Are you really as smart as you say you are?

[quiXote]

i've been thinking the past little while, and inspired by the big wall o' technology topic... i've reached to a thought.
Are we really that much smarter then people in the centuries before us?
I find the public en mass fo today to be a stupid animal, incapable of fending for itself.
I feel that we've become lazy in are technological glory. We let the machines and computers think and work for us. While I've no argument to machines working for us, i am against them thinking for us.
Windows for instance, "user friendly" angers me. I hate it.
I choose linux, because i can choose exactlywhat i want my computer to do without it having to guess for me, and i can see exactly what it is doing, and if it is doing something it is not supposed to be.
Here is a slightly less techie example.
Eyesight...Eye sight of the masses in the "civilized" world is worse today then it ever has been. We focus on things 3-5 feet away from us, if not a computer screen a foot and a half a way all day long. We are in a constantly lit world, almost none of us have seen "true night" let alone a true night sky.
With these gifts of technology, having everything illuminated and within arms reach... we loose a few things,
The ability to see in the dark - night vision is lost on most people today, or more so, the abillity to adjust between dark and bright lights is significantly hindered.
Do you wear corrective lenses? With little need to see anything more then 3 meters away from us with any clarity, we are losing the ability to see great distances. The human eye is capable of what, 8-15 miles of unobstructed vision? (not reading an E chart at that distance, but at least seeing that far on a straight plane with no loss in visibility.)
We no longer posses the ability to identify objects at any greater distance then maybe a just few hundred meters.

Think of y2k, the threat of all the things we relied on so much being rendered useless. What a mad panicky animal we turned into. We rely to much on technology to think and work for us. ATM's for instance... imagine two weeks without using an ATM, bank card or a credit card? There are so many things we take for granted, and so many abilities that we once had that are now lost and forgotten, their departure took for granted as well.

Imagine if you will, a killer Y-July 19, MMV bug- what if techonology gave up on, not just computers or electronics... flashlights, a scope on your rifle, your refridgerator, plumbing, cars... everything.
could you survive?

would you know where to begin if taken and left in the mountains, the desert, or plains with no civilization in sight, yelling distance, or walking distance for that matter - or better yet, taken to the year 1647, with nothing but the clothes on you back, no "modern techonlogy"
could you survive?
what if your family was there, could they survive too? could you provide and fend for them?

X

[quiXote]

*lingering though*

Granted you may Say a man from 1647 would not be able to nuke a pizza in your microwave...

but could you kill your food, clean it, preserve what you couldn't eat right that minute, and cook the rest over a flame? (hunting rifles do not count you! ;o)

X

[quiXote]

*malingering thought*
this was inspired when i saw on TV a commercial for instructional DVD's teaching children how to speak, at first i thought it was for english as a second language - nope!
it is just for parents either to lazy or incapable of teaching children to speak on there own.
(the real basics of speech, i am not talking C-A-T CAT sesame street either)

X

[Pancra85]

well my friend...we are evolving.
IMHO, I think we are more intelligent that people from centuries ago. What you say about vision and knowledge of nature is right, but that doesn't make us less inteligents.
In the year 1000 there were a little portion of humanity that knew it was 1000, we now understand a lot of things that are happening around us, in those times, the explanation of those things (Example: Fire, thunder) were god or gods will.

Advantages and disadvantages of evolution, it's like a fish that millons of years before could swim and now it doesn't, but now it can walk on earth, we adapt to our environment.
Please post what do you think about this.

[DarkVagabondX]

I don't believe we are less intelligent, less keen maybe...but we still have the same brainpower we had 6000 years ago.

We just know more why than we do how.

While a lot of us are reliant on technology, there are still those that make the technology happen.

Back in the good old days of 40< year lifespans and witch hunts everyone needed to know the same things to live. Now we can afford to cram a single subject into a person so he can act more like a tool than an organism. Half of us may not be able to survive in the middle of a desert with a stick and a loincloth, but how many ancint people knew how to stick together a few deadly materials that just so happened to be able to remove a small town from the map just by firing them at eachother at high speeds. (evil laugh)

[SignalRed]

Loss of physical abilities hardly justifies calling us less smart. Back in the day we didn't write anything down. Learn from the past, to avoid in the future. All of the tools needed to survive in the wild were formed because you had to survive on your own, or with a small group. Now we have large societies able to support themselves and allow for advanced knowledge. Unless information is lost, we will keep getting smarter. I learn something new everyday.

Side Note: Children usually learn how to talk naturally just by listening to their parents. DVDs that teach children to speak may be aimed towards children with mental handicaps, or simply teach them how to read. Again, teaching a child with a handicap can be difficult and time consuming. If the resource is available, why not use it. I would like to input information into a system that would teach my child while they were asleep.

[Dark Sider]

I think we're maybe as smart today as we were thousands of years ago. We just have more accumulated knowledge. But you know we only use 10% of our brains. Maybe ancient people used more. or less. i wouldn't know.

[The Nameless One]

Didn't our brainpower increase because we used it? I think we're pretty much the same until we change our species' name...

[Dark Sider]

do you mean ancient people didn't use brain power? as for the species name, depends whether or not you believe in evolution.

[The Nameless One]

I meant that the more complex instruments they used, the more their brainpower increased.

[Shaper]

I don't think we're any more or less smart, our knowledge is just applied differently and rests in different areas.
Take for example astronomy, we used to the the sun revolved around us, but that wasn't because we were stupid, its because of how things looked to our perspective, and when we discovered we were wrong, we changed our views.

[Sureal]

[Dark Sider]

oh i see. thx for clearing that

[Pancra85]

Yeah, maybe you are right Sureal. But are you shure we aren't more intelligents than people from centuries ago?.
I think we, as a specie, are much intelligent that before, couse we evolved our mind by using it more.

[Sureal]

*shrugs*

I was just making an asumption. It's certiainly possible that we're more intelligent.

It's a shame we can't go back in time and give them IQ tests...