Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:10PM (2 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:10PM (#752971) Journal

    Why blame Linux? By about 1997 Microsoft was close to achieving world domination. By 1999 it looked like they might have computing locked up forever and under their thumb. That only software companies would exist at Microsoft's pleasure.

    No wonder open source grew and took hold under the radar without the obvious commercial motive. People who wanted to build and use great software wouldn't be stopped.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Informative=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:08PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:08PM (#753011)

    :-) Fix your sarcasm detector... and let me know when you build your 'great software'... I kid I kid... I'm soaking in Linux right now

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday October 24 2018, @04:04PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 24 2018, @04:04PM (#753049) Journal

      I think Linux itself would qualify as great software by just about any measure I can think of. How widely used. Economic value. Flexibility. Scalability. Commercial ecosystem.

      There are numerous GUI desktop applications, that individually are great software. LibreOffice. Others are good or great to varying degrees. GIMP. Inkscape. WxMaxima. VLC. Blender. Video editors.

      Then there are numerous (innumerable?) command line tools. Tmux / screen. SSH. Not to mention a lot of stuff the internet is built on. Apache. Bind. Nginx.

      This is the tip of the iceberg. Once you start thinking about it. It's amazing really.

      Fix your sarcasm detector

      It was hopelessly permanently pegged by the output of my sarcasm generator.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.