Do you think that people are getting dumber?

Had this interesting client in the office the other day. He was an 80 year old man who still taught advanced calculus at the local university. He expressed his dismay to me that his class size kept shrinking and shrinking. "No one likes to take math anymore".

Interesting point, but he continued about how people just don't seem to think or reason like they did in the past. He felt we've grown so accustomed to technology that we no longer have to rely on our brains to figure problems out. We have calculators and computers to solve most of our problems. We have net searches to quickly gain whatever answer we need. Instant gratification and no processs of search or reasoning to track it down.

Take doctors, he said. They used to have to sit there and figure out from the patient's history and symptoms what disease they had. Where was the lesion? Now these days, they just get a CT scan or MRI, no thinking required. Take engineers. They now have programs that will do most of their calculations and planning for them. Etc. etc.

While I think that he was simplifying things a little bit, I suspect he does have a solid point. Do you think we are losing our ability to think critically, to reason?

Hard to say, one boon of all this tech is the vast amount of info available to us, but does that actually dumb us down?

yes, but i could not think of a way to express my self without coming of as a complete dick. myperspicacity must be waining as i surround my self with forum posters.

yes, but i could not think of a way to express my self without coming of as a complete dick. myperspicacity must be waining as i surround my self with forum posters.

surrealnumber5

I don't think; I know

It really depends on the person. I will use myself as an example. I agree about what the elderly man said about calculators, way too many people use them. Throughout elementary and high school I rarely used a calculator due to the fact I enjoyed figuring the equations out. You feel satisfied when you get the correct answer from using your intellect, not a computer programmed to the work for you. I also blame how children are raised nowadays. So many young children (especially whereI live) have cell phones or laptops by the time they are 8-10 years old. For me, thats a big issue. The children begin to rely on technology at an earlier age rather than using their own brain power too think of things. They would rather use google then actually research using a textbook or newspaper.

What I will say here is that yes we have left so many things on machines these days that we used to d befor manually. But at the same time when machines do this work our efforts are concentrated on something bigger. Thats how we progress the society.

After many centuries we don't chisel stones to make weapons. We got machine sto make them.

I can't say much about other fields as I don't know much about them. But as an Electronics Engineer I will comment something from my field. We learnt everything on how to design circuits and all when we were in lower semesters. but when we reached further semesters. We found softwares that could design circuits, make circuits etc. So our work got simpler. But we didn't stop there. We put our efforts in other things. Like we designed better architechtures so processor got faster, we tried to make things smaller. If it weren't for invention of ARM processor there wouldn't be smartphones. Cellular phones would still be bulky. So everyday we try to make technology faster and smaller. thats how things progress. thats how we moved from tube technlogy to transistor technology.

So no we are not lazy. But we are concentrating our energies on better stuff. Its waste of time to concentrate on trivila stuff.

There have always been dumb people. Are they getting dumber? I didn't know that was possible.

It really depends on the person. I will use myself as an example. I agree about what the elderly man said about calculators, way too many people use them. Throughout elementary and high school I rarely used a calculator due to the fact I enjoyed figuring the equations out. You feel satisfied when you get the correct answer from using your intellect, not a computer programmed to the work for you. I also blame how children are raised nowadays. So many young children (especially whereI live) have cell phones or laptops by the time they are 8-10 years old. For me, thats a big issue. The children begin to rely on technology at an earlier age rather than using their own brain power too think of things. They would rather use google then actually research using a textbook or newspaper.

quatoe

My kid would not have their own laptop at such a young age. Maybe when they hit their teen years, if they're lucky.

Had this interesting client in the office the other day. He was an 80 year old man who still taught advanced calculus at the local university. He expressed his dismay to me that his class size kept shrinking and shrinking. "No one likes to take math anymore".

Interesting point, but he continued about how people just don't seem to think or reason like they did in the past. He felt we've grown so accustomed to technology that we no longer have to rely on our brains to figure problems out. We have calculators and computers to solve most of our problems. We have net searches to quickly gain whatever answer we need. Instant gratification and no processs of search or reasoning to track it down.

Take doctors, he said. They used to have to sit there and figure out from the patient's history and symptoms what disease they had. Where was the lesion? Now these days, they just get a CT scan or MRI, no thinking required. Take engineers. They now have programs that will do most of their calculations and planning for them. Etc. etc.

While I think that he was simplifying things a little bit, I suspect he does have a solid point. Do you think we are losing our ability to think critically, to reason?

Hard to say, one boon of all this tech is the vast amount of info available to us, but does that actually dumb us down?

sonicare

nothegerg

There's been an upwards trend in intelligence since the Renaissance.

Sure, there may be some little hiccups from cutting spending on education or glorifying ignorance on television or whatever, but the fact is that each new generation is generally healthier, more intelligent and better off than the previous.

what do you expect? Denying natural selection to take place will always lead to the decline in favourable traits of a species. (stupidity, obesity, etc.)

What does he mean nobody likes to take math anymore? The only reason most people take math in the first place is because their degree requires it. Unless he means there are less people majoring in math. BMD004

A lot of people sincerely enjoy math.

Hell, my mum was only a credit away from minoring in math while getting an engineering degree when she graduated and didn't even know it.

[QUOTE="BMD004"]What does he mean nobody likes to take math anymore? The only reason most people take math in the first place is because their degree requires it. Unless he means there are less people majoring in math. jaydough

A lot of people sincerely enjoy math.

Hell, my mum was only a credit away from minoring in math while getting an engineering degree when she graduated and didn't even know it.

Take engineers. They now have programs that will do most of their calculations and planning for them. Etc. etc.

sonicare

If you're an engineer and you don't understand the program you're using, people WILL die.

[QUOTE="jaydough"]

[QUOTE="BMD004"]What does he mean nobody likes to take math anymore? The only reason most people take math in the first place is because their degree requires it. Unless he means there are less people majoring in math. BMD004

A lot of people sincerely enjoy math.

Hell, my mum was only a credit away from minoring in math while getting an engineering degree when she graduated and didn't even know it.

It's not that people are getting dumber it's just a lot of old intelligence is unneeded with technology today.

No the IQ has been rising over the past century, it is now we get to see people in their full glory which is never a good thing.

I don't think that people are getting dumber, although sometimes it sure looks like it.
It's just that nowadays dumb people have a lot more ways to display their stupidity, thanks to the internet.

Definitely dumber. I can notice it from just walking or driving around, or just talking to people. Stupid people annoy me more than just about anything because most of the things that anger me are acts or statements from dumb people. I don't know if the proper schooling or classes would help. Maybe they're just born that way, or maybe it is indeed a fact, that in our technological age, things are dumbed down too much.

Everytime I hear about stupid people, I think of the movie, "Idiocracy," with Luke Wilson. It's a funny movie if you haven't seen it. I don't agree that that reality would happen, but I could see the average IQ going down as dumb people seem to have more children.

Probably.....

I liked math though :'(

if you ask me my kid will not have a calculator until they start getting near calculus.

If i have to teach him or her myself how math works i will.

As for internet and laptops, they dont need them when they're young.

when kids are little they are still developing, they absolutely must need the cognitive ability to multiply with relatively ease and accuracy without going to a calculator.

Going to a calculator constantly does not mean they know what they are doing, it just means they can punch numbers in.

Things have changed. Yes people have less intrinsic knowledge.

However people are getting better at getting the details thet need.(internet)

Overall its getting better,

if you ask me my kid will not have a calculator until they start getting near calculus.

If i have to teach him or her myself how math works i will.

As for internet and laptops, they dont need them when they're young.

when kids are little they are still developing, they absolutely must need the cognitive ability to multiply with relatively ease and accuracy without going to a calculator.

Going to a calculator constantly does not mean they know what they are doing, it just means they can punch numbers in.

SaudiFury

I honestly wonder if there's a correlation with the average person being so bad with money and the average person doing so badly at math.

[QUOTE="sonicare"]Take engineers. They now have programs that will do most of their calculations and planning for them. Etc. etc.

jaydough

If you're an engineer and you don't understand the program you're using, people WILL die.

Had this interesting client in the office the other day. He was an 80 year old man who still taught advanced calculus at the local university. He expressed his dismay to me that his class size kept shrinking and shrinking. "No one likes to take math anymore".

Interesting point, but he continued about how people just don't seem to think or reason like they did in the past. He felt we've grown so accustomed to technology that we no longer have to rely on our brains to figure problems out. We have calculators and computers to solve most of our problems. We have net searches to quickly gain whatever answer we need. Instant gratification and no processs of search or reasoning to track it down.

Take doctors, he said. They used to have to sit there and figure out from the patient's history and symptoms what disease they had. Where was the lesion? Now these days, they just get a CT scan or MRI, no thinking required. Take engineers. They now have programs that will do most of their calculations and planning for them. Etc. etc.

While I think that he was simplifying things a little bit, I suspect he does have a solid point. Do you think we are losing our ability to think critically, to reason?

Hard to say, one boon of all this tech is the vast amount of info available to us, but does that actually dumb us down?

sonicare

Pure BS. Using programs to do calculations is smart as calculations is something computers are generally good at. You won't accomplish more by wasting a lot of time doing it manually by yourself. A computer is crap at understanding things which is where humans come in.

No, in the time it would take the doctor to figure things out, it may already be too late for the patient. If technology could do all of this, then why would we need doctors or engineers? The answer is it can't. Doctors and engineers still exist as a profession because they do things that technology cannot, e.g. critical thinking. The tech that they use exists to take care of menial tasks, it makes them more efficient.

[QUOTE="Sunfyre7896"]

Definitely dumber. I can notice it from just walking or driving around, or just talking to people. Stupid people annoy me more than just about anything because most of the things that anger me are acts or statements from dumb people. I don't know if the proper schooling or classes would help. Maybe they're just born that way, or maybe it is indeed a fact, that in our technological age, things are dumbed down too much.

Everytime I hear about stupid people, I think of the movie, "Idiocracy," with Luke Wilson. It's a funny movie if you haven't seen it. I don't agree that that reality would happen, but I could see the average IQ going down as dumb people seem to have more children.

thegerg

All of the uneducated stupidity that you can see all over the place. Another poster put on page one that whenever you deny natural selection, you have a declining in certain traits. This is true. There is a preponderance towards having more unintelligent people in the population. A couple of factors are that unintelligent and/or uneducated people seem to have more children while educated people know that having 7 kids while only making $100k might not be the smartest thing. The second factor goes with that in that, social welfare programs and having ample food available has killed natural selection in terms of certain aspects of humanity. No longer do unintelligent people starve because they're not smart enough to hunt or farm or have to get a good job/career to be able to suppor their family. Now you can be poor and get food easily and cheaply or free through welfare. Famines, disease, and natural selection do not influence first world countries the way it used to. So hence, you can have more reproduction of people that pass on their genes of 90 IQ than before. Its possible that you may find a widening gap between the unintelligent and the intelligent where one day you'll have a huge group of unintelligent people and a smaller group of intelligent people responsible for any technological and social/artistic growth. This is because no one really wants to marry a dumb a**. Could be I'm wrong, but I feel these are valid points to say the least. Just because you and all of your friends are intelligent doesn't mean that tens of millions of Americans that aren't so bright having more kids than you doesn't exist. One example, just go listen to some of the people when it's busy at WalMart.

I agree with the doctor's point, but not the conclusion that "people are getting dumber". Our system is set up so that people don't need to think very hard. As a matter of fact, in most jobs they probably want you to think less and just do as you're told.

People aren't becoming dumber, but they don't think as much. But they don't need to, and so I don't see the problem with that. Why would an engineer want to sit with a piece of paper and work out a problem when he can type in some numbers and get the answer instantly? Why would a doctor want to guess where the lesion is when they can get an exact location and the appearance of it within minutes? Does that mean they couldn't do it? No...an engineer could likely work out a problem by hand if he wanted to. People are as smart as ever, just because we use technology to replace our thinking doesn't mean that we are dumber.stanleycup98

i think you would be surprised how little most peoples can do when you take away all the things we have introduced to "make our lives easier". one of the best examples is probably car navigation systems, i know peoples that can't find the way to a place they have been many times while using their car navigation, turn it off and they just don't have a clue. what's even worse, we aren't even taught anymore how to do it the "old-fashioned" way, it's often considered obsolete. like you said this is not an apparent problem by itself because we have the technology so we can afford to be stupid and you could easily argue we would be more stupid not to use it. unfortunately however this seems to translate to problem solving capabilities in general, my jaw frequently drops when i see peoples do things that go against what should be basic common sense.

i do hold a view that peoples are getting dumber and that technology plays a part in that. I doubt it's the only factor but it does present us with a very superficial and/or summarized version of the problems we face whereas the reality behind it may be very complex. i think this causes simplified views, stops us from getting to the core of problems and makes us think about solutions in a very linear way. these things combined already hold a great danger of stupidity, then what makes it worse is that peoples often have no idea of their shortcomings because technology also gives them a false perception of their capabilities as they confuse skill with the trick they were taught to use someone else's skill.

Common sense is going down.

Intelligence is going up

I think there are more spoiled idiots now, kids with cellphones and parents buying them everything. I think the general intelligence will always be on the rise...in the 1st world.

What a hipster. Ofcourse everything was better when you were young.

Every hipster is like that.

As long as OTers reproduce, the population can only get smarter.

You no longer need to waste brain power to figure out 2+2=5 because you can use a calculator, I don't see how this means people are getting dumber, sure I might suck at maths but it's not like I am no longer able to comprehend it, I can still learn math just as good as that old fart. Also what does sucking at math have to do with reasoning?