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from the tv-and-video-games-cause-brain-rot dept.
A Norwegian study published Monday found a seven-point dip in IQ test scores per generation among men born from 1962 to 1991. The results suggest a reversal in the Flynn effect, an observed increase in IQ scores throughout the 20th century in developed countries.
Coverage from The Week adds:
The reasons for the Flynn effect and its apparent reversal are disputed. "Scientists have put the rise in IQ down to better teaching, nutrition, healthcare and even artificial lighting," says The Times.
But "it is also possible that the nature of intelligence is changing in the digital age and cannot be captured with traditional IQ tests", adds the newspaper.
"Take 14-year-olds in Britain. What 25% could do back in 1994, now only 5% can do," Shayer added, citing maths and science tests.
More from The Daily Mail:
Two British studies suggested that the fall was between 2.5 and 4.3 points every ten years.
But due to limited research, their results were not widely accepted.
In the latest study Ole Rogeburg and Bernt Bratsberg, of the Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research in Oslo, found that Norwegian men's IQs are lower than the scores of their fathers when they were the same age.
The pair analysed the scores from a standard IQ test of over 730,000 men – who reported for national service between 1970 and 2009.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:51AM (29 children)
Humans evolve. Evolution does not stop for humans. It is going extra fast because we have changed our environment. The biggest change is birth control, which evolution will defeat.
Evolution makes bears behave differently from sheep. Clearly, it affects the mind. People get strange ideas that this doesn't apply to humans, or at least doesn't apply to humans today, or maybe that it couldn't possibly apply to humans living in different environments around the world. Sorry, but evolution affects human brains today.
Evolution does not value "advanced" life forms. Being intelligent only counts if it causes more descendants in the Nth generation. (that is, not merely having kids but having kids who themselves successfully reproduce)
If intelligence doesn't help reproduction, then random drift will slowly destroy it. If intelligence impedes reproduction, as it does in most countries, then evolution will actively select against intelligence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:27AM (6 children)
your statement is ridiculous.
evolution is the process by which, over generations, traits that help survival are selected for.
this study is a comparison of two subsequent generations. men today compared with their fathers.
your statement is that out of the fathers, only the idiots had kids, therefore the kids are idiots, and this statement is provably false --- the percentage of men who do not have children has not changed (although it is true that the age of fatherhood may have changed, and it may affect offspring intelligence).
I find it much more likely that something in the education system/"nurture" element changed, rather than something in the genetic makeup of the population.
and, just to explain the word "ridiculous": by your argument, there isn't a problem, since the process can easily be reversed for the next generation, so humanity is ok.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:05AM (3 children)
Feminism. Schools have changed from establishments of learning to childcare, where young minds go to learn not to ever make anyone feel uncomfortable.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Thursday June 14 2018, @04:12PM (1 child)
> Feminism
You jest, or troll - but there may in fact be truth in it.
If intelligence is hereditary (it is, at least partly) then any system that disincentivizes breeding in the more intelligent, or incentivizes it in the less intelligent _will_ result in a population decline in intelligence. If socioeconomic success is linked to intelligence (rather than more directly inherited as "class"), then that means that disincentivizing the rich(er) from breeding, or incentivizing the poor, will have the same result.
It is possible that this decline is only "in developed countries" - not clear if the trend doesn't exist world wide or if they just haven't done the research.
Now, "in developed countries" since the 2nd world war, and particularly since the 60s, there have been significant social changes (more or less your "Feminism"):
* Reliable birth control, giving women a choice when/whether to have children
* More years spent in education on average (for men and women)
* Large increase in working women (possibly resulting from above or possibly coincident with)
* Resulting increase in housing costs - because prices are now typically based on two incomes and that is what you are competing with when buying
* Resulting increase in people delaying having children until they are financially ready, and having fewer (having left it later)
[There is also less pressure to have children to look after you in your old age as this social responsibility has shifted from individual/family to "society"]
BUT (and this is key) all this is in the higher socioeconomic groups, at the other end of things the rise of the welfare state means that young women in lower socioeconomic groups not only have less to lose from having children but may actually gain (both financially from benefits and in terms of larger social housing). There are those who will have children purely to get the benefit money - I have seen them and heard their views first hand.
SO, we are both disincentivizing the rich from breeding, and incentivizing the poor to breed, and the next generation is dumber. Quelle surprise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:36PM
Already proven false many times, I guess this article is just another dog whistle for you Eugenics fans.
Don't worry though, you're totally 70 years too late to be an actual Nazi.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:31PM
The vast, vast majority of schools were never establishments of learning, but rote memorization factories.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:02AM (1 child)
You're falling for the son-of-a-monkey fallacy. Of course monkeys became men, even if no man was the son of a monkey. And evolution can be damn fast if the selective pressure is high and the opportunities for variation are also high, the slow and steady view of evolution was debunked decades ago. Google "punctuated equilibria".
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:28PM
The slow, steady, view of evolution was *NOT* debunked. There is decent evidence that it isn't always the case, but punctured equilibrium is a theory that has been wildly over-hyped, and even Gould was talking about thousands or hundreds of thousands of years, and (probably, though he wasn't always clear) speciation happening in one place where it left no fossils and then moving to a new location were fossils were discovered different from the older population. Even then, I'm always uncertain when two slightly different fossils are claimed to belong to separate species. The evidence isn't really that good.
That said, there's a species of butterfly in North America that may actually now be two species. A few decades ago the butterflies on the West Coast couldn't interbreed with the butterflies on the East Coast, but they could interbreed with the adjacent butterflies, an those could interbreed with their neighbors, etc. all the way to the East Coast. So they were one species. But if one of the necessary intermediates has died out, then they are now two species. So speciation can be caused by the extinction of intermediate forms, and that can happen quickly. This, however, doesn't cause any change on either the East Coast or the West Coast.
So while evolution does have moments when a major change happens, they aren't locally noticeable...or at least not usually.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:33AM (16 children)
But evolution works on time scales much larger than the time since IQ tests were invented.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:00AM (2 children)
go research epigenetics
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:25PM
no u
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:30PM
Epigenetics may affect evolution, but it is not itself evolution, as epigenetic modifications disappear over time.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:25AM (8 children)
Not really. If dumb people have three kids on average, and smart people one, IQ will shrink if it's heritable, and it will only take one generation to happen.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday June 14 2018, @12:47PM (6 children)
You are correct, but there is more to it than that. There are two aspects to evolution, development of variation, and selection within the range of that variation. Development of variation is a slow process, radical variants tend to be fatal. But, selection within variation can be extremely rapid.
If 'heightist' aliens landed tomorrow and killed the tallest half of the human population each generation, then within very few generations, humans would be about 5 feet tall. To actually breed them down to say, 3 feet tall would take proportionally much longer as that is outside of the current normal range.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday June 14 2018, @04:00PM (5 children)
If the gene pool contains a high level of variation, it can change very fast. The two most diverse gene pools are domestic dogs, and humans. You can develop a new breed of dog, which will produce offspring reasonably true to type, in as little as three generations. (We know this because it's been done multiple times in just the past 150 years, documented by extensive pedigree records.)
Also, if selection happens to be for recessive traits -- there's no going back.(Eg. you can start with wolves and end with toy spaniels, but you can't start with toy spaniels and end with wolves.) Genes related to intelligence are generally dominants. If we ever manage to breed it out entirely, it may be gone for good.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:20PM (1 child)
Embyro editing is now on the table (or more likely, DNA/embryo synthesis). Population growth is trending down* and hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty, potentially giving them access to such a technology. Genes that have a slight effect on intelligence are being identified. So we are probably not at risk of intelligence being gone for good.
*This invites the Idiocracy comparison, but my point is that if global population is projected to peak at 10-12 billion, that is going to limit poverty in the world and encourage greater use of fertility technologies (less unplanned pregnancies).
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(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:22PM
Yes, and that's all to the good. Last I heard they'd ID'd somewhere over 500 IQ-related genes (not sure if this includes variant alleles). Which combinations resulted in you and me?? Recording the data is worthwhile, but not real useful if you've bred out everyone who can understand and work from it. Yeah, that's worst-casing it; humanity has the distinct advantage of a gene pool that's so huge it's difficult to entirely lose traits.But we also have the example of vast swaths of the world that never developed the wheel, not even in its most primitive form.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:47PM (1 child)
For a massive IQ you sure make a lot of unfounded assumptions. Since we all came from single celled critters how do you explain the 999,999,999X explosion in intelligence?
Don't let me pop your little self assured bubble though.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:37PM
While many mutations are disadvantageous all the way to fatal, more of them are neutral, which expands variation, and a few of them are even favorable. And you're talking about a period of perhaps 3 billion years, which is a lot of time for variation to build up. It doesn't only build up, because local conditions will favor some variants and disfavor other variants. (What is neutral depends a lot on the local environment.)
When the genes get too different, the groups can no longer interbreed, but the same process keeps continuing.
That's the entire theory in a capsule. Everything else is either evidence that that's what's going on, or elaboration of the details. (But there's a lot of evidence, and a *LOT* of details.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:46PM
Better dumb and happy than smart and without any friends.
-- Danny Elfman
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:12PM
I watched a documentary about that. I think it was called... Idiocracy.
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(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:36AM
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Descent_of_Man,_and_Selection_in_Relation_to_Sex [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:39AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence#Genetic_explanations [wikipedia.org]
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:40AM (1 child)
Tell that to the bacteria
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:35PM
And fruit flies in science fair projects around the world.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:10PM (3 children)
This must be the most ignorant thing I've seen posted on SN, and that's despite the frequent contributions from the likes of Jmoris and Idiotking.
Evolution today not only doesn't move faster, but we have reasons to believe that it has come to move slower because the period between generations, or in other words, the average time it takes for humans to be born and produce viable offspring has been steadily increasing, whilst the rate of mutation has remained consistent to the best of our knowledge.
Introducing new selection pressures does not make evolution go faster. It might make certain traits emerge or diminish at a greater rate, but you won't see people grow wings anytime soon, no matter how much anime they watch.
The only way we could truly increase the rate of "evolution" is if we supersede the underlying mechanisms through artificial means such as selective breeding or genetic engineering.
This alludes to one of the commonly misunderstood aspects of evolution - that it only rewards individual reproductive success.
This is wrong. If that was the case, then we would have long since evolved not to have gays and suicidal people. If your brothers, sisters or even more distant kin are reproductively successful, that's good enough for evolution. It doesn't matter if you specifically have offspring, what matters is that the mutations you have proliferate, including those inherited from your ancestors.
This is also incorrect. Cancer doesn't help reproduction, but it hardly impedes it, which is why we haven't evolved out of it.
It doesn't. SizeOfPopulation != EvolutionarySuccess. Evolutionary success is measured through long term population viability, so unless people in those countries are under any threat to go extinct, intelligence is not maladaptive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:25PM (1 child)
Oh really? Hold my beer ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:52PM
Your beer is being held sir....
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:44PM
Not certain.
E.g., it's not the length of generations that matters, but the rate at which viable mutations persist in the population. If the rate of mutation is unchanged, and the percentage of survival of variants per unit of time is unchanged, then the accumulation of variants in the population will be unchanged.
What seems to be happening is that selection pressure has been reduced. This means that more variants persist. But this is only half of evolution. You don't get the full aspect until selection pressure is imposed. And you don't know ahead of time how that's going to work out. Right now, if I were to guess, I would guess that the ability to work well with others was the thing most strongly being selected for. (And I say this as someone who isn't that good at that task. I failed as a supervisor because I just wanted to program.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:28PM
As you say, Evolution does play an important role.
In the past brains were adapted for solving problems, understanding nature, building the industrial age, putting men on the moon, the micro-electronics explosion and then microcomputers.
The downfall began with Microcomputers. (alternate theory: the introduction of Blue M&Ms)
Now brains are adapted for FaceTwit. Instagag. Amazon shopping. Infotainment. And what ever other anti-social monstrosities that we ironically call "social media". Look! A Shiny! Version 3.0!
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