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posted by mrpg on Wednesday October 24 2018, @09:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-care-I'm-getting-intelligenter dept.

Slate:

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?


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:57PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:57PM (#752933)

    Dutton showed that scores began to slide in 1997
    Right about the time the Internet became widespread. At first I had to remind myself "Google it" now I sometimes Google things I know the answer to ... Or could figure out with a bit of effort

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  • (Score: 1) by TheFool on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:01PM

    by TheFool (7105) on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:01PM (#752969)

    Right, I think that's the primary thing at play here. We really don't have to think as much when there's a conveniently packaged list of instructions or (god forbid) a youtube video showing you how to do something a dozen keystrokes away. Wikipedia is considered "good enough" for figuring out what something is, even if the average article misses a ton of nuance that you'll never see if you stop there. Social media abbreviates interactions into soundbytes, because you're trying to communicate with too many people at once and need to hit the common level.

    And worse, like any skill, I imagine "thinking" tends to get rusty over time... or not exist at all if you never developed the skill in the first place, like what is probably happening to children today. It's going to get worse before it can possibly get better.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:26PM (3 children)

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:26PM (#752981) Homepage Journal

    Widespread? Few people I know except myself that I knew had a computer, much less internet access. There are a hundred times more people on the web today.

    And in 1997, most people on the web were college students.

    --
    mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:29PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:29PM (#753025)

      In the good old early days of the internet, when you were debating something with someone on the internet they were likely an expert in their field. Now you are far more likely to discover they are some 14 year old kid who watched a movie on a subject and is now posing as an expert.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:29PM (1 child)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:29PM (#753026) Journal

      Yeah, but... <blink> was introduced in 1994 [montulli.org] and it took a while to make it on geocities.

      --
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      • (Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday October 25 2018, @09:09PM

        by Bot (3902) on Thursday October 25 2018, @09:09PM (#753849) Journal

        Finally, a solid trail to investigate.

        --
        Account abandoned.