Were we smarter 100 years ago?
thepublicdomain.org
thepublicdomain.org
A hundred years ago, far fewer people got advanced educations but those that did were thoroughly well-versed in the liberal arts (as classically defined), meaning that they had been grounded in Latin, rhetoric, and similar subjects that trained them to be highly articulate in their forms of expression (as is easily seen from a glance at these hearing transcripts).
Those who went on to become lawyers, politicians, etc. were indeed elitists but the best among them were highly talented, very bright, and quite capable of making many of our modern politicians look pathetic by comparison in their forms of expression.
The 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica is widely regarded as a classic high point in the venerable lineage of that work - whose aim, it is worth recalling, was to gather all the world's knowledge in an advanced and erudite state.
They may have used pen and paper back then, or sometimes typewriters - and their knowledge base was far smaller than what we have today - but we have nothing over them in terms of innate intellectual capacity.
But what you have to realize is, that 100 years ago most people couldn't even read or write. But today they are making youtube comments - progress!
If the net is a cesspool, then so is the entire world.
You mean, globally? In the industrialised nations, people were quite literate in 1909. Especially in the USA with all the emphasis on bible reading.
Is that your definition of "smart"? It sure isn't mine.
>Those who went on to become lawyers, politicians, etc. were indeed elitists but the best among them were highly talented, very bright, and quite capable of making many of our modern politicians look pathetic by comparison in their forms of expression.
The ones you've heard of, sure - they are the ones worth remembering. But if you don't think there were just as many moronic politicians back then you're just being naive. Anyway, politicians are a self-selecting group - and a terrible group from which to sample if you want to get an idea of an era's general intelligence.
People who can express themselves well in complex fields such as law (as reflected in these transcripts) are usually pretty smart as well. It is a general indicator, though obviously not the only one.
I am certainly not claiming that earlier eras did not have their share of moronic politicians - I was once a history major and read about them all the time! They are all-pervasive in every era.
I just don't think people today are innately smarter simply because our knowledge base has expanded.
I don't think that either - I think there are other reasons for it. The Flynn Effect certainly doesn't seem like it could be caused by an expanded knowledge base.
My intuition is that it has something to do with the increasing complexity of entertainment. The way kids played 30 years ago might have been better for creativity (and was surely healthier), but I imagine the way kids play these days makes for a stronger intellect.
Today, education is more broadly available. We can read the words of the brightest of our time, and the dimmest. They are all online for our reading pleasure.
So are we smarter? Are they smarter 100 years ago? Odds are, no to both questions. But we certainly have a visibility into the full spectrum of today's people. We don't have that view of olden folk. Our perspective will be skewed.
But wait, we only see their buildings that did last. Everything that's not a Victorian structure is evidence of something of theirs that didn't...
Guess they did better before we let the TV cameras in :-)
It's not a coincidence that the media industries have a degree of political influence that's out of proportion to their size. If you're a politician, it's good to avoid irritating major media corporations, and it's even better to have them on your side.
This is why Larry Lessig eventually gave up on trying to make his arguments more eloquent and went into the corruption-fighting business. Eloquence is great, but it doesn't do much good when the fix is in.
But it seems indisputable that we know how to deal effectively with more of life's threats and opportunities than we did back then.
(Again in computer terms, our libraries of event-detection and -handling routines are much more sophisticated than those of a century ago.)
As a simple example, just think of how much more more the average person knows about, say, healthy eating and the downside of smoking -- this isn't to say, of course, that there isn't still a lot of work to do in disseminating that knowledge.
So yeah, there seems little question that we are indeed 'smarter' (in the sense used above) than we were 100 years ago.
Anyway, do people study such puzzles? For such a consistent, widespread rise, you'd expect it to be pretty obvious that they do, but I'm not sure.