In addition, it can be said that some fans of brain biohacking are very brave in order to use all sorts of nootropic drugs to further activate their thought processes. Medicine also does not stand still; all the drugs that are being developed to improve people's IQ naturally turn society into a devoured information source. Dave Asprey, author of the book "Brain Biohacking," talks about this very interesting topic.
Improving basic health, nutrition and fitness is also a good method to reduce fatigue and brain fog. And better the thought process.
I think that the level of access to education is growing on the planet, and the level of critical thinking, on the contrary, is falling. People in general are becoming more infantile, more suggestible.
There are clips of youtube where people on the street are polled and unable to find australia on a map.
When we think of the past. We think only of the greats. Einstein, Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci. We estimate the intelligence of everyone who lived in those eras by their best, rather than their worst case scenario.
It is possible that the uneducated and uninformed of today. Are heads and shoulders smarter and more knowledgeable in contrast to their peers of past eras.
In the same way that women of today are probably hotter and healthier than women of centuries past. Simply due to improved health, sanitation and hygiene. Those health and cosmetic benefits might trickle down to higher intelligence and capability to think critically and solve problems as well.
People are being bombarded by advertisements and algorithmic content, few questions that would arise is does it really benefit the brain as a whole? And how many percentages does people are really comprehending the near real-time content that they view with critical thinking/thought?
Consumers being bombarded by commercials and ads triggered an arms race of suggestive content and defensive skepticism.
We're constantly forced into a position where our self interests align with suspension of blind belief in suggestive proposals and claims.
Con artists often target the elderly. A generation who didn't grow up being bombarded by commercials and ads. Who generally believe everything as a result.
In that age gap we might see people becoming smarter and more skeptical as a result of having been born and raised in an environment where they couldn't believe every commercial and ad to maintain their own health and wellness.
People becoming smarter ? We getting cyborgs and at the same time using machines everywhere, what you think is gonna happen ? There are loads of things happening as well in countries like Japan where people are getting their food delivered by the robots as well, I do think that this is just going to increase and get better over time as well. I think when we talk about people being intellectual beings, they will ofcourse get better over time, after homo erectus we got loads of new species, even lost the one with more cranial capacity. People will ofcourse become smarter to integrate themselves with the growing world there is also a epic research telling us how the brain have decreased in volume :
He rattles off some dismaying numbers: Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimeters to 1,350 cc, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball. The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion.
It's definitely not the same as cranial capacity, intelligence is not like the movie where you take the pill and use 100% of your brain, it doesn't work like that, we use various sections every once in a while, this I do think when we are going to be processing data it would depend on your : environment+ genetics 🧬 but ofcourse the survival of the fittest is going to pertain.
A segment of the brain is devoted towards motor cortex -- control of muscles. It is possible the motor cortex portion of the brain is shrinking as people become less physically active and athletic in their daily lives. But this does not mean that people are becoming less intelligent imo.
The idea that people use only 15% to 25% of their brains is a quote out of context. Originally a researcher was famous for saying most people will only develop 15% to 25% of the full potential their brain is capable of. Somehow it was misquoted as people using only 15% to 25% of their brain, with the rest being unused.
I think most believe they're better off not knowing things and not learning or improving themselves. That's where the greatest resistance to progress comes from.
A counter argument could be that, the modern world involves use of computers and devices, many of which does most of the critical thinking for us, making people need to do less and hence process less amounts of information independently.
Simple tasks like typing is now heavily promoted by text predictors, which only requires the individual to enter the first 2 or 3 letters they associate to that word and it would take it from there, this has been linked to reduced ability to recognize spellings and word structure in some.
The era of search engines also means people retain less and consult Google at the slightest inquiry, as opposed to before, when learning was more practical.
This improved technology is of course a positive as it makes learning significantly easier and automated but the ease of it all could make the newer generation lazier overtime.
I would be interested to know how often people of past eras read.
If the average person who lived 200 years ago, read 50 words per day.
And the average person today reads 5,000 words per day on social media.
Could it be considered an upgrade?
The common claim is our pace of life having increased dramatically. If that claim holds true, it correlates with greater exposure to data and information. The content could be less relevant and fact based due to environmental differences. There are probably forces working for and against human intelligence in the current era. Just as in every era.
If nothing else, can we say that ancient people not having access to basic books and reading materials. With only an oral story telling tradition to rely upon for content. Would definitely be exposed to far less data in contrast to the modern world where we have developing stories, news and information being constantly directed at us from a massive number of sources.
