Study suggests humans are slowly but surely losing intellectual and emotional abilities

The Borg cometh.

I don't think the situation is so stark. First intellect is more efficient application of learning than an innate quality. Many geniuses have ordinary offspring. Second humans undoubtedly learn the same subjects in different ways. They bring a ecosystem of genes into the process and a few mutations aren't usually devastating. People all over the world can learn and they don't learn the same way. Moreover the brain grows dynamically in response to tasks. I would argue that this is a case of nurture over nature.

This is one path from "elections have consequences" to "elections ARE consequences."

So the singularity will be a good thing and our best chance to evolve....

Have been watching this happen for the last 40 years or so, its quite troubling how many middle class functionaries such as admins, clerks, managers have trouble with basic logic !

And I'll add, especially so when there is a hint of sarcasm and suggestion they are not able to understand, this makes them firm up their opposition to thinking and shows quite substantively their inability to become detached, hence touching upon the emotional aspect as per this article.

Its as if people are getting more likely to develop a type of oppositional defiance disorder such as generally described in the link below but, instead a variance of this regardless of their age.

http://en.wikiped...disorder

@kochevik
Is learning innate? Provided from nature?
Is learning not a worthy subject of research?

Neurophysiology is at the infant stage while eugenicists have claimed knowledge of "good" and "bad" genes for over a century. So no it is children running amok with matches in a oil refinery. A PhD is no safeguard against disastrous claims and consequences. As MM linked above the very process of learning and rebelling and critical thinking (ODD) is considered a mental disease by US psychiatrists, as was the formerly case in the CCCP.

One fact is that humans had the biggest brains 10,000 to 30,000 years ago and have been shrinking mentally and physically every since.

Met accountant at a fish & chip shop, she asked why I was only buying sweet potatoes. Answered I am prepared to risk a little http://en.wikiped...rylamide
as the sweet potatoes are worth it.

Further discussion had me explain I'm a food scientist & take many combinatorial mineral supplements, Eg. Zinc & Copper which improve mental function but the dose needs to be higher than generally eaten http://en.wikiped...n_health
& for me thats ~ 7 milli gms/day.

She quickly complained & earnestly warned "NO, No, copper will make you go mad!" she was really worried but, I did manage to continue discussion to enquire how she came to that view & what sort of careers her family had pursued.

She came from a family of accountants, traditional, easiest with family but, she was the only girl who would be working, all others housewives.

I wonder if, for her family, madness meant ability for critical thinking, dialectic, rational discussion and doing things differently :-)

If you believe in natural selection and you have a society that doesn't worship the extremely intelligent, what do you think the result is? Worse, our society teaches regular people to treat the intelligent with disdain at best. We aren't naturally selecting for the most intelligent of us.

The claim that society does not select for intelligence and emotional regulation, and especially that it has not done so for at least 3,000 years, is silly on its face.

The belief that the results of genetic drift would be visible within your lifetime is also silly, if less obviously so. We don't reproduce fast enough for that.

And Flynn Effect makes a mockery of all claims that we're getting less intelligent.

Worthless paper, published as a favor to an otherwise very intelligent guy with an unsubstantiated pet theory. Just another Linus Pauling.

Just another Linus Pauling? That would make the author a Nobel Laureate!
"The subjects of the papers he published reflect his great scientific versatility: about 350 publications in the fields of experimental determination of the structure of crystals by the diffraction of X-rays and the interpretation of these structures in terms of the radii and other properties of atoms; the application of quantum mechanics to physical and chemical problems, including dielectric constants, X-ray doublets, momentum distribution of electrons in atoms, rotational motion of molecules in crystals, Van der Waals forces, etc.; the structure of metals and intermetallic compounds, the theory of ferromagnetism; the nature of the chemical bond, including the resonance phenomenon in chemistry; the experimental determination of the structure of gas molecules by the diffraction of electrons; the structure of proteins..."
You, Surly, have just single-handedly proven Dr. Crabtree's hypothesis corrrect.

Yea, our intelligence for creating weapons I think is a greater danger.

On a light note, Idiocracy is hilarious.

The logic of the last paragraph of the article is questionable. How on earth we are going to find (smarter) solutions to the problem, when we are getting stupider and stupider decade by decade?

Entropy is not a condition of human creativity, which is the only meaningful usage of the word "intelligence,"quite the opposite. The human mind makes us absolutely distinct from all other known living species in that it alone is capable of overcoming otherwise physically catastrophic conditions via the development of ever increasing energy dense forms of technologies. Thus, for instance, we alone are capable of controlling fire for our survival as a species. Today, we are on the verge of controlled thermonuclear fusion and foresee-ably matter-anti matter reactions. Anti-entropy!

Thanks for the heads-up Mike Massen.
"The Histories" by Herodotus is enough evidence for me that we have become compromised.
What with phyto endocrines and endocrine disruptors is anyone amazed at the stupidity we read in these comments?
Never mind, now that the population has built up to 9 Billion, Evolution has a lot of material to work with.
And it is about to put the pressure on the pool soon. The oil that feeds us is going away.

This is consistent with that at least two of our three ancestor species (archaics, neanderthals, denisovans) had larger brain-to-body ratio.

On the other hand it is a speculative article, in that we can't measure a decreasing ability. In fact, in as much intelligence tests measure it beyond the ability to respond to the tests, intelligence is increasing. (As mention in the comments.)

On the gripping hand, this idea says that we will have the intelligence we need.

@ kochevnik: Learning is an innate trait, as it must be (see computer science), because neuronal endowed species has it. Granted, we can push the bottleneck with various methods.

But innovation/capita hasn't gone up (or down) much, or we wouldn't be on the exponential economical and technical evolution we are.

@ aennen: An untestable crackpot idea is not relevant for science and society.

I know Kurzweil put out a list of "predictions", but they are mostly equivocal. He hasn't been able to test his "predictions" _now_. So no "singularity", actual phenomena are mostly readily obsrevable.

@ Massen: It is your life, but as a heads up: Some research have found supplements shorten your life (unless you really need them). Dunno how good it is, but you can surely find out if you need to.

@ Egleton: Funny how you say that oil goes away, when the IMF finally got fed up with "peak oil" erroneous predictions. (As they show in their recently released papers.)

In actuality oil has plateaued, as the best earlier models (simply random walk of total ignorance) predicted. But the IMF models, basically econometrics but allowing for supply shocks, can predict all the shocks and are better than all other models.

In sum, the oil production will continue its slow increase that the current economy has predicted. It will double in prize over a decade, but the GDPs will not crash.

With such a slow adjustment other technologies will kick in at the higher prizes. I hear that they are revisiting the century old technique of producing oil & gas raw materials from bacteria. Gas is an excellent energy carrier, and oil plastics are much more flexible.

If IMF is correct, and it looks as reasonable models for the first time, oil will always be with us. "Peak oil" terminology OTOH will go.

Not so slowly. Selection for intelligence stops only some hundred years ago and only there where human rights and equal opportunities become popular. Before that children of dumb parents just day as these were not capable to feed them. So, the speed of this process is amazing. To lost something is much easier then gain.

Torbjorn_Larsson_OM need not be concerned

Some research have found supplements shorten your life (unless you really need them). Dunno how good it is, but you can surely find out if you need to.

Studied food science, post graduate level at Curtin University, during that time accessed many international databases. Suffice to say here are some observations:-

- Many so-called herbal supplements dont have claimed contents
- Some herbals also have contaminants, eg Cadmium, excess Iron
- Others would mess with bowel equilibria, bacterial spores too !

Eg.
One very important discovery for a review for the Food Chemistry unit showed that those on a Western Diet whether in USA, Europe or Australia were very likely to suffer copper deficiency. Partly due to soils & fertilizers and also due to perception Copper is/was toxic.

Many would be lucky & get 0.4 mg/D, most need ~5.0mg/Day

~200 enzymes/proteins compete just for Copper

Too many complexities to expand here, food is deadly important!

We need to define intelligence. As an example, getting a vehicle moving from 1st gear requires a lot of energy, you need to get something from stationary to moving, once you've got the car moving, it requires a quiet stream of fuel to trundle along. We're capable of things with previous knowledge. Understanding a concept is much easier than originally thinking of the concept. Being smart means you can know a lot, you can regurgitate information. Intelligence is when you use old known information, and procure new information from it. The reason we're advancing so much is because we have a lot of resources, we know a lot more, therefore more will be discovered. It is simple genetics, if there is no selection, you will get a big mess...If you disagree, then you disagree completely with evolution, as that is precisely what evolution states.

To make an analogy, imagine a beaker with 5 million substrates (these denote facts, like gravity, speed of light, and all variables in the universe). Putting in 1 enzyme will give you an output, 1 per second as arbritary example. Adding more enzymes speeds up the reaction. HOWEVER, it does not speed up the potential of each enzyme. Society is advanced because we have many humans with many old known facts. Its the singular human we're looking at here. Are humans getting more or less intelligent? Or going back to the analogy, does the enzyme work faster with more enzymes present? No, it still works at 1 substrate per second, its just more enzymes are present. You see how many benefit scroungers are having 4-8 kids (and intelligence is genetic) and how many working people arent because they cant afford it and we see a very big problem. Don't think intelligence is genetic but nurture? Okay, teach a mentally retarded kid quantum physics. I rest my case.

taking money from the people who make more and are smarter, who then have fewer kids...
giving that money to people who make less and are less smart, then have lots more kids.

in this socially engineered lanscape of fairness, you have more kids the dumber you are... and have fewer the smarter you are.

given sangers neg*ro project started 100 years ago, and is now a billion dollar industry of eugenics (when combined with redistribution), the outcome is something any breeder could tell you.

you select for stupid who vote for dependency
you get a nation of dependent stupid

[this is how 80% of the population has fewer children than the remaining 20% according to the census]

The dumbest of the dumb are racist creeps like yourself, ArtflDdgr, whose anti-poor diatribes are nothing but a mask for your own self-loathing. Take your bullshit to AOL.

Just another Linus Pauling? That would make the author a Nobel Laureate!
...
You, Surly, have just single-handedly proven Dr. Crabtree's hypothesis corrrect.

You are aware that Pauling wasted years he could have spent on valuable work trying to prove that Vitamin C cures everything, right? I fear Crabtree's doing the same thing, dropping what he's good at to try to further a crackpot theory.

ArtflDgr, I don't think money has much to do with intelligence, however, you are mostly correct. I doubt the super rich are correlatively as super smart. You will find most rich people probably score quite averagely. You will find the most intelligent people arent actually that rich, most researchers discovering things have to beg for funds to allow their IQ of 175 to work on something. It is almost a cliche when reading up about historical inventors, who commonly die poor and ridiculed. You will however, find an extremely strong correlation between children with parents on benefits and academic capability. This is genetic, again, nurture counts for very little. If you want to test this, it is simple. Teach a mentally retarded kid quantum physics. Its genetics have made it completely stupid. If it is all nurture, then it should be possible to teach them anything. If however, it is genetics, it is impossible.

The dumbest of the dumb are racist creeps like yourself, ArtflDdgr, whose anti-poor diatribes are nothing but a mask for your own self-loathing. Take your bullshit to AOL.

Quite right, however, ironically he has touched on the truth somewhat. Tell me the latest super scientific discovery made by someone originating from council housing...

You can have a family of 4 all raised the same, its simple genetics, 3 can be absolutely thick and the 4th is VERY smart, same nurturing, different genetics. Its a commonly seen thing, hence the terms "black sheep of the family". While it has no p value, if something becomes a "saying" throughout human social history, it tends to lend a fair amount of truth to itself, otherwise it wouldnt be a saying.

"While it has no p value, if something becomes a "saying" throughout human social history, it tends to lend a fair amount of truth to itself, otherwise it wouldnt be a saying."-Triplehelix

Most British men are cross-dressers.

"While it has no p value, if something becomes a "saying" throughout human social history, it tends to lend a fair amount of truth to itself, otherwise it wouldnt be a saying."-Triplehelix

Most British men are cross-dressers.

Not quite as popular as "black sheep of the family". Maybe I should re-phrase myself for very very simple clarification to those who didn't understand. Very old common sayings that have stood the test of many generations, sometimes even complete eras, have a basis of truth. Sayings made up on a whim for a witty retort have minimal basis in truth, apart from the occasional coincidental one that is bound to happen

I didn't make that one up- it's a common belief across the pond. But most British have bad teeth- now THAT'S true, isn't it?

To clarify even more, my point is you can have a genius come from a family of benefits scroungers, and you can have a complete thick idiot born from a family of well educated and successful scientists/doctors etc.

However, as with all biological organisms, you aren't going to get 100% efficiency. If you compare the amount of geniuses from council housing, to the amount of thick idiots from successfull families of scientists/doctors, you will find that smart from stupid is much rarer than stupid from smart. Money has little to do with it. It is well known in todays economics and politic and law, that rich people are all ranges of intelligence. You can have an IQ of 100 and own a superstore-everyone needs food. Intelligence is genetic, the transfer isn't 100%, however, smart/intelligent people work jobs paying rubbish money and cant afford kids. Stupid benefit scounrgers get paid more money the more children they have. The maths is VERY simple, and is a basic evolutionary concept

I didn't make that one up- it's a common belief across the pond. But most British have bad teeth- now THAT'S true, isn't it?

The teeth one is true, I can tell you that being from the UK.

That was funny. But the poor are victims of bad social engineering- inferior schools, having to survive brutal and violent neighborhoods, and often are stymied by a stigma of revealing one's intelligence, as well as being denied access to jobs because of skin color. Generalizations are unfair because they ignore mitigating circumstances that point to broad failures of societies.

I'm sure people from their various country's police & army can substantively confirm or deny this:-

You would like to go into the army or police force & they start by giving you an intelligence test of their design which is not necessarily the standard psychological test of the 7 or so variants of intelligence...

There are three groups of outcomes:-
a. Very low, imbecile level, you are likely to be refused entry.
b. Anywhere from low to high, you are very likely to be accepted.
c. Very high, genius level, you are going to be refused entry.

Clearly a. and b. are pretty obvious as to the choice rationale.

But when it comes to c., other than care for the applicant & a suggestion they might be wasting their time, the applicant is dissuaded from pursuing a career in police or army.

I can see one protective reason for the relevant organisations but, I'm interested to hear of others knowledge in this area as its pretty much on topic as to the various rationales for denying c. entry ?

Surly mumbled this vague whim struggling to become any sort of idea

The claim that society does not select for intelligence and emotional regulation, and especially that it has not done so for at least 3,000 years, is silly on its face.

Who demonstrates any intelligence looking at superficial ("..on its face") aspects (duh) ?

Then your intelligent interest in truth demands you must look deeper.

Intelligent people tend to look at (deeper) levels where details really matter and try to avoid widespread inane generalisations such as your misplaced comment.

Try taking a look at my previous post as a starter to tickle your imagination !

*grin*

That was funny. But the poor are victims of bad social engineering- inferior schools, having to survive brutal and violent neighborhoods, and often are stymied by a stigma of revealing one's intelligence, as well as being denied access to jobs because of skin color. Generalizations are unfair because they ignore mitigating circumstances that point to broad failures of societies.

I never even mentioned skin colour. You're just releasing pent up political drivel. The fact remains, that the majority of people from social housing etc aren't going to be winning nobel prizes any time soon. The whole bad schooling thing is bull. I came from one of the worst "highschools" in the UK, from an area of mostly government benefits, the unemployment rate is something ridiculous like 80%. Guess what. Im one of the minority families who arent on the social, just happen to be from the area. Same schooling, same pressures, I still made something of myself. Its called genetics.

Your comments reflect the opposite of intelligence- ignorance. Also, your sense of superiority to your neighbors will be quickly shot down when members of the upper class look down their noses at you when they discover your humble origins.

Your comments reflect the opposite of intelligence- ignorance. Also, your sense of superiority to your neighbors will be quickly shot down when members of the upper class look down their noses at you when they discover your humble origins.

Personally insulting me doesn't make you correct, or me incorrect. Why would I be near upper class people? I am learned in the sciences and have a job in the sciences, I am still poor. Since when did intelligence = earn more money. A footballer earns more than any super genius will.

Brown eyes/Blue eyes. Chances are brown eyes for the offspring, occasionally, you get blue, from sheer chance.

Brown is thick, blue is intelligent. If both parents have blue eyes, the chances of blue eyes is much larger.

Trust me I've lived in rough low income areas, most of them are so thick by the time they were taking final exams they barely knew how to add! Same school, same teachers, same pressures, I passed! Why? Hard work? No, very lazy, good genetics.

This is also a very good example of how science is still subjective to so many people when coming to conclusions. If someone wrote a paper stating homo sapien survival increased due to the selection of smarter individuals in the tribe making more effective weapons, pretty much everyone apart from evolution deniers would smile and nod along and mostly agree with this bit of logic. So intelligence has a genetic link, and if it is being selected, it will occur more.

So why, when the other way around, do so many disagree, simply based on an opinion. Heres why. Most people arent rich. So funnily enough, when someone says "low income=low intelligence", it gets majority grumblings.

I'm sure if I entered this "debate" saying low income=high intelligence I'd have people singing my praises.

Stop being subjective, and look at the facts. Statistically low income areas perform worse in academics, and have more chances actually. You think rich toff schools allow 7 retakes? No.

I should also clarify my brown eyes/blue eyes was a thought experiment, im not literally saying brown eyes people are thick. I was simply showing a simple dominant/recessive attribute and how it links that sometimes smart makes stupid and stupid makes smart, but statistically, stupid does almost always make stupid, and smart does almost always make smart. Natural selection wouldnt work if that wasnt the case. If smart and stupid were completely random, then human evolution of intelligence was completely random, and "luckily" happened to go towards the intelligent vector. That of course, is retarded, its not random, and it is selectable. If it can go "forward" (more intelligent), then guess what, it can, and data suggests, it is going backward. If it is going backwards, simple experiment, what demographic has the most offspring, ergo, the ones causing the decrease as they are the majority population. Oh, right, the benefit scroungers!

Even disregarding my take on who is causing a "backward" trend, it is still simple evolution 101. Lets forget about who's to blame for intelligence and simply look at our population like we would ants or guinea pigs. A stupid person can breed at the same rate or faster than a smart person, and again, while stupid can sometimes make smart, it almost always makes stupid. A mutation is random, then non random selection makes the trait occur in the population. We are currently not selecting for either, our population evolutionarily speaking, is a big mass of knotted cables. Regardless of blame, it is very possible that our species can lose intelligence, and it is very possible that our species can gain intelligence. However just because we're whizzing atoms round and round doesnt mean we're getting smarter, because the people responsible for this are a few thousand in 7 billion, aka 0.00005% of the population. In tribe speak with populations of 25,000 like the past, this is 0.013 people

In the U.S., we're accustomed to rants on eugenics from Neo-Nazi groups, the John Birch society, and Southern Confederacy revivalist nutjobs. You expose yourself as a complete ignoramus by providing statistical data analysis from what you see around you. Imagine if you were in a roomful of Nobelists, you might be the least intelligent person present. Would any of these brilliant folks regard you as stupid? No, they wouldn't- unless you began airing your crazy hatred.

Nature does not like order. It likes disorder....entropy of a thermal system tends to a maximum...a physical law in thermodynamics.

Same with intelligence. Our wild ancestors selected for mates based on physical characteristics. The biggest muscles, the largest breasts, the biggest penis, the meanest personality... One can see all this in the 'country bars' all over this country and all over the world. Up to recently, intelligence was devalued by women as 'geeky' or 'nerdy' or 'square'(older generation). This constant deselecting of intelligence by masses of people of the lower classes over a long term leads to generalized lowering of intelligence of a species. Greatly dislike the use of the term, 'class', but no way to get around it. Our species 'mass culture' and our flocking to this mass culture of the exalting of muscles over intelligence is setting our species to a 'planet of the apes' scenario or a caste system of Brahmins and Sudras. Look at our muscle/fighting mags.

"Dr. Crabtree estimates that within 3000 years (about 120 generations) we have all sustained two or more mutations harmful to our intellectual or emotional stability."- from the article
Notice how he says "we have all"? Any attempt to fingerpoint at any group, class, or race is a fallacy promoted by the dumb. Try reading the article before sharing your ugliness.

Osiris1 speaks utter rubbish in fact disordered CRAP with

Nature does not like order. It likes disorder....entropy of a thermal system tends to a maximum...a physical law in thermodynamics.

Its physics that doesnt (seem to) like order, chemistry however favours patterns, nature which is based upon complex chemistry favours diversity with structured patterns which tend to order and at a very high level indeed - quite the opposite of disorder as you guess !

To claim nature doesn't like order, doesn't obviously take account of your own physical existence, unless you also claim to be a disordered mass - which you may well be or going that way...

So your writings must therefore logically be disordered as they arise from natures ideal of producing you, a heap of disorder and as your writings must be disordered, they can so easily be dismissed !

.
.
.

Blind are those that cannot see, and blinder still are those that write so badly about the opposite of what they guess they see !

People are posting on here to make sure that they show others how smart they are. "It's the other guy that's getting stupid"
So am I doing the same thing?

If IMF is correct, and it looks as reasonable models for the first time, oil will always be with us. "Peak oil" terminology OTOH will go.

Peak oil was estimated based on 1. Total estimated oil in each oil reserve and 2. back-dating those oil reserves to when they were first discovered. The total estimated oil was generally quantified as conventional, recoverable oil, and recoverable meant profitable at a certain oil price level (typically prices as they were in the 90s or early 2000s). As Americans have proven willing to pay for expensive oil and as advanced drilling and fracking techniques increase recoverable oil, perhaps it's high time that someone redid the peak oil estimate. Since fossil oil is a finite resource, peak oil is inevitable, regardless of the quality of the estimates used to predict its arrival. And to all you abiogenic oilheads out there... you're crazy.

"Dr. Crabtree estimates that within 3000 years (about 120 generations) we have all sustained two or more mutations harmful to our intellectual or emotional stability."- from the article
Notice how he says "we have all"? Any attempt to fingerpoint at any group, class, or race is a fallacy promoted by the dumb. Try reading the article before sharing your ugliness.

You dont understand evolution lol. If every person has it, then it has spread. All organisms of a species dont just suddenly change in unison. A mutation occurs and through successive breeding becomes dominant in a subgroup or entire group of a species. Someone started a thick mutation, them children mated, their children mated. Assuming just 2 children per generation, exponential increase, 120 generations, way over 7 billion. Its simple evolution and maths. Im surprised so many people voted my above comment so low because I said a mutation is random and its trait continuing is non random, thats evolution 101!

which may have weakened the power of selection to weed out mutations leading to intellectual disabilities

Given the fact that the majority of those disabilities are caused by randomly-occurring, spontaneous genetic mutations (rather than being entirely hereditary), this is hardly relevant to the case that humans are [supposedly] losing intelligence, through a halt in evolution.

I don't think that this article is true.I am not sure if intelligence was more significant 10k years ago or today.For example is strength, agility and other traits also very important under certain conditions and under selective pressure.On the other hand:People lived in social groups back then and today.So sharing tasks has possibly been done back then and it happens today. There are people that are less intelligent and some are more intelligent.and everybody does the tasks he is able to do.
It seems to me that the scientist fell a bit into the trap of romanticizing the past as an golden age(in that case of intelligence).

Nurture vs nature...answer usually somewhere in between. Childhood acquaintance long ago has parents, probably long dead now, that were university professors yet HE was barely literate then and I would wager him scarcely more now. Many studies have shown improvements in intelligence with active use of ones brain in work AND at home. These and other studies have shown that active minds are less likely to be early alzheimer's victims. This is not always true for greatly gifted folks...Einstein was sharp until the day he died, as was my father, a chess grandmaster. Yet my uncle, a PE with a masters in mechanical engineering, spent years in dotage. Maybe the key might be CONTINUED use of ones brain and not let it lapse in activity by not reading, by not engaging in stimulating conversation, by passive television watching of intellectual drivel, etc. An old saying: "When one stops learning, one stops really living!" perhaps is quite relevant here. Subjective yes, but observed.

any smart types here see a problem? I mean, everyone here is so worried about global warming and the impending doom of melting ice caps and balmy winters. I see a lot people here dribbling on and on about how stupid religious types are for failing to recognize the role of Darwinism in human evolution, and yet absolutely no respect among these same intellectuals for the role of Darwinism in ensuring human survival. Maybe there's some wishful prediction that Marxism will somehow bring about natural increased procreation among the most productive members of their selfless utopian. Or maybe the theory is that the liberal intellectual elite and their promiscuous lifestyle will somehow encourage a continued evolutionary process. Clintoniasm? Should make a for a good sequel to Idiocracy.

This generally seems accurate. We live in an incredibly artificial altrusitic society, where we depend on millions of people to survive. We can easily exchange money for intelligence, however this isn't a total disintegration. Much will come from this, perhaps new abilities for integration of massive amounts of information, more preparedness for this "hyper" reality.

mosahlah claimed irreverantly

I mean, everyone here is so worried about global warming and the impending doom of melting ice caps and balmy winters.

You are reading WAY too much into idle comment, there are hardly any mentions of AGW, care to clarify ?

DrDog412 claimed (also) irreverently

We can easily exchange money for intelligence,

NO, not at all well, having hired and fired many people since 1986, it is not easily done at all, there are huge discontinuities and nuances, where the heck does that comment originate from re any sort of real world experience ?

No mention of propaganda which has become endemic, mercury added to drugs, tooth repairs etc., drug abuse or stress of everyday life. These are the more likely causes of social psychopathologies. Was this study funded by big Pharm?

Giving the accelerating rate of discoveries and technological breakthroughs, I believe that way earlier than 3000 years from now, we will be capable of genetically engineering any kind of illness out of the human genome, and even improve our intelligence beyond today geniuses.

I think the ruling class is more interested in replacing most of humanity with unthinking reflexive slaves who don't care for anything beyond the four Fs: Fear, fight, food and reproduction.

In 1927 theoretical physicists started losing their intellignce genes. During the past nearly 80 years the majority in charge of theoretical physics has totally lost their intelligence genes: To such an extent that they do not tolerate any idea that might challenge their models and prove that these models are basically those of crackpots. Only a crackpot will believe that a "particle" can diffract when it moves through two slits.

You are aware that Pauling wasted years he could have spent on valuable work trying to prove that Vitamin C cures everything, right?

Did he claim that it "cures everything"? I do not think so. What he claimed is that vitamin C is so important that a deficiency can be dangerous. From personal experience I agree.

@johanfprins
Such as being OCD about theoretical physics in STR without ever doing one analysis of any of the 60 plus STR experiments of last 50 years with real data without claiming all the experimenters 'subconsciously' altered their data to agree with expectation.

Dont you realise their names would be up in lights if they had a result that went against understanding of the times, you obviously have never studied or experienced commercial psychology and public relations - is that WHY you dont get published ?

You keep going on at me for not answering questions, very strange when you CLAIM to know more about STR than I and YET have never done any analysis on any one STR experiment - why is that - are you a bit FixAted !

Each time I bring this STR example up you try so hard to ignore it, WHY ?

http://www.phys.u...adox.htm

Yet you 'want' me to derive the LF, its from Pythagoras (duh), its evident from the maths, get a grip johanfprins !

@johanfprins
Such as being OCD about etc., etc., etc.

I have asked you time and again to first do a simple derivation by using the Lorentz transformation: I should have realised that in your case, where you only have ossified bone between your ears it is not possible: So let us see whether you are able to think:

A moving clock passes through a stationary clock and their times are synchronized to be zero. Ater a further time interval on the mov. clock tm, the clock has moved on to be a distance

Xm=v*tm (1)

from the stationary clock. LT this time and the position xm=0 of the moving clock within its OWN IRT:

ts=(beta)*tm (2)

This is the "time-dilation" formula.

BUT the LT distance between the clocks is:

xs=Xs=(beta)*v*tm=(beta)*Xm

The time on the moving clock is tm when the clocks are a distance Xm apart and the time on the stationary clock is ts when the clocks are a distance Xs apart, WHICH IS LARGER THAN Xm.

The time ts and tm are thus NOT simultaneous

Since ts and tm in the "time dilation" formula are NOT simultaneous times on the clocks, it is utter BS to argue that the moving clock keeps time at a slower rate as the stationary clock.

When the time on the moving clock is tm, the distance Xm between the clocks can be calculated in terms of the time on either clock: Thus if at this instant the simultaneous time on the stationary clock is tss, one must have that Xm=v*tss=v*tm, so that tss must be equal to tm. Similarly when the distance is Xs, and the time on the stationary clock is ts, then the time on the moving clock MUIST also be ts.

The clocks must thus keep time at the same rate: The "time-dilation formula" cannot be caused by the moving clock keeping time at a slower rate, but by the fact that the LT time ts, is the same time as the time on the moving clock after it has moved on further to reach the distance Xs from the stationary clock!

Are you able to get this simple logic through your boney skull?

Human intelligence and behavior need optimum functioning of an out sized range of genes, which needs huge biological process pressures to keep up. A provocative hypothesis printed in a very recent set of Science and Society items printed within the Cell Press journal Trends in biology suggests that we have a tendency to are losing our intellectual and emotional capabilities as a result of the labyrinthine internet of genes endowing North American nation with our brain power is especially liable to mutations which these mutations aren't being elect against in our fashionable society.

" Thus, the brutish process of natural selection will be unnecessary."

Yeah, good luck with that.
Even on sites like this with a high density of seemingly intelligent liberal users phrases like "genetic modification" and "indefinite life extension" rustle many jimmies.

So I'm kinda not seeing how the whole evasion of natural selection is going to happen. Considering the ways of evading it seems to be such an offending topic.

@johanfprins

The space-time distance between the two events (clocks), is,...

Δσ = sqrt(Δr² - c² Δt²)

Linus Pauling was on to something with orthomolecular medicine, particularly with heart disease. Vitamin C doesn't cure everything as his detractors like to claim he claimed, but a chronic lack of the stuff will wear your body down and make you more susceptible to many diseases.

Pauling calculated that if humans had a functioning GULO gene the average human would produce about 5 grams of vitamin C per day. The RDI is what, ~60mg? The great apes except humans get more than this through diet. Doesn't it make sense we would have the same requirements?

Wow. I totally missed this thread. I have a lot of informative and insightful things to say on the subject. Oh well. Brutish is funny. I must remember that.

@FrankHerbert,

Why did you rate me a one in this thread?

Off topic? OK, that is reasonable, ..then why not rate your boy TheGhostofOtto1923, nor even johanfprins, nor mike?

Since, I know you will rate this post a one,...

This study explains why Obama won two terms.

Hey nou

"Understanding the relationship between the brain and the mind – mind-body problem is one of the central issues in the history of PHILOsophy"

-WELL OF COURSE IT IS. More bang for the buck. The answer is simple - one exists, the other doesnt.

"There are three major PHILOsophical schools of thought concerning the answer: dualism, materialism, and idealism."

-None of which have led anywhere whatsoever. If you read the wiki article you can see the preponderance of PHILO references along with the gratuitous use of scientific links which do not use the specious word 'mind' at all. As it has no scientific utility.
http://en.wikiped...iki/Mind

-A philo scam.

"Minds are simply what brains do." minsky
http://www.leader...h03.html

-And so why do we need the word 'mind' which carries with it all the obsolete PHILO notions such as soul and consciousness and intuition? We have one very good word for discussing human thought. It is 'brain'.

Hey nou

Dan dennett will also tell you that the mind is nothing more and nothing less than the brain. AND that what follows is that consciousness is an illusion.
http://www.ted.co...ess.html

@TheGhostofOtto1923,

I already explained to you in the other thread, but I will do so again.

I don't suggest that the mind has anything other than a physical basis. I have never suggested any kind of mind-body duality, nor soul-like role for it. Indeed those philosophical notions are out-dated.

The distinction I make between a brain and mind, is simply this; The brain is a bio-mechanism that passively operates on physical sense data. The mind is the various cognitive faculties that actively facilitates ordering and synthesizing of experience, and includes the organization of the complex of the understanding.

Of course the words, 'mind', 'consciousness', and 'intuition', all denote phenomena that is experienced, and thus meaningful. Ultimately they all have a physical basis, yes.

How about knocking it off with the "lite" already? People may take you more seriously.

The distinction I make between a brain and mind, is simply this; The brain is a bio-mechanism that passively operates on physical sense data. The mind is the various cognitive faculties that actively facilitates ordering and synthesizing of experience, and includes the organization of the complex of the understanding.

There is no distinction between 'cognitive faculties' and the organ which creates them. Dennett and minsky and many others make this abundanty clear. Did you read the links? Do more research, educate yourself, and discard useless philo words. I don't want to have to keep repeating myself.

Re your petulant profile, you need to include the names minsky and dennett, whose ideas I was only repeating.

For instance: there is no distinction between a Volkswagen and the way it operates. Philos may want to invent words like Farvergnugen to describe the experience of driving one, but it does not tell us ANYTHING about carburators or transmissions or engines, which is what we are interested in if we want to understand a volkswagens 'cognitive functions'.

The word 'Farvergnugen' is worthless to auto mechanics just as the words 'mind' and 'consciousness' and 'soul' are worthless to scientists.

You guys and people like penrose still want to insist that there is something different about the brain as opposed to the liver or the spleen, or that the human brain differs from an animal brain in some fundamental ways. But all EVOLVED in response to environmental stimuli, and all can be explained thus.

How about knocking it off with the "lite" already? People may take you more seriously.

And I am not lite nor am I frank. The distinction is obvious. I do not lie unlike some of the people you choose to ally yourself with. I am here to annoy people with words not ratings.

You continue to ascribe to me some distinction between mind and physicality, even though I stated explicitly as I am able, that the mind has a physical basis. There is the matter of the organizational structure of the "data", and various operational and synthetical effects upon that data. The brain would be the hardware, while the mind is the software.

Obviously, the identifiable phenomena of consciousness and awareness is an emergent property of the physical brain.

Awareness is the surest experience knowable in principal. To say that consciousness or the mind "doesn't exist", is only your faulty personal evidence. Are you aware or conscious of it not existing ?

It's a phenomenon, that is all that is meant. Why all of a sudden do you rely on philosophers?

To say that consciousness or the mind "doesn't exist", is only your faulty personal evidence

No, it is what I have learned from 21st century scientists:

"...when the mind is regarded, in principle, in terms of what the brain may do, many questions that are usually considered to be philosophical can now be recognized as merely psychological-because the long-sought connections between mind and brain do not involve two separate worlds, but merely relate two points of view."

" To comprehend the relationship between mind and brain, we must understand the relationship between what things do and what things are; what something does is simply an aspect of that thing considered over some span of time."

" we don't yet know enough about the brain...In any case, if we agree that minds are simply what brains do, it makes no further sense to ask how minds do what they do."

"...this sense of having a Self is an elaborately constructed ILLUSION..."

-You OUGHT to explore the refs I post.

Why all of a sudden do you rely on philosophers?

Who, dennett? His disdain for traditional philos is as great as mine. It simply doesn't WORK you see. He threw out all your words for starters.

Another book you never read:
"Consciousness Explained"
"One of the book's more controversial claims is that qualia do not (and cannot) exist. Dennett's main argument is that the various properties attributed to qualia by philosophers—qualia are supposed to be incorrigible, ineffable, private, directly accessible and so on—are incompatible, so the notion of qualia is incoherent. The non-existence of qualia would mean that there is no hard problem of consciousness, and "philosophical zombies", which are supposed to act like a human in every way while somehow lacking qualia, cannot exist."
http://en.wikiped..._Dennett