Geocentric beliefs: One in five Russians still thinks the Sun orbits Earth

The Earth revolves around the Sun. This fundamental scientific fact seems indisputable, yet a recent survey revealed that one in five Russians believes the Sun orbits the Earth. The same poll indicated that 16% of Russians think humans coexisted with dinosaurs, and a staggering 36% are convinced that antibiotics can kill viruses. These aren't the results of a casual online poll; they come from data presented by the Russian Academy of Sciences. The trend is particularly alarming: just a year prior, about one in six Russians subscribed to the geocentric model of the universe.

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View of the earth from space

One might immediately point fingers at educational reforms, such as the Unified State Exam (EGE), which may have reduced the volume of knowledge students are expected to retain, or lament the general quality of modern schooling. However, there's no concrete evidence directly linking the decline in scientific literacy solely to Russia's examination system. Disturbingly, similar issues are surfacing globally.

A Worldwide Decline in Literacy

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has documented a worrying worldwide trend: adult literacy has stagnated or declined over the past decade in most surveyed nations. Among young adults aged 16–24, literacy rates have either decreased or failed to improve in 24 out of 27 countries participating in two cycles of the OECD's Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). On average, a quarter of adults in OECD countries today fall into the two lowest levels of text comprehension.

This decline doesn't necessarily mean younger generations are inherently "less intelligent" than their parents. When looking at absolute scores, adults aged 25–34 typically perform best, while those aged 55–65 score the lowest. While older generations may have received an education that provided a more cohesive worldview and emphasized memorization of a larger volume of facts, cognitive skills related to processing new information tend to diminish with age.

The Rise of 'Knowing Where to Find It'

The phenomenon may represent not so much an erosion of intellect as a fundamental shift in how knowledge is stored and accessed. We can broadly categorize knowledge into three types: "I remember it," "I know it," and "I know where to find it." Several decades ago, the first two categories were critical for navigating life. Today, the importance of the third category is rapidly escalating.

Why bother memorizing a country's capital, a historical date, a scientific formula, or the name of a medication when a smartphone can deliver the answer in five seconds? The internet has already liberated individuals from the burden of retaining vast amounts of reference information. Now, artificial intelligence is taking the next step, often eliminating the need to even search for and cross-reference data independently.

There's an undeniable logic to this evolution. The sheer volume of information available to humanity today is incomparable to what existed even a century or a millennium ago. The pace of life has quickened, professions demand constant acquisition of new skills, and the ability to rapidly locate relevant information has genuinely become a crucial intellectual asset.

The Paradox of External Knowledge

However, this leads to a paradox: effectively utilizing external knowledge necessitates a substantial internal foundation of knowledge. One must possess at least a rudimentary understanding of a subject to critically evaluate the information presented by search engines, smartphones, or AI. Without this internal base, individuals are incapable of spotting errors, distinguishing fact from fiction, or recognizing when a retrieved answer contradicts fundamental laws of nature or established historical events.

Therefore, "knowing where to find it" cannot fully replace "knowing it." The more powerful the machines that answer our questions become, the more vital our own intellectual framework becomes for verifying their responses. The case of the Sun and Earth is thus significant not merely as evidence of Russian intellectual decline. It serves as a symptom of a much larger, ongoing experiment. We are, for the first time, building a civilization where extensive memorization may not be mandatory for survival. But if our internal knowledge base becomes too sparse, we risk reaching a point where we can no longer discern if the instantly retrieved answer is correct.

Source: This commentary was adapted from an original Russian-language publication by Pravda.Ru.