people as possible down Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - which also shows up as being less intelligent.

Happening right out in the open, and quite blatantly.

Most people are not stupid. They react to their emotions.

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