[Pants-of-dog]

Empirical studies into early childhood education began in the 20th century with people like Erik Erikson. Until this scientific basis for ECE, there was no scientific way to verify if early education programs were as helpful as they hoped.

It was at this point that education for small children, especially pre-schoolers, became significantly better.

[noemon]

Wat0n's source is definitive scientific proof of my theory of bell-curve evolution and devolution during golden ages, particular to families & social groups.

I've got no idea as to whether we are smarter than people in the Ancient Era, but it does seem the Flynn Effect may have stagnated or even reversed in some countries, relative to (say) 50 years ago. This would all be due to environmental factors:

https://www.pnas.org/content/115/26/6674

These graphs resemble the bell-curves that I described earlier, even better than I imagined.

[wat0n]

Note though that the x-axis is year. That shape only shows that mean IQ in Norway seemingly went back to the average levels of the cohort born in 1960.

[noemon]

Note though that the x-axis is year.

Which is the most amazing thing. As that is precisely how I described that it should be mapped previously.

[Rancid]

This means that even though Qatz claimed people are getting dumber with dumb reasons/evidence... Turns out his claim is correct.

[XogGyux]

This means that even though Qatz claimed people are getting dumber with dumb reasons/evidence... Turns out his claim is correct.

Self-fulfilling prophecy you mean?

[Pants-of-dog]

Unfortunately, the study only manages to show why genetics is probably not the cause.

This means that it is almost certainly environmental, but the study cannot figure out what the causal relationships are.

If it could, we could then analyse different eras according to said criteria.

[wat0n]

...And it only goes back to 1960.

[Pants-of-dog]

And it only looks at one culture.

[noemon]

Unfortunately, the study only manages to show why genetics is probably not the cause.

Unfortunately indeed for you and Xog, this study proves my bell-curve theory for intelligence beyond any doubt with scientific evidence to boot.

A human from the past is almost always superior to a human from the future on a like-for-like basis sans tech. The only moment in time when this may not be true is right at the cusp of a Golden Age and only for those in the society living in it. Not that it's relevant but I could make the same argument and they(Egyptians and Greeks) already did make the same argument for the people of their past. Plato was fully aware that he and the individuals of his time were inferior to his ancestors, that is the entire point of Timaeus and Critias. That is the entire point of Hesiod's Ages of Man. People have understood the dangers of human domestication for ever.

"Humanity" is nonsense first of all. Certain social groups(can even be family groups or individuals) reach peaks in intellect in various Golden Age stages. Social/civil groups/individuals have to undergo the full cycle of growth to realize that growth. It's not enough being born in a comfortable era, a human needs to actually mentally grow like a flower and undergo the entire process of advancement, not just be satisfied that their great-grand da did it for them. The only moment in time when societies are superior to their ancestors is right at the cusp of a Golden Age and only for those people in the society/tribe/family living in it.

Aristotle was superior to his dad, but his son was not superior to him.

As I said like-for-like.

The individuals in a current Amazonian primitive tribe can be compared in cognitive level to a pre-historic tribe from Africa, Asia or Europe, not to the urban societies of the M-E and the Med and vice versa. That would just make my point even stronger actually. Like-for-like is the guiding principle of this simple exercise for the sole purpose of identifying whether individuals have more cognitive function than individuals in the past on a like-for-like basis. As I said repeatedly, take any individual from any profession, any class of man and compare to the nearest equivalent of the past on a like-for-like basis.

A hunter-gatherer from Amazon needs to be compared to the hunter-gatherer of Neolithic Europe. A lawyer needs to be compared to an ancient lawyer, a modern artist/craftsman to an ancient artist/craftsman, a modern scientist to an ancient scientist, a modern farmer to an ancient farmer as regards their individual cognitive levels.

Of course, this exercise requires actual knowledge of these individuals from other eras. Something that evidently prevents you from making any contribution on this topic because you clearly lack this kind of knowledge.

I have mentioned the bell curve several times. The people on the left(rising) side are intellectually superior to the people on the right(declining) side. This cycle takes place among social groups several times across space time.

I have provided several and have explained to you that this is not about cumulative humanity and told you that putting all of humanity in the same soup is an idiotic exercise and how could it not be? Are Amazonian tribes enjoying the same human tech & civilisation as Americans? Golden Ages are achieved by particular social groups, not the entire inhabitants of the planet.

Others have already mentioned Aristotle and we have already discussed this several times. The argument however is not specific to a date even though 330BCE has been used several times as a placeholder. Several groups of people have undergone a Golden Age, some people have had several of those and have had several bell curves of Golden Ages. Greeks in the 4th BCE, again in the 2nd CE, 7th CE, 11CE. French people in the 18th CE, English in the 18th, Jews in the 19-20th CE and a lot of others. The personages and individual achievements developed by these people during their Golden Ages surpass those of their predecessors and that is the only time that this is true.

Looking at particular groups or families case by case is of course the correct way to do it.

Now you can both stop using the abstract and quite arrogant term "we" have this, that, and the other. "We have facebook and ipads and computers and hospitals and security by people we hate, how can we be stupider than those that didn't have those privileges."

Well this is an amazing realization for you to ponder on.

For starters, while we enjoy the fruits of various technologies, they are not yours or Xog's achievements, so their existence does not prove your intelligence. Ergo, you are unable to use the term "we have this and as such we are better" because it is not yours.

A social group striving for excellence is different to a social group striving for instant gratification or wokery. Athletes competing for an olive branch are different than athletes competing for money and doping. Scientists striving for truth are different to scientists striving for their personal gratification. Farmers striving for excellent crops are different to farmers striving for volume.

Parents leaving their kids with an ipad and tiktok all day in their bedrooms results to a cognitive drain on these children. People trusting the GPS device more than their own navigational wits results to a drain in their navigational cognition because effectively they are putting their own navigational cognition at rest while relying on some assistant. The problem is not the GPS or the iPad, but the way that groups of people are using or misusing them.

This very obvious issue is clearly touched upon by the OP and the sources the OP posted and it all boils down to this dreaded word of yours, morality and ethics.

So according to our friend Xog here:

1) The aether of humanity acquiring more knowledge is evidence of an upgraded cognition among the entire human population. Filling up academic journals is causing the instant upgrade of the intelligence of the hobo on the street, the Amazonian tribe, the Chav and the obese guy on the telly. Can't you guys feel your neurons firing up every second of the day while upgrades are being downloaded straight to your brain from humanity's supercomputer pumping upgrades into your frontal cortex? No? perhaps you need whatever Xog is smoking. Can't you people feel that the aether of 'humanity' is making sure we all keep up with the latest scientific discoveries that all humans understand and comprehend with total clarity thus magically improving our cognition and turning us into upgraded models every second of the day?

2) Cuban society, economy and individuals are superior today than they were 50 or 100 years ago. Humanity is superior and that includes all the humans in it, except for those who aren't who perhaps should not be called humans at all. For general information purposes, this is what is reductio ad absurdum.

3) Humanity was cognitively superior during WW2 than the decade preceding it.

4) The hobo on the street as well as Xog are cognitively superior to Einstein, Michelangelo and Plato because they were born later and as such they embody all the wisdom of the ages, they are supposedly upgraded models because time allows only for upgrades and never for downgrades on anything at all. He is upset I now used the lowest denominator to demonstrate the absurdity of his argument just as he was upset when I used the highest denominator on a like-for-like basis because he insists religiously that all modern humans [all society/ all humanity], from the highest to the lowest are cognitively superior to the people of previous times. As I said several times, take the upper classes of today vs the upper classes of 1920 or 1820 or 330BC. Take Trump vs Pericles if you prefer. Or the Bushes vs the Medicis. Or Boris and Andrew vs Victoria. Take any pick actually and one will observe the devolution for individuals or groups right before their eyes. If it is a difficult pill to swallow, ignore it, chastise it, hubrisize it. You should never under any circumstances get out of your comfort zone considering yourselves as the most supreme beings ever.

5) Devolution can not happen to humans or social groups, or companies, or countries or cars or to anything ever. So don't worry, whatever you do, the only way is up for you, so don't do anything at all and certainly not anything that challenges your ideas or the supremacy of your personal existence. The supercomputer is pumping all the new upgrades into your brain directly. He calls devolved countries that have devolved before his eyes as "my tricks", instead of real examples that prove that societies do devolve and rapidly so once they adopt a way of life(.ie morals) that is unsuitable.

6) Totally abstract and undefined average aggregates tell a better story than breaking statistics down to groups, areas, profession, income on a like-for-like basis. Companies are better off looking at average aggregate revenue from the point of founding to their dissolution, ignoring everything in between and simply allowing the companies to follow the wind, the wind always goes up according to Xog, instead of looking at like-for-like sales per year, month, season. According to our friend, the only way things can go is up and when things do go down it's all 'trickery' that should be ignored. Of course, if companies took his advice they would collapse immediately which is exactly what happens to humans who refuse to identify their own ups and downs and instead opt for an existence of ignorance and bliss where everything is imagined to be going up regardless of what is actually happening and what has indeed been happening throughout the ages.

The irony is that he fails to comprehend that the devolution happens when one follows advice or rationale such as his.

7) A car rapidly changing directions to avoid a "moose" is "not going around a corner", because the obstacles are not technical corners over straight lines. The car "does not corner" apparently and that is why several cars are overturning and flipping over even at 30mph. Corporations can never devolve any one of their products because they are awesome people who move everything forward for the sake of science, so trust them with your lives, they know what you need better than you do.

8 ) Pidgeons can perceive space and time better than humans and the average pidgeon can navigate better than the average human, he claims. This pidgeon superiority according to him proves that cognition has nothing to do with navigation, despite navigation being the perception of space and time. Has he shown that pidgeons are superior navigators to humans? Of course not, has he shown that cognition is not required to navigate? Neither. Still does not stop him from arrogantly claiming that he has achieved both because according to him any absurd statement is the same as a 'reductio ad absurdum' argument. So you heard it here first folks, any absurdity that anyone comes up with is at the same time mathematical evidence for that absurdity.

Interesting scientific fact that further buttresses my rather obvious argument is that humans do have a similar magnetic 6th sense as pidgeons do, most of us have simply devolved to the point of being unaware of it, according to science:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech ... geons.html


---------------------

Devolution happens to individuals, societies, countries and states. The only way to avoid devolving is to recognize the social mores that are causing that and change these bad habits. Social groups and individuals that understand this, survive, thrive and undergo several bell curves instead of just 1, social groups and individuals that do not understand this and are happy to convince themselves that they are the most superior people for having the privilege of being born in the present, devolve and eventually disappear in the ether.

Being born in the present does not grant anybody with the cumulative wisdom of all the ages by the miracle of birth.

This ridiculous millennial "privilege" is the exact reason why so many people are so pathetically arrogant without having achieved anything at all.

Lastly, it is not just the fact that most modern individuals are cognitively inferior on a like-for-like basis to their past counterparts, but the entire humanity is significantly inferior to its projected potentiality. If ancient Greeks achieved X with Y knowledge, why can't Americans achieve X on the nth with Y knowledge on the nth? It is not just about recognizing that one or more particular western society is the best "humanity" has ever had it but about understanding how much better one can be when one takes into account the knowledge & resources that one has in their availability compared to other societies in the past who produced better like-for-like humans with much less knowledge and technology.

If knowledge is infinite(after all why would it be anything less), the argument that opportunity for knowledge lessens as we move through time is untrue. So why are we covering less and less distance in an infinite space?

[XogGyux]

Unfortunately, the study only manages to show why genetics is probably not the cause.

This means that it is almost certainly environmental, but the study cannot figure out what the causal relationships are.

If it could, we could then analyse different eras according to said criteria.

And it only looks at one culture.

You are correct. This is an example of measurement bias. It has been addressed on other studies.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... via%3Dihub

We tested the claim that intelligence decreases in France (negative Flynn effect).

•
We re-analyzed princeps data (Dutton & Lynn, 2015) and collected a new sample.

•
Performance only decreases on tests involving declarative knowledge, not reasoning.

•
This is attributable to measurement bias for older items, due to cultural changes.

•
There is fluctuation of knowledge, but no overall negative Flynn effect in France.

As I have mentioned many times on prior posts. "Measurement of intelligence" is not a straightforward task. You cannot put a person on a scan and get an objective number (at least not yet). All tests have their limitations and they can give some useful information but it has to be interpreted with great care.

[noemon]

You are correct. This is an example of measurement bias. It has been addressed on other studies.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... via%3Dihub

It does not say what you would have wanted it to say:

In 2015, Dutton and Lynn published an account of a decrease of intelligence in France (negative Flynn effect) which had considerable societal impact. This decline was argued to be biological. However, there is good reason to be skeptical of these conclusions. The claim of intelligence decline was based on the finding of lower scores on the WAIS-III (normed in 1999) for a recent sample, but careful examination of the data suggests that this decline was in fact limited to subtests with a strong influence of culture-dependent declarative knowledge. In Study 1, we re-analyzed the data used by Dutton and Lynn (2015) and showed that only subtests of the WAIS primarily assessing cultural knowledge (Gc) demonstrated a significant decline. Study 2 replicated this finding and confirmed that performance was constant on other subtests. An analysis of differential item functioning in the five subtests with a decline showed that about one fourth of all items were significantly more difficult for subjects in a recent sample than in the original normative sample, for an equal level of ability. Decline on a subtest correlated 0.95 with its cultural load. These results confirm that there is currently no evidence for a decrease of intelligence in France, with prior findings being attributable to a drift of item difficulty for older versions of the WAIS, due to cultural changes. This highlights the role of culture in Wechsler's intelligence tests and indicates that when interpreting (negative) Flynn effects, the past should really be treated as a different country.

The cognitive decline in France is there and its real, its interpretation differs on whether it is responsible on immigration as some claim or down to something else.

The cognitive decline of the US is also there in black and white and its real with no such nationalisms/wokery affecting the conclusions of these studies.

And more actually:

Research suggests that there may be an ongoing reversed Flynn effect, i.e. a decline in IQ scores, in Norway, Denmark, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, and German-speaking countries,[4] a development which appears to have started in the 1990s.[5][6][7][8].

[QatzelOk]

Comparing yourself to a slave is of course the right thing to do and the reason why your analogy shows how you are wrong. You cannot compare yourself to the average citizen but to the slave because with the citizen you lose the battle. A slave is a conquered person and does not in any way make that person less multi-cultural than you despite your advantage of not being conquered and enjoying the security your country and the current world provides.

This is correct, noemon: most people posting on pofo (myself included) belong to today's "slave class." When posters like Pants-of-Dog claim to be "more educated" or "more sophisticated" than the average Athenian, they mean the average Athenian slave.

That so many people in our day don't realize that they are in the slave class... is a sign of our lack of self awareness, and of our lack of historical perspective. We live in a hyper-real PRESENT where the past is just a theme park ride that some consumers enjoy. The people who lived in the past perceived as actors, or Disney animators.

This lack of self-awareness that is the product of reification of fake-history texts... is a very modern flavor of dumb.

Cab driving gives you social skills for sure but not meaningful relationships with other people.

Cab driving, hairdressing, bar-tending, and other jobs where you work independently and with a wide variety of "types" of people as customers.... provide a large number of human slaves with the opportunity to "explore the market with Socrates" but at a level that is often limited by "a lack of theory."

But a theory-wise (educated or self taught) person working in one of these fields... is likely to have a very sophisticated take on the human condition.

[Pants-of-dog]

The mention of environmental causes started me thinking about verifiable environmental causes that we can compare.

The first one I thought of was lead exposure.

Apparently, ancient Greeks and Romans used lead a lot for things like plates and cups. And lead was also used frequently in food preparation. There was even a popular wine called sapa that was flavoured with lead acetate.

https://passionateomnivore.wordpress.co ... -and-lead/

[QatzelOk]

The mention of environmental causes started me thinking about verifiable environmental causes that we can compare.

The first one I thought of was lead exposure.

Apparently, ancient Greeks and Romans used lead a lot for things like plates and cups. And lead was also used frequently in food preparation. There was even a popular wine called sapa that was flavoured with lead acetate.

https://passionateomnivore.wordpress.co ... -and-lead/

The dumbness that is "lead exposure" is a gift that keeps on giving.

From the lead consumption you mention, you can explore the lead-based make-up of the 17th-19th Centuries that gave the rich skin cancers that they learned to hide with little face tatoos of hearts and diamonds.

Then, there is the lead in gasoline which decreased child intelligence, and provoked a lot of mental illness in urban dwellers. Oil corporations started dumbing down urbanites with their gasoline additives in 1921. And this process only ended last year, with Algeria as the last country to stop dumbing down its own population to make oil corporations happy.

I am of an age where I grew up in denial of the damage my parent's station wagon was inflicting on inner-city dwellers.

Which age of denial are YOU living in?

[wat0n]

There's also the issue of infant nutrition and similar environmental pressures. I'm guessing Greeks were worse off on that end than a contemporary westerner. Of course, here I'm thinking about IQ as a measure of intelligence and not others.

@XogGyux I find that paper on France to be quite interesting. Not so much about the Flynn effect turning negative being driven by the culturally sensitive parts of the IQ testing instrument, but that the rest is basically flat. IIRC the Flynn effect was positive throughout the 20th century, amounting to increases of 3 points per decade. Isn't the fact that it may now be around 0 itself a big deal?

[Crantag]

This is the source I read that confirms my previous argument that only circumstantial evidence exists, that only the citizenry would need to read, and even they could get away with not doing it,



And this is the same source.

Education in ancient Athens was limited to men and non-slaves. This means that most Athenians did not get an education, even if we assume that slaves were 230% to 40% of the population as historical evidence suggests.

But even if we compare the most educated Athenian to the average person today (instead of comparing them to the most educated people today) we would still see that modern humans are smarter. The average person today speaks more languages, has better relationships with other people, better nutrition, better education, and possibly less environmental toxins.

If we accept that relationships help the brain develop, and we also argue that only “deeply actualized” relationships help, then we can see that the slave master relationships in ancient Athens probably did not help brain development as much as the more equal (and therefore more actualizing) relationships we have today. Since women did not have rights back then, our relationships with wimen are also better now.

And we have more diverse relationships. This is because the ancient Athenians usually only knew other Athenians, or at best knew people from other parts of the Mediterranean. Nowadays, we know people from all over the world.

And many of the relationships we do have that make us better and healthier (and therefore more capable of being smart) simply did not exist back in the day. They had no therapists. They had no early childhood educators. They did not even have dentists.

You are incredibly full of shit.

I'll start with the end and I might end with the beginning.

My ex-fiance is from northern Vietnam. She has never been to a dentist. She brushes her teeth once a month with salt and lemon juice.

And you are dead wrong that ancients didn't know multiple languages. Not to say every Tom, Dick and Harry knew multiple languages necessarily, but I tend to think polyglotany was more common in older days, and moreover that a fair number of people needed to know multiple languages.

Better relationships? Lol. You need to set down your crack pipe with that one.

[Rancid]

Which age of denial are YOU living in?

Social media and the metaverse.

[noemon]

Apparently, ancient Greeks and Romans used lead a lot for things like plates and cups. And lead was also used frequently in food preparation. There was even a popular wine called sapa that was flavoured with lead acetate.

Apparently, ancient Greeks were fully aware of the problems of lead according to your source:

Even as these metals came into wider use, their health risks were known. Hippocrates (460-377 BCE), the ancient Greek physician, “described the symptoms of lead poisoning as appetite loss, colic, pallor, weight loss, fatigue, irritability, and nervous spasms. Among the earliest records, there are notes that lead miners and individuals who worked with lead developed ailments that resulted in their early demise. This was first well documented by the Egyptians who used slaves in their mines and later by the Pre-Greeks, Greeks, and Romans” (Lesser, 1988).

Waldron wrote that the practice of adding sapa in Rome was “so universal that Pliny remarked indignantly that ‘genuine, unadulterated wine is not to be had now, not even by the nobility.’ And he was right to complain for, he comments, ‘From the excessive use of such wines arise dangling . . . paralytic hands, echoing Dioscorides, who wrote that corrected wine was ‘most hurtful to the nerves’” (Waldron 1973). As the Roman Empire expanded, the mining and manufacturing of lead increased across Europe. And while several notable historians have suggested that lead poisoning contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire, this theory is still rather contentious.

Lesser indicates that during the Middle Ages, “the writings of medieval physicians indicated an awareness of both the sources and symptoms of lead poisoning. U. Ellenberg in 1473 published “On the Poisonous and Noxious Vapors and Fumes of Metals” and later G. Agricola (1556) published “De Re Metallica.”” Even with this awareness, “the Middle Ages saw a marked increase in the use of lead and lead-containing products” (Lesser, 1988).

But more importantly, you are clearly misinterpreting the word 'environmental' in the study:

In Table 1, we categorize the main hypotheses according to whether or not they allow for within-family Flynn effects. A metareview of empirical studies argues that the positive Flynn effect relates to improved education and nutrition, combined with reduced pathogen stress (2). Turning to the negative Flynn effect, the metareview notes a deceleration of IQ gains in some studies and suggests that these may relate to (i) decreasing returns to environmental inputs (“saturation”) or (ii) the “picking up of effects that cause IQ decreases and may ultimately reverse the Flynn effect,” such as dysgenic fertility (2). Dysgenic fertility is also the favored hypothesis in a recent literature review on reversed Flynn effects, where the authors conclude that dysgenic trends are the “simplest explanation for the negative Flynn effect” (6). A negative intelligence–fertility gradient is hypothesized to have been disguised by a positive environmental Flynn effect, revealing itself in data only “once the ceiling of the Flynn effect was reached.” The review further suggests that this direct genetic effect may be amplified by a social multiplier. Additional hypotheses for both the positive and negative Flynn effects are drawn from a survey of intelligence researchers (7), a subsample of whom claimed specific expertise on the Flynn effect. These researchers largely agreed with the metareview on the environmental factors driving the positive Flynn effect. The researchers were also asked about retrograde effects, with the question “In your opinion, if there is an end or retrograde of the Flynn-effect in industrial nations, what are the most plausible scientific theories to explain this development?” Here, the highest scores were assigned to dysgenic fertility, immigration, and reduced education standards.

The 6 cognitive skills are these ones.

When one compares the lifestyles of today with the lifestyles of the past, one can clearly see that today domestication is severely reducing the input values for these skills.

[QatzelOk]

Social media and the metaverse.

We are currently in denial about the major social and psychological harm that "staring at screens all day" has on humans.

This denial - this stupidity - has an economic benefit to "those who sell us things."