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from the don't-care-I'm-getting-intelligenter dept.
In November, the European TV channel Arte aired an hourlong documentary, Demain, tous crétins?—Tomorrow, everyone’s an idiot?—on a topic that would seem to be of great importance. It starts with a London-based researcher, Edward Dutton, who has documented decades-long declines in average IQs across several Western countries, including France and Germany. “We are becoming stupider,” announces Dutton at the program’s start. “This is happening. It’s not going to go away, and we have to try to think about what we’re going to do about it.”
[...] It’s wrong to hint that scores on tests of memory and abstract thinking have been falling everywhere, and in a simple way. But at least in certain countries—notably in Northern Europe—the IQ drops seem very real. Using data from Finland, for example, where men are almost always drafted into military service, whereupon they’re tested for intelligence, Dutton showed that scores began to slide in 1997, a trend that has continued ever since. Similar trends have been documented using data from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. At some point in the mid-1990s, IQ scores in these countries tipped into decay, losing roughly one-fifth to one-quarter of a point per year. While there isn’t any sign of this effect on U.S. test results (a fact that surely bears on our indifference to the topic), researchers have found hints of something similar in Australia, France, Germany and the Netherlands.
Are we becoming dumber, as in losing cognitive function, or merely less-well read?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Unixnut on Wednesday October 24 2018, @09:41AM (1 child)
You could argue it is deliberately dumbed down. The powers that be don't want an overtly intelligent population. Intelligent people tend to think for themselves , and are hard to control and manipulate.
You want your population intelligent enough to be able to survive and do whatever tasks are needed of them, but not too intelligent to start asking awkward questions or seeing when they are being taken advantage of.
So from things like state education that doesn't really challenge people to think, more to listen to authority and memorize rote tasks, to welfare systems designed to tax the hard working so much they can barely afford to have a child, while offering benefits to those who have as many kids as they can pump out. All effect the general level of intelligence.
Then again, there might be the simple case that stupid people have more kids. Intelligent people are more aware of the consequences of pregnancy, are more likely to use contraception correctly (or even use it in the first place), more likely to delay having kids and are more likely to have fewer kids (or not have kids at all). As a result with each generation more and more stupid people as a percentage of the total is born.
Then you got the argument about immigration, which seems to be a popular issue nowadays. The logic being that high taxation welfare states encourage the less intelligent and hardworking to immigrate, while the intelligent and hard working working ones generally already have jobs in their native countries, and are generally unwilling to uproot and move just for a higher pay somewhere else.
How much of the above influences a populations total IQ is a matter of debate, and it is also a matter of how much you think IQ is influenced by Genes or by actual use of the brain (usual nature/nurture argument), and I don't know the answers to that.
All I can say is that at some point in the past, there was an evolutionary advantage to intelligence, the fact that generally the less intelligent are more successful biologically, indicates that maybe the selection pressure for intelligence is no longer there.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday October 24 2018, @05:00PM
You extrapolate on too short a timeframe and assume modern society is the pinnacle of evolution. All of civilization compared to the age of the Earth is less than the length of a movie in a person's life. (Figured at 10,000 years against 4.543 billion years, against 80 years that comes to 1.54 hours of civilization). Should (perhaps when) this civilization burns itself out the intelligent will be the ones to survive. Presuming the Earth isn't a radioactive cinder by then.
This sig for rent.