For subscribers
Have humans passed peak brain power?
Data across countries and ages reveals a growing struggle to concentrate, and declining verbal and numerical reasoning.
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Nobody would argue that the fundamental biology of the human brain has changed in a far-too-short time span.
PHOTO: UNSPLASH
John Burn-Murdoch
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What is intelligence? This may sound like a straightforward question with a straightforward answer – the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “a capacity to understand” – but that definition itself raises an increasingly relevant question in the modern world. What happens if the extent to which we can practically apply that capacity is diminishing?
Evidence is mounting that something exactly like this has been happening to the human intellect over the past decade or so.
