How come humans have not evolved into a higher species?

[The Barbarian]

Impossible, no objective measure of "smarter" exists.

There are many objective measures. IQ consistently measures a suite of cognitive skills. There are valid and reliable tests for other cognitive skills like memory, speed of computation, emotional perception, and so on. None of them show a decline. But skills might. If it weren't for calculating tips in restaurants, my computational skills would atrophy; a smartphone lets me quickly do math faster than I can do it in my head. For some reason, I don't use it for tips.

And having come of age with slide rules, I have a much better sense of degrees of magnitude than most people today (slide rules require you to remember the number of zeros). That allows you to rapidly do approximate values in your head.

If we are smarter why are we struggling with the same problems that past generations faced?

We aren't, in many, many cases. The problems are due to a lack of wisdom and ethics, in most cases where problems persist. We're smarter; we're not much kinder, if any.

As humans get more fit for the world we have today, we'll see changes. You may have noticed how younger people are much more adaptable to digitial information. That's mostly due to environmental effects during development, but the genes that insured successful survival and reproduction 20,000 years ago are often not useful today, while other genes are certainly becoming more favorable. Also, genes that were unfavorable then, may well not be unfavorable now.

"So what if civilization collapses? What then?"

What usually happens to a population when environment changes drastically. A lot of die-off, with the relatively few who are more fit for the new environment, leaving more offspring. Remember, "fitness" counts only in terms of environment. Kids aren't intrinsically smarter or dumber than we are; they merely have developed different cognitive skills. And these happen to be largely those that are tested for on IQ tests.

 

[The Barbarian]

Impossible, no objective measure of "smarter" exists.

There are many objective measures. IQ consistently measures a suite of cognitive skills. There are valid and reliable tests for other cognitive skills like memory, speed of computation, emotional perception, and so on. None of them show a decline.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

There are many objective measures. IQ consistently measures a suite of cognitive skills. There are valid and reliable tests for other cognitive skills like memory, speed of computation, emotional perception, and so on. None of them show a decline. But skills might. If it weren't for calculating tips in restaurants, my computational skills would atrophy; a smartphone lets me quickly do math faster than I can do it in my head. For some reason, I don't use it for tips.

And having come of age with slide rules, I have a much better sense of degrees of magnitude than most people today (slide rules require you to remember the number of zeros). That allows you to rapidly do approximate values in your head.



We aren't, in many, many cases. The problems are due to a lack of wisdom and ethics, in most cases where problems persist. We're smarter; we're not much kinder, if any.

As humans get more fit for the world we have today, we'll see changes. You may have noticed how younger people are much more adaptable to digitial information. That's mostly due to environmental effects during development, but the genes that insured successful survival and reproduction 20,000 years ago are often not useful today, while other genes are certainly becoming more favorable. Also, genes that were unfavorable then, may well not be unfavorable now.

"So what if civilization collapses? What then?"

What usually happens to a population when environment changes drastically. A lot of die-off, with the relatively few who are more fit for the new environment, leaving more offspring. Remember, "fitness" counts only in terms of environment. Kids aren't intrinsically smarter or dumber than we are; they merely have developed different cognitive skills. And these happen to be largely those that are tested for on IQ tests.

So what good is a higher IQ if we can't solve simple problems? Or as you say, maybe we just don't care. Or worse. Perhaps the brightest among us are just using this advantage to enrich themselves while ignoring the need for their gifts in the greater community.

Or as in my own case I don't use my abilities to the fullest, being content with the life of a worker doing rather simple tasks.

 

[The Barbarian]

No, I am defining intelligence in a manner that includes wisdom and ethics. I am not confused, it is my choice to regard the inclusion as vital.

The issue is that a person with greater cognitive abilities, but no better wisdom or ethics than another person is measurably smarter than that other person.

And we seem, as a nation to be ethically better than we were in my youth. When I was young, most people saw nothing wrong with keeping some people in subjection because of their race, religion, or sexual orientation.

Today, that's not the case. So we've come a long way in ethical standards as well. Perhaps we've declined in some other ways. But I notice that young people are now less sexually active than was the case when I was young, so there is that.

 

[MrsFoundit]

So what good is a higher IQ if we can't solve simple problems?

It seems good for providing support for the delusion that we are getting more intelligent.

 

[MrsFoundit]

Today, that's not the case. So we've come a long way in ethical standards as well.

In my country, which does not happen to be the USA, our police are asking for help youth are killing each other with knives, baking a cake as become a very rare skill, and the medical professionals just announced that one fifth of "us" are on a prescription for some type of psycho active drug.

If we need to lose a few "cognitive skills" in order to solve any of these issues, I say lets do it!

 

[The Barbarian]

I notice that the murder rates in London remain below those of the United States, although until the last two years, murders were falling in the United States.

I don't have any data on cake baking skills, but the fact that more women are working outside the home probably has something to do with it.

And the fact that mentally ill people are now being treated instead of being shut up in institutions seems like a good thing to me.

The murder rate in London is well under that of London in prior centuries, BTW:
Given the data in this project cover a time period from 1300 to 1340, and given Eisner's average of 80,000 people living in London during that time, the approximate homicide rate per capita in early 14th century London was 4.5 per 100,000. By comparison, contemporary London has a murder rate of 1.5 homicides per 100,000 per year.
Map Reveals Medieval London's Grisly Murder Rate ... That's Still Lower Than The U.S.'

 

[The Barbarian]

So what good is a higher IQ if we can't solve simple problems?

It solves simple problems like "how do we make better roads", to complex problems like "how do we anticipate where crimes are likely to occur in the future.

Or as you say, maybe we just don't care.

Some don't. That's not a failure of intelligence.

Or worse. Perhaps the brightest among us are just using this advantage to enrich themselves while ignoring the need for their gifts in the greater community.

Grifters are generally not that bright. They're just devious.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

It solves simple problems like "how do we make better roads", to complex problems like "how do we anticipate where crimes are likely to occur in the future.

Then they rob the highway fund to pay for other programs.

We can't address crime where it is happening now.

Some don't. That's not a failure of intelligence.

Not caring is stupid.

 

[MrsFoundit]

I don't have any data on cake baking skills, but the fact that more women are working outside the home probably has something to do with it.

We have abandoned teaching basic cooking skills in our schools, and incidentally men can bake cakes as can women with payed careers.

And the fact that mentally ill people are now being treated instead of being shut up in institutions seems like a good thing to me.

If we were talking about a direct substitution you would be right. We are not.

Map Reveals Medieval London's Grisly Murder Rate ... That's Still Lower Than The U.S.'

The comparative rate between here and the USA is not relevant. When violence is not destroying young lives, in any country, we can say we are now smarter.

 

[Tone]

Oh yes, mankind has become more and more smart...

 

[OldWiseGuy]

And the fact that mentally ill people are now being treated instead of being shut up in institutions seems like a good thing to me.

The streets are filled with the mentally ill, who actually need to be institutionalized, for their good and for ours.

 

[The Barbarian]

The streets are filled with the mentally ill, who actually need to be institutionalized, for their good and for ours.

Few of them are of any danger at all to anyone but themselves. Institutionalizing them failed. Which is why the courts won't let states warehouse mentally ill people without a demonstrable need to do so. Most of the people you see on the streets lack housing and medical care. The biggest problem is when they become ill, are taken to hospitals; someone has to pay; it would be cheaper to offer free preventive care.

Asylums were such horrible places, that wasn't an option. Biggest problem is it's expensive to have them going to ERs for medical care,and they are vulnerable to crime.

 

[The Barbarian]

The comparative rate between here and the USA is not relevant. When violence is not destroying young lives, in any country, we can say we are now smarter.

I'm just showing you that in earlier times, murder rates were much higher in England than they are today.
Smarter in a sense. Sir Robert Peel had the right ideas:

1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
2. To recognize always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behavior, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
3. To recognize always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing cooperation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
4. To recognize always that the extent to which the cooperation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
5. To seek and preserve public favor, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humor, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public cooperation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. To recognize always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
9. To recognize always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

It worked. Really well. Smarter, not harder.

 

[The Barbarian]

The fact is, we see that Tibetans are not degenerating, but in a few thousand years, evolved better adaptations to living at high altitudes. The Pacific Islanders I mentioned are not degenerating,but have evolved a better mechanism to let them dive deeper and longer.

That's how evolution works under natural selection.

 

[Daniel Marsh]

If we are smarter why are we struggling with the same problems that past generations faced?

I am not having those struggles because I ask my great grandfather for help when I was a child.

 

[MrsFoundit]

Few of them are of any danger at all to anyone but themselves.

No one spoke of "danger" but you. All of them are human beings, loved by Jesus Christ, and therefore to be treated with respect and dignity. We are better off as a society if we stop leaving people to survive in inappropriate conditions, and a safe shelter is no way worse than the streets for anyone. That is, "for their own good, and ours", no perceived danger involved.

 

[MrsFoundit]

The fact is,

The suggestion is that our capacity to adapt is diminishing over time, not that adaptation never occurs at all.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

Few of them are of any danger at all to anyone but themselves. Institutionalizing them failed. Which is why the courts won't let states warehouse mentally ill people without a demonstrable need to do so. Most of the people you see on the streets lack housing and medical care. The biggest problem is when they become ill, are taken to hospitals; someone has to pay; it would be cheaper to offer free preventive care.

Asylums were such horrible places, that wasn't an option. Biggest problem is it's expensive to have them going to ERs for medical care,and they are vulnerable to crime.

They can't get the care they need on the streets.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

I am not having those struggles because I ask my great grandfather for help when I was a child.

How many have a living great grandfather with money to spare (I never knew either of my grandfathers).