The new generation is indeed not the equal of its progenitors

Language Log is one of the more enjoyable sites on the internet for quixotic topics and intelligent discussion.

In this instance the discussion is an echo of one I had among Scout leaders the other day. End of year pot luck dinner in an old Scout Hut with momentoes of past times and scouters. Relics of projects, laughter and camaraderie. The conversation took a turn towards universities and which ones our kids were attending. Someone mentioned that his child was attending the same university from which he graduated, offering the age old observation "I wouldn't be able to get in now." It struck a bell. In my first week or two at Georgetown some decades ago, there was an informal meeting with local alumni, all of whom seem aged to a wet-behind-the-ears freshman. I recall the same comment then: "I wouldn't be able to get in now."

Which made me wonder how one can even test such a context specific hypothesis. Sure the standards have changed and usually gotten higher, but we can't all not get into the same institutions we once attended.

And the connection is to this post at Language Log, Kids Today by mark Liberman. He cites several quotations from the past:

Many children today are greatly to be pitied because too much is done for them and dictated to them and they are deprived of the learning processes. We seem to have dropped into an age of entertaining, a breathless going from one sensation to another, whether it be mechanical toys for the five-year-old or moving-picture plays for the sixteen-year-old. It not only destroys their power to think, but also makes happiness, contentment, and resourcefulness impossible. At seventeen, life is spoken of as "so dull" if there is not "something doing" every waking hour.

and

[The 4th-C. sophist Libanius] described the unmannerly behaviour of his pupils during a solemn lecture, a presentation to which a wider audience was admitted. He had ordered a slave to call the students in. They hardly budged, continuing to chat, laugh and sing the top hits of the day. Finally, they condescended to enter the hall, yet their lackadaisical attitude roused the ire of those already present and made them resentful. Finally the lecture could begin. The students, however, were winking at one another, were talking about this, that and the other, about charioteers, mimes, horses, pantomimes, and fights among students. Some students lolled about like statues, arms folded, while others picked their noses with both hands at once, remained utterly unmoved while everyone applauded, forced enthusiastic members of the audience to fit down. Their behaviour could be even more disgraceful: they clapped at unsuitable moments, prevented others from applauding, strutted ostentatiously through the lecture-theatre and tried to lure as many people as possible out of the hall by concocting false messages or by spreading round invitations to the baths.

The first describes the core of many contemporary hand-wringing magazine and newspaper articles but is from 1915 and the second is, obviously, from the 4th century.

The discussion in the comments is interesting and sophisticated.

Having been intensely interested in Egyptology as a youth, even going to the extent of teaching myself some rudimentary basics in order to read hieroglyphs, I have long been aware of passages from Sumeria, Egypt, Rome, Greece, etc. lamenting the decline of youth.

I parked this simply as evidence of an ever present adult disposition to mismatch the conditions of contemporary youth (and how they respond) against the conditions of the commenter's youth (and how it was then appropriate to respond.) Sure, youth differ from aged but so do the contextual circumstances of youth and aged. A seventeen year old in 1940 is responding to the contextual circumstances of 1940. If you were to time shift that seventeen year-old forward seventy years to 2010 and the contextual circumstances of 2010, they might react just as their new millennial peers. But it is hard for the non-time travelling 87 year-old to recalibrate what they think they know to the reality of the contextual circumstances of today. The net is that my thinking extended only to the conclusion that there was an ever-recurring Curmudgeon's Lament and that therefore it was improbable that there were significant cycles of differences in capability from one generation to the next.

But I wonder if this is actually correct. Or maybe it is only partially correct. Confronted with the phenomenon again in this language log post, I wonder if perhaps the plaint might have more validity than I had accorded it. Why? Survivorship bias.

Let's assume a culture/state/nation has some gaussian cycle of development and decline. It rises for some period of years, plateaus, and then declines. While the shape of the curve and the details vary, this is pretty much how we are accustomed to thinking of all ancient powers from Egypt and Sumer to the British Empire and Pax Americana.

Further, let's observe and assume that records are more voluminous on the back end of the cycle than the front end. No-one bursts forth with writing and literature in full spate at the beginning. Power development and literature/records tend to go hand in hand. As there is greater prosperity, there are more records. Prosperity tends to be the greatest, in absolute terms, at the top and decline side of the cycle than at the beginning.

Finally, let's assume that volume is correlated with survival of documents. If there were 100 scribes producing court records at the very beginning and 1,000 at the peak, then there are ten times more records at the top (and decline) than at the beginning and therefore a ten times greater probability of survival.

Records survival is highly capricious and serendipitous. Even at the full development of a civilization, sometimes there are years and decades where we have little or no written records. Originating volume has a marked impact on probability of survival. What we know depends on what survives and what survives is most likely to be from the decline phase rather than the growth phase.

If all these assumptions are true, and there is a good likelihood that they are, and most of what we know is from the declining phase of a power, then perhaps there is merit to those continuing lamentations that kids weren't what they used to be. If the lament is written from the decline phase, then the kids weren't what they used to be.

This certainly fits lots of different hypotheses about the rise and decline of nations, but principally that prosperity is the seed bed for decline. As prosperity and productivity grow, there is greater shielding from day-to-day challenges of poverty. With prosperity, people have more options and choices. With choices, people dither, lose focus, lose perspective, lose discipline, etc.

I have long thought of the repetitive written record of complaints against the younger generation as simply being the Curmudgeon's Lament. All generations lament the weakness of the new generation. But this line of thought suggests otherwise. At some times and under some circumstances, the new generation is indeed not the equal of its progenitors.