[P2P-F] Fw: [novelty-lifeboat] Re: are we getting smarter?

[robert searle]

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Norma <pirie3 at wildblue.net>
To: novelty-lifeboat at yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Wednesday, 30 January 2013, 4:55
Subject: [novelty-lifeboat] Re: are we getting smarter?
  
 
   
 
 
These are good questions; good subjects for our 
best and creative selves.  For me, a lot of the nihilistic thinking comes 
from thinking with our conditioned intellects, which rightly tells us there are 
too many folk on the planet, doing too many things to disturb the balance of 
healthy water, air, and food sources for life to continue as is. So, we 
ain't.  Cause we can't!   Greed and addiction seems to outweigh 
our basic common sense and willingness to survive as we are.  Our hearts 
and spirits are always telling us this fact, that we must become willing to die 
to our old selves and become a new kind of human.  Life and cellular 
intelligence is much smarter than we are, and I do feel we will evolve into new 
life forms. It remains to be seen if we can have willing participation 
in that evolution.  Though, in my opinion, our DNA is designed to that 
advantage and potential.   If that includes continued evolution on the 
third dimension, that may mean our future selves may have to learn how to 
survive extremes of solar activity, perhaps global droughts or iceages, maybe 
severe radiation or poisions if we decide to use weapons of mass 
destuction.  Life forms of humans come and go, but we are such a 
successful, smart, and adaptable predator, that I think life will not give up on 
us completely.  If we choose to move into other higher dimensions of 
reality, we can really make no assumptions whatsoever.  At this time, the 
amazing thing that I see that is so different than in past decades, is that 
there are so many people awakening to these bizarre realities, and so many very 
smart and good folk absolutely refusing to face the extremes of our dilimma, and 
instead moving into the comfort of very conservative, fearful, fanatic belief 
systems. .  especially those of the Book, and a lot of them New Age folk 
moving more and more into varying forms of escape.  Which is par for the 
course in all perilous times.   I deeply feel the fragility of the 
human race as we have created it in the 20th century, and for that reason I have 
great hope for the 21st century!   We keep creating new tools and 
meanings and purposes for the constant changes we are making in our identities 
of worlds, nations, relationships, genders, and selves!   We are 
definitely in the quantum soup, and the life-boat is picking up speed, dear 
Ones!   Norma P 
I'm in the process of finishing EcoMind by Frances Moore Lapp�. She  challenges my thinking about so many of things; including that we can  collectively wise up! 
>
> 
>Thought Trap 7: It's Too Late 
>The last thought trap is �It�s too late.� This is  the one I feel the most. I�ve see a study showing that if we don�t start  cutting our carbon emissions by 2015, it's game over for the planet. It�s not  too late? 
>
> 
>It�s true that it is too late to avoid the profound  suffering that would not have occurred if we hadn�t been so trapped for so  long. So, I am not saying that things are not in terrible shape. 
>But I am saying that what defeats human beings is  when we feel futile, when we feel we don�t have a clue about what to do to be  effective. This deep human need to be useful, to contribute -- that�s the key. 
>It�s not too late to figure out how to shift our own  energy and the energy of others toward this incredible challenge. We can start  now to build the spirit toward what we can do to make a difference. 
>more at: http://www.csrwire.com/blog/posts/336-ready-set-re-frame-a-conversation-with-frances-moore-lappe-about-ecomind 
> 
>On Jan 29, 2013, at 5:40 PM, Arek Fressadi wrote:  
>
> 
>Laurie, 
>This appears to be a  �cut and paste� post. You haven�t added any of your own comment, presuming  then, that you either concur with the conclusions, or find the topic of  sufficient interest to rouse some conversation in the  lifeboat.  
>While it appears that  our intelligence as a measure of cultural acuity is increasing, there is an  argument that our �hardware� hasn�t been upgraded in 50,000 years and what we  may classify as improvements are really only �progress traps� leading to the  ultimate demise of civilization and perhaps the extinction of our  species.  
>While Suzuki and  others have made arguments on the potential demise of us or our planet (at  least to the extent that the planet cannot sustain current civilization), I�d  proffer a read of A Short History of Progress, by Ronald  Wright. 
>http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Progress-Ronald-Wright/dp/0786715472  
>http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/massey-archives/2004/11/07/massey-lectures-2004-a-short-history-of-progress/  
>there is also a  documentary called Surviving Progress based on Wright�s  book. 
>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1462014/  
>ciao,  
>Arek  Fressadi 
>http://www.fressadi.com/ 
>520.216.4103 
>
>________________________________
>  
>From:Laurie  [mailto:libramoon42 at mindspring.com] 
>Sent: Tuesday, January 29,  2013 3:21 PM
>To: seers and  seekers; novelty lifeboat
>Subject: [novelty-lifeboat] are we  getting smarter?  
>   
>http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-flynn-effect-are-we-getting-smarter.html 
>The Flynn Effect:  are we getting smarter? 
>I  enjoy a habit of contrarian-poking at overused assumptions. Especially the  hoary nostrum that humanity is not improving. Elsewhere I take on one aspect of  this cynical calumny, where folks sadly shake their heads over how "our ethics haven't kept pace with  technology." What malarkey. What stunning ability to ignore all we  have done in the last 60 years.  
>Oh,  I'll avow we may not be getting better fast enough to save ourselves or the  planet.  That tense race is central to my novels EARTH and EXISTENCE. I'm  no complacent polyanna. Rather, the fact that we've improved a bit demands we  redouble our efforts! It is cynics who are at best lazy and  unhelpful.  
>Putting  ethics aside, what other areas of improvement might do the most good?How about making everybody  smarter?  Better able to grasp complex situations and  knowledge. Better equipped to understand diverse views and negotiate pragmatic  solutions. Yes, there are forces in today's society, especially America, that  seem bent on pushing in the opposite direction - lobotomizing large swathes of  the public  The worst of these at present is run by Roger Ailes on behalf  of foreign trillionaires, but there are noxious forces pushing moronic  oversimplification on the far-left, as well. So it has always  been.  
>Decades  ago, science fiction author Poul Anderson wrote a terrific novel -- Brain  Wave -- that asked: what if every creature on Earth started getting smarter at a steady  pace, beginning the same day?  In that story, it happens because our  solar system moves out a galactic zone that repressed electrical activity  slightly. A magical story device but one that may have some relevance after  all, as I'll assert below.  
>Today,  much talk revolves around expanding human intelligence the way that it has  increased for thousands of years -- through prosthetics.  By using external devices to expand what we can know and see and pay attention  to.  This revolution began with cave paintings and then writing, but  really took off with the invention of printing presses and glass lenses...  then newspapers and steamships, radio, television, libraries, the Internet.  Each generation, grouches greeted these advances with: "normal people cannot  cope!" Countered by transcendentalists proclaiming "this will make us all as  wise and mighty as gods!"  
>The  irony, of course, is that both the cynics and fervid technophiles always  turned out each to be about half right.  (For more on this, see  Third Millennium Problem  Solving. A 90 minute Google  Tech Talk spanning the entire range of human "discourse" and how it  is evolving.)  
>But  today let's veer away from obsessing on our toys and prostheses and external  cyborg enhancements and instead focus on the central, "meatiest" aspect of all  this. Are we - on average - getting smarter within our squishy human brains?   To explore this briefly for us, I invited fellow member of the Lifeboat  Foundation Francis Heylighen, of the Free  University of Brussels, who will offer some background about the "Flynn  Effect."  
>==  Guest post: "Why it appears that we are getting smarter"  == 
>...  by Francis Heylighen  
>James  Flynn, a political scientist working in New Zealand ,  observed in the 1980's that the score-results of different groups of people on  standard intelligence tests had consistently increased over the past decades.  Earlier researchers had failed to pay attention to that trend, because IQ  scores are always calculated with respect to the average score for the present  group. By definition, the average is set to 100, and the standard deviation to  15. Someone who scores one standard deviation better than the average would  therefore get an IQ of 115. But if that person's score would be compared with  the average for the corresponding group, but tested one generation earlier,  then the final score would be about 125! Flynn was the first to systematically  make such cross-generational comparisons.  
>Since  then, the so-called "Flynn effect" has been confirmed by numerous studies. The  same pattern, an average increase of some three IQ points per decade, was  found for virtually every type of intelligence test, delivered to virtually  every type of group. This means that people nowadays are on average some 20 IQ  points smarter than people in 1940. People with a perfectly normal IQ of 90  then would according to present norms merely score 70, i.e. as having a mild  form of mental retardation. For one type of test, Raven's Progressive  Matrices, Flynn found data that spanned a whole century. He concluded that  someone who scored among the best 10% a hundred years ago, would nowadays be  categorized among the 5% weakest.  
>One  might expect that the Flynn effect would be most pronounced for tests that  measure the results of education. The opposite is true, however: the increase  is most striking for tests measuring the ability to recognize abstract,  non-verbal patterns. Tests emphasizing traditional school knowledge show much  less progress. This means that something more profound than mere accumulation  of data is happening inside people's heads.  
>Flynn  himself admitted being baffled by his initial results, and finding it hard to  believe that his generation was significantly more intelligent than the one of  his parents. Indeed, compared to the previous generation, the number of people  who score high enough to be classified as "genius" has increased more than 20  times. This means that we should now be witnessing, in Flynn's own words, "a  cultural renaissance too great to be overlooked". Because he found this  conclusion implausible, he suggested that what has risen is not intelligence  itself, but some kind of "abstract problem solving ability" that may have more  to do with skill at test-taking than with creative  intelligence.  
>But  if we look at the ever-accelerating production of scientific discoveries,  technological innovations and cultural developments in general, the "cultural  renaissance" does not seem such an absurd idea anymore. Perhaps we cannot  pinpoint a dozen contemporary Einsteins simply because there are so many of  them that their contributions have not had the time yet to diffuse to the  level that everybody would know them.  If there would be hundreds or  thousands of Einstein-level geniuses in the scientific community nowadays,  then it seems likely that none of them would stand out enough to get the kind  of worldwide recognition we associate with exceptional figures like Darwin, da  Vinci, or Newton. Moreover, our society and the problems it investigates have  become much more complex than in the days of these historical geniuses. (We have already pickjed the "low-hanging  fruit" -db) It should not surprise us that present-day geniuses may  be working
 on subjects too complex or abstract to be appreciated outside a  relatively small circle of specialists. But that does not diminish the  superior intellectual level of their contributions.  
>Nowadays,  most authors tend to consider the Flynn effect as a real cognitive  improvement, not a mere artefact of testing methods (although the fact that  people are more used to taking tests may have helped somewhat in getting  better scores). There is less agreement about the origin of the effect,  though. Most likely, it is due to the interaction between a variety of factors  that tend to accompany the tremendous economic and social advances of the past  century:  
>o         better health care (less serious illnesses that can delay or damage brain  development, less exposure to toxins such  as lead, smog, food poisoning, etc.)   
>o         better nutrition (better availability of fresh foods, proteins, fats,  vitamins, minerals such as iron and iodine, etc. that are necessary to build  and support the brain)  
>o         higher levels of education (although this is not the whole story -- as Flynn  found that the IQs of children have been rising even during periods when the  time spent in school remained the same). 
>o          higher cognitive stimulation by an increasingly complex  environment  
>This  last factor may be particularly important. Indeed, our everyday world offers  ever more abstract information to be processed ever more quickly-in the form  of computer games, books, high-tech gadgets, television, advertisements, news  items, magazine articles, blog entries, movies, etc. This requires ever more  activity from the brain, thus "training" it to become more  intelligent.  
>Some  people like to complain that our society is "dumbing down", noting that very  few read Shakespeare or listen to Bach nowadays. However, these people  typically fail to notice that hardly anybody read Shakespeare a century ago  (if they could read at all), and that probably more are reading him now than  ever before. Moreover, an objective observer cannot fail to notice that a  typical TV series or even an ad nowadays is much more complex and fast-paced  than it used to be half a century ago. Thus, even the "non-intellectual"  stimuli we are bombarded with demand ever more intense cognitive processing.  In the workplace too, we see that what used to be repetitive industrial and  agricultural jobs tend to be replaced by knowledge work, caring for people, or  controlling complex machinery. As a result, people with a low intellectual  level find it increasingly difficult to find a decently paying job, thus being  stimulated to develop themselves.  
>A  final plausible factor contributing to intelligence increases is that families  have become smaller: with fewer children, parents have simply much more  attention and resources to invest in each child. The effect on intelligence is  confirmed by the observation that first-born or single-born children are on  average some 2 to 3 IQ points smarter than second or third-born children, who  had to compete with their siblings for parental attention.  
>In  sum, while there are of course always methodological and other question marks  about something as difficult to measure as intelligence, it seems well  established now that we are indeed getting smarter. While the causes are not  fully clear yet, those we do understand leave plenty of room for further  improvement: we can definitely eat and live more healthily than we do now,  while there does not seem to be a limit to the quantity and quality of  education and cognitive stimulation achievable via the Internet. There is  certainly cause for optimism in these observations. However, we should note  that our rise in intelligence might simply be paralleling the rise in  complexity of the problems we have to deal with, so that subjectively we may  not really feel more competent to do what we need to do.  
>More  to read  
>--Bernheim,  J. (1999). The Cognitive Revolution and 21st Century Enlightenment: towards a  progressive world view.Science,  Technology and Social Change, Einstein meets Magritte (p. 63).  Kluwer. 
>--Flynn,  J. R. (1987). Massive IQ gains in 14 nations: What IQ tests really measure.  Psychological bulletin, 101(2), 171. 
>--Flynn,  J. R. (2012).Are We Getting Smarter?  Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge  University Press. 
>--Heylighen,  F., & Bernheim, J. (2000). Global Progress I: Empirical Evidence for  ongoing Increase in Quality-of-life.Journal of Happiness Studies,1(3), 323-349. 
>--Neisser  U. (1997). Rising Scores on Intelligence Tests, American Scientist, September  - October 1997 
>--Neisser,  U. (Ed.). (1998).The rising curve:   Long-term gains in IQ and related measures (Vol. xv).  Washington ,  DC ,  US :  American Psychological Association.
>
>--Francis Heylighen; Evolution,  Complexity and Cognition group, Free University of  Brussels.  
>== Afterword by Brin  ==  
>Thank  you, Francis, for that excellent summary of a fascinating phenomenon. Which  makes us wonder -- is humanity "uplifting itself?"  
>There  are so many aspects to this that we have no time to explore thoroughly  here.  
>1.  Can this phenomenon be partly genetic?  It is a truism, widely held, that  civilization must have slowed human evolution because it gave the weak  opportunities to survive and to breed. But in fact there is every reason to  believe that human evolution sped up with the arrival of civilization, and  especially after we discovered beer! See Christopher  Wills's book  CHILDREN OF PROMETHEUS. For example, clothing and  shelter technologies empowered some groups to settle the Tibetan Plateau, an  environment so harsh that selective pressures have turned Tibetans into almost  a sub-species of their own. This may really take off if segments of humanity  start adapting to space and other worlds.  
>2.  I would add a few recent factors, such as changes in the toxic loads supported  by most human populations. Francis mentioned the gradual elimination of toxins  like lead from paint and gasoline - (though resisted strenuously by the same  dopes who claimed Tobacco was harmless and cars don't cause smog and that  human industry cannot change a planet's climate). Removal of lead has now been  shown to have dramatically reduced levels of violence in the  U.S. and other populations since 1970. (See my own role  in getting the lead out of gas, as a 19 year old Caltech student in  1970!)  
>The  same can also be said regarding our burdens of living parasites. In  Korea after 1960, a vast de-worming effort eliminated  endemic intestinal parasites which helped improved diets to increase the  height of children by many centimeters and no doubt affected brains. Likewise,  the parasitic paramecium Toxoplasma gondii is endemic in much of the human  population and now is known to dramatically alter personality and  behavior.  
>I  am hoping we'll find dozens of such things that have long nibbled away at  humanity's potential! Why? Because no simpler way can be imagined to boost  human mental and moral performance than just by eradicating factors holding it  down. It would mean that we can improve in the easiest and best way... by  eliminating that which had been crippling us.  
>3)  Then there is selection. Elsewhere I discuss the question of  whether humanity performed its spectacular mental "overshoot" beyond what  was necessary to become the top predator, for the same reason that many other  species acquire exaggerated traits -- sexual selection. Only in my theory, it  was two-way with both males and  females choosing each other based in part on savvy and smarts.  In which  case, might that sort of thing resume?  It could do so... if tastes  changed just a little.  
>Alas,  none of these things can possibly act fast enough to turn the tide and help us  in time. The real solution will be harder.  It will involve looking in  the mirror - each of us, one at a time - overcoming the allure of  self-righteous dogmatism and rage, pondering little steps of self-improvement,  adding grace to our thought processes, calm consideration, subtlety, curiosity  and contingent wisdom... plus finding subtle ways to convince our neighbors to  do the same.  Learning to accomplish the latter, without getting  killed... that's a sure intelligence test, if there ever was  one!  
>Oh,  even if we optimists are right, and a road to gradual and eclectic, free,  voluntary, individualistic and diverse improvements in human nature and  intelligence can be found, rest assured there will be many ructions and  difficulties before we finally adapt at last to a mature and relaxedly sane  state. To a world without brutish evil, rage, violence, illogic, dogmatism or  Fox News. 
>Posted  by David Brin  
>
>   
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