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It's a pretty typical mistake. We are just as smart as our predecessors. We just have a much higher population, a higher % of them are well educated, and we ha
by DavidHm 6y ago
It's a pretty typical mistake.
We are just as smart as our predecessors. We just have a much higher population, a higher % of them are well educated, and we have an enormous body of historical knowledge (as well as easy ways for anyone to access it).
"On the shoulder of giants" etc.
- sradman 6y ago> We just have a much higher population, a higher % of them are well educated, and we have an enormous body of historical knowledge Specialization and trade accelerated with the Industrial Revolution as well; Adam Smith’s division of labour combined with man’s propensity to truck, barter, and exchange.
- raducu 6y agoOur brains decreased by a golf ball size in the past couple thousand years. It is much easier for stupid people to survive today.
- pjc50 6y ago[citation needed]
- imtringued 6y agoWell, that's true in the sense that it is easier for everyone to survive today. That includes both the smart and the stupid.
- simias 6y agoIt is well known that Sperm Whales have long ago figured out how to unify quantum physics and general relativity. They could tell us small-brained humans but apparently they enjoy watching us struggle.
- raducu 6y agoBrain size does correlate with intelligence WITHIN a species.
- felipemnoa 6y agoNeural density seems to be what matters.
- raducu 6y agoYeah, people seem to be getting denser by the year.
- amelius 6y agoWe work harder than our predecessors (8+ hours workday, 5 days a week, both men and women), so I'd say we aren't really as smart as them.
- elric 6y agoThat statement feels wrong but I have no data to back up my gut feeling. Only a handful of generations ago even something as menial as doing your own laundry was hard work. Maybe we spend more time in offices, but if anything, I suspect we work a lot less hard in general.
- gowld 6y agoFor most of human history most people didn't "do" laundry.
- elric 6y agoMaybe if you count prehistory when people wore animal skins or walked around in their own fur. But as long as there's been fabric, there's been laundry. The documented history of laundry goes back to at least ancient Rome, where fullones (usually male slaves) did laundry. In the early middle ages women started to take care their household's washing needs.
- lbriner 6y agoIt depends what you mean by work. I read an article a few months back which was saying that the addition of "modern" technology washing machines and the like doesn't give you more free time, it gives you the opportunity for doing more things so you feel more busy and tired because you are doing more things in the same amount of time!
- BerislavLopac 6y agoAs opposed to 12 hours a day (depending on daylight), 6 days a week, both men (in the fields) and women (at home, without the luxury of washing machines and vacuum cleaners). Yeah, we certainly work harder...
- stareatgoats 6y ago> It's a pretty typical mistake. It's an even more typical mistake to believe that our time is the pinnacle in all respects (because of all the cool gadgets that we have). But we are not the pinnacle in all respects; perhaps the largest danger is that we are delegating all multifaceted work (which ultimately is what produces skill) to automation and/or extreme specialists, so that we can push the enjoyment button (or take the enjoyment pill) in solitude without end. We are on a path to an 'Idiocracy' type of society which would likely have been an abomination to generations past if they were to see it.
- andrepd 6y agoLess work is a good thing.
- stareatgoats 6y agoLess mindless and debilitating work is a good thing, but to replace work that challenges human capabilities in all its aspects with leisure and enjoyment is probably not a good thing. If for example reasoning was automated (we're not there yet, but it is on the horizon) then human capacity for nuance would likely diminish further, to the extent where concepts and ideas might only placed in a 'good' or 'bad' category without capacity for further analysis ...
- Tokelin 6y agoI would like to reply to just the first sentence of your post. While I agree that just being leisurely and seeking enjoyment rarely leads to long lasting meaningful experiences, I do not believe we humans are striving to replace all work with those activities. There are many examples of people who have the possibility to do nothing but enjoy themselves and they still push their capabilities and try to find new challenges. Leisure is nice, but only leisure gets boring.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoThe work is the problem, or should I say, jobs - not the activities. The problem is with people being forced to spend most of their lives fighting for survival. In the past it was toiling in the fields 3/4 of the year to have anything to eat. Today it's toiling in factories and offices to have money to pay for the house, food and medical care. The less time is spent on that, for the same level of quality-of-life, the better.
- pjc50 6y agoThis has really brought out the eugenicists, it seems? But you're absolutely right; we get to use the infrastructure, explicit (written) knowledge, tacit knowledge of our society, social structures, institutions, legal systems, property distribution, and peacemaking of our predecessors.
- henrik_w 6y agoThe "On the shoulder of giants"-quote made me think of this: "It has been said that the great scientific disciplines are examples of giants standing on the shoulders of other giants. It has also been said that the software industry is an example of midgets standing on the toes of other midgets." -Alan Cooper
- elihu 6y agoThe version I'm familiar with, though I don't know the original source, is "if we have seen less far than other men, it is because we have stood in the footprints of giants."
- BitwiseFool 6y agoThere's so much about programming that I just don't know because someone else abstracted it away from my responsibility.
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y agoIf you haven't, learn to program in assembly. Everything else is built on top of that.
- thomasahle 6y agoIf you look, you'll find that there're plenty of levels below assembly.
- IgorPartola 6y agoLet me get my magnetized needle.
- timthorn 6y agoIt's from Newton, who it is thought was aiming a barb at Hooke.
- emiliobumachar 6y agoYou're generally right, but missing an important detail: nutrition. We are not smarter than the subset of our predecessors who had the privilege of developing without ever starving.
- cma 6y agoHopefully a rise in atmospheric CO2 doesn't start counteracting improvements in nutrition.
- erikpukinskis 6y agoThere is evidence that overeating can lead to cognitive impairments so I’m not sure at a population level we’re ant better off.
- rsanek 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
- tantalor 6y agoSee "Flynn effect" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
- galaxyLogic 6y agoMost interestingly "Research suggests that there is an ongoing reversed Flynn effect, i.e. a decline in IQ scores, in Norway, Denmark, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, France and German-speaking countries,[4] a development which appears to have started in the 1990s.[5][6][7][8]"
- miohtama 6y agoWe are actually getting stupider because of the raise of CO2 consentration in air. https://thinkprogress.org/exclusive-elevated-co2-levels-directly-affect-human-cognition-new-harvard-study-shows-2748e7378941/ https://thinkprogress.org/exclusive-elevated-co2-levels-dire...
- gridlockd 6y agoA more reasonable interpretation of that data would be that we're getting stupider because we spend more time indoors without proper ventilation. Even if we doubled yearly increases in ppm we'd be a century away from a measurable impact on human cognition for outdoor air.
- mleonhard 6y agoThat study looks extremely well done. A couple of other studies showed no effects of elevated CO2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23161403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23161403