Is the human race getting dumber......maybe......

[marv]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...-8307101.html#

(snip)

Is the human species doomed to intellectual decline? Will our intelligence ebb away in centuries to come leaving our descendants incapable of using the technology their ancestors invented? In short: will Homo be left without his sapiens?

This is the controversial hypothesis of a leading geneticist who believes that the immense capacity of the human brain to learn new tricks is under attack from an array of genetic mutations that have accumulated since people started living in cities a few thousand years ago.

(snip)

Life as a hunter-gatherer was probably more intellectually demanding than widely supposed, he says. “A hunter-gatherer who did not correctly conceive a solution to providing food or shelter probably died, along with his or her progeny, whereas a modern Wall Street executive that made a similar conceptual mistake would receive a substantial bonus and be a more attractive mate,” Professor Crabtree says.

(snip)

I'm inclined to agree with Prof. Crabtree - to a point. I think that we dumb ourselves down because of cultural evolution rather than genetic evolution, at least in the short term. Cultural and technological evolution is infinitely faster than genetic evolution. As humans, we prefer the quicker - and lazier - path.

Look at the product of the inner cities. Look at the product of idiot savants coming out of the educational system that produce keypad button pushers who can't spell without a spell checker, or engineers who can't calculate a logarithm without a TI calculator.

[ReinMan]

I also tend to agree, and believe that one contributing factor, ironically, is the technological prowess our intelligence has given us.

By curing diseases, building safer cars, advancing emergency medical techniques, etc.; we have eliminated many of the natural selectors that would have weeded out the especially stupid from among us.

The self-destructively dim now survive to produce even stupider offspring, instead of selecting themselves out of the gene pool in some accidental, but easily foreseeable manner.

Just look at the average Democratic voter...

[Rockntractor]

Stupid will always be with us, no matter what period you look at their is no shortage. The only difference I see is that stupid is organizing with one voice now which is a more dangerous form of stupid. stupid in large numbers is a lot of stupidly dangerous effect, when they join their idiot hands together.

[Janice]

... stupid is organizing with one voice now which is a more dangerous form of stupid. stupid in large numbers is a lot of stupidly dangerous effect, when they join their idiot hands together.

Hmm... sounds eerily like 'unions'.

[Zeus]

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[Zathras]

Well, 50% of the people who voted for President this time around put truth to the question whether or not people are getting dumber.