Have you noticed that we seem to be getting dumber as a culture? Fewer people seem to be doing any real thinking, relying instead on their emotions, feelings, or the opinions of others to determine how to act. And, all too often, those opinions are formed from nothing but someone else’s feelings, reactions, or emotions.
There is nothing wrong with feelings and emotions as such. But there is plenty wrong with using them as a substitute for gathering real data and doing real thinking. This universe is built on logic, so if you ever want to come up with actions that produce desirable results — actions that work — you need to be able to gather true data and think with it logically. That’s how we get real answers.
IQ measures, in large part, a person’s ability to perceive, receive data, and think with it successfully. We think of people with a high IQ as being “smart,” and usually they are. They have an increased ability to get correct data and think with it successfully when compared to the average person.
Since IQ is wrapped up with the ability to get correct answers in life, it makes sense that we would want people in society to have or attain as high an IQ as possible. Smarter societies will probably do better.
But this is not really about whether people are born smarter or less smart. It is about whether they are being given the tools that allow intelligence to function.
Many people sense that our culture has become less capable of careful thought over the last several decades. Why? Is it bad genetics? Environmental toxins? Poor education?
We made an interesting and relevant discovery a while back when we realized that the efficiency of communication drops off with the product of the imprecision in the definitions used by both speaker and listener. In plainer English, the ability to communicate new, subtle, or significant ideas decreases very rapidly once you introduce even a little sloppiness into the definitions used by either the speaker or the listener — and especially both.
If both parties have a good grasp on exactly which definitions are being used in a communication, they can communicate very well. They can get across new ideas, subtle ideas, or a very exact notion of an existing idea. But if the speaker is a little loose in his knowledge of the definitions in play, or the listener is a bit confused about what some of those words really mean, the ability to fully and successfully communicate new or subtle ideas decreases notably.
If both the speaker and the listener have more than a moderate amount of imprecision in their definitions, the ability to communicate new, subtle, or precise ideas drops to almost nothing.
Communication goes beyond words and ideas. It also applies to the ability to perceive what is going on around you. It is the backbone of the ability to acquire data.
So, let’s say we take a generation — or two — of kids and educate them using methods that don’t really teach them how to read very well. Whole-word recognition, for example, or “figuring out a definition from the context.” These kids grow up with a limited vocabulary of words they know well, so they miss out on much of what the language can say. They grow up with a limited ability to acquire data or new ideas. They also grow up with a limited ability to think because, first, you have to have data to think with, and they are not very good at acquiring data; and second, they never really learned how to think because that was too high-level a skill for them.
Let’s say you are one of these kids, with a limited vocabulary and the related limited ability to acquire data and think. How are you likely to do on IQ tests? Lousy. Not because of inherent stupidity, but because you do not have the tools to do the things that add up to IQ. You are going to test well below your potential.
And how are you going to get by in life? Are you going to be a rational and insightful social agent? Hell no. You are going to be a slave to the latest trends, a slave to your feelings and emotions. Your opinions will be formed by your heart, or other body parts, and social media — not with your head.
What if your influencers on social media are equally limited in ability? What if their only real activity is to loudly push empty ideas, made plausible only by volume, repetition, and appeals to emotion or sensation?
You might pick up and advocate unworkable ideas and programs. Your life would be limited because you were never really able to acquire much in the way of skills. With no real direction, you would probably be unhappy. And if one of those programs did happen to break through into real policy, high hopes would turn into disappointing results, because the idea was never built on clear thinking in the first place. Society would stumble from one disaster to another, getting weaker all the time.
This does not have to be. There is a solution.
Let’s start teaching people to read, and to read properly. Phonics is a pretty workable method. Let’s teach people how to use dictionaries and understand that words usually have more than one definition. And let’s make sure to be clear in the words we use so that the chances of “fuzzy reception” are limited.
We can raise the level of thought in society. And doing so matters. Without better reading, clearer definitions, and more disciplined thinking, we will keep mistaking noise for knowledge.