Some images are permanently burned into memory. I can still visualize the steam cloud created by the explosion with the two "ears" created by wayward SRB's on top of the rocket exhaust trail. It was a cold cloudless day with nothing else present in the sky and it just stayed there for what seemed like forever.
My earliest permanent memory was the assassination of JFK. It happened while I was attending the special school for misfits. The school was small with no playground, so we were driven to a local park in a Volkswagen van. We were getting into the van to return to school, but the radio was not playing the usual Beatles music, only the news of the shooting. Oddly I remember the dirty blue van and the musicless radio in the grey dash.
A man who has been married for 37 years, 8 months, and 31 days knows not to question his wife no matter what she calls it or puts it in. I do however draw the line at tomato in breakfast cereal. I will accept it in eggs if it comes with cheese and onions.
Sorry for the soapbox, but still hope the points are meaningful....
Saw this thread a little late and wanted to go back to the OP and some of the responses. I almost envy those born in 2000 or later and wonder how other people my age can not feel the same. In 1970 we had to call the local librarian to find a fact that was not covered in our out-of-date encyclopedias. Researching a high school science project in my town required a 60 mile round trip to a local university library. Information was a very scarce commodity.
So are kids less intelligent now that information is everywhere? Teens today cannot use our slide rules or do math in their heads, but can we use Mathematica to understand and analyze complex problems? 12 year old kids can and do in the right educational setting. Don't blame the technology if the educational system is failing.
Kids today have the world's knowledge at their fingertips. If you doubt what that enables, volunteer at a local STEM class or any class for "advanced" or "gifted" kids. I've watched 9 year old kids take apart discarded copiers and build robots from salvaged parts. 11-13 year old kids that understand video production and marketing concepts so well that they create professional and highly persuasive videos.
As for the "average" or even less enabled people? They are able to achieve things that were previously beyond them, thanks to videos that address daily life challenges like troubleshooting and repairing an appliance. There are different definitions of intelligence, but many include the ability to understand and control one's environment. That's a practical definition, and one that makes people on the unfortunate side of the bell curve, far more intelligent today than ever before.
Saw this thread a little late and wanted to go back to the OP and some of the responses. I almost envy those born in 2000 or later and wonder how other people my age can not feel the same. In 1970 we had to call the local librarian to find a fact that was not covered in our out-of-date encyclopedias. Researching a high school science project in my town required a 60 mile round trip to a local university library. Information was a very scarce commodity.
So are kids less intelligent now that information is everywhere? Teens today cannot use our slide rules or do math in their heads, but can we use Mathematica to understand and analyze complex problems? 12 year old kids can and do in the right educational setting. Don't blame the technology if the educational system is failing.
Kids today have the world's knowledge at their fingertips. If you doubt what that enables, volunteer at a local STEM class or any class for "advanced" or "gifted" kids. I've watched 9 year old kids take apart discarded copiers and build robots from salvaged parts. 11-13 year old kids that understand video production and marketing concepts so well that they create professional and highly persuasive videos.
As for the "average" or even less enabled people? They are able to achieve things that were previously beyond them, thanks to videos that address daily life challenges like troubleshooting and repairing an appliance. There are different definitions of intelligence, but many include the ability to understand and control one's environment. That's a practical definition, and one that makes people on the unfortunate side of the bell curve, far more intelligent today than ever before.
And that was exactly the idea behind the repeated videos from the media of the WTC towers collapsing, to insure that you retain the horror - a form of brainwashing.
Not always.
My father was a SEPTA bus driver, and after high school he suggested that he could land me a job with the company too.
However I chose my own path, I'm more of a "leader" type person than a follower.
I like to be independant, I enjoy my born-with freedom.
Computers are double edged blades.They help the smart guys do the smartest things and stupid people progress down the hole... and we have proof of it :
The wise guy is wise because it already happened to him, and he knows what to avoid.
dave
I vaguely remember my grandmother giving me a bath in her kitchen sink, and me fascinated that the bar of Ivory soap floated in the water.
I must have been a toddler at the time.
They do make very good use of computers.14...16 yo kids beat world champions from time to time by using memorised strategies made by computers:
On the other hand 13 yo Magnus draw Kasparov without using any computer but having outstanding memory.
" Computers are double edged blades, they help the smartest guys do the smartest things" - what do Concord, the space shuttle, the bullet train and the 747 have in common? - designed with slide rules. Odd to think that Concord and the shuttle are just museum exhibits now, it's like we've gone backwards.
Martin lockheed jet fighters can't even be flown without computers...
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Only 59 units 747 on regular scheduled service.
Some A380 also scheduled for storage / scrapping, not viable.
Will be exhibits / scrap by 2030.
Some A380 also scheduled for storage / scrapping, not viable.
Will be exhibits / scrap by 2030.
Some 10-12 year old kid came to the electronics market here with his Mom for the circuit for a moisture sensor, one shop has many kits for projects.
The trader said huh?, and the kid pulls out a smart phone, finds what he needs on the net, and points to the photo...
Seller says, comes with sensor, not circuit alone, less than $2.
Kid says fine, buys it, mom pays, tells me Vcc is positive.
I asked where is negative...he got confused, board had Vdd printed on it.
Point is, he knew what to look for.
That is useful.
But Vdd is what had him losing his confidence...
The trader said huh?, and the kid pulls out a smart phone, finds what he needs on the net, and points to the photo...
Seller says, comes with sensor, not circuit alone, less than $2.
Kid says fine, buys it, mom pays, tells me Vcc is positive.
I asked where is negative...he got confused, board had Vdd printed on it.
Point is, he knew what to look for.
That is useful.
But Vdd is what had him losing his confidence...
Kids today have the worlds knowledge at there fingertips but they have even more misinformation and out right lies getting in the way. We went camping recently and a friend was freezing salt water for his cooler because he saw a few videos that "proved" the point it kept your cooler cold for longer. Which is wrong. You get a colder cooler which increases the temp. difference and also the heat transfer.
You really think using mathmatica is better for the brain than learning the math? Or using a spice program is better than learning to model circuits by pencil? You end up using trial and error instead of knowledge and intuition. This can be extended to almost everything. Being spoon fed information does not create critical thinkers.
Not just the kids. I am amazed at how many “smart” people spew out this misinformation.
Just had a buddy visit and we got into a too long discussion where he kept spewing misinformation and i kept trying to unwing him… he set the stage by saying chemtrails. The next day a BBC article explained contrails (ice formed in the sky by the plane passing thru) so hopefully i at least unwound that one.
It is scary.
dave
Yeah, we've got some of those in the neighborhood. Covid really brought out the worst ones though. I try and avoid them now when I'm out walking the dog.
jeff
A skill is as useful as the need for it.Do you forge your own knives, do you grow your own food? No! You rely on technology and poorely paid workers to do it.
And trial and error method is based mainly on intuition which doesn't become necessarily better with more information.Sometimes the carpenter knows what the electrical engineer can't figure out.
I was poor, very poor at mathematics, mainly because I always had poor memory and a minor autism while the school asked me to perform at 15 different subjects all the same.Parents also had huge expectations and showed me their superiority whenever they could to shame me.Actually engineering was something my father wanted me to do allthough I was good at french , philosophy, litterature and sports...I followed physics snd chemistry...I did tons of maths in one of the highest regarded highschool in the world(thankfully for free) as it gave two world champion at mathematics olympics, but I was one of the poorest students at math that highschool ever had in a century.
Trial & error was my thing.Accumulated knowledge did help, but was aquired mainly through countless trials and errors.Simulators helped a lot.I still don't know a lot about them, but they were made specifically so that people like me can do some design here and there.
I know true professionals that can't be introduced to Altium, but are very good with Eagle or Orcad.I only learned Altium for 6 weeks and it looked fantastically easy to work with for me.It was made for people like me.We're not all the same.
In school I was faitly good at chess, but I often lost games because I forgot one of the earliest anslysses I made.If you have poor short term memory like I have you're forced to repeat following the same logical pathways, but that leads from time to time to creativity because the brain is not a computer, it finds new ways to make use of less sugar when it can.
Repetition and trial & error methods
occasionally give birth to creativity because creativity relates to laziness and economy of means or just enthropy.If you stress your brains long enough you find new ways because the brain cells need to rest so they allow for quicker information or pattern retrieval.
If a professional is using a simulator he doesn't trust it so he's making his own convergence rules and apply them on the circuit he's looking to analize.When I do simulations I do it for a thousand times until I get it.Eventually I find the rules that I missed, but in a very empirical form.I just notice "glitches in the matrix"cause I am the one who runs the simulator for 1000 times.And those glitches tell me quietly to make dome minor changes here and there.In the end I find the glue that binds the glitches and avoid it without being able to name it clearly so that I get reliable results. And I do get reliable results for a while even without doing advanced simullations.I trust simullators more than a professional and in the end we share the similar skepticism, but from different positions.
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And now theres censoring. Soon the info you receive will only be what "they" want you to see.
From https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/08/big-techs-heavy-hand-around-globe
"Another worrisome trend is major tech companies coordinating to remove content that they define as “terrorist” or “extremist.” While it’s understandable that Facebook, Google, and other tech companies want to work together to counter such content, evidence suggests they are over-censoring — and in fact often removing anti-terrorism counterspeech, satire, and journalistic material, with grave implications for rights including free speech and accountability. Online documentation of attacks on civilians and other grave human rights abuses in Syria and Yemen, for example, is rapidly disappearing, often making this information inaccessible to researchers and criminal investigators and impeding efforts to serve justice on those responsible."
From https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/08/big-techs-heavy-hand-around-globe
"Another worrisome trend is major tech companies coordinating to remove content that they define as “terrorist” or “extremist.” While it’s understandable that Facebook, Google, and other tech companies want to work together to counter such content, evidence suggests they are over-censoring — and in fact often removing anti-terrorism counterspeech, satire, and journalistic material, with grave implications for rights including free speech and accountability. Online documentation of attacks on civilians and other grave human rights abuses in Syria and Yemen, for example, is rapidly disappearing, often making this information inaccessible to researchers and criminal investigators and impeding efforts to serve justice on those responsible."
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If I had to I could forge a knife (I read a metallurgy book once) and I have grown my own food. I could go on about my life and experience which is quite different but thats not the point. We are talking about the general public and intelligence and how to change it. If you know ohms law (if you know ohms law substitute something more complicated) you know how much to change the resistor and what power rating to use, if you need to simulate and are guessing or worse just copying, your wasting time and you might not even think about a power rating because spice doesn't care.