

Are humans getting cleverer? - alexsnurnikov
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31556802?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits

======
kazinator
> _Luria put the following problem to the head man of one tribe in Siberia:
> Where there 's always snow, the bears are white; there's always snow at the
> North Pole - what colour are the bears there? The head man replied that he
> had never seen bears that were any colour other than brown, but if a wise or
> truthful man came from the North Pole and told him that bears there were
> white, he might believe him. The scientific methods of hypothesising,
> classifying and making logical deductions were alien to him. _

What? That head man of the Siberian tribe gave a darned excellent answer
there.

There is nothing scientific about taking the premises for granted that bears
are always white wherever there is always snow, and that there is always snow
at the North Pole. Unless you empirically investigate these things for
yourself, you take them on authority. Deduction isn't scientific; it's just a
way of rearranging logical statements to see their truth value in a different
representation.

From the premises it can be deduced "bears are white at the North Pole", but
that doesn't make the premises true.

The Siberian simply didn't recognize the academic context of being asked a
question about logical deduction in order to demonstrate that he understands
that _form_ ; he looked at it in a broad, real-world context relevant to
himself and his position in that world.

~~~
dropit_sphere
It's also worth noting that this guy is working off of a _built-in reputation
system_ , while the question is just looking for a syllogism recognizer. The
questioner can go play with Coq if that's what they're looking for.

~~~
kazinator
... and real science also works off a reputation system.

If everyone did nothing but check everyone else's results, there would be no
progress. While we don't trust first-hand original research, we do place trust
in third party validations of research.

~~~
ethanbond
By "real science" you do indeed mean the modern scientific method. There's
nothing inherently provably correct about how we currently do science, we just
know it tends to be a lot more effective than whatever the hell it was we did
prior to inventing it.

------
lkbm
Just reducing malnutrition has a huge effect, as does cutting exposure to
lead.

And the ending idea of there being more geniuses, just that they're
unrecognized--are they? We've been accumulating knowledge for a long time.
Sure, in the 1500s there were people who were top of the class in physics,
chemistry, and biology. I'm sure many, many people here know (or could readily
learn) those as well as the great polymaths, and come up with novel new-to-
the-1500s-models ideas. But physics, for one, has gone so far beyond what we
understood back then.

You're impressed by people inventing calculus? Yeah, it's pretty impressive.
It's also something a fairly intelligent person these days can at least
_understand_ as a young teen. Do you have any idea what we've developed to
model modern theoretical physics?

~~~
kazinator
I studied calculus on my own in high school because there was no course in it.
After learning about integration for a few days, I reinvented the idea of
repeatedly doing a definite integral over several different variables of a
multivariate function, and within minutes confirmed the formula for the volume
of a sphere from its radius. Sometimes people just need a hint in the right
direction.

~~~
ethanbond
Well calculus in particular (in my opinion, at least) actually makes a TON of
intuitive sense. The calculations are obviously impossible for someone who
hasn't been introduced to algebra, but the intuition is just as simple – at
least, as you said – when given a push in the right direction.

------
3pt14159
The book "Coming Apart" comes to mind. It doesn't need to just be that we are
all getting more clever. Our distribution could be increasing in part due to
the effect of sending every small town genius to Harvard. This distribution
has a hard cut off at the bottom end (can't get laid without a car or a job)
but it doesn't have a hard one at the top end, so the effect is a more and
more diverse humanity.

Another possible explanation is immigration, which selects for people that can
do paperwork really well; at least in America.

------
jader201
Original discussion from last week:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9131923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9131923)

------
svalorzen
> But if the tests were getting harder, and the average score was steady at
> 100, people must have been getting better at them. It would seem they were
> getting more intelligent.

But the average score of IQ is 100 _by definition_. It doesn't matter whether
the test is hard or easy, since the score system is determined by the average
performance of people on the test. So even if a test was nearly impossible and
nobody got more than 2-3 questions right, the average result would still be
100, because the points would be computed accordingly.

------
sebgr
duplicate of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9131923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9131923)

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dlu
Not with that title we aren't

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someotherdb
How would we know when we have reached the point in our intellectual evolution
to be able to judge where actually are on the scale?

