are we smarter?

I came across this today. It’s a cool comic. What did people do before they had all the information on their fingertips?

It reminds me of a question in science that goes along those lines. Psychologists found that over the last 50 years our SAT scores have risen up. Steadily too. Someone asked, well, then are we getting smarter?

No. We are not.

What we are though, is getting surrounded by knowledge and information more and more. Imagine thinking of a sea turtle. Now go look for some information. I can guarantee than among all the encyclopedia entrees, amateur photos and documentaries, in about 2-3 hours you can know much more about sea turtles than any person 50 years ago.

Another cool statistic. Teachers decided to do an experiment and gave children age 3 to 7 years old iPhones with vocab applications on them. The result was that soon after this the children’s vocabulary expanded by up to 31%. Smarter? Not biologically.

Here’s what happens:

more mobile tech ->more available knowledge -> more exploration of this knowldege -> more understanding and learning

We are not smarter.

But…

We are more apt at using our environment to our benefit.

What we have that could lead to biologically getting smarter is developing a better intuition for gaining and using knowledge.

you are a tourist when…

You are a tourist in NYC when you walk around with a map (or an iPhone) and you wonder which is North and which is South.

You are a tourist in DC when you get lost in the streets around street circles. This usually takes about 5 mins.

You are a tourist in Amsterdam when you end up being in a totally different part of town of what you intended in the matter of half an hour. You didn’t even see it coming.

You are a tourist in Paris when you have white dust on your shoes (from the garden in front of the Louvre).

You are a tourist at the Great Pyramid site when you get a cold and you think it’s an ancient pharaoh curse.

You are a tourist in Sofia when they convince you that paying in your own country’s currency is a normal thing. I will give you a hint: it is not and you are being cheated. It’s a fun city tho.

You are a tourist in Las Vegas when you hope to re-live “The Hangover”.

You are a tourist in Hong Kong when you buy a fake bag and you think it is still a better quality than a fake bag from Shanghai. It is not.

You are a tourist in Boston when you secretly hope to see the Boondock Saints. They are not real. You will see them when the wind there stops blowing. Capiche?

You are a tourist in London when you confuse the Double-Deckers with the tourist buses.

You are a lame tourist when you take pictures with any famous building or monument, like the Eiffel Tower, and you are pretending to lean on it, poke it, hug it etc. That’s old.

Freakin’ tourists…:)

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the inflation of integrity

Integrity is one of those key components of western societies that comes with a high price-tag. The effort to stick to a moral code and a strict (or so) system of values is tremendous when your road is paved with multiple temptations all the way to the top. If I stopped you on the street and asked you if you would cheat on an exam, I’m sure most people at least would say No. Integrity has been pushed on us for a few thousand years now (what do you think the 10 commandments are? a moral system, besides everything else) by a society which has smartly realized the need for transparency and consistency. So, the price tag of putting effort into our “goodness” might be cognitively high but it’s definitely worth its price.

The point is, integrity is constructive and is pushed by society (other people, not you; a.k.a. your super ego) to make you (your ego)  excersize  some self-controlling powers on your drives and nasty motivations (your most cerebral juice of wants and desires; a.k.a. your id), ultimately for everyone’s good. It may be an individualist world, but are we not realizing the power of the collective?

That said, as an individual you can deceive. You can manipulate and machinate enough to keep you going for a while. I say for a while, because today, more than ever, is it easier for us to catch each other of little mischiefs. Or big ones for that matter. Consider this:

- if you take people’s small and big ideas and present them as yours, we’ll know.

- if you cheat only a little bit every day, we will know.

- if you talk behind people’s backs, we will know.

- if you are unnecessarily secretive, we will know.

- if you network only to get something out of it, but never give, we will know.

- if you manipulate, we will know.

- if you lie, we will eventually know.

When it comes to the day to day, what this all means is, lack of integrity = lack of the good part of the people in your life = lack of an overall opportunity for development. If you know you will talk to someone and the next day they will be presenting your ideas to your team as theirs, you probably won’t do it. You would rather bond with the people who expand on your ideas, give you more feedback, work with you. Just a practical example, integrity is no longer only for philosophers.

So, in a society that increasingly surrenders more and more (but slowly) some of its privacy for the benefit of more integrity, this virtue sees some inflation: it is not a “good” and “virtuous” thing, it becomes a “necessity” and a “requirement.”