Since we are getting more intelligent as a species

24 and as long as I have money for rent, food and water I'm fine. I don't even need to have internet access because I can use books or the free internet in the library. Even though I don't have depression my desires are dead for some reason.

No! His creative genius is what makes him superior. The average present day high schooler is no more advanced then ones from hundreds of years ago, being that they lack the genius of originality, invention, discovery etc, and only repeat or imitate without thought or comprehension. Also, such a man as Isaac Newton would only be more advanced, when surrounded by the advantages of modern society.

>Since we are getting more intelligent as a species via evolution

You are assuming that our environment selects for intelligence.

But Newton was a highly devout christian

That was common for that day!

That didn't believed that Jesus was divine. He had some weird beliefs.

*tips fedora*

Evolution isn't real it's just a theory you sweaty nerd loser.

studies say that general IQ has increased in the last few decades in first world countries, but I don't think the change is actually in our brain, I think it's in how we're using our brains. Everyday life now involves a lot more abstract thought than it did 50 or 100 years ago. So no if you went back to the 1600s Newton would still be smarter than you.
IMO our IQ as a species won't start improving until it becomes a defining factor of survival/reproduction; that's not to say that it isn't a factor but you can't tell me it's the biggest one.

at least pretend to put some effort into it

So i heard a very nice analogy from a programmer the other day.

Basically the point was that nobody could humanly be an expert at everything from Assembly to Java. That's why it's so important to define the tools you create with the tools you have. Poorly defined practical applications of developments in your code will cascade into ineffectiveness as you progress down the "coding language chain"

Same thing with the sciences, in a sense.
Mathematics define concepts for use in physics, which define concepts for use in chemistry and so on.

Stuff like sociology isn't actually easy, it's just so incredibly complex that there's no way to rigorously derive any exact definitions.
(And this lack of anything resembling -facts- and hard science is part of the reason its ridiculed so much)

In a sense, this information compartmentalization is one of the biggest game changers in scientific dvelopment. It allows us to overcome some of the natural limitations of the human brain, it's memory and short life span.

Leonardo Da Vinci was the last multigenious. we probably wont have another due to practical limitations on what a human can learn in a life time.

/endofuneducatedrambling

I don't think your average current high schooler would be able to come up with calculus

And that evolution act in any significant sense in the span of a few handfulls of generations.

I think he'd be a pothead if he was around today

>And that evolution act in any significant sense in the span of a few handfulls of generations.

Well, you know, genetic drift with a global population of 7 billion with transcontinental travel isn't exactly going to be as rapid as the beagle found it, amirite?

I mean, is calculus really all the complicated to discover? I used to think about change, and changes in change as a kid. He figured out the mathematical formula behind derivatives and integration, and a ton of their applications, but the fundamental theory of calculus isn't more complicated than figuring out how to mathematically calculate what the rate of change is of a function.

Yeah that's what im implying?

>Yeah that's what im implying?

Yes.... yes it is.

Feel like a few dozen points are sailing over my head. Care to elaborate so i can read up abdstop being wrong?

>Feel like a few dozen points are sailing over my head.

Nah, you're just getting that feeling because the psychological effect of the image macro I posted along with my text up there wasn't accurately received in the manner it was intended.

No worries though, although your astuteness has served you well in noticing that there WAS a subtle joke implied within the labyrinthine memetic recesses of my post, I assure you my good man, it was not directed at you.

Care to elaborate so i can read up abdstop being wrong?

>Care to elaborate so i can read up abdstop being wrong?

That should have been greentexted, follow by the phrase:

"Not even necessary"

Right.

I realize this but engineering teachers pretend this is false, at least in my country.
For example why I neeed to even aknowledge that maxwell equations are true for a three dimensional wave moving throught space? Why I need, at the same time, know all the power sources avaliable to FTIR and all those particular cases where precipation tritation would fail? After a while you understand that they pretend you supposed to be the guy that has linear algebra in your heart but also should be able to not only plug high end science together but also derive and check everything from basic trigonometric if needed. Let's not even talk about the "today we gonna roleplay we are living in the 16th so we must know how to do numerical calculus not only in general terms but also know this specific pitfall that's totally not there just to force you to fail" or the "I know you understand the theory but you also need to know all these one weird trick to start the question".

Why they don't make up their minds and choose between pluggers or people who can prove shit using basic math? Is engineering school in USA any different?

Im from Denmark, i wouldn't know.

As an engineer the stuff you mentioned is, yeah, kind of pointless in some ways.

I don't think there's an agenda behind it, maybe it's just outdated pensums or uninspired teachers?

I do think that engineers need a basic understanding of a lot of basic principles, in order to correlate and draw inspiration from multiple fields when solving problems.

Existence is a diamond y'know? Every scientific field, equation, chemical reaction and so on is just another facet, another perspective to view it through.

Problem is:

>you need to learn all these specific details on top of all these traps because you need knowledge from all the areas
Ok, I don't know exactly what you are asking but I know other things that I tried to learn on my on
>no you need to learn a bit from every field that I ORDER YOU and not these useless fields you chose by yourself
>but I tried to spend more time in projects instead of theory but this required a lot of time
>no, no, no, stop it, you party year around now try to fool me

you know who else thought that? moslems

I know that feeling. Spending way too much time on exciting projects and stuff instead of the curriculums.

On the bright side, if you pass your examns, none of those things you learned are gone. They'll be a goldmine of inspiration and information once you, y'know, get an actual practical job, solving problems.

Because that's what being an engineer is all about, taking all that shit and -using- it to fix all of the shit. All of it.

At the very least it keeps you curious, and that's more important than you could ever imagine.

What they said. It's easy to sit in your armchair and claim that calculus wouldn't be 'difficult' to discover in this day and age, when any studious high-schooler could learn the basics of it.

Imagine living in Newton's time, when most people were illiterate and even more knew next to no mathematics. He was certainly an outlier; I doubt that kind of intelligence is replicated very often.

As someone else mentioned, we cannot say for sure that 'evolution' favors smarts as of yet. So, no, I don't believe that Newton would be comparable to an average high-schooler in the future. I believe he will still be far superior to most.

In undergraduate it's good to get a decent breadth of knowledge into students, especially engineers. It gives you exposure to find what you like / are the best at; it also gives you a good basic understanding of the world outside your niche which can change how you go about solving problems in your profession. For example a software engineer that understands the basics of how a compiler or interpreter works and how assembly and machine language are structured and how a computer processes them can change how they go about creating a program in C. Same with the knowledge of how logic gates and the actual physical processor and circuits work.

No the Flynn effect isn't an evolutionary phenomenon, it only says that old methods of measuring intelligence become less reliable when they've been around for too long. OK?