Orwell vs HuxleyFollow

Spent some time browsing the site, but my eyes started to hurt from rolling them too hard at the stuff like this piece of crap.

The "Double Slit" experiment wasn't at all what I'd hoped

So, if one were to maintain the same average level of general worldy understanding while the rest of the planetary peeps devolved, then one would become extraordinarily brilliant (by comparison) with little effort. I'm gonna try that.

PS: It's frightening that "removal of lead paint" is cited a primary factor in the effect.

The question, of course, is what this stimulation might consist of? It obviously has to be extremely widespread, since the IQ gains exist at the population level. One frequently cited factor is the increasing complexity of entertainment, which might enhance abstract problem solving skills. (As Flynn himself noted, “The very fact that children are better and better at IQ test problems logically entails that they have learned at least that kind of problem-solving skill better, and it must have been learned somewhere.”) This suggests that, because people are now forced to make sense of Lost or the Harry Potter series or World of Warcraft, they’re also better able to handle hard logic puzzles. (The effect is probably indirect, with the difficult forms of culture enhancing working memory and the allocation of attention.) As Steven Johnson argued, everything bad is good for us, especially when the bad stuff has lots of minor characters and subplots. HBO is a cognitive workout.

That said, environmental stimulation remains an incomplete explanation. Even for those on the right side of the curve, intelligence gains probably have many distinct causes, from the complexity of The Wire to the social multiplier effect, which is the tendency of smart people to hang out with other smart people. (In this sense, gifted programs in schools might help drive IQ gains among the top five percent. The Internet probably helps, too.) The question, of course, is whether such factors have really changed over time. Has it gotten easier for smart people to interact with each other? Are those on the right side of the IQ distribution now more likely to have children together? Would the Flynn effect be even larger if we did more of [fill in the blank]? These questions have no easy answers, but at least we now know that they need to be answered.

I think the missing link to the issue is that Huxley's future didn't necessarily require that the people became less intelligent. Quite the opposite (for the most part). It was that with sufficient diversions provided and priorities reinforced, the very intelligent would accept authoritarian rule, and even argue for it strongly and passionately.

Uh, it totally did in Brave New World. 75% of the population had deliberately induced Fetal Alcohol Syndrome to keep them as Gammas, Deltas, or Epsilon Semi-Morons. Only 25% of the population was allowed to stay "average" (betas) or above average (alphas and alpha plus.)