Why Are We Getting Dumber?

Humans are as smart now as they ever were. The difference is now there are far more idiots thriving all around those smart people. 100 years ago, everyone had to pull their own weight and figure out how to survive or die. We are now living in the age of plenty. It's also the age of information. We are aware and connected with the reality of exactly how stupid people can be. Carbon fueled machines deliver twice as much food as we need right to our homes. Fat useless slobs can make a living posting retarded youtube videos and playing video games on twitch. Don't worry, the carbon era won't last long. Survival of the fittest (and smartest) will drive human evolution again. The stupid leaches of today will be little more than fertilizer tomorrow. Hard drives containing useless cryptocurrencies, that pointlessly wasted vast amounts of carbon energy to generate, will be melted down to make farm equipment and solar heat panels. Nobody will remember the name Pewdiepie or have the luxury of watching "will it blend" videos.

 

Uhm, don't we all end up as fertilizer 'tomorrow'?

This part is spot on. The part after it seems speculation to me. Based on educated guesses for sure, but still.

 

Yeah, but I meant in a more literal agricultural sense. That the actual calories in dumb useless bodies will be worth more than their living contribution was to advancing humanity.

I'm talking about Soylent Francis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF41xyYYWDs

 

No fat slob that likes watching videos of other people doing nothing special could have made a worthwile contribution to other people/society naturally! It is simply out of the question.

I know you probably did not ment it like that, relaxxx Just got this thought that it might be very arguable and subjective who's living contribution is worthy and who's not, and felt like expressing it... I know I am not busy on a daily basis advancing humanity as a whole and I deem myself very worthy (I acknowledge I could be biased here).

 

A similar type of blanket statement that it "doesn't encourage any thought" could be applied to music, but I'm sure you'd see the folly in that assertion. Likewise, the statement is patently false as a blanket statement in regards to sports. There are many involved with sports doing things that require a lot more thinking and/or intelligence then you may think or give them credit for. There are also many fans who simultaneously watch sports to be entertained and engage in thinking while doing it, as many sports involve aspects of problem solving, strategy, situational thinking, etc. . I don't think there's much of a debate to be had really... (But if you don't see the music comparison as equivalent, please elaborate on what you mean.)

Perhaps the more compelling argument, which I think is implicit in your statement might be is allocating so much time, money and resources to entertainment like sports really worth it when there are much more concerning issues in the world?

Also things like statisticians for sports. Baseball and increasingly basketball rely on fairly involved statistical analysis like sabometrics, to help gather data and predict a lot of aspects of the sport(s). Which can be implemented in a variety of ways dependent on opposition, situations, etc.



Higher mathematics[SIZE=small][edit][/SIZE]
Value over replacement player (VORP) is considered a popular sabermetric statistic. This statistic demonstrates how much a player contributes to his team in comparison to a fake replacement player that performs below average. This measurement was founded by Keith Woolner, a former writer for the sabermetric group/website Baseball Prospectus.
Wins above replacement (WAR) is another popular sabermetric statistic that will evaluate a player's contributions to his team.[22] Similar to VORP, WAR compares a certain player to a replacement-level player in order to determine the number of additional wins the player has provided to his team.[23] WAR values vary with hitting positions and are largely determined by a player's successful performance and their amount of playing time.[23]

Calculus in baseball[SIZE=small][edit][/SIZE]
Many traditional and modern statistics, such as ERA and Wins Shared, don't give a full understanding of what is taking place on the field.[24] To truly understand the physics of baseball, algebraic equations won't do. Calculus is capable of explaining all kinds of aspects of the game, from tracking home run balls over the fence to how often a team should attempt to steal.[25]

We can consider the sport itself as well, If we consider physical intelligence, the player's themselves possess a high degree of intelligence as they are presumably the most gifted athletes in their respective sports, or at least certainly display the most dedication, devotion, endurance, etc. to get them to professional status in their respective sport.

In a more generalized sense, I think sports, team sports in particular, displays a highly sophisticated level of abstraction. What I mean by this, is a lot of the qualities we express in sports are similar to qualities we have tended to display in other competition, which historically had been relegated to things like fighting, war, sacrifice, etc. So to be able to abstract these aspects of human nature into the confines of a field, race track, court, etc. without intending the same scale of violence (UFC is a arguable exception) is pretty interesting imo.

 

The really mindboggling truth is that IQ scales have had to be increased because the average person has keep growing more intelligent over the last century, however, that trend appears to have reached its peak and, according to the National Science Foundation one in five American insists the sun revolves around the earth. The more the rest of the world keeps taking two steps forward the harder these 20% of the population drag their feet insisting the world is changing much too fast for them to keep up. If you ask me, its all part of the insidious alien anal probe mind control conspiracy behind the Illuminati.

 

That's also a good point.

It also brings up the whole fantasy sports argument. If I understand how fantasy sports work, it's all about stats and probability. Participants are armchair statisticians.

 

Thing about fantasy is it changes the way you ummm watch a sport or go for a sport etc. like say in the NFL I go for the Broncos. But let's say I have Phillip Rivers as my fantasy QB. I inevitably want a Broncos victory, but I want a 41-38 score line with 4 Rivers TDs.

Now. I would never ever say that ever, that I wanted the Chargers to score 4TD on my Broncos, but when you play fantasy that's exactly what you're looking for.

 

I'll try.

You select a fantasy team which is selecting players in real life positions. Phillip Rivers is a Quarterback of the Chargers. The Chargers are the Broncos rival, I support the Broncos.

To earn points in fantasy, your selected players must perform, so throwing 4x touchdowns and a 350+ yard game is going to be good statistics.

When the Chargers play the Broncos, of course I want the Broncos to win. If I didn't have any Chargers players on my fantasy team, I'd want my Broncos to win 41-0 BUT since I've selected Phillip Rivers as the Quarterback on my fantasy team, I now need him to perform against my team to earn fantasy points.

So I don't want my boys to win 41-0. I want them to win, but I also need the Chargers and particularly Phillip Rivers to perform against my boys.

So that changes the way I watch and support a game IMO. I don't want 41-0 I need 41-40 or something. For my team to still win, but for the other team to exploit my team to get as many fantasy points as possible and a good close fought 13-10 game ain't gonna cut it, which is why I think the NFL now changes the rules so the games are now like 35-28 and shit like that. Nobody wants to see close defensive games anymore because they don't get fantasy points from them.

 

Sports encourage tribalism and hate where there otherwise would be none. In that way they are used as a distraction. The passion people have for them is easily exploited. The average Roman citizen did not care that he was poor because he could see a Gladiator fight a lion. The Roman elite knew this. If someone enjoys a sport it's fine people have their hobbies. But they fight so much over it just disinterests me because in the long run it slows human evolution.

There are lots of examples of people getting violent because their team did or did not win. In England if you are the wrong part of a soccer stadium during the game that alone could be a physical attack. The two teams might even be in the same city London has at least 3. The two teams are probably at most a few hours drive apart in the same country yet they fight and hate each other. But I know lots of sports fans have some good fun with it. Maybe they tease a friend who likes the other team but it's never psychical.

 

Sounds like passion to me and that's something else the people of this world are lacking is just simple passion. People just aren't passionate about things anymore. They just float through life so blahzay.

 

Irminsul explained it fairly well but to expand and generalize fantasy football... Basically your fantasy team is comprised of real players that can be from any team and once selected they are usually removed from the draft pool, so they cannot be selected by other fantasy owners. Player Selections are based on availability, rating, positions they play, and to a lesser extent, their actual team. The general fantasy layout requires that you meet a certain quota of players per position, so this both may prevent one from just getting the next Highest Rated Player in the draft in favor of a more complete team, or it also may provide your fantasy team with a sense of identity.

For instance in regards to identity, if you want to try and have a really good Running Team, you may stack up on a couple of top rated Running Backs, as opposed to if you wanted to be a passing team, where you would focus more on selecting a top rated a Quarterback and Wide Receiver. Then throughout the season, you can adjust your roster by benching players, trading them, or releasing them and picking up undrafted players. You could potentially even have it where you kind of play against yourself, like if the team your Quarterback was on was playing the team that you chose for Defense. In this circumstance, theoretically you could have an instance where your QB loses points for you because he throws an interception (to the other team) but that interception gains points for you that's your defense I think you could perhaps understand how sans the unforeseen injury, the decisive process in all this requires quite a bit of thought and appears much more strategic and seemingly reliable than say standard gambling.


It probably sounds like a lot of effort, and it certainly can be but for online Fantasy Leagues, there are usually a bunch of stats provided for you and algorithms that will try to help you predict how your players will do in upcoming games and stuff. You only have to set your lineups once a week, so it's kind of up to the person how much they want to be invested in it.

 

I have never done the NFL fantasy, but have other football fantasy and it takes some years to really get your head around like for instance adjusting for bye weeks etc. no point stacking a team full of players that aren't playing, so managing that aspect, you really need to know what you're doing and I find it starts at week 1.

 

I would say that sports encouraging "hate" is a bit hyperbole, particularly for American Sports. I don't follow other countries sports that much, so I won't tell you you're right or wrong there.

But even if I concede that sports encourages passionate involvement, which on occasion can turn into overzealous reactions and result in physical altercations, how is this any worse than music like Gangster Rap, Metal, some of the extreme forms of EDM, and even Rock n Roll in general that have EXPLICITLY mentioned themes of violence and hate?

 

Most of the time when we riot over soccer in Europe it's just fun it starts off as fun, a flare will come over. It gets thrown back. People are laughing. It's just always one group of mongers that actually try to hurt people and then the real nasty stuff kicks off. But I'd say generally, they're all started from people with mostly good intentions. But yes we take our football seriously here I guess, it's defined our continent for hundreds of years. Why should tradition stop just because a few loose cannons show up at a match?

Are we going to ban mosh pits too?

 

Pretty much the death knell for the original Hippie Movement

Altamont:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Free_Concert#Situation_deteriorates

 

We're getting dumber because there's no need to be smart anymore. If you have a Smart Phone, you're all set.

 

It all started when Disco hit in the 70's then it was accelerated with the onset of Rap. Break Dancing also had a lot to do with it, there was severe brain damage to all that head spinning. The most damaging of all was the Macarena.

 

we started getting dumbed down the day television became a consumer commodity. or was it radio? or was it movable type and news papers?
lol. well people did actually have to learn how to read them, so i guess it must have been radio.

then again it could have been victrolas.
you know, wind up record players,
so no one except professional musicians had to learn how to read sheet music
(and even they started pretending they couldn't or didn't)

but then people must have been already kind of gullible when they thought the automobile gave them freedom,
(never counting how much of their time, one way or another, went into keeping them functional,
let alone the tax cost of paved roads to drive them on)