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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: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:35PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:35PM (#752949)

    Counter argument proof:

    We did not elect Hillary.

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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:48PM (2 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:48PM (#752959) Journal

    Well, she was at least elected as candidate, wasn't she?

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:06PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:06PM (#752970) Journal

      She was elected by the popular vote but not by the electoral college.

      Don't just look at who we have for president. Look at who we have as secretary of edumacations.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Pav on Wednesday October 24 2018, @05:55PM

      by Pav (114) on Wednesday October 24 2018, @05:55PM (#753150)

      Yes and no. The email leaks revealed Bernie Sanders campaign was systematically stymied on purpose... so much so that two DNC heads were forced to resign for separate incidents that came out in the email revelations. It turned out, at least according to one of these heads, the DNC was effectively bankrupt [washingtontimes.com], and in return for Clinton bankrolling the DNC she was "sold" the nomination. This is the explanation of why the DNC acted in such a partisan way, pulling stunts including:
      1) denying the Bernie campaign access to the voter database in the crucial early weeks on what turned out to be bogus grounds.
      2) all superdelegates were pledged for Hillary in a completely unprescedented manner before there was even another runner in the race because Hillary was sinking in the pollls after debates.
      3) A proportion of funds raised by both candidates were to be directed to downballot races, but instead were redirected to the "Hillary Victory Fund" to preferentially elevate Hillary, and to skirt campaign finance laws.
      4) the debate schedule was "modified" down from 12 debates to 6 and shifted to low rating viewing times
      5) town hall questions were leaked ahead of time to Hillary by DNC head Donna Brazille, for which she sacked from CNN and forced to resign from the DNC after she was caught (after which she was immediately hired by the Hillary campaign).
      6) voting irregularities were strongly suggested by exit polls, but when this was raised the DNC cancelled the exit polls for New York, Callifornia, and other late states.

      Thats only what I can remember off hand... It's also interesting to note that after the election the new DNC head Tom Perez also admitted to DNC medling, but then immediately rolled this statement back.