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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: 4, Interesting) by Bot on Wednesday October 24 2018, @10:01AM (8 children)
It would be interesting to correlate this data with wireless emission wavelengths and strength, also with vaccination history.
inb4 somebody criticizes the idea before even trying: north europe has been comfy long before iq started dropping, so it must be something else, unless they were so PC not to exclude immigrants in a study of historical trends.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:05PM (3 children)
Everyone knows it coincides with removing lead from petrol (or was it removing lead from Alcohol? I forget)
(Score: 3, Disagree) by RS3 on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:47PM (2 children)
Petrol. Sadly, but an enlightening study is of the lead industry in the 1800s-1900s industrial revolution. The lead industry employed chemists to find ways to add lead to everything, and then sell the public, or at least the buyers in the distributors. (WalMart's corporate buyers shape much of the world's consumer products that are available...)
So they put lead in paint, which we're still paying for- it's very difficult and costly to remove lead-based paint, which was used up until the late 1970s. They also put it in petrol- it raised octane a bit, and lubricated engine valves. It was fairly easy to make valves and valve seats harder, and use better valve guides to eliminate the need for lead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:20PM (1 child)
It's OK as long as you don't lick it
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday October 25 2018, @01:42AM
What? You mean these are not good for what ails you? https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/whats-in-century-old-snake-oil-medicines-mercury-and-lead-16743639/ [smithsonianmag.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by darkfeline on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:47PM (1 child)
Don't bother, I can tell you right now that the decrease in IQ is correlated with wireless emission strength and vaccination history.
Why? Because the decrease is almost certainly correlated with social and technological progression, and social and technological progression is obviously correlated with wireless emission strength and vaccination history.
Correlation does not imply causation. What exactly were you trying to learn from spending a lot of money funding a study to demonstrate a meaningless correlation?
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday October 25 2018, @08:44PM
Easy, one step at a time, I want to know correlations, not causes. Once you find most of the correlated stuff you look for causes.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @03:01AM (1 child)
I first discovered the Internet in 1994. I'm pretty sure my own IQ has dropped since then.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 25 2018, @10:20AM
It's the porn. You put less time in using the big head when the little one's so active.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.