Latest Breaking News
In reply to the discussion: People Getting Dumber? Human Intelligence Has Declined Since Victorian Era, Research Suggests [View all]antigone382
(3,682 posts)I am not going to pretend to be totally up to date on the correlation between genes and intelligence, but suffice it to say that genetics are not the whole story. It is well known that the cluster of traits and behaviors which our culture calls "intelligence" (I'll save the debate for whether or not intelligence actually exists for another day) is profoundly influenced by social/environmental factors as well. We all know this; kids that get better nutrition, kids that are read to as children, kids that live in situations which allow and encourage learning, kids who see their parents model the behaviors that contribute to intelligence...those kids in general are going to be more intelligent than kids who are deprived such things. Of course the article chooses to define only "inherited" intelligence as true intelligence, as if there's some totally reliable and clear cut way to separate it from environmental factors which influence intelligence, but whatever, it's par for the course.
Moreover, what possible evidence is there of a decline in intelligence following the invention of agriculture? How would you even measure it? The article cites not a shred of evidence that such a decline occurred, only that a scientist somewhere said in an e-mail that he thinks it may have occurred for maybe this or that reason. This is pure speculation and should be presented as such.