Have you ever bumped into someone marvellously erudite, full of wisdom and interesting information on a wide range of issues? On the other hand, have you ever bumped into someone who seems to have stepped straight out of the movie Idiocracy?
I’m willing to bet that you seldom ever see the former and that you find the latter almost everywhere, from the street to Parliament. Since every aspect of human welfare depends very closely on accumulated knowledge, it matters immensely if the balance between the two shifts.
What does it take to create the former and why instead do we see so much of the latter?
Inborn intelligence plays a large role in how much skill and knowledge individuals end up accumulating. Yet it is undeniable that the development of any skill requires practice, and knowledge depends on exposure. Formal education provides much of the practice and exposure, but by no means all of it.
The primary means of storing accumulated knowledge is the written word. It stands to reason that we acquire the cognitive skills and knowledge we end up with mostly by reading.
Using data on textbook reading requirements, and time spent preparing for classes and exams, I once estimated how much reading an average student requires in the US to obtain various qualifications.
The qualifications ranged from an associate degree at a two-year community college to a PhD or academic tenure at a decent university.
One could express this in the number of 500-page textbooks or 300-page serious ordinary soft-cover works. I use the 300-page measure. 48 books and about 800 hours of reading (assuming you read each book twice) equates to a two-year associate degree.
A basic BA (and honours degree in SA) is the equivalent of 96 books and 1,610 hours of reading, a PhD, 587 books and 7,363 hours, and tenure, 1,110 books and 13,930 hours of reading.
Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours for top-class expertise converts to 797 books. That is just reading and does not account for time spent discussing or disputing the contents.
At a rate of one book per week (a rate of reading achieved by fewer than 4% of the US population) it would take at least 17 years to read enough to acquire the skills and knowledge of a PhD or four basic degrees in different subjects.
Mental chewing gum
At 2.5 hours per day (less than the average person spends on TV or their phone), you could do it in half the time. It is feasible to become as erudite as a tenured professor by the age of 35. Naturally the books must all be challenging and informative. No mental chewing gum.
Also, to become an expert, the reading should concentrate on your subject. Now few people actually earn the equivalent cognitive skills of a PhD or four degrees by age 35, but in principle ten times the current rate in the US population is possible.
Instead of an erudite or expert world, things are going backward.
In 1969 the richest and most privileged – college graduates – were reading less than the least privileged – those with only basic education – were in 1950. Reading rates continue to decline and reading scores are following suit.
The latest PISA scores (standardised measures of mathematics, science and reading skills) of the 33 OECD countries show a steady decline over the last decade. The Flynn effect (increases in IQ scores over the 20th century) have started reversing. IQs in several developed countries, such as, for example, the UK, USA and Sweden, have declined since 2000.
In the US you need 15% more education to achieve the same vocabulary as 40 years ago. Alternatively, the same amount of time in formal education will leave you with a vocabulary 20% lower than you could expect in the late 70s. Mindless TV started the decline. People spent an average of 40% of their leisure time staring at the screen. Researchers found that IQs in Norway dropped 0.8 points per year as a result of TV exposure.
Now people look at their phones 144 times per day. Mostly they watch YouTube or TikTok, where stuff like someone wearing a microwave as a helmet is the main entertainment. Added to that is the trend in educational institutions to oppose hierarchies of value about what is ‘better’.
They claim that saying classic literature is better than TikTok somehow harmfully marginalises people. There aren’t many philosophers who believe that every thought and expression is of equal value.
Massive decline
The institutional outlook reflects what Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset explained in his book The Revolt of the Masses. He said that in the early 20th century the masses started feeling they were just as entitled as the elite to express their preferences within civilization, and the result would be a massive decline in standards.
The British utilitarian philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill claimed that all that counted was the pleasure or pain felt by individuals and that no source of pain or pleasure was privileged. However, both were horrified when they realised that the cultural preferences of the masses would replace those of the elite.
Good books, like the classics, expose readers to people, experiences, ideas and perspectives they would never see in life. Nothing improving can come from the mass’s navel gazing. The working class had the most political power when high culture was at its peak in the early 20th century.
The knock-on effects of the decline in quality and volume of reading are everywhere. Music has become simpler, more repetitive and noisier over time. UK’s Parliament and the US’s Congress have seen debates degenerate in quality. Politicians take metaphors literally and respond with moronic outrage.
The reading difficulty and idea density (number of ideas per 10 words) of political speeches has declined steadily. The likes of HL Mencken no longer appear in newspapers. All that matters is to attract attention by any means, like wearing a microware as headwear or a red overall. Even science is less innovative and original than it was.
Social media algorithms (and to some extent AI) feed you what you already believe and like.
Unfortunately, they are also more likely to feed you junk than uplifting versions of it. Not only will you learn nothing outside your narrow preferences, but your knowledge around your own preferences will become impoverished. This is industrialised misinformation to take advantage of how we evolved to “hook” attention, just like purveyors of junk food and gambling do.
Obviously, this does not bode well for civilization.
Cultural vanguards
What to do? One new development is to force social media companies to allow people to switch off algorithms or otherwise control them. Another is to fight the cultural vanguards and insist on standards.
Finally, you could rescue yourself (and those you influence) and gain an advantage in life, by swapping phone and TV time for serious reading.
The experience of reading is at least as pleasant as the mental chewing gum, as is Michelin-Star dining compared to McDonald’s but without the crazy prices.
[Image: by Wavebreakmedia]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend