On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 8:10 AM, Melissa P <[email protected]>wrote:
> Gosh, I hope this one/news hasn’t been posted yet. > > A "Family Guy" episode satirizing abortion that Fox declined to broadcast > is to be released as a stand-alone DVD in September. > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/arts/television/20family.html?src=me&ref=arts > The money quote is at the end of the article: ************** "But he did not criticize Fox for its decisions, which he said revealed more about mass audiences than about the networks. “People in America, they’re getting dumber,” Mr. MacFarlane said. “They’re getting less and less able to analyze something and think critically, and pick apart the underlying elements. And more and more ready to make a snap judgment regarding something at face value, which is too bad.” ************** As a self-identified and unapologetic, unreconstructed liberal, I find myself subjectively agreeing with this, and affirm it is true of Americans in general, conservatives, liberals and everyone in between. It is less about ideology and more about a certain intellectual approach. The fact are, however, that it is not true that people in American are getting dumber. The data is quite clear that Americans (and everyone else in the world) are getting smarter - at least as measured by intelligence tests. This is called the "Flynn Effect" - over the last 110 years the average IQ of Americans has increased steadily, at a rate of about .3 points per year (3 points per decade). Over the last 55 years average American IQ has increased 18 points (for reference, the standard deviation of IQ is 15 points, so this is quite a large increase over a relatively small period of time). One of the most puzzling things about the Flynn Effect is that it is largest with the kinds of tests that are least verbal, and rely least on learned, cultural knowledge (the opposite of what some psychologists who specialize in intelligence would have predicted). The Flynn Effect is, to a large extent, the result of more people going to school, and of school based instruction focusing more on abstract learning, as opposed to specific, rote learning. Some psychologists think part of the increase in recent decades is due to video games, and television, which increase abstract thinking (there is an interesting study that shows that kids randomly assigned to play "Call of Duty" 1 hour a day for 10 days did better on an IQ test that kids assigned to play Tetris for the same period). So, not only are Americans not getting dumber, they are getting smarter - and smarter in precisely the ways that should increase if not appreciation, at least toleration for the kinds of things McFarlane does. So why doesn't it feel like Americans are getting smarter? I don't think we know for sure, but my theory is that as more and more people get a little bit smarter, they enter the arena of what we might call "public debate". More and more people have the rudimentary tools to have an opinion about what is going on around them, know superficially at least what an opinion is supposed to look like, and believe that theirs is as valid as anyone else's. This has the effect of lowering the quality of opinion in the arena of public debate. To put it crudely, if 50 years ago only 30% of the population were smart enough to have and express an opinion in the arena of public debate, now 45% of the population has the intellectual ability to do so - but most of the extra 15% have only minimal intellectual tools. They are "smarter" than their grandparents were, but that only allows them to graduate to a level of discourse where they are dumber than most of the people who were already there. This waters down the quality of existing discourse, and makes the people who were already there feel like the population is getting dumber. One might call this the "Sarah Palin Effect" - though I am sure there are those who might want to refudiate that. Of course there is something horribly elitist and narrow about this analysis. There are likely other benefits to having more people engage in the public debate that are not being considered - and it is possible that as people continue to get smarter the population will be much better off having more of its numbers involved in debate (though this presupposes that the greater number of poorly equipped people taking part in the public debate don't do something stupid to stifle the continued growth of debate, like increase censorship and undermine free inquiry in schools - an assumption that might not be justified). -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
