Thread: 32: Godless
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Old 08-29-2012, 10:49 PM   #10 (permalink)
DaveNJ
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MichaelApproved View Post
This is exactly the stupidity I'm talking about. The school is asking the student to change how he signs his name because it looks too much like a gun. Are these people getting dumber or is the media reporting on more dumb stories?

School says deaf boy's name sign looks too much like a gun - News Summarized on Skim That
There are several ways to look at this story. The easiest, most satisfying way to look at this story is "people (obvious not me, my friends, or my family) are getting dumber".

It's also easy to look at this story and remember that for as long as the news has existed, it has told stories like this. We're not the first generation to have a lot of dummies in the news/

Alternatively, it's worth considering how litigious schools and parents are at the moment and how problematic even the hint of things related to guns are in schools. Moreover, regardless of the content of the story, the very nature of the controversy (sign language and its integration into mainstream schools) is itself an indicator of major progress for the disabled as a result of gains made in the last couple decades.

Even if the basic aspect of this story is dumb, rather than a school district going to absurd lengths to cover its ass, the underlying issue is a sign of how much progress has been made.

That's ultimately the issue with folks who worry about our society getting dumber. "Dumb" is a moving target. By continually holding ourselves to higher standards, the things that would not have been regarded as idiotic in the past become comparably worse.

As for folks getting more intelligent, the Flynn Effect correlates across standard deviations. It's not a rich get richer issue. People are becoming smarter writ large, at least as measured by IQ, as a result of better access to nutrition, healthcare, and education. And while smart folks talk themselves out of having kids, so do dumb people. Birth rates are down across the board, particularly as a result of the recession. However, even if dumb folks have more kids, the implication that their children will certainly be dumb simply isn't supportable.

As for eugenics, folks who bring up the Idiocracy argument often casually bandy about the whole "there should be a licensing process for the right to procreate", as if said process wouldn't by definition by anti-poor and anti-minority. It is disgusting, but discrimination is pretty disgusting on its own, and it's still really, really prevalent.

The Idiocracy argument bothers me a lot because it's not supported by science, it implies that intelligence is purely heritable, and it leads to subtle advocacy for programs to counter the (nonexistent) problem. It's also one of those acceptable ascientific positions that a lot of otherwise educated people hold, and it's rooted deeply in prejudice. Stephen Jay Gould's second edition of "The Mismeasure of Man", revised in opposition to "The Bell Curve", is a great takedown of the notion as well as of the conclusions drawn by many of its proponents.
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