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Because of modern amenities, people that would have died off due to reasons of low intellect now survive. I was watching Star Trek TOS last night, and noticed

by kefka 12y ago

Because of modern amenities, people that would have died off due to reasons of low intellect now survive. I was watching Star Trek TOS last night, and noticed the vocabulary of the actors is significantly larger than current crop of TV shows. I'd wager that people are getting dumber, and the ad/television networks are catering to this absence of education. I wonder how I would go about proving that? Perhaps find a script archive and process for average age of learning words, and average each year up?

leoedin 12y ago
Most people who died in childhood in the past died because of diseases that had absolutely nothing to do with intellect - typhoid, tuberculosis, cholera, diptheria etc. Surely in an age of widespread literacy and limited manual labour, those with low intellect today are faced with a far harder struggle than those in the past. Only a few hundred years ago the vast majority of humans were engaged in farming and manual labour - not particularly demanding of intelligence. Even if your theory (that those of low intellect used to die off at a far greater rate than those of high intellect) had any basis in fact, it strikes me as remarkable that it would take less than 50 years (perhaps 2 generations) for the effect to be so pronounced that television producers were forced to reduce script vocabulary. You'd think that a crisis of this magnitude would at least be noticed. Perhaps (and I only guess here) the reason the lexicon of television might have fallen is less to do with a reduction of the audience's intelligence and more to do with the slow realisation of television producers that simpler, less wordy television shows have greater mass appeal. Television used to be a near-monopoly serving the establishment. It's now incredibly competitive driven entirely by ratings. Evolution works over periods far, far greater than single generations. If you're proposing that society has seen a significant fall in average vocabulary over a generation, rather than simply blaming people getting "dumber", perhaps you should look at how your education system is failing.
- rowanseymour 12y ago
  We didn't get our intellect from our farming ancestors 10,000 years ago - but our hunter gatherer ancestors 100,000 years ago. For them, daily survival required a high level of intelligence. In Sapiens, Harari argues that the neolithic agricultural revolution (~12,000 BCE) which caused people to settle down into villages made death by disease more common than it had been for our hunter gatherer ancestors. That said am also doubtful that we've got significantly dumber since the advent of television.

by kefka 12y ago

leoedin 12y ago

Most people who died in childhood in the past died because of diseases that had absolutely nothing to do with intellect - typhoid, tuberculosis, cholera, diptheria etc. Surely in an age of widespread literacy and limited manual labour, those with low intellect today are faced with a far harder struggle than those in the past. Only a few hundred years ago the vast majority of humans were engaged in farming and manual labour - not particularly demanding of intelligence. Even if your theory (that those of low intellect used to die off at a far greater rate than those of high intellect) had any basis in fact, it strikes me as remarkable that it would take less than 50 years (perhaps 2 generations) for the effect to be so pronounced that television producers were forced to reduce script vocabulary. You'd think that a crisis of this magnitude would at least be noticed. Perhaps (and I only guess here) the reason the lexicon of television might have fallen is less to do with a reduction of the audience's intelligence and more to do with the slow realisation of television producers that simpler, less wordy television shows have greater mass appeal. Television used to be a near-monopoly serving the establishment. It's now incredibly competitive driven entirely by ratings. Evolution works over periods far, far greater than single generations. If you're proposing that society has seen a significant fall in average vocabulary over a generation, rather than simply blaming people getting "dumber", perhaps you should look at how your education system is failing.

rowanseymour 12y ago
We didn't get our intellect from our farming ancestors 10,000 years ago - but our hunter gatherer ancestors 100,000 years ago. For them, daily survival required a high level of intelligence. In Sapiens, Harari argues that the neolithic agricultural revolution (~12,000 BCE) which caused people to settle down into villages made death by disease more common than it had been for our hunter gatherer ancestors. That said am also doubtful that we've got significantly dumber since the advent of television.