The Objective Observer

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General Ranting

• Maureen Dowd is a Sexist Pig
• Everything Bad Is Still Bad for You
• The Da Vinci Code

Steven Johnson is putting my newly pledged “niceness” to the test; in a BIG way. I have to admit that I haven’t read his book, Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter (Riverhead) but I don’t have to in order to poke so many holes in its premise that it will think it is a pin cushion.

Mr. Johnson writes, “The most debased forms of mass diversion – video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms – turn out to be nutritional after all.” This joker actually tries to link an increase of 17 points in United States IQ scores from 1947 to 2001 to video games, TV dramas and sitcoms. And this guy actually got a publishing contract? I had no idea book publishers were in such dire straights.

Never mind a better educational system, better diet, more experienced test taking skills and the real cause, which I will get to in a moment. Oh no, it has to be the video games and TV. Sarcasm aside, the theory is that video games make you smart at analyzing systems. In addition, Mr. Johnson theorizes that emotional and social intelligence can be developed by watching dramas such as 24, Alias, ER, The Sopranos and The West Wing because of their complex plots and social networks.

I don’t know about you, but the only thing that I ever learned from The West Wing is that liberals like to escape into TV fantasyland when they aren’t in power. But besides this fact, it is implausible, if not downright impossible for video games and TV to make people smarter. Here’s why. First, somebody has to ALREADY be smart enough to create the content. Second, there ALREADY has to be an audience capable of consuming that content. You can’t come out with a video game or TV show that people are not already smart enough to consume. The video game or TV show would flop before people have a chance to become smart enough to master it. It defies all logic and reason. Fatal flaw number one.

Here’s another one. I don’t know if anyone has noticed this or not, but video games and TV have little or nothing to do with reality. If you are going to try to learn how to function in the real world from video games and TV, well, then you are in for a world of disappointment my good friend. The real world is nowhere near as exciting, stimulating or has anywhere near the sex and violence of TV. Thus, it is illogical to believe that you can learn anything useful from video games and TV that is actually going to help you in the real world, except maybe to learn English if you don’t already know it. This is like trying to learn something useful about farming by watching an episode of The Simple Life; or thinking you can learn anything useful about the vast majority of real women by flipping through the pages of Playboy. Guess what? Not going to happen. Fatal flaw number two.

Neither of these flaws is particularly difficult to understand and incredibly difficult to refute. Thus, the author and the publishers most likely know that they are peddling junk. Alternatively, they really could be so ignorant that they do not realize it. In that case, that would be yet another argument against their thesis. Obviously, pop culture has not made them any smarter. So, while the author and their publisher are probably making money peddling this trash, they are also demonstrating that they are either incredibly ignorant or incredibly dishonest.

The press is only slightly better. They actually cover and report on this complete crap and drivel. If this is the best news they can find to report on, then the publishing and book business is in seriously dire straights. Ignorant babble this flawed should never be reported upon or otherwise covered unless it is to ridicule.

So on to the final fatal flaw, fatal flaw number three; the real cause for the rise in intelligence scores. Guess what? It is the same thing that has been causing a rise in intelligence since the first ape stood upright and built a fire. It’s EVOLUTION baby, the only thing that CAN cause an actual increase in intellectual capacity.

While this probably deserves an essay of its own, check out John R. Horner’s work on the effects of the ebb and flow of America’s inland sea, the Western Interior Seaway, on the speciation of ceratopsians. Mr. Horner is arguably the most brilliant paleontologist alive today, perhaps ever. His book, Dinosaur Lives: Unearthing an Evolutionary Saga, essentially tracks how both the isolation and the new environments caused by the ebb and flow of the Western Interior Seaway had a pronounced and identifiable effect on the evolution of horned dinosaurs; that’s Triceratops and his ilk. So, think of what has occurred since 1947 to today in terms of travel and the breaking down of social barriers. This has led to more interracial marriages and marriages between previously isolated populations, which leads to what? Evolution. What has been the primary and most beneficial evolutionary adaptation that defines Homo sapiens? That’s right, the brain. Mystery solved; there’s your 17 IQ points Mr. Johnson.

Bottom line, we need more books like John R. Horner’s and less pathetic trash like the Steven Johnson’s. I’ll file Steven Johnson under the same heading as Dan Brown. Idiot.