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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: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:10PM (5 children)
How about Jews in Israel? How many of them are "inbred"?
Anyway, marriage among cousins is legal in much of the US.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:13PM
That 'splains a lot.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 24 2018, @06:36PM (3 children)
Don't know why you were modded "informative", when you ask such a silly question. No, Jews aren't very inbred. In fact, there have been discussions in which it is claimed that today's Jews have little direct relationship to historic Jews. Today's Jews have been Europeanized a lot. In Israel, there are Jews with English blood, French, Italian, Spanish - the list goes on and on. Israel is probably on par with the US for genetic diversity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @06:52PM (1 child)
Which is why a boatload of genetic diseases frequently targets Jewish communities.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 24 2018, @07:03PM
Yeah - probably picked up a bunch of diseases while inbreeding with Euros.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @06:55AM
Runaway does not know why. Paint me surprised, not. What a Maroon! .