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Setting aside the click-baity title. The world today is way different than when we came up with IQ tests. Yes there might be a corellation between how good you

Setting aside the click-baity title. The world today is way different than when we came up with IQ tests. Yes there might be a corellation between how good you do on an IQ test and how “smart” you are but I think over and over again your background/upbringing had been show to influence that more than your “smartness”. If the question is: do we think in different way than we did 50 years ago? I think the answer is a stong yes. The technology and the tools we have today enable us to do things that were unconcievable 50 years ago. Is this good? Is this bad? The truth is that human beings are (and always were) pretty limited. Our hardware sucks. The things that enables us are tools and our use of tools. As we get better tools we do better and better and our attention is focused on different things. I would argue that today we are smarter than we’ve ever been and we are getting smarter each day by using more and more powerful tools.

cgag 8y ago
I thought it had been shown over and over again that Iq had more to do with it than your upbringing?
- oculusthrift 8y ago
  it has. there’s twin studies where they are adopted to differnt families and yet end up scoring the same on IQ tests later in life and end up with similar levels of educational attainment and income etc
chucksmash 8y ago
If I used to do arithmetic mentally or by hand and you gave me a basic adding calculator that let me do the math more quickly, would my increased productivity really signify anything w.r.t. my intelligence?
rimliu 8y ago
Technology is amplifier, not a replacement.
- usrusr 8y ago
  It can be both.
musage 8y ago
> Yes there might be a corellation between how good you do on an IQ test and how “smart” you are but I think over and over again your background/upbringing had been show to influence that more than your “smartness”. Do you maybe mean that background influences "smartness" more than genetics? Because as written you're just saying smartness is more influenced by background than by smartness, which doesn't exactly make sense. > The technology and the tools we have today enable us to do things that were unconcievable 50 years ago. That is true, but doesn't say anything about "thinking in a different way". > The things that enables us are tools and our use of tools. I'm not even sure what that's supposed to say. Yes, tool usage is are very important. As is thinking, which kind of determines what tools we come up with, in what directions we explore, and how we use those tools. > I would argue that today we are smarter than we’ve ever been and we are getting smarter each day by using more and more powerful tools. Hmm. You say "more powerful tools" like someone who doesn't know the concept of hitting a target would talk of a "faster arrow". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohcwksrvDOg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohcwksrvDOg Would you say someone who built their own 8bit computer (or something) that they use as word processor (or something) is less smart than someone who is handed a mobile device they understand nothing about, where they just follow prompts on screen, "adapt" to the updates that get pushed on them, and "hope" that the next thing, will address some pain points instead of adding some more, along with "must-have" features? I'd actually argue we're moving into a sort of information dark age. And we're generally not even intelligent enough to understand half of the actually very intelligent people who wrote about these things since the dawn of industrialization were saying. Some of them pointed out how quantity gets confused with quality, bigness with greatness, numbers or force with being right -- and here we are, saying "but OF COURSE we're smarter, we now are each carrying around a bunch of mobile computers that would have filled several city blocks 50 years ago". Pathetic gimmicks, while a steely cocoon of learned and enforced helplessness closes around people. As I said, technology says nothing about the dimension of thinking, while thinking has a lot of influence on our invention and uses of technology. A fast car you drive into the mud is less useful than a slower car you use well. There is no really meaningful difference between denying/censoring/ignoring blurry black and white photographs of dead soldiers and civilians, and doing that with high resolution color video, and so on.
coldtea 8y ago
>Yes there might be a corellation between how good you do on an IQ test and how “smart” you are but I think over and over again your background/upbringing had been show to influence that more than your “smartness”. The background/upbringing influences one's performance in IQ tests too, so the point is moot. >If the question is: do we think in different way than we did 50 years ago? I think the answer is a stong yes. Not in the slightest. >The technology and the tools we have today enable us to do things that were unconcievable 50 years ago. Which is neither here not there when it comes to intelligence. Plus we still do things we did 50 and 100 and 100000 years ago and still need to be good at them...

cgag 8y ago

I thought it had been shown over and over again that Iq had more to do with it than your upbringing?

oculusthrift 8y ago
it has. there’s twin studies where they are adopted to differnt families and yet end up scoring the same on IQ tests later in life and end up with similar levels of educational attainment and income etc

chucksmash 8y ago

If I used to do arithmetic mentally or by hand and you gave me a basic adding calculator that let me do the math more quickly, would my increased productivity really signify anything w.r.t. my intelligence?

rimliu 8y ago

Technology is amplifier, not a replacement.

usrusr 8y ago
It can be both.

musage 8y ago

> Yes there might be a corellation between how good you do on an IQ test and how “smart” you are but I think over and over again your background/upbringing had been show to influence that more than your “smartness”. Do you maybe mean that background influences "smartness" more than genetics? Because as written you're just saying smartness is more influenced by background than by smartness, which doesn't exactly make sense. > The technology and the tools we have today enable us to do things that were unconcievable 50 years ago. That is true, but doesn't say anything about "thinking in a different way". > The things that enables us are tools and our use of tools. I'm not even sure what that's supposed to say. Yes, tool usage is are very important. As is thinking, which kind of determines what tools we come up with, in what directions we explore, and how we use those tools. > I would argue that today we are smarter than we’ve ever been and we are getting smarter each day by using more and more powerful tools. Hmm. You say "more powerful tools" like someone who doesn't know the concept of hitting a target would talk of a "faster arrow". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohcwksrvDOg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohcwksrvDOg Would you say someone who built their own 8bit computer (or something) that they use as word processor (or something) is less smart than someone who is handed a mobile device they understand nothing about, where they just follow prompts on screen, "adapt" to the updates that get pushed on them, and "hope" that the next thing, will address some pain points instead of adding some more, along with "must-have" features? I'd actually argue we're moving into a sort of information dark age. And we're generally not even intelligent enough to understand half of the actually very intelligent people who wrote about these things since the dawn of industrialization were saying. Some of them pointed out how quantity gets confused with quality, bigness with greatness, numbers or force with being right -- and here we are, saying "but OF COURSE we're smarter, we now are each carrying around a bunch of mobile computers that would have filled several city blocks 50 years ago". Pathetic gimmicks, while a steely cocoon of learned and enforced helplessness closes around people. As I said, technology says nothing about the dimension of thinking, while thinking has a lot of influence on our invention and uses of technology. A fast car you drive into the mud is less useful than a slower car you use well. There is no really meaningful difference between denying/censoring/ignoring blurry black and white photographs of dead soldiers and civilians, and doing that with high resolution color video, and so on.

coldtea 8y ago

>Yes there might be a corellation between how good you do on an IQ test and how “smart” you are but I think over and over again your background/upbringing had been show to influence that more than your “smartness”. The background/upbringing influences one's performance in IQ tests too, so the point is moot. >If the question is: do we think in different way than we did 50 years ago? I think the answer is a stong yes. Not in the slightest. >The technology and the tools we have today enable us to do things that were unconcievable 50 years ago. Which is neither here not there when it comes to intelligence. Plus we still do things we did 50 and 100 and 100000 years ago and still need to be good at them...