Are people getting dumber? My latest at Taki’s

One of my “favorite” subjects…

Steven Pinker concurs. The famous Harvard prof insists that anyone who thinks we’re stranded on Normal Island in the middle of the Imbecile Ocean “needs a sanity check.”

After all, isn’t it self-evident that humankind—fellows such as Pinker recoil from saying “man”—is more enlightened than ever before?

I thought the conviction that one’s generation is the most advanced and ingenious in history was a hoary, even dangerous one. (Dr. Pangloss, please pick up the white courtesy phone.)

When you’re a Pinker, everything looks like a Flynn. What about the rest of us? Contributor Linda S. Gottfredson (who sounds shockingly intelligent for a sociologist) departed from the “best of all possible worlds” script.

True, she notes, a handful of brainiacs—such as those invited to NYT symposia—have cured previously fatal maladies. But, she asks, what good is that if the vast majority can’t figure out how to take this medication properly, avoid contracting preventable conditions in the first place—or, I would add, are too stupid to live anyhow?

Take these people…

(Read the rest here.)

Damn:

I just remembered that I (stupidly) forgot to joke about the New York Times running a print symposium on “stupidity,” even though, like almost every other daily paper in America, they supposedly aim for/achieve a 10th grade reading level, tops — the same as that “stupid” USA Today.