Do humans get smarter "all the time"?

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Bear in mind I'm speaking about nuclear power as New Zealander... this is a country with a huge history of anti-nuclear thinking (and rightly so) with extremely strong opposition to it (again, rightly so). Bear in mind we also are a land with huge potential for wind power and thermal power, both of which are beginning to be exploited properly and cleanly. (Also, putting anything nuclear in this country would be insane, due to the sheer number of earthquakes and the geography of the land - three major faultlines and countless smaller ones, a number of active volcanoes and about 20 due to erupt imminently (not counting the ones that do erupt every 20 years or so). As part of the social history of our country and a huge political talking point, I've studied it in depth for a long time now.

There's nothing clean about nuclear energy when you compare it with other forms that really are clean, don't involve toxic waste and potentially horrific side-effects, and won't run out...

They tell us that
We lost our tails
Evolving up
From little snails
I say its all
Just wind in sails
Are we not men?
We are devo!
Were pinheads now
We are not whole
Were pinheads all
Jocko homo
Are we not men?
D-e-v-o
Monkey men all
In business suit
Teachers and critics
All dance the poot
Are we not men?
We are devo!
Are we not men?
D-e-v-o
God made man
But he used the monkey to do it
Apes in the plan
Were all here to prove it
I can walk like an ape
Talk like an ape
I can do what a monkey can do
God made man
But a monkey supplied the glue
We must repeat
O.k. lets go!

Nope. As Orwell mentioned, intelligence and brain size has no selective pressures any longer for us humans, as someone being smart doesn't mean they will have more children and spread their genes across the population faster than say, idiots who don't know how to take birth control measures. So overall as a population, I'd say humanity's intelligence is shrinking.

A relatively small minority of very intelligent people, mostly scientists and engineers, have been advancing our technology. Problem with that is technology increases the number of things humans can do without thinking, to the point where people no longer need to use much intelligence in their daily lives to survive. Just my 2 cents from my drowsy mind.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upyewL0oaWA[/youtube]

Wrong. Nuclear power is extremly clean. It does not harm anyone or anything.





ok, Its good to get some support for my simple theory.



Sorry, but you are wrong. 80000 years ago, the human brain was about half the size compared to today.

Okay...dude, if you're a troll, you are an incredibly incompetent one.

Where the hell did you get that number? Even H. erectus had a brain over half the size of H. sapiens do now.

There have been genes (apparently) selected for whose function is undetermined but which are related to brain development in the last 30,000 years. Evidence in relation to these is inconclusive.

Why is that?

Furthermore, where do you go to get classified as an official troll?

From my understanding, most significant changes in a population come from evolutionary bottlenecks or the founder effect, and since we're a technologically based society, intelligence should be selected for to survive catastrophes or colonize other planets if we make it that far.

By looking at the current state of television, reality shows, chat shows such as Oprah, Dr. Phil, Springer, it would be next to impossible to find 100 IQ points from an entire trailer park. The Neanderthals actually had a larger brain the home sapiens, says alot for the human race. Its my opinion that we should go back up the tree we came from and try to evolve for another million years.

Last edited by spudnik on 16 Apr 2008, 12:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It's much worse than that. While higher intelligence correlates fairly well with increased material prosperity, the upper classes don't have bebehs while the lower classes spawn 'em left and right. In other words - stupidity is being selected for

That's why we're making neat, little pills to make them less like them. Yay!

actually iq averages are slowly dropping worldwide due to the fact that less intelligent people are far more likely to produce offspring.

It's always refreshing to hear some sense about human evolution - Irresponsibility is also being selected for. Too many people have this beliefs that humanity is evolution's masterpiece and that future humans will be multi-brained starmen and not morons too stupid to use a condom.

Hmm, I tend to disagree with the stupid people breed more = humanity getting stupider idea. Just having more offspring doesn't ensure more long term evolutionary sucess. If the smart people have fewer children, but invest more in them to ensure their success, their genetic line may be just as successful as a stupid line that has many children but invests very little in them. The stupid line will appear to be more successful while times are good. But when some kind of pressure gets applied, like a war, famine, or a decision on who gets to go on a spaceship to colonize a new world, the smart line individuals are going to do better.

As far as the OP's question, beyond a few exceptions like the Ashkenazi Jews, humans in general are not evolving to greater intellegence on a genetic level. However, a case could be made humanity becoming smarter and smarter over time due to memetic level. Over time we have developed more and more intellegent ways of thinking, like the arabic numerial system, macroeconomics, and the scientific method. In other words, are hardware is staying the same but the software installed on it is being upgraded, effectively creating a more powerful machine as time goes by.

Source? Oh wait, you don't have one because you're making crap up.