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Comment by stonethrowaway | Hacker News Reader

Something Awful: The Internet Makes You Stupid.

I think some things that were said about "training" for IQ tests in the past (which increased scores) are true , but in a different way than may be considered on the surface. I believe we WERE training, but in a different way. But I will get back to that. To me, an iq test is a simplified way to judge someone's intelligence in a narrow fashion. A bunch of questions, in a controlled environment, that you can practice for. Seems a bit simplified as a means of measuring intelligence. Especially when very little of our lives are spent in such an environment. With the world being full of so many variables it seems like it would be more beneficial to gauge how that intelligence responds not just to simple questions or problems but how it applies that knowledge in real world situations. I think that is why a high or low IQ score does not necessarily determine success. I said before that we were training in the past for IQ tests. The training we were doing wasn't anything we did in school. It was the way we grew up and lived our lives. Before technology "improved" our lives, we had much more interactive experiences with the world. We played investigators in a world that required more physical engagement & effort to answer your questions. At that time it wasn't as simple as just using Google, having answers at our finger tips. If you had questions & wanted answers, it was more of an undertaking. It took more effort. Before you even started, you understood that you would have to WORK to answer your questions. Research and information gathering was much more difficult and involved. You also often had to speak to many different people along the way because information and opinions werent always easy to come by. I can also say from personal eperience that the satisfaction I had in the past having to do all the work to get my answers was much more satisfying than simply pressing search. I think this applied not only to learning & information gathering, but to life in general. In today's world, while I wouldn't say life is easier (it has its own challenges), i would say a lot has been simplified. Most of our daily struggles have changed. Technology has changed us from being doers into being more thinkers. More specialized. Specialized because the level of our technology forces us to specialize. Even if I have a high IQ, the world isn't as open & accessible as it used to be. It takes many years of learning & often a degree from a very specialized field to be successful. The things in the past that fueled our IQ growth, like all of our wordly interactions and learning due to the lack of said technology, have been in many ways removed. I keep coming back to what I call worldly interactions. In our lives today much of our lives take place in a very limited environment. There is not the unknown factor of daily physical interaction out in a big world with endless experiences & possibilities. You are sitting there scrolling on a tablet or pc from the comfort & safety of your home or office. Being more of a digital society we have lost a lot of our interaction with the world. I believe it is this simplification, this lost interaction, that has lead to lower IQ scores. We learn through our myriad of experiences and interactions. Having a broad volume of past experiences to learn from is how we grow our intelligence and become wise. Not simply by having a high level of gathered information & facts. Intelligence is applied. The level of our current technology has unintentionally lead to this. By requiring us to specialize in today's world, the interactions gained through generalization that were facilitated by the lack of technology, have been lost. To help get my point across, i will use today's medical field as an example. A few years ago I started having seizures. I saw many different doctors specializing in their own fields. They all seemed very knowledgeable in their respective fields. But when it came to applying their knowledge across different fields, they were very limited. I was often told when asking questions "that is out of my area of expertise", even if they were related. I would have to be referred to another specialist. Whose knowledge was great but was again, narrowed only to their specialization. This leads to quite an issue. Todays specialization has lead to a doctors inability to be diagnosticians. By being unable to connect dots across different fields due to lack of general knowledge, it has lead to delayed and missed diagnosis. Not every case fits the books, some require thinking outside the lines and connecting dots that dont ordinarily connect. Specialization, by eliminating exposure to other fields has removed the idea of being a diagnostician due to their narrow scope. Its awfully hard to consider other conclusions if you don't have the breadth of knowledge to intelligently consider them. So....doctors seem more educated & know more about their specialty, but their usefulness has become very very narrow & something has been lost along the way. This connects back to worldliness and experiences. The same way doctors have been limited by specialization is the same way technology is limiting us as a whole. Many of the challenges that fueled our IQ growth have been removed. Since we have fewer real life experiences and & have less opportunity to apply that knowledge broadly due to specialization....we can see the results.

I guess in short what I'm saying is that we are using our brains less & as a byproduct we are just not as smart. We aren't challenged as much with our easy access to...well everything. Heck we don't even have to come to our own conclusions anymore. With the internet & social media its much easier to simply find someone who has already done the research & work already & will eagerly tell your their thoughts. I think one of the intangible things that has been lost is the challenge. It is different learning on your own. Doing research, gathering facts & information. Coming to your own conclusions. I dont just mean on an intellectual level either. The processes & interactions have value in of themselves. Experience & knowledge gained on the side while learning other things can't be measured. It is this learning through personal experience & the interactions during this process that fuels our intelligence. Our simplified lives have limited our exposure to this "extra" knowledge we miss due to fewer experiences & easy REMOTE access to everything.

Agree-- The satisfaction from uncovering something by effortful research helps the subject stay in our memory, and build our IQ. I agree to a poin that "Technology has changed us from being doers into being more thinkers." However, there is a darker side too, which you also share, - when we get all of the answers do we think? You have a point about the lost contact with others, in the past, people regularly met for intellectual discussions with colleagues, think of CS Lewis and Tolkein, Churchills "Other Club" with Wells and many more, Ramon Cajal and his weekly meeting. Yes, specialization is limiting our generalizability's for sure.

Hmmm. "When we get all the answers do we think?" Good question. If we consider what we have said, then has thinking on your own become such an inferred CHORE? I dont mean independent thought, I mean using your own intelligence as a means to learn & understand the world. But somehow having all the answers has thinking as the second best option when compared to finding others' ready made solutions.

...and that is a terrible thought for me.. 'thinking as the second best option." I guess we need to think through carefully many processes, and then allow the 'tools' to do the jobs for us... but then are we simply adopting these tools and losing the ability to think? As a simple example - Smartphones have many advantages, but we used to have to hold a host of telephone numbers in our heads and then think as we dialled the numbers (or read them from our little address book), GPS has helped in so many ways, but also hinedred our ability to think of routes, as I said simple examples. Some tools are dosed out to us without our thought, we adapt rapidly. As you said about search - library research at uni's is dwindling dramatically. We do give up a lot for the convenience of tools - and it will continue as we 'automate' more. So, we need to use the time we gain wisely and become discoverers... seeking new knowledge, rather than letting, mindless screen time become our daily norm!

I agree, especially with the term "discoverers". I think a key part of what steers us towards the easy answer, and leads us away from thinking on our own is the fact that most questions do in fact have answers readily accessible online. The mystery is gone. The zest for learning & applying knowledge loses a little something when you believe there not much else to be gained on your own. So I agree, breaking new boundaries and making new discoveries is a vital part to maintaining high intelligence levels. But there we have a catch 22. Technology has progressed to the point that in order to consider new boundaries the knowledge required is enormous. This prerequisite severely limits access to these boundaries on a large scale. Only a small percent will have the means (financial, intellectual, ect) to acquire the knowledge necessary. This of course would lead to a larger perceived IQ divide among the masses.

Just to see what kind of responses I can get....

If i were a crazy conspiracy theorist...what better way to control a population than to propagate a culture where thinking becomes the second best option? And our technological advances have raised the bar intellectually so high that the perceived divide is real as shown through declining IQ scores. And that divide is a means of societal separation, cultivated to allow aristocracy. But I'm just talking crazy.

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