One of the occasional but regular themes around here has been something I’ve called “visualcy”. A quick summary of the hypothesis is that, just as orality was supplanted by literacy, visualcy, a reliance for information on visual imagery of different sorts, is replacing literacy as the primary way by which most people receive information and, just as literacy produced cognitive and behavior changes in people, so will visualcy. In a recent article at Reason.com, Michael Shermer, citing the “Flynn effect”, wonders if we’re “becoming morally smarter”:
If the moral Flynn effect is real-and I think it is-the implications for the future of humanity are encouraging as we continue expanding the moral sphere along with the abstract complexity of our technologies and culture.
It’s hard to accept the notion that people in the early 20th century were moral idiots, two standard deviations dumber than us. Their attitudes about race and gender sure seem morally moronic to us today, but does that mean in another half century our descendants will look at us with equal moral dumbfoundedness? Surely we’ve learned some things that will carry civilization forward and that are grounded in relatively permanent principles, such as equal rights for everyone. I believe we have.
The “Flynn effect”, a secular increase in IQs, was named for the psychologist, political scientist, and activist James R. Flynn who documented it. It posits that over the last century or so IQs, as measured by ordinary IQ tests, have risen on a regular basis. As Mr. Shermer notes, that has occurred almost entirely due to improvements in abstract reasoning. He then draws a link that I find suspicious between the rise in IQ scores and moral improvement as evidenced by greater rights for women and minorities.
Unfortunately, although he dances around it, Mr. Shermer fails to identify the actual processes involved. As I’ve mentioned before, there is a demonstrated causal relationship between literacy and abstract reasoning. The causality moves from literacy to improvements in abstract reasoning to increases in IQ.
Recent research has suggested that the “Flynn effect” ended in 1975 and may even have reversed. That supports the visualcy hypothesis: as people increasingly derive their information through visual means abstract reasoning ability actually decreases along with a host of other cognitive and behavioral effects, as I’ve catalogued in previous posts.
In my view the sheer volume of information with which we’re being deluged strongly suggests that visualcy will only increase and as it does the very things we’ve noticed over the last several years—an increase in reflexive “tribalism” and more agonistic modes of expression.