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Uncategorized Monday, November 12th 2012 at 3:50 pm

Not Your Imagination: Humanity Getting Progressively Dumber and Crazier

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When the news of the day consists of things like Elmo’s underage sex scandal, it’s easy to think sometimes that the world and everyone in it is just getting more awful by the minute. According to a recent paper published in the journal Trends in Genetics, it appears that may be exactly the case. In even more depressing news, it seems to be because being intelligent and empathetic are no longer traits that are evolutionarily selected for. Man, we could have told you that.

According to Stanford University researcher Dr. Gerald Crabtree, civilizing factors like the development of agriculture and the rise of urban living weakened natural selection towards intelligence, which he suggests would have peaked when humanity was still largely non-verbal, and coincidentally when being smart was an important trait for not being eaten by a tiger, and not just a good way to get a wedgie after gym class.

Less pressure to select for intelligence isn’t the only factor at play though. Recent research has demonstrated that genes thought to be involved in intelligence and brain function are particularly vulnerable to mutations. Crabtree’s calculations show that most people have probably suffered at least two genetic mutations that make them less intelligent or emotionally stable.

Considering that researchers estimate there are between 2,000 and 5,000 genes implicated in human brain function, we’re getting off pretty light. But it’s troubling to think that our default state seems to be getting dumber as time wears on. Crabtree, however, is hopeful that we’re getting dumber slowly enough that future technologies will fix the problem before we’re reduced to a race of mouth-breathing knuckle draggers, making what he refers to as “the brutish process of natural selection” unnecessary.

That conclusion would, of course, be more heartening if it didn’t suggest that the only alternative to mankind’s reversion to idiocy is a Brave New World-style future of genetic fine-tuning and manipulation, but some days we’ll take what we can get.

(via Medical Xpress)

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  • Anonymous

    Earlier today, I heard a report on NPR that efforts are being made in Egypt to weaken the power of fundamentalist religion so that the country can be governed based on the world as it actually exists. If religion could be kept in the background, and the percentage of atheists and agnostics could increase as is happening in the United States, this descent into idiocy MAY be arrested.

  • Jack Bond

    Maybe it’s not an accident. Maybe things like the government are putting us in an environment where we can get what we need without having skills of any particular sort. It’s not sustainable, though.

  • http://twitter.com/wonkydonky wonky donky.

    I thought the general trend in IQ scores was up.

  • Derpina

    Between 2001 and 2008 the number of Atheists in America grew by ~5 million, while the number of Christians grew by ~13m and still comprise over 3 quarters of the population. Even though the rate is slowing, the sheer majority is shockingly large and will continue to exert significant influence over government.

  • verybored

    Honestly, I know enough intelligent, compassionate and non-idiotic Christians (the majority of the ones that I know) that I find this comment slightly rude and definitely uncalled for…

  • Brianmc

    Bronco has electrolytes, maybe that wil smarten us bak.

  • Anonymous

    They may not be overtly “idiotic”, but they still believe that such evils as disease, death, birth defects and smooth jazz came about because a woman was tricked by a talking snake into eating a piece of fruit. They also believe that the Earth’s rotation came to a dead stop one day so a military figure “approved by God” could win a battle. Und so weiter…

  • Idlethoughts

    Peoples personal beliefs tend to vary widely, please don’t speak for them.

  • Anonymous

    Well, that was… the opposite of enlightening. No numbers, no links to research, just paraphrasing and speculations. In truth, all scientists in the field of human cognition are familiar with the so-called Flynn effect: that the average intelligence has gone dramatically up the last 80 years.