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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   45550 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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The peaceful stupidity - It is said that some of the greatest inventions in the history of mankind come during times of war. Where the nation is put at risk and all resources are put into maximizing upgrades to ones technology or any capacity to beat the enemy. It was war that boosted the process of splitting the atom. It was the pressure of war that sent satellites into space. It was war that sent men to the moon long before they had any right to be there. That is not to say that there is no creation during a time of peace. Many things are invented during times of peace. Yet in the previous lines there is a symbolism which we see once again in the fact that in the most developed societies of the west we have now begun to see people get dumber over time. A society wide fall in overall IQ. A warning of the possibility of bad days ahead. Even a possible sign that we in the past century went way past the point of our natural capabilities and now find ourselves in a world that none of us understand.

I don't see much evidence that things are dumber per say. Math, medicine (certain cancers are now curable), physics (like James Webb telescope) , computer sci, AI (like Stable Diffusion, machine learning), etc. is making a lot of progress; the caliber of research today is greater than in the past; papers are longer, more complex....today's child prodigies are starting college at earlier and earlier ages, much like how the mile times and weightlifting records also keep being beaten despite a lot of Americans seemingly being obese and out of shape. Math research much more complicated, kids taking calculus at earlier age. YouTube guys routinely lifting weight that 50-60 years ago would have set records. I think rather there is a greater bifurcation between the smart and the dull, the fit & strong vs the fat or weak...High school seems dumbed down because it's designed to accommodate a lot of dull kids (blame demographics).

https://georgefrancis.substack.com/p/dysgenics-by-the-numbers

I think that is sort of the point.

Sure we still have exceptional things, in fact they are so optimized as to be even more exceptional than were previously.

But those are few and far between. Is the average man really smarter, more well adjusted, stronger, fitter, etc than his grandfather at the same age?

Another thing is that we've had a tendency to optimize along metrics that get gamed. Tons more people go to colleges, but are they really better educated and more well read than in the past? Or do we just give them a pass?

Are we really better people than our forefathers? I'm not sure either way honestly.

Is the average man really smarter, more well adjusted, stronger, fitter, etc than his grandfather at the same age?

Ofcourse not. Most people have badass grandfathers because of survivorship bias.

On average, some skills definitely might have decreased, but we live in a kinder and wealthier society that allows for weaker people to survive and even thrive.

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