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So did we make any progress in the last 50 years? Is the Flynn effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect) a

by nefitty 11y ago

So did we make any progress in the last 50 years? Is the Flynn effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect) a natural side-effect of the increasing complexity of a society, or the result of active work and research toward increasing society's intelligence? I'm very fascinated by this area, as I'm sure many of you here on HN are as well.

visakanv 11y ago
> a natural side-effect of the increasing complexity of a society, or the result of active work and research toward increasing society's intelligence? I think the two are interrelated, and maybe one might be a function of the other– that is, "society's intelligence" is a function of the operations we can perform unconsciously. We are more intelligent than before because we don't have to reinvent everything from scratch, we can build on what others have learnt and discovered before us.