whereas a modern Wall Street executive that made a similar conceptual mistake would receive a substantial bonus and be a more attractive mate.
http://news.yahoo.com/humans-becoming-less-intelligent-173400651.html (http://news.yahoo.com/humans-becoming-less-intelligent-173400651.html)
Are Humans Becoming Less Intelligent?
By Tia Ghose, LiveScience Staff Writer | LiveScience.com – Mon, Nov 12, 2012
Humans may be gradually losing intelligence, according to a new study.
The study, published today (Nov. 12) in the journal Trends in Genetics, argues that humans lost the evolutionary pressure to be smart once we started living in dense agricultural settlements several thousand years ago.
"The development of our intellectual abilities and the optimization of thousands of intelligence genes probably occurred in relatively non-verbal, dispersed groups of peoples [living] before our ancestors emerged from Africa," said study author Gerald Crabtree, a researcher at Stanford University, in a statement.
Since then it's all been downhill, Crabtree contends.
The theory isn't without critics, with one scientist contacted by LiveScience suggesting that rather than losing our smarts, humans have just diversified them with various types of intelligence today.
Life or death situations
Early humans lived or died by their spatial abilities, such as quickly making a shelter or spearing a saber-toothed tiger. Nowadays, though almost everyone has the spatial ability to do ostensibly simple tasks like washing dishes or mowing the lawn, such tasks actually require a lot of brainpower, the researchers note.
And we can thank our ancestors and the highly tuned mechanism of natural selection for such abilities. Meanwhile, the ability to play chess or compose poetry likely evolved as collateral effects.
But after the spread of agriculture, when our ancestors began to live in dense farming communities, the intense need to keep those genes in peak condition gradually waned.
And its unlikely that the evolutionary advantage of intelligence is greater than it was during our hunter-gatherer past, the paper argues.
"A hunter-gatherer who did not correctly conceive a solution to providing food or shelter probably died, along with his/her progeny, whereas a modern Wall Street executive that made a similar conceptual mistake would receive a substantial bonus and be a more attractive mate. Clearly, extreme selection is a thing of the past," the researchers write in the journal article.
Intelligence genes
Anywhere between 2,000 and 5,000 genes determine human intelligence, and these genes are particularly susceptible to harmful changes, or mutations, the researchers write. Based on knowledge of the rate of mutations, the team concludes that the average person harbors two intelligence-stunting genetic changes that evolved over the last 3,000 years.
The hypothesis is counterintuitive at first. After all, across the world the average IQ has increased dramatically over the last 100 years, a phenomenon known as the Flynn Effect. But most of that jump probably resulted from better prenatal care, better nutrition and reduced exposure to brain-stunting chemicals such as lead, Crabtree argues.
But just because humans have more mutations in their intelligence genes doesn't mean we are becoming less brainy as a species, said psychologist Thomas Hills of the University of Warwick, who was not involved in the study. Instead, removing the pressure for everyone to be a superb hunter or gatherer may have allowed us to evolve a more diverse population with different types of smarts, he said.
"You don't get Stephen Hawking 200,000 years ago. He just doesn't exist," Hills told LiveScience. "But now we have people of his intellectual capacity doing things and making insights that we would never have achieved in our environment of evolutionary adaptation."
Sort of messes up the whole Darwin thing.
We're not stupider by nature than our ancestors. But as the quality of education declines, we are certainly acting that way.
You're mixing up breeding traits with obedience school.
All humans are born ignorant. Education is key.
Stupid people are breeding at a much higher rate than smart people. The net result is....?
..what anyone can see displayed in red and blue on any county electoral map.
Feeding them? Hell, we're arming them.
Ask Joe Biden and you'll find the answer.
That's more than stupidity, that's psychotic...We are giving them the rope with which to hang us...as a Russian whose name I can't remember, once prophesized.
Any professor who has been teaching for more than a generation can tell you that the intellectual capabilities of today's students is not even close to what they were a generation ago. Part of it is the fact that technology has severely diminished their capability to concentrate for any extended period of time. Part of it is the fact that the culture has changed for the worst in terms of how much discipline and achievement are admired and respected. Part of it may be the fact that we have artificially elevated the incompetent and mediocre, and that means less resources available to nurture the true geniuses among us.
In truth, we don't have to be particularly intelligent to get by in most jobs today. Machines do most of the heavy lifting for us.
My young kid great granddaughter said she'll teach me to use an i-pad.
That's more than stupidity, that's psychotic...We are giving them the rope with which to hang us...as a Russian whose name I can't remember, once prophesized.
Doesn't take a scientist to see that coming. This movie, a stupid movie, is more prophetic than I'd like it to be.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6b/Idiocracy_movie_poster.jpg)