I remember reading about the Flynn effect awhile back. Can't find the exact article, but this one [1] will do. This quote really does it for me: "The second fa

I remember reading about the Flynn effect awhile back. Can't find the exact article, but this one [1] will do. This quote really does it for me: "The second factor is what Alexander Luria discovered when he tested rural Russian peasants in the 1930s. He discovered that pre-scientific people can't take the hypothetical seriously. That is, if you pose to them questions like, "There is snow at the North Pole; where there is snow, bears are white; what color are bears at the North Pole?" they would say, "Well, I've only seen brown bears. And only if a person came from the North Pole with testimony would I believe that the bears there are white." It seems like the brain doesn't think abstractly when it doesn't need to, and for many thousands of years it didn't. The nice thing about culture and education is that it seems like more than just knowledge is passed down. Whole modes and ways of thinking, perspectives on the world that are useful and revealing now exist in the greater collective consciousness. We can't really measure this, but I think it makes a huge difference that there is this idea that everything in the world is not simply magical or arbitrary and that given the right tools we can figure it out. The idea that there ARE knowable underlying principles that govern the universe (even randomness!) completely changes the way that we think about the world. 1. http://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/03/smarter.aspx http://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/03/smarter.aspx