Is humanity getting dumber and dumber? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15206548
2022

Vineyard of Saker wrote:The Menticide Manual – Stupidiocracy

In 2016, a video game influencer and Youtube superstar going by the handle of Markiplier uploaded a 5-minutes long video of him gazing at a banana. That video immediately got 3 million views. The baby face with fiery-orange top hair wanted to prove his theory that because he is a celebrity, people will watch his content no matter how moronic. And they did.

And this isn’t just a fringe movement. Humanity is actually getting dumber. The technical term from evolutionary biology is dysgenics or selection of the unfit. To put it bluntly, our liberal society allows its not-so-bright members to fornicate like rabbits. Thanks to human rights and a generous welfare state, those idiots have no natural enemies like merit or competition, and fear no consequences for bad life decisions. And when it is time to mate, hell yes, they find each other and multiply.

And that is just the beginning of our downfall. We actually do have to entertain these idiots, and the standard by which we must do that has dramatically declined too. ...


The above is part of a multiple essay collection that I have read in its entirety. I especially enjoyed the "Deceit" essay.

2006



Idiocracy is a movie that was released in 2006 that depicts a Western world that has been rendered dumb by commerce.

1978



American new-wave band Devo releases a song called Jocko Homo which asks "Are we not men?" and then answers "we are Devo."

Devo stands for "de-evolution" or "devolution," and the band's theory was... this is where homo not-so-sapien is going. According to this song, rather than becoming stronger and wiser through evolutionary forces, humankind is doing exactly the opposite - becoming dumber and less healthy.

By the late 70s, the side effects of suburbia, TV viewing, and the isolation of car-based living was becoming obvious to everyone. Doing LSD and walking around golf courses at night trying to avoid security guards... was an extremely stupid way to live.
#15206564
Nonsense.
Humanity is not getting dumber.
Just because you find some aspects of our culture and/or behavior "dumb" from your singular, unique, perspective; does not mean that humanity is on some sort of intellectual decadence. Every year we come up with new ingenious ways to make our lives better and to increase our knowledge.
#15206577
AKSHULLY, yes humanity is getting dumber, or a better term would be 'domesticated'.

Similarly to what we witnesses with dog brains relative to wolves, our Cerebellum is slightly increasing in size and has been doing so for the past 2,000 years, while the cerebral cortex has shrunk by up to 15% in the past few millenia. This points to a loss of memory/planning/higher function and increase in the propensity to process emotions and instinctual habits. We are becoming institutionalized and dependent on our own technology in the same way wolves became more docile, less tricksy and less independent due to their dependence on us when we bred them generationally into dogs. Note that dogs have up to 20% fewer neurons than wolves, similarly humans in 21st century may have up to 10% fewer neurons overall than ancient Greeks.

When you defer many higher functions to external tools (such as high technology) then you lose them in your brain over time. I don't think humans will be capable of basic arithmetic in 5,000 years. With the rise of digitization and brain-computer interfaces, our neocortex may indeed shrivel to nothing. IT will be replaced entirely by embedded devices. We will just have a beefy cerebellum due to our growing addiction to dopamine, entertainment etc.
#15206603
QatzelOk wrote:Idiocracy is a movie that was released in 2006 that depicts a Western world that has been rendered dumb by commerce.


Have you ever seen the movie "Fight Club"? I think you might like it. It's about rejecting modern consumerism, which has replaced the meaning in our lives, and Brad Pitt's character plots to destroy the banking/corporate system and cause widespread chaos to destroy modern society so we can go back to a society of hunting elk for survival, and how men's violent instincts have been suppressed in our society, hence starting a Fight Club.

American new-wave band Devo releases a song called Jocko Homo which asks "Are we not men?" and then answers "we are Devo."

Devo stands for "de-evolution" or "devolution," and the band's theory was... this is where homo not-so-sapien is going. According to this song, rather than becoming stronger and wiser through evolutionary forces, humankind is doing exactly the opposite - becoming dumber and less healthy.

By the late 70s, the side effects of suburbia, TV viewing, and the isolation of car-based living was becoming obvious to everyone. Doing LSD and walking around golf courses at night trying to avoid security guards... was an extremely stupid way to live.

I think people are more educated today, but people have less common sense and wisdom. I also think people's values have devolved terribly. People's lives used to revolve around their families, and they'd go to church every Sunday. Now instead of family and God people are more interested in self-gratification.

Religion is pretty stupid. But was it needed to control the population? Is "no sex before marriage" a worse value than everyone screwing everyone? Are hijabs and loose dark clothing worse than our daughters flaunting their cleavage and asses? Are prudish values worse than tons of violence, profanity, and sex on TV? Was experimenting with drugs as good an idea as it seemed in the 60's? If greed, envy, lust, etc were hard to control before, what's going to control it now? Western society has dealt with nihilism by creating a new culture of "if it feels good, do it".

The 1960's began a cultural revolution towards minority civil rights, anti-war, sexual liberalization, experimenting with drugs, freedoms to divorce, freedom for women to enter the workplace etc. Turns out with the first 2 we were on the right track while the others we have totally mismanaged and they have helped erode society whether we admit it or not.
#15206605
late wrote:Look at some of the fads of the 1960s, like smoking banana peels...

Kids will do anything.

Ok so why are kids so tarded? I didn't do any dumb shit as a teen and I thought I was a prude. I remember some guy in high school shoving chewing tobacco in my face and telling me to try. It looked gross so I refused. Why was tardo chewing that tobacco like a moron? Why were kids smoking? Why do kids vape? Like are they tardo?
#15206617
Unthinking Majority wrote:Ok so why are kids so tarded? I didn't do any dumb shit as a teen and I thought I was a prude. I remember some guy in high school shoving chewing tobacco in my face and telling me to try. It looked gross so I refused. Why was tardo chewing that tobacco like a moron? Why were kids smoking? Why do kids vape? Like are they tardo?

Nope, just selfish and naive. Selfish enough to want to do whatever feels good, and naive enough to be oblivious to the possible personal and social consequences.
#15206620
Aside from @QatzelOk, humans are probably smarter than at any time in our history.

We've far more knowledge to accumulate than what we once had to know.

How We Know That Humans Are Getting Smarter [Excerpt]
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... n-excerpt/
#15206622
Godstud wrote:Aside from @QatzelOk, humans are probably smarter than at any time in our history.

We've far more knowledge to accumulate than what we once had to know.

How We Know That Humans Are Getting Smarter [Excerpt]
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... n-excerpt/

How come every generation of young people seem to act dumber and dumber? How come parents and teachers keep acting dumber and dumber? Why are our politicians getting worse and worse, and less mature?
#15206626
@Unthinking Majority Perception is a funny thing. I am positive that our parents thought that we were the dumbest generation. :D
#15206653
Unthinking Majority wrote:
So in other words, they're dumb.



I smoked cigs when I was a teen. Did a lot of dumb shit.

That's the way kids are. Sometimes I like to say the nervous system doesn't fully connect to the brain, until you're 30.
#15206659
Yes quite obviously so.

If you compare like for like, upper class from 2020 to upper class from 1920 or 1820 or 330BCE you can clearly see a severe reduction in knowledge, wisdom and intelligence. You can repeat that for any other class and still come to the same conclusion. At best the only argument modernists can make is in the field of social mobility but that does not equate to intelligence.

Our overreliance on third-party information has made us far stupider than people of previous generations who actually had to deduce things on their own and that does not just apply to politics but to anything.

As previously stated, knowledge or intelligence needs to be measured according to situational awareness.

Acute awareness.
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