Is Dumb Dumber Or Merely More Dumbfounding, 56
I read recently a short but intriguing article in Popular Mechanics entitled American IQ Scores have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the ‘Reverse Flynn Effect.’”
Tsk, Tsk Your Child May Not Have What It Takes
As a teenager I remember hearing about those omnipresent IQ scored that were extremely popular, and because of astute corporate marketing became the be all and end all of your child’s future opportunities and happiness. Much of it was incomplete, traumatizing, elitist and simply hogwash.
We eventually learned that intelligence encompasses a wide range of activities (social and otherwise) and not just an “appropriate” test score on a limited assortment of mental measurements. By the way, guess who tended to do well on these tests and those that tended to do not so well.
I’ve found myself over the past few years thinking a lot about this thing we call “intelligence” because we, meaning humankind, have seemingly in one way or another intentionally lobotomized ourselves in our still relatively young 21st century, most strikingly in the past eight years.
Globally, take your pick for idiocracy and cognitive puzzlement. There’s the gangster Putin, representing a long line of Russian autocrats running a third rate economic power and a second rate military, a Peter the Great wannabe.
Yes, Putin does have his unpleasant fan base in the U.S. Of course, it has a great deal to do with the usual white racism and Putin’s loathing of human rights and democracy. But, we can’t ignore that Russia is knee deep in nuclear weapons.
India and Pakistan are snarling at each other once again over water rights, that necessity for all life. But they too have nuclear weapons. Military juntas are jailing and killing their citizens all over the place, while global migration is just getting started, and China of course claims to represent the planet’s future.
You get the point; a kind of dull, torpid stupidity, in its latest iteration, has descended over the entire planet like poison gas. Oh, and there is the “small” matter of climate change, misunderstood by some, confusing to others and denied by many.
Speaking of climate change, this might be an article that could hold your attention. It’s a story of Ophiocordyceps (orf-eo-cor-di-ceps), a tale of new threats likely brought about by a warming planet, that, uh, more than a few Americans think is a hoax. But, nevertheless, think about it as a real zombie apocalypse. Best decide what’s actually important. See,
Our Warming Planet is a Petri Dish
Closer to Home
The United States is the world’s superpower. But for a great many Americans, transgender folks are now the latest focal point of our ignorance, fear, anxiety and dislike, not infrequently encouraged by morally empty politicians, like the strutting Ron DeSantis of Florida, who wants to be America’s next il Duce.
Of course, our transgender relations were very likely around when we first climbed down from the trees and began to walk upright across the savanna a very long time ago.
Now we do have choices in the United States. One can concentrate on library censorship, maybe even work on defunding public libraries. You might decide that colleges and universities are spending too much time on “thinking” and need to emphasize more vocational type programs. Get ‘em out the door. Certainly critical-race-theory, which most people don’t have a clue about, instills fear and obviously a “threat” in some way to our well being as Americans.
So many possibilities and so little time. But ultimately it’s really about mindless mediocrity, a growing lack of curiosity and an outright fear of change, especially the unfamiliar kind.
Perhaps last but not the least in the United States right now is a thuggish glorification of violence that is spreading and growing in intensity. Yes it’s Fascism and not merely the usual white victimization and entitlement drivel. It was largely below the surface of America or only partially visible in the 1930s but it’s most certainly out in the open today in 2023.
Fascism is not a politics, it is a pathology compounded of nostalgia and resentment. (Marilynne Robinson, American novelist)
Considering the Ideas of Intelligence
Back to the article in Popular Mechanics for a moment. The study was conducted by Northwestern University and analyzed intelligence test categories from 2006 to 2018. The four categories were (1) logic and vocabulary, (2) visual problems and analogies, (3) computational and mathematical abilities and (4) 3-D rotation.
In the first three categories there were clear drops in scores, in some ways not terribly surprising considering the wide disparity of quality education in the U.S. along with, it seems to me, a growing unwillingness to support good, innovative educational programs in some parts of the country.
In the fourth category, however, what is called 3-D rotation, the scores went up. The last category measures spatial reasoning, that is thinking in pictures rather than in words. It’s also about seeing the whole before acknowledging the details.
Could it have something to do with a “shift” in the perceived values in society, the types of education we’re offering in schools, the emphasis on STEM learning for children, the validity of the tests themselves, health and nutritional issues in America or even a new way of thinking? It remains to be seen.
The engineer is needed to build the bridge but what also is required are people who will ask the question, why do we even need the particular bridge in this particular location in the first place. Tell me why specifically. It’s all part of understanding what constitutes intelligence.
In almost any closed society, with a population of fearful, superstitious and incurious citizens it will be less likely that the why will ever be asked in the first place. The “why” is critical for any society to advance, prosper and grow—in so many ways, individually and collectively.
While the MAGA cult, for example, may be incapable of running a functioning, creative and inclusive society, they are quite capable of dismantling one if given the chance. The nagging question is do most Americans actually grasp this very real possibility and its dismal consequences if successful? I’m not absolutely sure at this point. Perhaps it’s still a concept that’s too difficult to conceive of. Or possibly it’s merely not being expressed correctly.
Looking Briefly At the Health Numbers in the U.S. and Its Relationship to Everything Else
If you live in Aspen, Colorado or Santa Clara, California you’ll live on average to 87 years of age. If you live in Owsley County, Kentucky or Union County, Florida you’ll live on average to 67. That’s a difference of some 20 years! Welcome to the United States.
The life expectancy in the U.S. may have had in worst decline in 100 years. We did of course lose one million Americans to COVID 19, a record that no other developed country came close to. Understand Americans your health is closely connected to wealth, demographics and location … and a certain segment of your fellow citizens that wish to leave it as it is or perhaps even make it worse.
Living in certain states could be hazardous to your health, mentally and physically, make no mistake about it … and a certain segment of your fellow citizens want to leave it as it is or perhaps even make it worse.
State that provide no income support, refuse to approve medicaid expansion, or stronger gun controls, or have poor drug overdose prevention, bad prenatal care or safe abortion access are states with problems. They are dysfunctional; they are authentic problems for America. See,
Understanding the Red State Death Trip
For some excellent information on the numbers and interactive maps, see at the end of this post, American Inequality
The Peculiar Nature of Intelligence and the Benefits of Confusion
Gerald Crabtree, professor of pathology, genetics and developmental biology at Stanford University, proposed in 2013 that human intelligence peaked some 2,000 to 6,000 years ago and has pretty much been in steady decline since the beginning of agriculture and the Neolithic era some 10, 000 years ago.
His critics immediately asked the question, which science tends to do. Where’s the proof? And how do you prove it? Crabtree has come to conclude that much more study needs to be done. Over the past 20 years or so we’ve made remarkable progress in genetics, neuroscience and psychology for example, allowing us to think about how we do think and how we make sense of the world around us and what constitutes what we think intelligence means and the forms it might take. We clearly have a long way to go; it’s an ongoing project.
Could confusion, as most of us experience at one time or another, actually end up improving our learning and increase our brain plasticity? Brain plasticity refers to the brain’s ability to change through growth and reorganization. It’s like a kind of rewiring and modifying various connections.
Long lasting functional changes in our brain happen when we learn new things or even memorize new information. It is a reason why children should be encouraged to be curious and explore the world around them. This plasticity appears to slow down at about 25 years of age.
Juliette Vazard, a postdoctoral researcher, has written an article in Psyche entitled Perplexed? Embrace it! Confusion is a Symptom of Learning. It’s actually “productive confusion” that Vazard is referring to.
Under the right conditions, as Vazard and other researchers believe, confusion can be the impetus to succeed in difficult learning tasks, such as producing explanations and diagnosing and solving problems, adopting alternative strategies and confronting misconceptions and biased assumptions.
As the author states, “Feeling confused can motivate learners to engage a deeper kind of inquiry and more thorough information-processing, which increases their chances of actually overcoming the cognitive obstacle.” The article is worth reading and thinking about, especially in light of the amount of misinformation and outright nonsense that we’re all wallowing in every day. See,
Confusion is a symptom of learning
Productive confusion is not generally something that authoritarians want their citizenry to engage in, in the United States or anywhere else. Whether you’re 8 or 80 years of age get busy and become productively confused and encourage other as well. Your liberties and possibly the well being of the planet could be at stake.
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