Older Civilization's Smarts?

[macchia]

Successes are built on the foundation of failures. The more people there are, the quicker we learn how NOT to make a lightbulb. Of course there's the prodigal mind who can get it right the 2nd time, but he or she isnt the cornerstone for all humanity. Im just working from the laws of probability, discounting variables like the Edisons and Franklins and DeVincis of the world since they're not perfect examples of humanity but perfect exceptions to humanity. Its because of our mass that we're able to deduce things quicker by getting the wrong methods out of the way quicker, not because our brains are bigger than they were 5,000 years ago which I've seen no proof of.

 

[Guybrush]

But the Edisons and Franklins and De Vincis were the ones who actually... invented stuff. The light bulb wasn't invented by fifty dumb guys working nonstop for twenty years and failing over and over. It was invented by Edison. You're discounting the factors that actually got us where we are.

 

[macchia]

Actually Edison didnt invent it, he perfected it and he failed hundreds of times preceding his perfecting of it. He also wasnt the only person trying to create something similiar to the lightbulb, so hey, you learned something today guybrush. I suppose an airplane would be a better known example then of deduction at its best.

 

[Guybrush]

That wasn't my point. My point was that you're saying that you realize greatness and innovation is present in certain individuals, but you're discounting their impact on the development of humanity. I was trying to give a simplistic example; forgive me. Maybe I should have chosen one of Edison's other inventions.

 

[Roman Candle]

sixty, what is your obssession with counting? If you can count to thirty, you should be able to count to any number at all. I have absolutely no idea where you're coming from with that :p People nowadays are general less adept with langues than we have been in the past. For instance, if you were expected to know anything at all in Rome, (ie not be a menial slave), then you would be expected to at the very least speak Greek.

I don't know about you, but the standerdised tests I get in no way show intellegence. They essentially show how much work you are willing to put into regurgitating what you have been told. There is no inginuity or true scholarship involved in the end. The dullest, most uncreative, inept people can get fantastic grades, just by putting in enough hours to cram it all in.

The acheivements of a culture are largely dictated by the wealth and leisure time that it has - that way it can afford to have people engaged in purely intellectual persuits, instead of having to produce food and fight off other nations. Thus the Greeks made such leaps in maths, etc. I mean, they actually managed to work out that the Earth travelled around the Sun, and the distanced between the stars, (although when finally had a look at the actuall speeds and distances required to produce the rotations and paralax effects they could see, they decided they must be wrong). Pythagoras, apart from the triangle thing, worked out how the musical scale works. Democritus discovered his atom, and Xeno proved that space is not infinitely divisible. After Greece collapsed, how long did it take for all of this to be rediscovered? Much of what they said wasn't really surpassed till Gallileo, Descartes etc.

 

[macchia]

"I don't know about you, but the standerdised tests I get in no way show intellegence. They essentially show how much work you are willing to put into regurgitating what you have been told. There is no inginuity or true scholarship involved in the end. The dullest, most uncreative, inept people can get fantastic grades, just by putting in enough hours to cram it all in."
Very true. All it teaches is memorization which, frankly, is redunadnt in a world of computers. We still need critical thinkers and deductive thinking, we dont need to flatly memorize information anymore and that's all the SOLs teach because as soon as they're over, you forget it all. People are learning things are important because there's a test on it and processing it the same way a computer does so it can't be applied to anything outside of 'regurgitating' the answer later, but they're never taught why its important so they forget it as soon as the test is over. Its just so redundant, to learn a line of thinking so easily outsourced by AI since its essentially the simplest level of analysis.

Please try to use quote tags when quoting another post. Thanks!

 

[Roman Candle]

I don't quite mean that recall isn't important - it's a vital part of intellegence. But a very mediocre person can get the same grade as a very clever person who does very little work by spending a lot of effort on exam technique, etc. Standerdised testing is nothing new, nor is it that relevent.

 

[macchia]

Of course its not completely without merit, a good investigator or interigator needs to have good memory just because of the pace a good one should move at. But neither would be good at their job just for memorizing, they'd need to be able to apply pretext, content and intent to everything they've memorized(and just about every other job out there requires this) and that's something SOLs dont cover. It just covers the what, who and where in a very flat unconnected mannor, ignoring the why and how more often than not. I'd like to think a democratic president could fix it, but frivelous(comparitively) issues seem to dominate the right and left charicatures now so a democratic president might be too busy doing progressive things to remember to be a damn democrat and fix our status qou.

 

[catalyst]

So, getting through some of this: Ixis has a very big point of this. Intelligence, the ability to solve complex problems, has not really changed. Between then and now, we have plenty of advances that doesn't make us smarter, as much as it makes knowledge more widespread. It isn't the few scholars who can read and write anymore. Anyone who wishes to learn can usually find a way, and those who know are usually willing to teach. We also have more knowledge today than we did back then. Losing technology would not take that away from us. Not all of us know how to hunt, but those that do could would hunt, and would teach. We'd already know how to write. If you took our books and our paper, we could still find other ways. Plenty of us learned how paper is made in elementary school. I'm sure we could dredge up those old memories. And once we had paper, why did we need to go back to scrolls? Plenty of us can sew, and there are plenty of things to make thread and paper from. Heck, you can do it with celery.

And even without all of that, we'd still have knowledge that the ancient peoples didn't have. Without books, without technology, many of us would tell it to our children. Even if we didn't rebuild for hundreds of years, those who cared would teach the neonates to read, and write, and would talk about genetics, atomics (I'm thinking about atoms and molecules and such, but I don't know the true name for that study other than science), psychology, biology, astronomy, history and government... It's possible that knowledge would once again become the property of a select few, but it would still continue on. Plus, they would still have the knowledge of the history of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Their culture, their religion... And some would welcome the challenge of figuring out how their inventions worked, using schematics they'd burned into their brain out of fascination, and those would be easily built.

Really, I'd say that in the end, that gives us a leg up on the Greeks and Romans.

 

[FlippyD]

The thing is, we are more knowledgeable than previous generations but we aren't more intelligent. Intelligence would require a physical change to the way we process information. ccoa may have a point with the health theory however. Though, I assume the benefit we get from better nutrition ins negligible when you look at the big picture.

 

[Roman Candle]

Though, I assume the benefit we get from better nutrition ins negligible when you look at the big picture.

When eat badly for a week, the homework I get back the next week is noticably worse :p Of course, that's a short term point, and you're talking about long term development, but I think it illustrates the point.

Slightly related point: How many people have heard this about Omega3 little/no noticable effects above placebo after infanthood? It does kind of seem obvious when you think that most of the laying down of myelin etc is done in the womb and early stages of childhood.

 

[catalyst]

However, Omega-3 does have a noticeable effect as a mood stabilizer/antidepressant, as well as keeping the heart healthy. If someone has a healthy system anyway, then there will continue to be little to no improvement in performance. For those who suffer from certain illnesses, however, it would probably show a large difference just because a healthier mind and body will have better mental performance. It all depends on who they're getting for the study. It's very possible that a previous study that showed performance improvement did the study on the general populace. For the most recent study, they may have screened out those with mental disorders or other health problems which Omega-3 has an improvement on.

 

[lunarhiro2002]

eh i think that your argument on food is moot. In the Egyptian tombs there is wheat that is found to have amino acids that arn't in any of our food today. So I'm pretty sure ancient man ate pretty well...even if htey didn't have the variety of today...which I think they did.

 

[FlippyD]

Yes, now we do eat better and more healthier, but it's a very modern development. When was the food pyramid created again? 1992.

It's hard to find a difference in the short amount of time we have been health concious. I suppose however we could compare America's eating and preformance habits with that of a third world country's with a fine comb.

I'm on the fence about it though. A part of me does think there might be some correlation (now), but then again everyone's biologically different. What might be healthy for one person won't be for another.

When you see those weight loss commercials what the advertisers do is find atheletes and healthy people who've been injured and hospitalized for a while (so, lying around in the hospital and getting fat.) Then sign them up to shoot a "before" picture, put them on the "diet" and then wait a month or so for their natural metabolism to kick in and bam! They're thin again.

Bodies process food differently. One person might gain more energy from grains/bread than someone else. Certain people can get up earlier in the morning than others. Certain people have faster metabolisms. I'd like to see an in-depth study about all of this, however.