Six years ago I wrote this post about a link between constantly rising complexity and a corresponding rise in general stupidity. This was the introduction –
As the world becomes more and more complex, we are presumably obliged to become more intelligent in order to cope. Otherwise, relative to a general increase in social, political and economic complexity, we might expect to see a corresponding rise in stupidity.
Oh dear!
If I’d chosen to write an updated version today, I would have phrased it differently and taken note of the comments on the original, but the gist of the post would be much the same. As complexity increases we cannot expect to increase our intelligence to cope with it. In which case, six years on we might just about expect to see signs that stupidity really is increasing. All this is subjective of course but the signs are not encouraging. For one thing a list was too easy -
- Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader.
- Woke culture.
- Climate change still with us.
- BLM riots.
- Beating up statues.
- Social media censorship.
- Coronavirus response.
And tomorrow the bar rises again.
5 comments:
As I remember it, the bar rises because increasing complexity renders old solutions and levels of intelligence insufficient to cope. I'm fine with that, but how far back do we have to go to find a situation for which Jeremy Corbyn was an adequate solution? Would he have been put in charge of a steam mill? Could he cope with organising a team of manuscript-illustrators? Would you barter a used hand-axe from him?
I find the climate change stuff quite entertaining.
Like the boy who cried wolf, their predictions grow worse by the day to try and get people's attention.
Sooner or later, there will be a total disconnect between what's actually happening (not much) and the increasingly dire predictions (10 C of warming by next week, billions to drown by next Tuesday etc).
I've been saying for some time that the increasing complexity of life is what is causing an increasing amount of people to fall between the cracks, so to speak. Its why there is an ever increasing underclass, because more and more people are below the line of intelligence required to 'get on' in life today. I often thought the whole Blairite thing about making the UK a 'high skilled' economy was doomed to failure, as what did they expect the people who just aren't capable of doing the high skilled jobs were going to do with themselves for 60 odd years of adult life?
I think one of the things that is fuelling the apparent rise of stupidity is the new availability of social media.Never has it been easier to make ones views known or to contact people of a like mind. It takes some kind of committment to sit down and write a letter to a newspaper with a strong likelihood that it would not be published.How much easier it is to bash out 140 characters and press send.
Sam - maybe not as far as hand-axe bartering because he doesn't understand give and take, but organising a strike by manuscript-illustrators could be a role he might handle.
Mark - I found your climate posts interesting but I'm sure you made the right decision not to write a book. I've done some of my own research but in the end there is so much bad faith by the climate crowd it is more entertaining to watch them try to keep the game going.
Sobers - there is a Jordan Peterson video where he discusses intelligence tests conducted by the US Army over many decades and how 10% (I think) of possible recruits simply lack the intelligence for any military role at all. In other words, millions of people in any large developed country are probably just too dim to be employable.
John - yes that has been extremely revealing. Some people make social media comments which give the impression that they were written by an imbecile. On the other hand there are some very bright people out there, people we never heard of before the internet.
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