A Peaceful, Intelligent World.

[CraigS]

In response to the many rather depressing and negative posts I’ve read here about the supposed decline in human intelligence, I offer this little gem ...

Bombings, beheadings? Stats show a peaceful world

Three new books recently written, including one by a Harvard Psychologist, who based his data on peer-reviewed studies published by academics who actually gathered real data, (as opposed to believing mass media reporting):

1) The number of people killed in battle - calculated per 100,000 population has dropped by 1,000-fold over the centuries as civilizations evolved.

2) There were fewer than 20 democracies in 1946. Now there are close to 100. Meanwhile, the number of authoritarian countries has dropped from a high of almost 90 in 1976 to about 25 now.

3) IQ tests show that the average teenager is smarter with each generation. The tests are constantly adjusted to keep average at 100, and a teenager who now would score a 100 would have scored a 118 in 1950 and a 130 in 1910.

They go onto to make the points: murder in European countries, murder within families, rape and lynchings (in the US), discrimination and child abuse are all down by several orders of magnitude. The average annual battle death toll has dropped by two orders of magnitude, (over the last 60 years), and the number of deadliest wars, dropped by almost 80 percent over the last 23 years.

And in defense of the much disliked USA role in world peace:

What's happening is that the U.S. is acting as a "pacifier" keeping the peace all over the world, Mearsheimer said.
...
Pinker said looking at the statistics and how violent our past was and how it is less so now, "makes me appreciate things like democracy, the United Nations, like literacy." He and Goldstein believe it's possible that an even greater drop in violence could occur in the future.

A somewhat different perspective to that portrayed on a day-to-day basis by our much beloved, and for some reason, ‘trusted’ mass media, eh ?

Whilst the numbers might be somewhat debatable, at least there's some peer-reviewed scientific method behind the analysis, and the drops are orders of magnitudes .. ie: huge!

Cheers
PS: I have nothing further to add to this thread .. the analysis speaks for itself .. so I'll be pretty quiet from hereon.

[xelasnave]

And Goldstein points out that even though a nuclear attack hasn't occurred in 66 years - one nuclear bomb could change this trend in an instant.

Nevertheless ....I hope the world is becoming a better place and for me personaly I beleive it is... imagine living a thousand years ago death stalked us in many forms.. we have better health and no wars between city states etc...we work to achieve more than survival in many cases.

Folk should appreciate what we once had to put up with and not focus on the bad which can be easily observed and is always brought to our attention via alarmist media .

Great post Craig as it suggest hope for humanity most fail to embrace.

alex

[Brian W (Brian)]

Thanks for the good news. I am not going to debate a thing and i surely hope the numbers indicate a true trend and for lack of any other evidence i might as well believe they do.
Brian

[Jules76 (Julian)]

Interesting stuff and not suprising in my oppinion. I think we often forget that we live in such an information rich society that something could happen in some place in the world we never even heard of and within minutes the news can spread across the world and be viewed on TV, online video feeds, websites to any number of devices in the home. It's so easy to be overloaded with information and form the impression that the world is getting worse because your hearing of bad things so much more often. But that's not the case.

It always annoys me when I hear older generations lamenting on how bad things are now compared to the "good old days". Sure there is some truth in that in certain aspects of life, but just because you didn't hear about all these going on's as much and as frequent as you do today, doesn't mean it didn't happen at all and to the same extent, if not worse. Some perspective is needed I think.

Just my 2 cents.

[sjastro]

I must be one of those negative types.

I believe the human race is becoming progressively dumber.

3) IQ tests show that the average teenager is smarter with each generation. The tests are constantly adjusted to keep average at 100, and a teenager who now would score a 100 would have scored a 118 in 1950 and a 130 in 1910.

I believe this is explained by the Flynn effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

A contradictory piece of evidence is given by the declining entry standards for officer training in US military academys since the early 20th century.

It seems the aptitude tests given to determine if a certain percentage of the population were potential officer material during WWI is now only passed by a significantly smaller percentage of the population.

Perhaps this is also a reflection in our declining numeracy and literacy skills.
Maybe it's not the education system that is at fault......

Regards

Steven

[mishku]

I'd love to agree that this is true, and hope that the trends continue...

Though I am compelled to point out that if the given statistics are per head of population, how does one account for global population growth in the interpretation??

Know what?? I'm just as happy to imagine that as a civilisation, we're becoming more peaceful and intelligent, so lets not think too deeply about it. To peace, love, and even smarter kids in two generations

[xelasnave]

From the article......

Lynchings, which used to occur at a rate of 150 a year, have disappeared.

Does this mean the "mob" is better or that those leading the "mob" have become tame? whatever reason it is nice to know there is little chance of being strung up by a "mob" in this era.

Nevertheless I can think of a few horrible crimes where a lynching would be most appropriate.

One could think that in our early history one would have had to be rather clever simply to survive... hunting and/or early farming would have left little time for much else but it seems tribal battles etc would have been the norm and long term peace the exception... pretty tuff on top of providing food.

The neanderthals were clever enough to survive cold harse conditions for some 250,000 years yet we seem to rate them as simple and somewhat stupid because they died out and we took over. However will we last 250,000 years? if not does that mean they were smarter than us?

It is so difficult to qualify change..are things better or worse? are folk smarter or less so than those who came before them?... Maybe lynchings would equate to a better society because justice is less expensive than it is today and administered with no delay or regret...and I am not sure having so many lawyers is a step forward in evolution really.

Finally things are what one perceives them to be as reality is a personal experience. AND no doubt if one took a position opposite to the author of the article one probably could draw upon credible facts to suggest the opposite so as to conclude the world is going downhill fast.

The growing human population could also be seen as a very bad prospect given the destruction of other species.

How one describes reality is a personal choice so things are better or worse upon ones own qualification of what is presented.

alex

[wavelandscott (Scott)]

I was glad to read the initial post I needed a bit of positivity today...

I do wonder if the reduced killing/lynching etc. (more peace) will also reduce the evolutionary pressue on us humans to improve. If only the smart and strong survive the species gets smarter and stronger...since more folks are survivng does this (species wide) make us less smart and less strong?

[Ric]

We are definitely heading in a positive direction but there is still a long way to go.

[Brian W (Brian)]

Originally Posted by wavelandscott

I was glad to read the initial post I needed a bit of positivity today...

I do wonder if the reduced killing/lynching etc. (more peace) will also reduce the evolutionary pressue on us humans to improve. If only the smart and strong survive the species gets smarter and stronger...since more folks are survivng does this (species wide) make us less smart and less strong?

Actually it is not necessarily the smart and the strong that survive. It is the most adaptive to the situation that are most likely to survive. And it is best to remember that evolution is blind and can lead a species (for lack of a better term) up a dead end as well as up the evolutionary path.
Brian

[Peter Ward]

Originally Posted by sjastro

I must be one of those negative types.

I believe the human race is becoming progressively dumber.


Steven

I agree with you Steve. A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that the internet is turning us into scattered and superficial thinkers.

Anecdotially, many young store clerks simply can't do a basic $ change calculation without a calculator or till.

Even at a tertiary level students show reliance upon software with not much understanding of the underlying equations or whether a calculation migh actually diverge from the solution due machine rounding errors.

I'd certainly accept populations are becoming more literate, but the capactity for "critical tought" seems to be falling.

We are swamped with constant and petty legislation that "dumbs down" behaviour via banning of once legal and fun activities. This I personally find to be real PITA.

[wavelandscott (Scott)]

Originally Posted by Brian W

Actually it is not necessarily the smart and the strong that survive. It is the most adaptive to the situation that are most likely to survive. And it is best to remember that evolution is blind and can lead a species (for lack of a better term) up a dead end as well as up the evolutionary path.
Brian

Good Point!

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

I agree with you Steve. A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that the internet is turning us into scattered and superficial thinkers.

Yep. We're turning into 'big buttons' pushers in a macro world. Nobody knows or care to know what's under the hood anymore. Turn the power off and we all go home.