Mr Beardsley wrote: ↑Mon Oct 02, 2023 5:17 pm
Citizen B wrote: ↑Mon Oct 02, 2023 5:08 pm
Mr Beardsley wrote: ↑Mon Oct 02, 2023 4:52 pm
Are you thinking of @Johnny Dingo?
You are the other one. I get you confused with Piping Abe all the time. And, now that I say it, I realize that Piping Abe got the knife because you told me to send it to him. You two are yin and yang in my mind.
Anyhow, to derail my own thread now that this mystery has been solved, I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago and I have been bothering people about it ever since. It seems that, based on archeological evidence, the human brain has consistently shrunk over the past three thousand years. Compared to our three thousand-year-old ancestors, our brains have less volume. We have lost the cubic centimeter equivalent of a lime.
What happened 3000 years ago? Civilization. People living together reached critical mass so that we now have collective intelligence as well as individual intelligence. We can rely on other people to remember things while we remember things that they do not.
I find this notion interesting, as I would since I always farm out questions to the rest of you because I am too lazy to do the legwork to find the answer, and, after all is said and done, what is the art of conversation but asking and learning?
We probably shouldn't be cluttering up the new member thread more than we have to.
Abe and myself would definitely be yin & yang. He's quite polite and I'm... Not.
As for the human brain shrinking over the centuries, I can definitely buy into that theory. We have gotten lazier as a species and no longer have to remember as much because we have the technology to investigate within arms reach at all times. And I'm not excluding myself from that point of the finger, I'm as guilty as anyone.
A mod can move this if they want to since we are getting 'Off Topic.'
Ancient Greek philosophers complained about writing because people didn't have to remember everything, they could just refer to the text.
As hunter gatherers, everyone had to do everyone else's job because there were few people. That, and anyone could die at a moment's notice. Everyone had to know everything and then some. Once critical mass was achieved, for better or for worse (I think for better), people could specialize, there were enough replacement parts in the machine, if you will. There was a store of knowledge, and it was recorded, easily accessible.
Printing made the store and the accessibility more so. The internet, sheesh! In my lifetime, I have seen my attention span shrink. I do not look things up on my phone when I wonder about something. Instead I plumb my memory. If I don't have an answer, I asked the person sitting next to me. If they want to look it up on their phone, I lose interest.
I google things but I went to the library today because I have some research to do. I really am a codger. I prefer analog over digital, real over virtual.
I am sure everyone having a computer in their pocket is going to shrink our minds more. I do not know if this is a good thing or not. It will make us more productive collectively, but it will not make us smarter, per se, individually. Time will tell.
@Johnny Dingo would know. He came here from the future.
