The wheels of progress
SciAm have published an article
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=will-we-keep-getting-smarter-flynn-effect-says-yes
on the Flynn effect, a mysterious world wide increase of human intelligence measured by standardized tests.
The notion that the average intelligence is rapidly increasing is taxing my own intelligence. I did not notice any such dramatic gains over my life span. Back extrapolation suggests that the mean IQ of an Englishman in 1900 roughly corresponds to today's imbecile. Something must be wrong here.
The paper gives several hints what's wrong. The scores in math and vocabulary (dismissively referred to as "crystallized intelligence") either did not change over 100 years or retrogressed since the mid-1990. All of the asserted gains are in "fluid intelligence;" the subtests, where people manipulate isolated concepts as pure abstractions.
...One part deals with similarities and poses questions such as "How are an apple and an orange are alike." A low-scoring answer would be "They're both edible." A high-scoring response would be "They're both fruit," and answer that transcends simple physical qualities.
Oh, really? That's news to botanists...
...The other subtest consists of a series of geometric patterns that are related in some abstract way, and the test taker should correctly identify the relation between them... "If you don't classify abstractions, if you're not used to using logic, you can't really master the modern world," Flynn says. "Alexander Luria, a Soviet psychologist, did some wonderful interviews with peasants in rural Russia in the 1920s. He would say to them: (1) Where there is always snow, bears are always white, (2) There is always snow at the North Pole, (3) what color are the bears there? They would say they had never seen anything but brown bears. They didn't think of a hypothetical question as meaningful. The peasants were not stupid. Their world just required different skills.
I agree that these peasants were not stupid, but I cannot say the same about their interlocutor... It never occurred to Luria to substitute the North Pole for the South Pole, for the sake of the argument. If there are no bears at the pole, these nonexistent bears can be of any color, correct? Furthermore, the North Pole (OK, one of the six differently defined North Poles) is an imaginary point where the rotation axis meets the surface. Bears cannot live "at the point," and in any case this point is located miles beneath the ice. Polar bears do not travel beyond 82°N, as there is nothing for them to eat up north. Not one of them has been sighted within 60 mile from the true north. As for (1), there are plenty of mountains that are covered by snow year around and still visited by brown bears. The question is not 'hypothetical,' it is absurd, like the question about apples and oranges. Only a person knowing what answer is expected can answer such questions ‘correctly’.
Does it even test the ability to make abstractions? No. The same problem re-emerges at any level of abstraction. Let's stick to "geometric patterns." Suppose, for example, you are asked, Luria style: (1) Squares are circles, (2) Two tangents to a circle are always equal. (3) Are tangents to a square always equal?
According to what I've read, saying "yes" should be regarded as a mark of high intelligence (one's ability to make logical deductions about counter-intuitive, hypothetical statements removed from everyday concerns). Both statements (1) and (2) are correct. In taxicab metrics 'circles' are squares. However, in such metrics tangents to these 'circles' are not equal in length; statement (2) is correct only in Euclidean metric. Statements (1) and (2) can not BOTH be correct, and nothing follows from them. At any level of abstraction, one needs to reason from one's active knowledge rather than formal logic alone to assert the truth of the statements, which are incomplete. Doing that IS intelligence, even if someone believes otherwise. That's what Russian peasants were doing. Fewer people are doing that today.
I wonder what is it that is rapidly increasing. Perhaps it is the ability to 'logically' manipulate nonsense in a fashion disengaged from the actual knowledge. I refuse to believe that 'intelligence' can be increasing while proficiency in math, vocabulary, etc. is stagnating or falling. What increases is a special kind of intelligence, and I am not sure I should be happy about that.
Whatever it is, 'progress' appears to be producing a person that is ideally suitable for propaganda. A -> B! B -> C! - Thereupon he who does not believe that A -> C should be shot against the wall.
I've seen plenty of that and in ever increasing quantity.
The dumbest thing on the planet - a computer - performs precisely such manipulations. What that has to do with human intelligence?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=will-we-keep-getting-smarter-flynn-effect-says-yes
on the Flynn effect, a mysterious world wide increase of human intelligence measured by standardized tests.
The notion that the average intelligence is rapidly increasing is taxing my own intelligence. I did not notice any such dramatic gains over my life span. Back extrapolation suggests that the mean IQ of an Englishman in 1900 roughly corresponds to today's imbecile. Something must be wrong here.
The paper gives several hints what's wrong. The scores in math and vocabulary (dismissively referred to as "crystallized intelligence") either did not change over 100 years or retrogressed since the mid-1990. All of the asserted gains are in "fluid intelligence;" the subtests, where people manipulate isolated concepts as pure abstractions.
...One part deals with similarities and poses questions such as "How are an apple and an orange are alike." A low-scoring answer would be "They're both edible." A high-scoring response would be "They're both fruit," and answer that transcends simple physical qualities.
Oh, really? That's news to botanists...
...The other subtest consists of a series of geometric patterns that are related in some abstract way, and the test taker should correctly identify the relation between them... "If you don't classify abstractions, if you're not used to using logic, you can't really master the modern world," Flynn says. "Alexander Luria, a Soviet psychologist, did some wonderful interviews with peasants in rural Russia in the 1920s. He would say to them: (1) Where there is always snow, bears are always white, (2) There is always snow at the North Pole, (3) what color are the bears there? They would say they had never seen anything but brown bears. They didn't think of a hypothetical question as meaningful. The peasants were not stupid. Their world just required different skills.
I agree that these peasants were not stupid, but I cannot say the same about their interlocutor... It never occurred to Luria to substitute the North Pole for the South Pole, for the sake of the argument. If there are no bears at the pole, these nonexistent bears can be of any color, correct? Furthermore, the North Pole (OK, one of the six differently defined North Poles) is an imaginary point where the rotation axis meets the surface. Bears cannot live "at the point," and in any case this point is located miles beneath the ice. Polar bears do not travel beyond 82°N, as there is nothing for them to eat up north. Not one of them has been sighted within 60 mile from the true north. As for (1), there are plenty of mountains that are covered by snow year around and still visited by brown bears. The question is not 'hypothetical,' it is absurd, like the question about apples and oranges. Only a person knowing what answer is expected can answer such questions ‘correctly’.
Does it even test the ability to make abstractions? No. The same problem re-emerges at any level of abstraction. Let's stick to "geometric patterns." Suppose, for example, you are asked, Luria style: (1) Squares are circles, (2) Two tangents to a circle are always equal. (3) Are tangents to a square always equal?
According to what I've read, saying "yes" should be regarded as a mark of high intelligence (one's ability to make logical deductions about counter-intuitive, hypothetical statements removed from everyday concerns). Both statements (1) and (2) are correct. In taxicab metrics 'circles' are squares. However, in such metrics tangents to these 'circles' are not equal in length; statement (2) is correct only in Euclidean metric. Statements (1) and (2) can not BOTH be correct, and nothing follows from them. At any level of abstraction, one needs to reason from one's active knowledge rather than formal logic alone to assert the truth of the statements, which are incomplete. Doing that IS intelligence, even if someone believes otherwise. That's what Russian peasants were doing. Fewer people are doing that today.
I wonder what is it that is rapidly increasing. Perhaps it is the ability to 'logically' manipulate nonsense in a fashion disengaged from the actual knowledge. I refuse to believe that 'intelligence' can be increasing while proficiency in math, vocabulary, etc. is stagnating or falling. What increases is a special kind of intelligence, and I am not sure I should be happy about that.
Whatever it is, 'progress' appears to be producing a person that is ideally suitable for propaganda. A -> B! B -> C! - Thereupon he who does not believe that A -> C should be shot against the wall.
I've seen plenty of that and in ever increasing quantity.
The dumbest thing on the planet - a computer - performs precisely such manipulations. What that has to do with human intelligence?