An investigation of intelligence in the modern age
The above headline refers to most of the world’s 155 million college students and 600 million seniors. Maybe it doesn’t apply to you or your grandparents. Is it fair or accurate, though, to generalize widespread ignorance when both categories think they’re so smart? I think so.
Most students around the world consider themselves intelligent, having reached a higher level of formal education, eventually passing a set of exams because of a fair-to-excellent memory which, in fact, is generally mistaken for intelligence. In my opinion, students lack not only experience, but general knowledge about almost everything that matters.
First, however, let’s take a look at the elderly:
Despite having been around longer than most people on Earth, they’re more stupid, basing much of their reasoning on personal experience. For instance, an old couple is treated badly at a Quebec City hotel. For their remaining years, they complain about French-Canadians. When the husband was younger, he was a prisoner of war in a German concentration camp. Today, he has no use for Germans, dismissing all of them as “square heads.” He also uses the N-word when talking about African-Americans because he was once mugged by two black people.
The following questions are a test of memory:
Can any senior explain:
- The distance measurement of uncertainty of Type 1a supernovae?
- In Canadian dollars, how much Vincent van Gogh was paid for The Red Vineyard, his one and only sale, while identifying the buyer?
- Why the countries that would benefit most from genetically modified (GM) foods are benefitting the least?
- Why has the Ruy Lopez opening lost its popularity among strong chess players?
- The major differences between Christians and Muslims?
- In ancient China, the similarities between Confucianism and Taoism?
- The Incan relationship between Inti-Guauqui and Apu-Inti (the Lord Sun)?
- Whether there’s any such thing as universal good or bad?
- When sleeping with your spouse/partner, why your side of the bed is more important for a good night’s sleep than his/her snoring?
- Why you would eat a Thai dish of deep-fried tarantula rather than the Chinese fruit Durian?
Now it’s the university student’s turn to explain, again from memory:
- How an advanced form of life in the cosmos may exist without water?
- What determines the difference betweeen good and great Art?
- The easiest method of eliminating world starvation?
- In Chess, which Sicilian variation is currently most popular among Grand Masters, and why?
- The major differences between Sunnis and Shi’ites, Hutu and Tutsis?
- The philosophical cornerstones of Vaishnavism and Shaivism?
- In politics, which aspects of a benevolent dictatorship are far better than democratic government?
- What “freedom” means in the real world, and why it remains an unfulfilled dream?
- The fact that evolutionary change is sometimes unfavourable?
- The neurosurgical technique used to treat craniopharyngiomas?
It’s improbable that anyone on Earth can answer all these questions, without referring to various websites on the computer. My intention in posing them is to show you know-it-alls that you simply don’t know it all.
Sure, you’re familiar with a superficial little-about-a-lot, but when it comes to applying logic and reason to what is going on all around us? You’re out to lunch.
The vast majority of people have an opinion about almost everything, based on something they read or saw on TV, a computer, or cellphone. They simply are not interested in what’s really going down, preferring instead a sugar-coated version of the past, present, and future.
And yet, there’s still hope for some students who may mature into contemplative, intelligent human beings. As for the elderly, forget it! Too many years have cemented their biases and crippled their sense of reason.
Mind you, there are exceptions. I’m 80 years of age.