Are We Getting Dumber?

Will our intelligence decline as technology continues to advance?

This past week I remember someone saying that as technology advances we all get dumber and dumber. Okay... let me think...

Certainly we have become more dependent on technology as it has become more prominent. Younger generations can barely stay off their cellphones for a few minutes. I don't know what I would do without my laptop - I use it for a lot of different things, including staying in touch with friends, connecting with professors, writing papers (and blogs!), editing pictures, browsing the internet, testing music, checking my email, etc. But does our dependence relate in any way to our intelligence?

We often use incorrect spellings to shorten words when we text, and it completely deteriorates our sense of grammar. We also rely on spell check to fix our mistakes, so we don't really learn the correct way to write. Calculators do our math for us! Why waste my time reading when I could just look up the summary on Sparknotes? Yeah, we depend a lot of technology, and we end up paying for it in our breadth of knowledge. I'm not learning things I otherwise would learn without technology, but I am learning things that people without technology wouldn't be able to learn. It's a give and take situation.

Human Evolution

Brandon asked the question in his blog: "Are humans the end of natural evolution?"

My answer:

We're constantly evolving! Homo Sapiens have existed for a long time. From Neanderthals to Ancient Egypt to The Dark Ages to the Renaissance to The Industrial Revolution to the Space Race to now we've seen a lot of change. Who's to say we can't continue? Humans are constantly looking for ways to improve upon the way things are. Right now we're putting most of our energy into technology.

There are a lot of concerns when we think of the advancement of technology. The main concern is artificial intelligence. What happens when machines can think like humans? Maybe that's the advancement that will continue evolution, but it's hard to know.

Another possibility is combining technology with the human brain. M.T. Anderson suggests what might happen if we were wired to the internet, and his illustration is a scary one, where language, intelligence, emotion, human interaction, etc. all seem to go down the drain.

My question is: Will our intelligence decline as technology continues to advance? Are we unfit in the realm of evolution?

Tone of Voice

I was thinking about innate versus societal human traits, and I'm wondering how we acquire certain societal traits. The one thing that instantly came to mind was why our tone of voice changes when we talk to different people. In general, I have four main tones of voice that I use on a regular basis: 1) A relaxed voice when I'm around people I'm comfortable with, 2) A guarded voice when I'm around people I'm intimidated by or trying to impress, 3) An "in love" voice when I'm talking to my boyfriend, and 4) An annoyed, disinterested voice when I'm with people I don't care about or am irritated by. So how did I obtain these voices?

When I'm talking to people I'm trying to impress, my voice gets rather low and my throat dries up. Is this an instinct, or am I reacting because of societal pressures? I think it's a combination. Since I am nervous, due to societal pressure, I react in a nervous fashion, which is my natural instinct. Not everyone reacts the same way when faced with someone who intimidates them. Maybe someone else's voice would be high and squeaky when talking to someone they fear.

So I can conclude that we form these voices from the way certain people and situations make us feel. In society, a professor is seen as a person who should be respected by his students, and therefore when talking to a professor, I feel the pressure to impress him, which makes me nervous and inevitably brings my voice into a lower register and dries out my throat. However, since I feel so emotionally close to my boyfriend, I sometimes talk to him in a sweeter voice because I see him as someone I can trust (which is a societal norm), and it makes my voice soften.

What does it mean to be fit?

Stevenson and Haberman say that "the basic point of Darwinian theory is that the biologically fittest individuals are those that survive longest and leave the most progeny" (207). So if you live a long life and you have lots of children, you are more fit than someone who dies early and doesn't have any children. When I say it that way, it makes me wonder if this is really what it means to be fit.

Let's take for example someone who dies in a terrible accident that wasn't their fault. They're driving at the speed limit, on their way to visit their grandmother, and a drunk driver crashes into them from the opposite direction at 60 mph. Was that person not physically fit? Maybe they were really sexually attractive and had the promise of reproducing many children. Just because they died in a freak accident shouldn't mean they weren't physically fit. Maybe Stevenson and Haberman just forgot to include this.

So now that we can rule out accidents as a determination of what makes someone fit (there's always an exception to the rule after all), what else might define someone as "fit" in the modern day? We're no longer animals, so we aren't simply concerned with reproduction and survival anymore. We also think about morals, personality, religion, intelligence, etc. when we're considering who we want to mate with. Different people are looking for different qualities. I might want to mate with someone who has a good sense of humor while someone else might be looking for someone who is rich and famous.

I don't think there is a good definition for "fit" anymore. We are too complicated to be able to define any characteristics that every person wants when considering a mate. Our level of fitness is completely dependent on each individual. One person might see me as perfectly fit while another might see me as completely unfit. Our subjectivity negates the possibility for one universal definition of "fit".

Why are we Condemned to Freedom?

Sartre says that we are condemned to freedom.

He gives freedom a very negative connotation. Having the ability to choose is a lot of pressure, which he seems to think is a bad thing. You are held responsible for every choice you make. However, if you make good choices, then that is a good thing. And if you learn from the bad choices you make, then you can make even better choices in the future.

This makes me think of my earlier idea that life is about learning. Having this radical freedom gives us the opportunity to learn from the mistakes we make. Without freedom, we wouldn't have the ability to choose what we do or don't do and there would be no control over what we learn. It's wonderful that we have the ability to choose because I find that I learn best through experience. If I mistakenly press the mute button instead of the power button, and realize that it wasn't the power button, then from that point on, I will remember which button is the power button and which is the mute button.

Sartre obviously didn't share my way of thinking at the time he said this because if freedom is such a bad thing, then he doesn't really think of learning as all that important.

No Right/Wrong Answers for Morality?

Sartre said at one point that there are no right or wrong answers when it comes to morality.

I don't even understand what this could mean. How can there be no right or wrong? How can killing an innocent person be morally equal to baking cookies for a sick friend? Is it all based on point of view?

For me, morality is a social concept. We have created a general idea of what is right and what is wrong. Is this really how it should be? Who knows? We just know that some things that people do seem negative while other things seem more positive. We have defined what those things are and we make laws accordingly. Taking it upon yourself to hurt an innocent person, whether it be by taking his wife, stealing his money, drugging him, etc. is wrong. I believe all violence is wrong, including verbal violence, and it should be entirely outlawed (and hopefully that will happen one day).

As for Sartre, I disagree that there are no right or wrong answers for morality - if someone thinks that shooting a person is okay, they are still wrong for doing it.

Sartre's Freedom

The early Sartre claimed that you're ultimately responsible for everything you do. Part of me wants to agree with him and part of me doesn't. Here's why.

An example against this point brought up during class was poverty. How can one choose to be poor? Well, my question is how can one become wealthy? You get an education, you apply for jobs, you rise up the occupational ladder. You can't pay for an education? You work whatever job you can get until you have enough money for an education. You can choose to make the best of the situation and work your way out of it.

However, you can't choose whether or not you are born into a life of poverty. At such a young age, you can't really choose to get out of poverty. This certainly proves that there were some missing ends to Sartre's claim.

He did change his theory as he got older, and I completely agree that freedom is confined by "'facticity,' the facts about oneself and one's situation that constrain the ways in which one can express one's freedom" (Stevenson 195), such as socioeconomic factors and our innate needs.

What is Freedom?

The question of what freedom really is was brought up in class recently. Is freedom the capability to do anything, or does it have more boundaries than we might think at first?

We can't be free to do anything we want because then I would be able to fly and the world would be in chaos. I mean, it would be awesome to fly, but that's not what freedom is. We're only capable of doing so much.

I think freedom is restricted (ironically) to our capabilities. I can do what I can do, but not beyond that. If I want to swim, then I can find a body of water and I can swim in it. If I want to wear a dress, I can find a dress and put it on. I have the freedom to do what I want within the boundaries of what I can do.

Freedom is good to a certain extent, but when people are doing whatever they want to do, that means there is no structure or authority that is keeping things in order. I think what we really need is controlled freedom - the ability to do what we want that is within moral reason. We are reasonable creatures, we should be able to identify between right and wrong, so we should stick to making the right choices and then we can stay in control. Freedom can be dangerous if misused, so staying within the boundaries of morality is very important.

Family

Marx has some really good ideas, but it was brought up during class that he wanted children to be raised not by their families but by people who are trained to raise children. The thought of it is actually kind of frightening, even though in some aspects it makes sense. If children are reared by professionals, then we can be confident that they will be well-disciplined and well-behaved, but imagine the pain involved in taking a child away from its mother.

Family is such an important aspect of society and Marx’s idea would completely destroy it. Individuality would be at a much greater risk as well because the children are all raised by the same people. With different parents, children learn different things in different ways, which creates different world views and opinions that vary from each child to the next. I think it’s very important to maintain the family unit, but in order to secure discipline and behavior, maybe future parents should be required to take classes in child-raising.

Communism = Bad???

Throughout my pre-college years, we never really learned about communism, and what we did learn was negative. It doesn’t make sense why teachers want to convey negativity when thinking of communism. It’s been engrained within me to think negatively when I even hear the word. What’s so bad about communism that teachers don’t even want us to know about it? Why does everyone pretend that Marx had such terrible ideas?

I think it’s because it has been attempted by other countries who failed at really fulfilling Marx’s intentions. He said it would eventually stem from capitalism, so that might be an indicator of why other countries didn’t do so well (among other reasons of course). But because China and Russia didn’t do it right, we see communism as such a bad thing when it really isn’t. Schools need to really teach students what the core values of communism are, because they really aren’t as bad as China and Russia (etc) make them seem.

How Might Economy Affect Society?

I don’t know how economy in general might affect society, but I can hypothesize as to how our capitalistic economy in America might affect Americans. Capitalism gives businesses a lot of freedoms. Facebook for one stores all of our information that we post and sells it to other businesses so that they can use it to advertise to us. Companies look at what’s really popular right now and uses it to appeal to potential customers. For example, the marketing director for The Voice knows that the Superbowl is one of the biggest events of the year and gets countless viewers, so they made sure to advertise throughout the entire event in order to spread the word that it was premiering the same night.

So what we end up getting access to is what businesses want us to see, or what they think we want to see. This can affect our behavior because especially at a young age you can be easily influenced by the media. If Lady Gaga is really popular during your childhood, you might be inclined to act like Lady Gaga. In the same spirit, if Gandhi is really popular during your childhood, you might be inclined to act like Gandhi. It’s very easy to be swayed by the economy, which is another reason why it may be beneficial to switch to communism.

Could We Benefit from Communism?

Understanding that communism is regime in which people can focus their jobs around what suits them so as to preserve a sense of individuality that we care so much about, certainly communism could benefit us. We would all be treated as equals, which is so important because we stray far away from that in our capitalist society. My career as a musician would be just as important as someone else’s career as an engineer. We would all get an education and have shorter work hours because everyone would be working an equal amount.

Imagine the kind of team spirit this could stir up. If we’re all working together to decrease hours, we would feel more like a group of people working for each other rather than individuals working for ourselves. If it was executed correctly, I could see communism as being very beneficial for our society. It wouldn’t take away our individuality, as is what is commonly thought when facing communism, but in fact it would preserve our ability to do what we want as well as giving us a better opportunity to do it. Nobody would be jobless and everybody would be working the same amount – it sounds good to me.

A Troubling Sermon

I went to church this morning (to ring handbells, it was a lot of fun) and what the pastor said during the sermon really bothered me, as it had much to do with instilling faith within the congregation. To me, it is proof that Christians tend not to understand that it is not their responsibility to "spread the good news" to others.

He was talking about how even though we didn't see Jesus come back to life that we should have faith that he did. But why? Why is it so important that we believe he rose from the dead? So that we have proof that there is an afterlife? And why is must we know that there is an afterlife? For our own selfish need for comfort? It's silly. I wish I could have asked him during his sermon why we should have faith in the resurrection.

I imagine he would've responded with something about having faith in God. By having faith in the resurrection, you show your faith in God. But in my opinion, we have probably misinterpreted what God wants. I don't think he wants us to worry about death, I think he wants us to focus on life. We don't have to have faith to learn.

What is God trying to teach us?

I don't think the Christian God is trying to teach one specific thing. Learning how to be faithful is what some people choose to learn, but I think he wants us to learn any lesson we can.

We've been learning ever since we've been able to - even while inside the womb. As an infant, we learn a huge amount in a short period of time. Then we grow up and start learning more intellectual lessons in many different areas. We take classes in math, science, history, language, and the arts to expand our knowledge. We get jobs and learn about spending, paying bills, and buying insurance. We raise families and learn how to rear our own children. Life is just a cycle of learning, we never stop gaining information. So shouldn't that have something to do with why we're here?

I can only imagine that if there is a God, he would have a reason for giving us the capacity to learn.

Why/how does religion get so out of hand?

Many religions, especially Christianity, promote loving thy neighbor and they have the best intentions, but they tend to get out of hand when people lose sight of those intentions.

Religion becomes a war when it involves itself with society or the government. If religion isn't personal, then it quickly turns into something dangerous. People impose their beliefs on others and learn to hate those who don't believe the same; things like marriage and abortion became major political issues; powerful religious figures fight over holy territory.

It all gets out of hand when religion is no longer personal. Everyone should be able to believe in whatever they want and not be judged for it. It's important not to impose one's own religion onto others because then it is no longer personal.

The Good Samaritan

I said in my answer to this weeks question that "Ten Theories of Human Nature mainly focuses on the concept of faith, saying that “Jesus famously summed up the Old Testament law in to injuctions: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all you strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself’” (Stevenson 122). To me, this isn’t what The Bible is about". I want to delve further into what I mean.

I believe that the Christian religion that I grew up with is about learning. The Bible is a tool we use to help us learn, but it is simply an interpretation of God's will and I believe it is a misinterpretation. Most Christians believe that God created us to serve him, as though he is selfish and needs us to make him feel better about himself (a very humanistic quality). But The Bible contains many stories that teach us important lessons, such as the story about the good samaritan which teaches us to help those in need, and it seems that these stories are often forgotten in religious discussion.

Even if our purpose isn't to learn, what is there to lose? We learn new things every day, so why not learn to take the good lessons proposed by The Bible and put them to use?