from the tv-and-video-games-cause-brain-rot dept.
A Norwegian study published Monday found a seven-point dip in IQ test scores per generation among men born from 1962 to 1991. The results suggest a reversal in the Flynn effect, an observed increase in IQ scores throughout the 20th century in developed countries.
Coverage from The Week adds:
The reasons for the Flynn effect and its apparent reversal are disputed. "Scientists have put the rise in IQ down to better teaching, nutrition, healthcare and even artificial lighting," says The Times.
But "it is also possible that the nature of intelligence is changing in the digital age and cannot be captured with traditional IQ tests", adds the newspaper.
"Take 14-year-olds in Britain. What 25% could do back in 1994, now only 5% can do," Shayer added, citing maths and science tests.
More from The Daily Mail:
Two British studies suggested that the fall was between 2.5 and 4.3 points every ten years.
But due to limited research, their results were not widely accepted.
In the latest study Ole Rogeburg and Bernt Bratsberg, of the Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research in Oslo, found that Norwegian men's IQs are lower than the scores of their fathers when they were the same age.
The pair analysed the scores from a standard IQ test of over 730,000 men – who reported for national service between 1970 and 2009.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:23AM (1 child)
If only this study had been performed 30 years ago, we would have understood the reasons. Alas, our scientists have lost the necessary brain power.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @04:27PM
Why did they need a study? Couldn't they just ask their wives?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:31AM (66 children)
You can't being to make sense of complicated phenomenon based on a single metric, particularly if you don't even understand that!
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 5, Funny) by c0lo on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:39AM (64 children)
It's not that complicated.
The main cause for the drop is the excessive and unchecked reliance on autocomplete (large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by Arik on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:48AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:54AM (55 children)
Literally correcting autocomplete.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:09AM (52 children)
Are you implying that IQ tests are affected by cultural differences? So, they don't necessarily measure intelligence, but one culture's idea of what intelligence is?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:23AM (44 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:31AM (20 children)
Which mean that the IQ test doesn't test your intelligence, but rather your ability to employ critical and/or analytical thinking. Which certainly is one aspect of intelligence, but not the only one. Indeed, it is exactly the other aspects of intelligence that make AI a hard problem.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:13AM (4 children)
It's the important one if you want a job, want to go to Mars, build a bridge, feed more people with fewer resources or design a nano particle based high efficiency carbon sink.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:36AM (3 children)
Wanting to go to Mars today? And you reckon that's a proof of critical thinking?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:12PM (2 children)
Not only are we going to Mars today (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InSight [wikipedia.org]), but we're already there (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_(rover) [wikipedia.org]).
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:32PM (1 child)
What's this "we" shit? Are you claiming to be a remote controlled robot? "We", humanity, has never stepped foot on Mars, so "we" ain't there. You and the rest of the robotic species have a couple representatives there? Well, good on you. Don't worry though. "We" will be along sooner or later to upset any apple carts you may be considering. "We" will pollute the shit out of Mars, exploit it for resources, and set up some mobile home parks to really screw things up. It's just a matter of time.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:55PM
You say this like it's necessarily a bad thing.
Evidence indicates that in the past, Mars was much warmer and may have had things like usable atmosphere and running water. There may have been life, or more plentiful life is there remains life still. But now Mars is generally a cold, frozen wasteland...
...that needs Anthropocentric Global Warming to return to its natural temperature and state! Long live nature and mother
EarthMars!---
This post is tongue-in-cheek. I do not think we should pollute Mars, even if it would make it comfortably warmer.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:04PM (14 children)
Seems to be the only aspect.
There's a list of wishful thinking at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_human_intelligence [wikipedia.org]
But that is hard to take seriously when it contains "cultural yes man" measures like "Moral intelligence" or "Spiritual intelligence". Even worse when you research stuff that doesn't sound too ridiculous, like spatial intelligence, google found me a study (Swanson '96) along the lines of below 100 IQ people, verbal IQ and spatial IQ are essentially uncorrelated.
Something like electromagnetic field theory is one "thing" with a couple aspects. You can't move an electric charge without making a magnetic field and you can't wiggle a magnetic field without inducing an electric field and so forth. However, no matter how sexy you paint the experimental apparatus in purple polka dots, the E+M fields shouldn't change (other than at the wavelength of violet light, LOL). Likewise it seems intelligence IS reasoning, no matter how much some folks would like to include spiritualism or sophistry.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:45PM (12 children)
are a critical component for success in the world (culture)... in the old days if you couldn't toe the line the consequences were severe, including death.
Before you can conquer the natural universe, you must first successfully navigate the human one from which you come.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:15PM (11 children)
This is redefinition of intelligence as success... obviously a critical component for success for women in a beauty pageant is nice curves, but its hard to claim "intelligence is fitness for success" and "success at a beauty pageant is nice rack" therefore nice rack equals intelligence. I'm not complaining when it happens to coincide, nor claiming there's an anti-correlation effect, but am claiming there's not much correlation beyond simple random chance.
Race car driver would be another analogy, great reflexes and high risk tolerance don't usually correlate with anything most would consider intelligence.
I'd stick with the opposite cause effect relationship where success requires intelligence but not every required component of success is intelligence.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @03:18PM (5 children)
What world are you living in?
In mine, success requires an IQ score of perhaps 70, and a myriad of other factors that an IQ score of 170 won't substitute for.
Agreed, however, that: intelligence.NE.success
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by curunir_wolf on Thursday June 14 2018, @07:56PM (4 children)
Actually, IQ is an excellent predictor of success ON AVERAGE. Extremely well correlated. There are always outliers.
84, according to the military. That's the minimum they will accept, because over the years they have determined that anyone with less basically cannot be trained for any job.
And that's pretty scary. Probably the scariest statistic of our time. It comes out to about 10% of the people are below 84 IQ, and they cannot do any job in the modern world. The menial tasks they have been able to do are by large measure going away.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:27PM (2 children)
Menial jobs don't have to go away. Just because we can automate doesn't mean we should. Human beings need to feel useful, so there are some jobs that should be kept around. We've let economic efficiency and "profits" override what is good for our civilization.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:36PM (1 child)
Menial service labor as opposed to skilled labor. The best bartender is probably a fifty cent bottle cap opener, but people like having bartenders around, so we have a lot of bartenders.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday June 15 2018, @11:32AM
I would agree with the GP with regards to those jobs not having to go away. A manufacturing company I used to work for many years ago was next door to a sheltered workshop - basically somewhere to house intellectally challenged people while finding them something to do.
We would occasionally have some simple repetitive task that needed to be done thousands of times, and they would get the job. One carer would come in with them. We would explain to him/her the job, and he/she would explain it to them, and supervise while they did it. They were the happiest, most diligent and enthusiastic people I ever worked with. They loved feeling useful, even if it was just assembling boxes.
As a society we have lost sight of that. It should not be just about if a robot can do it better and faster, but what is better for people.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:30PM
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder costs the US 6 trillion (yes trillion) dollars over a lifespan. Four percent of pregnant women meet the clinical definition of alcoholic.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @04:23PM (4 children)
Research has shown that average IQ of race drivers is 130-135. Other research has shown that the primary burden on a race driver is the enormous flow of information they have to process. I assume from this that IQ does correlate with mental bandwidth, hence the high IQs.
So, "race driver" isn't the example you want - I would suggest "Fashion Model" or "Ditch Digger" where intelligence isn't really required.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @04:36PM (1 child)
or POTUS
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:21PM
He already said Fashion Model.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:23PM
You need an IQ of 130 or greater to figure out how to get people to pay you millions for turning left for a living.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:32PM
Thats probably the pro sports effect where its not hard to drive fast and dangerous but since almost anyone could qualify, being one in a million who gets to do it selects for people very skilled at rising to the top of the pack. See also, pop star music.
General construction labor, perhaps.... not smart or sober enough to learn a profitable trade, but can carry heavy objects until body breaks down...
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:17PM
Check out the Aharonov–Bohm effect
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:38AM (3 children)
accident would be lack of opportunity, design would be deliberately clinging to bronze age attitudes that do not encourage thinking because you think they're superior.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:26PM (2 children)
In contrast to the Icahn frat boy theory [businessinsider.com] of dumb leadership:
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday June 15 2018, @07:19AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 15 2018, @11:39AM
Not only does it have a long history, it also has widespread practice, and it's more insidious than the Peter principle [wikipedia.org]. Put the two together and you see why Dilbert is so popular, because it is so true in so many people's real lives.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:27PM (12 children)
What kool-aid have you been drinking? IQ test are notoriously sensitive to cultural differences.
(Score: 2, Informative) by ChrisMaple on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:48PM (10 children)
The makers of IQ tests have been sensitive to the charges of cultural bias for decades, and have done a lot of work to make the tests culture-neutral (within the limits imposed by using a single language.) Your claim is obsolete.
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:29PM (9 children)
Sensitive to and capable of actually addressing are not the same thing.
Just as have done a lot of work is no guarantee of positive progress.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by curunir_wolf on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:04PM (8 children)
I am a crackpot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:35PM
But in the postmodern world, feelings and personal perspective are more important than numbers which are culturally and sexually defined.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:46PM (2 children)
That might speak more to the brutally competitive nature of human society. There are many negative feedback loops that widen the gap between someone with 100 IQ and someone with 120. It begins in the school system where if a student falls behind in 2nd grade and does not receive remedial help then that trend will often get worse and their future prospects will go along with it. That doesn't mean the person isn't capable of holding a normal job and be a successful contributing member of society.
This entire thread is so full of blind assumptions based on how society IS that most people can't imagine what society COULD be.
Once we automate away all the menial jobs we'll get a society with the rich smart people on top and the dumb people on some sort of nightmarish welfare which will lead to revolution. That is with our current system anyway.
Even if you went the eugenics route that so many users on here obviously dream of you will likely cause other problems. Smart people tend to be more prone to mental disorders and delusions of grandeur (eugenics) which could lead us into mass sterility or even worse genetically engineered problems. Hell, even without those you'd end up in some cutthroat society where the best aspects of humanity such as compassion and courage get trampled into dust.
The self-styled bigoted geniuses around here are too smart for their own good. They hide behind logic, reason, and numbers; but forget that the numbers are the result of a complex system that no human can completely understand. Not to Godwin, but the Nazis tried to go down the route of superior genetics and that is regarded as one of the worst atrocities in human history. You sure following "the numbers" is a good idea?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @02:51AM
If you have high IQ you can do piss all till you are 14, then spend a summer studying for GED. You will probably be smarter at that point than most of your peers. My IQ is not that high, because I only figured this out when I wan well into my late 20s. I wasted so many years "learning" like all the other lemmings.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Saturday June 16 2018, @02:03PM
It's not human society, it's all of nature. The distribution you're describing, where small differences in ability, first-mover status, resource access or pure luck lead to huge differences in productivity was first discovered in pea plants. I believe it's referred to as the pareto principle or pareto distribution. Human society actually strives to mitigate those effects of nature, NOT to exacerbate it.
Your premise is false. These are natural outcomes. Of course we want to create a society that works for everyone, and helps those that are weak or vulnerable. But, in western society at least, we also want to ensure that people that are more capable and productive are rewarded more for their efforts. That's fair and helps everyone. We don't make rock stars out of people with no musical talent (usually), and we don't want people that can't do simple math writing computer software we rely on for critical tasks. Sure, there's corruption that harms those outcomes that we value, and corruption is something we should fight against. But for the most part we want the most capable people to be the most valued.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:18PM (1 child)
Means very little, other than you can do what the instructors want you to do to get the best scores - which (at the highest levels) is as much a social skill as it is correlated with mastery of the subject of the class/course. What I'm saying here is that teachers/professors are human, and while _on average_ they tend to correlate grades with mastery of the subject, there is a great deal of human noise (prejudices, personalities, randomness) in the score - and that shows up heavily when you hit the top of the scale.
I have found that depends almost entirely upon the career pursued. Again, in the middle, on average, drones being processed through HR departments for placement in the average job pool, yes... IQ has a strong correlation, but even more than school, there's tremendous human noise in the process - luck/timing of placements, who you happened to get as a boss, what your group/department/company/industry experienced in the broader market, all have a very strong bearing on success. Then there are entire fields (Sales, especially Real Estate Sales for one) where intelligence seems to be a neutral if not negative asset due to the social aspects of the jobs.
If you're calling the top and bottom ~10% the "far edges," and 20% the "tiny minority" for highly successful low IQs and lowly successful high IQs, then, maybe we're in agreement.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:24PM
No. You forget that the average school is abysmal. On average, they tend to correlate grades with one's ability to rote memorize information about the subject and spew it back on tests and homework assignments.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:22PM
And what does that have to do with intelligence? Stop relying on faulty social 'science'; it rots your brain.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Immerman on Friday June 15 2018, @01:15PM
>IQ, as measured by IQ tests, is the single best predictor of success ever developed.
No. You're thinking of parent's wealth.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday June 15 2018, @07:05AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:20PM
Citation please
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:38PM (2 children)
Which IQ tests? They aren't all the same, and they don't all measure the same thing (though there normally is a quite strong correlation). It's also quite clear that the extent to which they are culturally indifferent is limited...though again it's different for different IQ tests. To take an extreme case, the early IQ tests were given to people who didn't understand English, and they made truly wretched scores for quite understandable reasons. But the *tests* were the same ones that were standardized at Stanford. Now one could say that this example was laughably extreme, but the results were used to justify laws, so some people were taking them seriously, if not honestly (and that can't be proven). And it implies that one can expect the same effects to a lesser extent in cases that are less extreme. If you don't think that does apply, I'd like to hear why not.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:32PM (1 child)
I've been thinking that there's a catch 22 at work here: the tests in the 1970s sucked, so... if you continue to use them today, you're using sucky tests.
However, if you use the improved tests today, then you're changing your testing method and comparing apples to oranges.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:49PM
BEGONE!
Millenials are obviously retarded, STOP MESSING WITH THE NARRATIVE!
Oh, and obviously its also tied to all the colored folk mixing their genes in after the whole Civil Rights bullshit.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:20PM (1 child)
Which is a social science filled with absolute garbage. IQ is correlated with several things that people commonly deem significant, but it's never been rigorously proven that it actually measures intelligence. We don't even truly understand intelligence, so good luck measuring it as of yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @11:40AM
Well that's easily fixed. You simply define intelligence as that which is measured by IQ tests.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:25AM (6 children)
I'm don't know if the parent is implying it, but they indeed are. [sciencedaily.com]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:44AM
Also hereditary [sciencedirect.com] but you already knew that [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by choose another one on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:51AM (4 children)
If genetics affects "intelligence" (as indeed it has been found to: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2017.104 [nature.com] ) then this would be entirely expected since cultural differences are often correlated with gene pool differences. In fact any test that _doesn't_ show differences between gene pools is probably a poor test of intelligence.
Your study took people originating from different cultures, different languages, different geographical areas, different backgrounds (immigrant and native - it makes a difference to the way you think if you have to be bilingual, requiring one language at home and another outside it) and different gene pools - too many variables.
To determine whether IQ is affected by culture you'd have to test people from the same local gene pools with different cultures - which is tricky because cultures that are very different often don't intermix and therefore the gene pools will differentiate, alternatively, if there is a enough intermixing there is probably not a whole lot of cultural difference. You may be able to get a decent result by looking at places where there has been (recent, in generational terms) large scale religious conversion of only part of the population, for instance.
The (initially) more interesting result in the study you cite was that there was little difference in socioeconomic status between the groups, implying that the system doesn't reward IQ, alone (may also reward something else that immigrants may have/do more of, say, hard work...) - but then they blow that one out of the water with "but most of them were students"... sigh.
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:22AM (3 children)
And if culture is affected by IQ.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Reziac on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:44PM (1 child)
Culture is selected for *by* IQ. Funny thing, you can pretty much correlate IQ with invention of the wheel.
Also, there is so much data that any cultural skew on IQ tests is long since swamped out.
As to the "Flynn effect" ... friend and I (both with IQs in the 160 range, mine by actual test) were discussing the IQ thing and noted something interesting: we both have ZERO patience with the current standard test, Raven's Progressive Matrices. Get to the third item and we're both about ready to throw darts. This despite being generally good and tenacious problem-solvers. We also both tend to solve problems without the tedium of "show your work". I thereby hypothesized what's creating the "Flynn effect" is that Raven's is selecting for people who will plod through the test no matter what, which probably tends to flatten the curve toward the right side. I'd like to see a chart of IQ scores vs adoption of Raven's; I'd bet there's a correlation.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:33PM
Hey everybody, Doctor Nick here.
Now slow down sir, you're going to give yourself SKULL failure. Ok, the symptoms you describe point to brainus eruptus where the brain tries to leap out the mouth and escape the body. Our one chance is transdental IQ transplanticide!
After the operation there are maaany options for compulsive narcissism. This therapeutic backpack carries two car batteries we hook up to your temples, and anytime you feel like bragging it will give you a teeny little shock.
If your symptoms do not get better in two weeks we will have to increase the voltage which may have just a leetle brain damaging effects.
Good bye everybody!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @01:43AM
> And if culture is affected by IQ.
They are interrelated because both are hereditary. In biology a related term is called inclusive fitness but that's as far as the top biologists are willing to state publicly. Off the record, there is a growing consensus that populations have an overall fitness themselves, which means that objectively some cultures are more fit than others. That's something that cannot be published in today's academic climate.
The article mentions Norway, and the elephant in the room there is Islam. Islam afflicts close to 6% of the Norwegian populus [pewresearch.org] and that volume is expected to more than triple by 2050 if left untreated. There is a correlation between the spread of Islam and the drop in IQ. It is not that Islam itself causes the drop in IQ but that the reproducing individuals that carry it are of lower IQ.
Sweden and the UK in similar situations. The UK has already long since passed 6% occupation and in Sweden it is well ove 8%. The IQ is dropping rapidly in both and no politician or scientist is willing or able to look at the cause. Yet by 2050 a third of Sweden will be occupied by moslems [pewforum.org]. Overall, Europe will hit 14% by 2050 which is enough for internecine fighting to become pervasive and eventually dominant on top of the IQ drop. Society is fully dependent on excessively complex technologies and workflows that the IQ drop by itself will prevent long term survival of the overall population.
(Score: 2) by datapharmer on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:40AM
That site doesn't appear like they even looked at their own data.
China is #6 for IQ ahead of 19 of the top 20 countries by income and Mongolia isn't even in "the table above", but from the IQ listed on the map it ranks on par with the United States. Further, of the top 20 income countries only 3 are in the top 10 for IQ which is proportionally just average, so I'm not really clear on how they are drawing these conclusions. I will give them that many low income countries also rank poorly, but that's simple correlation and means almost nothing. It seems obvious that if you are malnourished or in a war torn country without regular access to education you won't test as well. I suspect the same would be true if I gave you a million dollar salary under the condition you aren't allowed to buy and food and people will shoot at you randomly.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:30PM
That list is missing Antarctica. I bet the IQ there is higher than any other country and the temperature is the lowest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:36AM (6 children)
Serious question: these tests tend to restrict augmentive tools like internet connections. The average person today, stripped of their cell phone, may indeed be losing skills, but how would they perform on these tests with their handy and a good connection?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 14 2018, @12:06PM
Badly. Seriously. Can't tackle IQ tests by using Google search or by asking your facebook friends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:51PM (4 children)
You're addressing a real point, but I don't think you understand it. Different environments develop different skills. The skills used in accessing the internet are not the same as those used in living within driving distance of a library, and those aren't the same as where you needed to harness a horse to plow the field. People adapt to the skill-set used in their culture. IQ tests measure one particular portion of the skills used. When what they measure are not the skills valued by the culture, the scores are lower. To this point it's worth noting that not all IQ tests are the same, and some have valued demonstrably incorrect answers for decades. (I don't know that those particular tests are still in use, but mistakes happen everywhere, and IQ tests don't have a good QA team.)
The standard IQ test is a reasonable test of certain basic skills, and of the ability to focus on a task, and a few other things, many of which are expected to be generally useful. They don't attend to other skills, like ability to get along with people or ability to detect and identify particular scents that are quite useful and more demanded by some other situations. The internet environment is largely similar to prior Western European history, but differs in certain major ways, e.g. short bursts of attention are more favored. This may well explain the small change in scores.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:12PM
There's an interesting variable to track over the past 4 decades...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:19PM (2 children)
Nearly half of a standard deviation [quora.com] per generation is pretty big. To paraphrase the Brits and George Carlin: Think of someone you knew back in the 70s who had an IQ of 100, now: realize that over 80% of people today are dumber than them.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday June 15 2018, @12:53AM (1 child)
Rephrase....have an IQ lower than them. It's not really the same thing as dumber, though there sure is an overlap.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 15 2018, @03:03AM
Very true, but it kills the punchline.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:02AM
if your IQ has already dropped for so long.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:51AM (29 children)
Humans evolve. Evolution does not stop for humans. It is going extra fast because we have changed our environment. The biggest change is birth control, which evolution will defeat.
Evolution makes bears behave differently from sheep. Clearly, it affects the mind. People get strange ideas that this doesn't apply to humans, or at least doesn't apply to humans today, or maybe that it couldn't possibly apply to humans living in different environments around the world. Sorry, but evolution affects human brains today.
Evolution does not value "advanced" life forms. Being intelligent only counts if it causes more descendants in the Nth generation. (that is, not merely having kids but having kids who themselves successfully reproduce)
If intelligence doesn't help reproduction, then random drift will slowly destroy it. If intelligence impedes reproduction, as it does in most countries, then evolution will actively select against intelligence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:27AM (6 children)
your statement is ridiculous.
evolution is the process by which, over generations, traits that help survival are selected for.
this study is a comparison of two subsequent generations. men today compared with their fathers.
your statement is that out of the fathers, only the idiots had kids, therefore the kids are idiots, and this statement is provably false --- the percentage of men who do not have children has not changed (although it is true that the age of fatherhood may have changed, and it may affect offspring intelligence).
I find it much more likely that something in the education system/"nurture" element changed, rather than something in the genetic makeup of the population.
and, just to explain the word "ridiculous": by your argument, there isn't a problem, since the process can easily be reversed for the next generation, so humanity is ok.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:05AM (3 children)
Feminism. Schools have changed from establishments of learning to childcare, where young minds go to learn not to ever make anyone feel uncomfortable.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Thursday June 14 2018, @04:12PM (1 child)
> Feminism
You jest, or troll - but there may in fact be truth in it.
If intelligence is hereditary (it is, at least partly) then any system that disincentivizes breeding in the more intelligent, or incentivizes it in the less intelligent _will_ result in a population decline in intelligence. If socioeconomic success is linked to intelligence (rather than more directly inherited as "class"), then that means that disincentivizing the rich(er) from breeding, or incentivizing the poor, will have the same result.
It is possible that this decline is only "in developed countries" - not clear if the trend doesn't exist world wide or if they just haven't done the research.
Now, "in developed countries" since the 2nd world war, and particularly since the 60s, there have been significant social changes (more or less your "Feminism"):
* Reliable birth control, giving women a choice when/whether to have children
* More years spent in education on average (for men and women)
* Large increase in working women (possibly resulting from above or possibly coincident with)
* Resulting increase in housing costs - because prices are now typically based on two incomes and that is what you are competing with when buying
* Resulting increase in people delaying having children until they are financially ready, and having fewer (having left it later)
[There is also less pressure to have children to look after you in your old age as this social responsibility has shifted from individual/family to "society"]
BUT (and this is key) all this is in the higher socioeconomic groups, at the other end of things the rise of the welfare state means that young women in lower socioeconomic groups not only have less to lose from having children but may actually gain (both financially from benefits and in terms of larger social housing). There are those who will have children purely to get the benefit money - I have seen them and heard their views first hand.
SO, we are both disincentivizing the rich from breeding, and incentivizing the poor to breed, and the next generation is dumber. Quelle surprise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:36PM
Already proven false many times, I guess this article is just another dog whistle for you Eugenics fans.
Don't worry though, you're totally 70 years too late to be an actual Nazi.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:31PM
The vast, vast majority of schools were never establishments of learning, but rote memorization factories.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:02AM (1 child)
You're falling for the son-of-a-monkey fallacy. Of course monkeys became men, even if no man was the son of a monkey. And evolution can be damn fast if the selective pressure is high and the opportunities for variation are also high, the slow and steady view of evolution was debunked decades ago. Google "punctuated equilibria".
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:28PM
The slow, steady, view of evolution was *NOT* debunked. There is decent evidence that it isn't always the case, but punctured equilibrium is a theory that has been wildly over-hyped, and even Gould was talking about thousands or hundreds of thousands of years, and (probably, though he wasn't always clear) speciation happening in one place where it left no fossils and then moving to a new location were fossils were discovered different from the older population. Even then, I'm always uncertain when two slightly different fossils are claimed to belong to separate species. The evidence isn't really that good.
That said, there's a species of butterfly in North America that may actually now be two species. A few decades ago the butterflies on the West Coast couldn't interbreed with the butterflies on the East Coast, but they could interbreed with the adjacent butterflies, an those could interbreed with their neighbors, etc. all the way to the East Coast. So they were one species. But if one of the necessary intermediates has died out, then they are now two species. So speciation can be caused by the extinction of intermediate forms, and that can happen quickly. This, however, doesn't cause any change on either the East Coast or the West Coast.
So while evolution does have moments when a major change happens, they aren't locally noticeable...or at least not usually.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:33AM (16 children)
But evolution works on time scales much larger than the time since IQ tests were invented.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:00AM (2 children)
go research epigenetics
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:25PM
no u
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:30PM
Epigenetics may affect evolution, but it is not itself evolution, as epigenetic modifications disappear over time.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:25AM (8 children)
Not really. If dumb people have three kids on average, and smart people one, IQ will shrink if it's heritable, and it will only take one generation to happen.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday June 14 2018, @12:47PM (6 children)
You are correct, but there is more to it than that. There are two aspects to evolution, development of variation, and selection within the range of that variation. Development of variation is a slow process, radical variants tend to be fatal. But, selection within variation can be extremely rapid.
If 'heightist' aliens landed tomorrow and killed the tallest half of the human population each generation, then within very few generations, humans would be about 5 feet tall. To actually breed them down to say, 3 feet tall would take proportionally much longer as that is outside of the current normal range.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday June 14 2018, @04:00PM (5 children)
If the gene pool contains a high level of variation, it can change very fast. The two most diverse gene pools are domestic dogs, and humans. You can develop a new breed of dog, which will produce offspring reasonably true to type, in as little as three generations. (We know this because it's been done multiple times in just the past 150 years, documented by extensive pedigree records.)
Also, if selection happens to be for recessive traits -- there's no going back.(Eg. you can start with wolves and end with toy spaniels, but you can't start with toy spaniels and end with wolves.) Genes related to intelligence are generally dominants. If we ever manage to breed it out entirely, it may be gone for good.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:20PM (1 child)
Embyro editing is now on the table (or more likely, DNA/embryo synthesis). Population growth is trending down* and hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty, potentially giving them access to such a technology. Genes that have a slight effect on intelligence are being identified. So we are probably not at risk of intelligence being gone for good.
*This invites the Idiocracy comparison, but my point is that if global population is projected to peak at 10-12 billion, that is going to limit poverty in the world and encourage greater use of fertility technologies (less unplanned pregnancies).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:22PM
Yes, and that's all to the good. Last I heard they'd ID'd somewhere over 500 IQ-related genes (not sure if this includes variant alleles). Which combinations resulted in you and me?? Recording the data is worthwhile, but not real useful if you've bred out everyone who can understand and work from it. Yeah, that's worst-casing it; humanity has the distinct advantage of a gene pool that's so huge it's difficult to entirely lose traits.But we also have the example of vast swaths of the world that never developed the wheel, not even in its most primitive form.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:47PM (1 child)
For a massive IQ you sure make a lot of unfounded assumptions. Since we all came from single celled critters how do you explain the 999,999,999X explosion in intelligence?
Don't let me pop your little self assured bubble though.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:37PM
While many mutations are disadvantageous all the way to fatal, more of them are neutral, which expands variation, and a few of them are even favorable. And you're talking about a period of perhaps 3 billion years, which is a lot of time for variation to build up. It doesn't only build up, because local conditions will favor some variants and disfavor other variants. (What is neutral depends a lot on the local environment.)
When the genes get too different, the groups can no longer interbreed, but the same process keeps continuing.
That's the entire theory in a capsule. Everything else is either evidence that that's what's going on, or elaboration of the details. (But there's a lot of evidence, and a *LOT* of details.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:46PM
Better dumb and happy than smart and without any friends.
-- Danny Elfman
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:12PM
I watched a documentary about that. I think it was called... Idiocracy.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:36AM
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Descent_of_Man,_and_Selection_in_Relation_to_Sex [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:39AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence#Genetic_explanations [wikipedia.org]
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:40AM (1 child)
Tell that to the bacteria
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:35PM
And fruit flies in science fair projects around the world.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:10PM (3 children)
This must be the most ignorant thing I've seen posted on SN, and that's despite the frequent contributions from the likes of Jmoris and Idiotking.
Evolution today not only doesn't move faster, but we have reasons to believe that it has come to move slower because the period between generations, or in other words, the average time it takes for humans to be born and produce viable offspring has been steadily increasing, whilst the rate of mutation has remained consistent to the best of our knowledge.
Introducing new selection pressures does not make evolution go faster. It might make certain traits emerge or diminish at a greater rate, but you won't see people grow wings anytime soon, no matter how much anime they watch.
The only way we could truly increase the rate of "evolution" is if we supersede the underlying mechanisms through artificial means such as selective breeding or genetic engineering.
This alludes to one of the commonly misunderstood aspects of evolution - that it only rewards individual reproductive success.
This is wrong. If that was the case, then we would have long since evolved not to have gays and suicidal people. If your brothers, sisters or even more distant kin are reproductively successful, that's good enough for evolution. It doesn't matter if you specifically have offspring, what matters is that the mutations you have proliferate, including those inherited from your ancestors.
This is also incorrect. Cancer doesn't help reproduction, but it hardly impedes it, which is why we haven't evolved out of it.
It doesn't. SizeOfPopulation != EvolutionarySuccess. Evolutionary success is measured through long term population viability, so unless people in those countries are under any threat to go extinct, intelligence is not maladaptive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:25PM (1 child)
Oh really? Hold my beer ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:52PM
Your beer is being held sir....
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:44PM
Not certain.
E.g., it's not the length of generations that matters, but the rate at which viable mutations persist in the population. If the rate of mutation is unchanged, and the percentage of survival of variants per unit of time is unchanged, then the accumulation of variants in the population will be unchanged.
What seems to be happening is that selection pressure has been reduced. This means that more variants persist. But this is only half of evolution. You don't get the full aspect until selection pressure is imposed. And you don't know ahead of time how that's going to work out. Right now, if I were to guess, I would guess that the ability to work well with others was the thing most strongly being selected for. (And I say this as someone who isn't that good at that task. I failed as a supervisor because I just wanted to program.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:28PM
As you say, Evolution does play an important role.
In the past brains were adapted for solving problems, understanding nature, building the industrial age, putting men on the moon, the micro-electronics explosion and then microcomputers.
The downfall began with Microcomputers. (alternate theory: the introduction of Blue M&Ms)
Now brains are adapted for FaceTwit. Instagag. Amazon shopping. Infotainment. And what ever other anti-social monstrosities that we ironically call "social media". Look! A Shiny! Version 3.0!
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:04AM
IQ rises when during a course of your psychological maturation you believe in contraction of knowledge - i.e. that there is one true answer for each question. Highly intelligent are highly focused on problem solving, believing there is one optimal solution.
New favorite (rewarded) paradigm is "creativity" and "lateral thinking" and that is contradictory to focusing and dismissing unnecessary information. New human is intellectual gatherer and hoarder, staggering under the weight of everyday trivia.
Also, many common daily brain exercises, even in intellectual professions, has been "helped" away by informatics, automation, organization, and instant solutions, allowing broader participation, but also taking away brainpower, not unlike what industrialization and mechanization of physical work did to muscle power and body fitness. Perhaps you should reserve some time for mental gym too?
So, this shouldn't be a surprise, really. When God wants to punish someone (especially the lazy, so it seems) he makes their wishes come true.