>"renaissance man" now is a dilettante. In Jefferson's day it meant having both broad and deep knowledge.
Jefferson's estimated net worth is $212 million. George Washington's is $525 million. It seems like you are comparing the values of a notably intelligent and published subset of the upper 1% aristocratic crust subset of society to the general population today. Hardly a fair comparison.
You are railing against people for being dumb and yet have really bad proposals as to the cause. "It's the schools fault, let's do away with schools" "It's the kids' VALUES"
You fail to consider that:
1. Intelligence is a distribution. There have always been dumb people and there always will be.
2. Economics. Blacks used to score significantly lower on IQ tests than whites in America. But guess what, the gap was directly proportional to the gap in poverty rate (http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-IQgapgenetic.htm). As the economic status of blacks in America improved the gap has decreased.
If you want to compare the intelligence of groups of people large enough to account for outliers, the difference is always largely socioeconomic. Thus I will argue the OPPOSITE of your hypothesis is true:
The wonders of technology and readily accessible information are the most important factor driving down global poverty, resulting in a higher percentage of the global population fulfilling a "Jeffersonian" ideal of the renaissance man with deep knowledge, whereas it was the time and opportunities and books to achieve that level of study was before confined to the aristocracy.
1. Intelligence is a distribution -- I don't disagree, but I also believe 99% of the population never realizes their potential, and in a lot of cases the educational system is the cause.
2. Yes, technology is driving down global poverty, but in the already privileged world I don't think this holds true. Where people want to learn they will find ways to do so. Where they are apathetic, they will find ways to remain ignorant.
Jefferson's estimated net worth is $212 million. George Washington's is $525 million. It seems like you are comparing the values of a notably intelligent and published subset of the upper 1% aristocratic crust subset of society to the general population today. Hardly a fair comparison.
You are railing against people for being dumb and yet have really bad proposals as to the cause. "It's the schools fault, let's do away with schools" "It's the kids' VALUES"
You fail to consider that:
1. Intelligence is a distribution. There have always been dumb people and there always will be.
2. Economics. Blacks used to score significantly lower on IQ tests than whites in America. But guess what, the gap was directly proportional to the gap in poverty rate (http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-IQgapgenetic.htm). As the economic status of blacks in America improved the gap has decreased.
If you want to compare the intelligence of groups of people large enough to account for outliers, the difference is always largely socioeconomic. Thus I will argue the OPPOSITE of your hypothesis is true:
The wonders of technology and readily accessible information are the most important factor driving down global poverty, resulting in a higher percentage of the global population fulfilling a "Jeffersonian" ideal of the renaissance man with deep knowledge, whereas it was the time and opportunities and books to achieve that level of study was before confined to the aristocracy.