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, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @09:17AM (58 children)
The brain isn't getting taxed because everything is simplified for our convenience.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @09:34AM (35 children)
These are countries with absurdly low birth rates in the native populations. Every two generations, the population is cut in half.
Meanwhile, the countries are importing people from the dumbest and most violent parts of the world. For example, the typical IQ in Somalia is about 68. This brings the average down. BTW, it is taboo to discuss this in the affected countries.
Evolution is an ongoing thing, affecting every generation and building upon itself much like compounding interest. The Flynn effect is merely the removal of some IQ-affecting health problems (malnutrition, lead, etc.) and the addition of education. In the long term, evolution is the main determining factor of IQ. Compare with height: people stunted by famine may produce more-normal kids and fully-normal grandkids, but the great-grandkids and beyond will not keep getting taller without the selection process required by evolution.
Europe got smart because dumb people died, particularly in winter. These days, we don't let dumb people die. We feed them. They are thus well-suited to the current environment, so their population grows.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pav on Wednesday October 24 2018, @10:00AM (21 children)
Not enough data [newscientist.com] to say either way, although it's suggested that some or all of the effect could be because more people 60 and over are sitting the tests. There isn't enough data to support this hypothesis either, but due to known lowering of working memory due to age it seems a resonable hypothesis.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Pav on Wednesday October 24 2018, @10:37AM (9 children)
BTW, it seems there are twice as many Asian immigrants live in Finland as Africans, and these groups combined are a pretty low proportion to start with. Aren't Asians meant to be more intelligent on average than Europens or something according to these weird theories? Shouldn't you be finding some Asian ass so you don't get completely bred out of the gene pool or something BTW?
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:52PM
What does "asian" mean? Afhanistan or Korea?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:03PM (2 children)
Asia is a huge place, only small part of Asia has the smart people (according to testing anyway). Rest has averagly to abysmally dumb, with a mix of con artists. Mixing with "smart" Asians won't make your kids smart, especially if the genes responsible for the discreprancy are recessive.
Secondly, (according to tests) even though the "smart" Asians are smarter on average, the distribution of intellect on either end is much different. So even though the average person is smarter according to current trst, the number of geniuses and idiots is much smaller. We really want the geniuses to be as high as possible, as tgey are the ones that make a lot of tge innovative leaps tgat drive the soxiety forward.
Lastly, I added the "according to tests" caveat because we are not sure if China is not cooking the numbers by allowing only testimg in select districts. This kind of fudgery could be right up their alley.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 24 2018, @06:29PM (1 child)
Those typos look odd. Are you using a different keyboard layout than you normally use? It just looks odd . . .
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @06:05AM
Mentally week: Runaway cannot be the cause of this, since he has had the same low Intelligence Quotient since he was tested in 1956. Must be his spawn, in that case.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:43PM (4 children)
"Live in" != "recently immigrated to". If you meant the latter, that needs to be specified, because your comparison is currently invalid.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday October 24 2018, @04:58PM (1 child)
Ummm... then I don't want to live in Finland where apparently I get roped into national service (and its requisite IQ test) without even being a citizen.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 24 2018, @05:33PM
S'not what I mean. I mean the way you phrased it, the Asians could have all been there for fifty years or more while the middle-eastern immigrants are mostly more recent. Not a legitimate comparison.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @06:45AM (1 child)
Like Tennessee, you Carpetbagging Son-of-an-anchor-Bro?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 25 2018, @10:16AM
With apologies to the late, great Johnny Cash:
I've been to,
Louisville
Nashville
Knoxville
Omerback
Shereville
Jacksonville
Waterville
Costa Rock
Richfield
Springfield
Bakersfield
Shreveport
Hakensack
Cadallic
Fond do Lac
Davenport
Idaho
Jellico
Argentina
Diamondtina
Pasadena
Catalina
See What I Mean
I've been everywhere, man
I've been everywhere, man
Crossed the deserts bare, man
I've breatherd the mountain air, man
Travel, I've had my share, man
I've been everywhere
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by driverless on Wednesday October 24 2018, @11:00AM (9 children)
There's also the third option, that we're less able to answer questions on a test that, somewhat arbitrarily, was defined to measure IQ. In other words we're not getting "dumber", we're just less able to answer the particular questions that someone decided measure your IQ.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Oakenshield on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:26PM (8 children)
Anecdotal evidence suggests the effect is true. For instance, I had this conversation not once, not twice, but three times in the same semester with three different grad students at my university:
student: Can you install this software package in the XXX lab?
me: It's already installed and it's current
student: No it isn't. I just left that lab.
me: Yes it is. Look in the start menu and there is an icon on the desktop.
student: Sorry, but it's not. Can I install it?
me: Let me show you. (Walks to lab) See? Right there on the desktop.
student: Well it wasn't there earlier.
me: Jesus...
These are GRAD students. On the third go around, I just told number three to install it if it makes him feel better. The machines are deep frozen. There's hardly a day that goes by that I wonder how these kids made it through high school, let alone found their way to college. Around tax season, I find W-2 forms and tax returns left in the printers all the time. SMH
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:36PM (1 child)
Are all your grad students called Jesus, [youtube.com] or just the truly exceptional ones?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:18PM
Not all are called Jesus. Some are named Pablo or Miguel or even Consuela.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:01PM
We've been having a strong economy for 10 years. Not so many people applying to spend seven years to push out having to make a decision on what they want to do.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 24 2018, @07:01PM (4 children)
That conversation was matched yesterday, at work. I wasn't present, so I got it second hand.
Super: I want you to bolt this punch press to this steel table.
Worker: weld . . . weld . . . weld . . . "I'm done!"
Super: Did I tell you to weld, or to bolt, that punch press.
Worker: Oh, a weld is MUCH STRONGER!
Super: You can't make a good weld between cast iron and carbon steel UNLESS you use an oven to control the temperatures.
Worker: If the weld doesn't hold, I'll fix it.
Roughly two hours later
Super: I need you to BOLT that punch press to the table. Your weld broke already.
Worker: Alright . . . weld . . . weld . . . weld
Super: WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!?!
Worker: I'm fixing my weld.
Super: You can't DO THAT!
Worker: Yeah, I know, but look at the clock, I have to go home!
about six hours later
Super2: Maintenance, I need you to look at the punch press at machine 11. The weld is cracking, and the press moves around on the table.
Maintenance: I'll get to it in a little bit.
about four hours later
Maintenance2nd: Super2 wanted me to look at the punch press at machine 11, but I just never got around to it. Can you do something with it?
Maintenance3rd: Yeah - no problem - uhhhhh - WTF welded cast iron to a steel table?
Maintenance2nd: name - he's such a dumb shit - I get tired of cleaning up behind him because he's too stupid or too lazy to do it right the first time.
Maintenance3rd: drill drill drill - for almost two hours
If the original worker had done what he was told, the drilling would have been done in ten minutes, using a magnetic drill. Can't set the mag drill on the same table occupied by a punch press, and a bunch of ragged welding, so Maintenance3rd is using a hand drill to drill through 3/8 plate.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Thursday October 25 2018, @12:19AM (1 child)
Jesus...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 25 2018, @12:37AM
Jesus hasn't worked here for about six years now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @06:51AM (1 child)
I would fire your ass so quick, Runaway. You are allegedly making decisions above your pay grade! Did you not learn about this in the Navy? Thinking you know more than those who know more than you results in Fox News, and General Quarters. Fraud. Now I know you do not know how to weld, and especially you do not know how to bolt. You're Fired, and not just from your job, but from SoylentNews, because we cannot have someone so ignorant being our public face, unless it is TMB, who also does not know how to weld, or bold. He can only hack.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 25 2018, @01:44PM
You poor fool. Keep trying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @11:09AM
It's present in conscripts in Finland so we have a control for that and it's still showing in the affirmative.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @11:11AM (8 children)
"A rough estimate shows that close to half of all Muslims in the world are inbred: In Pakistan, 70 percent of all marriages are between first cousins (so-called "consanguinity") and in Turkey the amount is between 25-30 percent.[11]
Statistical research on Arabic countries shows that up to 34 percent of all marriages in Algiers are consanguine (blood related), 46 percent in Bahrain, 33 percent in Egypt, 80 percent in Nubia (southern area in Egypt), 60 percent in Iraq, 64 percent in Jordan, 64 percent in Kuwait, 42 percent in Lebanon, 48 percent in Libya, 47 percent in Mauritania, 54 percent in Qatar, 67 percent in Saudi Arabia, 63 percent in Sudan, 40 percent in Syria, 39 percent in Tunisia, 54 percent in the United Arabic Emirates and 45 percent in Yemen"
The British geneticist, Professor Steve Jones, giving The John Maddox Lecture at the 2011 Hay Festival had stated in relation to Muslim inbreeding, "It is common in the Islamic world to marry your brother’s daughter, which is actually [genetically] closer than marrying your cousin."
(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! .
(Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Wednesday October 24 2018, @04:30PM
In the 'golden age' of the ancient world, an even closer form of marriage was practiced particularly by royalty - marriage of half-siblings. No joke.
Why? A couple of reasons are obvious - availability and inheritance.
Availability is a major consideration for all pre-modern societies and even still today. If you live in a small village in an area dotted with them (or if you're a hunter gatherer no less so) there just aren't that many people you could match with to begin with, and in those settings there's just a much better chance that many of those people are 'cousins.'
And that's as good a point as any to insert one of the non-obvious reasons. Because we use the word 'cousin' ambiguously in English. While the word may have originally meant only one's mother's sister's son, it's sometimes used extremely broadly in English - c.f. 'my second cousin twice removed.' By that broader definition large numbers of people in EVERY traditional society marries their cousin. By the stricter definition; the son or daughter of an aunt or uncle, far fewer.
On to inheritance. There are obvious advantages if you've ever tried to divide up family farmland into smaller and smaller plots as grandchildren are born. If your parents are cousins you stand to inherit multiple shares from your grandparents, countering this trend. That's a simple and neat explanation for why consanguine marriage was particularly favored in the middle east, the cradle of agriculture.
If you read the Bible you'll find that the early patriarchs commonly married close relations, and if you read the cuneiform tablets you'll find the same of their contemporaries across the region. Later on the priests and scribes added prohibitions on marrying the closest sorts of kin - as well as certain non-blood related in-laws. Both Christianity and Islam carried on the basic framework, changing it a little here and there, but essentially intact. And cousin marriage flourished under all of them, perhaps because it was the nearest relation still allowed to marry.
And that *might* be why we seem to have expanded the word 'cousin' to include more distant kin about the same time we quit marrying "full" or proper cousins to each other legally, in certain states at least. It's only banned in less than half of US states to this day.
We think of it as something 'they' do but it was common and unremarkable in this country until well into the 19th century as well.
The genetic risk was dramatically exaggerated by certain 19th century 'public health' writers and it's now socially unacceptable even where it's legal, but in reality the risk is pretty small - UNLESS you're talking about super-cousins, which unfortunately you often are in the middle east. And by that I mean, cousins whose family trees are roughly 30%+ cousin marriage all the way back to ancient times, in which case the recommendation to avoid it would probably be a very wise one.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday October 25 2018, @04:41AM
And just this week I saw a stat from the British medical system to the effect that 1 in 6 kids from these inbred "Asian" (Middle-Eastern) parents has serious medical issues. The effect might be trivial from occasional inbreeding, but from 1500 years or more of concentrated inbreeding? Well, as you see.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @05:45PM
i think it's probably also this "international modern culture"/psyop spoon fed to children in developed nations since birth. never mind the chemical warfare imposed on them. lazy, entitled, fat, brainwashed, dependent, poisoned, brain damaged, etc. would we expect these poor bastards IQ to be going up? more and more can't even use the bathroom without a diaper. but hey, have your baby at the slave warehouse so they can get their bioweapons shot into their brain and cancer into their blood. send them off to slave training centers from the time they are 4-18 while you go earn fake money to buy plastic from china. i'm sure everything will be fine.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @06:26PM
Gotta love the smell of racism and eugenics in the morning. What a pile of shit with no evidence to back it up, the same shit racists have been saying since the dawn of civilization.
Taboo to discuss these things? No, just most rational people dismiss such dumb ideas and judge the people stating such things as hateful bigots. I know that will trigger you since you think you're just "telling it like it is" but please get the evidence before you start spreading the kind of shit that gave rise to the Nazis. Yes I'll Godwin the fuck out of that because it is incredibly relevant. Devalue human life and attach a group label and you pave the way for genocide.
"Europe got smart because dumb people died, particularly in winter."
How fucking dumb are YOU? Dumb people died? No jackass, POOR people died. Maybe that is your entire point? You want to reconnect poor == dumb so its ok to treat them badly? You're a racist shit hiding behind "reason".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @06:32PM
So edgy. But the next part was edgier:
So edgy that if you were going for a racialist interpretation, you just provided a reason that low IQ in Somalia may not have to do with race.
Then you provided a reason not to worry about immigration from Somalia on account of IQ.
So edgy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @08:31PM
Your post sounds like it was written by a dumb person.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Unixnut on Wednesday October 24 2018, @09:41AM (1 child)
You could argue it is deliberately dumbed down. The powers that be don't want an overtly intelligent population. Intelligent people tend to think for themselves , and are hard to control and manipulate.
You want your population intelligent enough to be able to survive and do whatever tasks are needed of them, but not too intelligent to start asking awkward questions or seeing when they are being taken advantage of.
So from things like state education that doesn't really challenge people to think, more to listen to authority and memorize rote tasks, to welfare systems designed to tax the hard working so much they can barely afford to have a child, while offering benefits to those who have as many kids as they can pump out. All effect the general level of intelligence.
Then again, there might be the simple case that stupid people have more kids. Intelligent people are more aware of the consequences of pregnancy, are more likely to use contraception correctly (or even use it in the first place), more likely to delay having kids and are more likely to have fewer kids (or not have kids at all). As a result with each generation more and more stupid people as a percentage of the total is born.
Then you got the argument about immigration, which seems to be a popular issue nowadays. The logic being that high taxation welfare states encourage the less intelligent and hardworking to immigrate, while the intelligent and hard working working ones generally already have jobs in their native countries, and are generally unwilling to uproot and move just for a higher pay somewhere else.
How much of the above influences a populations total IQ is a matter of debate, and it is also a matter of how much you think IQ is influenced by Genes or by actual use of the brain (usual nature/nurture argument), and I don't know the answers to that.
All I can say is that at some point in the past, there was an evolutionary advantage to intelligence, the fact that generally the less intelligent are more successful biologically, indicates that maybe the selection pressure for intelligence is no longer there.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday October 24 2018, @05:00PM
You extrapolate on too short a timeframe and assume modern society is the pinnacle of evolution. All of civilization compared to the age of the Earth is less than the length of a movie in a person's life. (Figured at 10,000 years against 4.543 billion years, against 80 years that comes to 1.54 hours of civilization). Should (perhaps when) this civilization burns itself out the intelligent will be the ones to survive. Presuming the Earth isn't a radioactive cinder by then.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Bot on Wednesday October 24 2018, @10:01AM (8 children)
It would be interesting to correlate this data with wireless emission wavelengths and strength, also with vaccination history.
inb4 somebody criticizes the idea before even trying: north europe has been comfy long before iq started dropping, so it must be something else, unless they were so PC not to exclude immigrants in a study of historical trends.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:05PM (3 children)
Everyone knows it coincides with removing lead from petrol (or was it removing lead from Alcohol? I forget)
(Score: 3, Disagree) by RS3 on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:47PM (2 children)
Petrol. Sadly, but an enlightening study is of the lead industry in the 1800s-1900s industrial revolution. The lead industry employed chemists to find ways to add lead to everything, and then sell the public, or at least the buyers in the distributors. (WalMart's corporate buyers shape much of the world's consumer products that are available...)
So they put lead in paint, which we're still paying for- it's very difficult and costly to remove lead-based paint, which was used up until the late 1970s. They also put it in petrol- it raised octane a bit, and lubricated engine valves. It was fairly easy to make valves and valve seats harder, and use better valve guides to eliminate the need for lead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:20PM (1 child)
It's OK as long as you don't lick it
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday October 25 2018, @01:42AM
What? You mean these are not good for what ails you? https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/whats-in-century-old-snake-oil-medicines-mercury-and-lead-16743639/ [smithsonianmag.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by darkfeline on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:47PM (1 child)
Don't bother, I can tell you right now that the decrease in IQ is correlated with wireless emission strength and vaccination history.
Why? Because the decrease is almost certainly correlated with social and technological progression, and social and technological progression is obviously correlated with wireless emission strength and vaccination history.
Correlation does not imply causation. What exactly were you trying to learn from spending a lot of money funding a study to demonstrate a meaningless correlation?
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday October 25 2018, @08:44PM
Easy, one step at a time, I want to know correlations, not causes. Once you find most of the correlated stuff you look for causes.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @03:01AM (1 child)
I first discovered the Internet in 1994. I'm pretty sure my own IQ has dropped since then.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 25 2018, @10:20AM
It's the porn. You put less time in using the big head when the little one's so active.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Funny) by SpockLogic on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:14PM (4 children)
Yes, the US is getting dumber too.
In 2016 we elected Trump.
Q.E.D.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:35PM (3 children)
Counter argument proof:
We did not elect Hillary.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:48PM (2 children)
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
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.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Pav on Wednesday October 24 2018, @05:55PM
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.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:21PM (4 children)
On the contrary, there is far more to know now than there was when I was your age. The most complex thing most people did was drive a car. Today today everything is computerized and far more complex.
That said, it does seem like people are getting dumber.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:27PM (1 child)
You need to know a lot and think a lot to thrive, but not to just live.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @06:12PM
You need to know a lot and drink a lot to thrive, but not to just live.
There, FTFY.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Thursday October 25 2018, @02:54AM (1 child)
I've found that most people barely know how to operate a computer or a smartphone. With that said, they can also barely operate a car.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday October 28 2018, @01:21PM
There have always been bad drivers. As to the phone, phones used to be simple and computers used to be complicated. Now that's reversed. TVs had two knobs, channel and volume. Now they're computerized with two dozen or more buttons on the remote control, which didn't use to exist except on the most expensive TVs, and they only had three or four buttons (and no batteries).
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 24 2018, @06:24PM
The brain isn't getting taxed
WILL YOU JUST HUSH!! If the wrong people hear you, everyone with more than fifteen working synapses will be tagged by the IRS!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @09:45AM (7 children)
They imported the low IQ.
(Score: 2) by fraxinus-tree on Wednesday October 24 2018, @09:50AM
You are right - for some nations.
Then again, everything is just more and more people having access (and interest in) IQ test.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @10:42AM
A review of several studies [researchgate.net] suggests immigration could only account for 0.1-0.2 IQ points. Dysgenics (a negative correlation between fertility and IQ) seems to be a more likely candidate, but they weren't able to establish that reliably.
A cause not considered in the review that I've been wondering about is the effect of the way we're being bombarded with information on our attention span. How well do you perform on an IQ test if your ability to concentrate isn't as good as it should be?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @11:02AM
Due to inbreeding?
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/10/muslim_inbreeding.html [americanthinker.com]
Yes. Yes, it is. It's been this way for centuries. This explains a lot.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @11:24AM (2 children)
The downslide measured against drafted 18 yr/olds around '97 weren't immigrants. Finland only started seeing immigrants from the former Africa, Soviet Union and the Middle East following the early 90s and those weren't drafted and made part of the census until the mid-2000s. Same applies to most of the other countries in the census.
But don't bother too much with these sort of tests. They've been "updated" a dozen times since the 50s whenever it became clear they don't make a lick of sense and failed to predict anything of value. Just look up the history of how IQ tests came about to the world... It's really just a con.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:48PM
I liked the old name too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:05PM
I would accept that IQ tests are a chiropractor level con. Does not seem out of the realm.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @11:24AM
Based on your comment, you're an immigrant, no?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jimbrooking on Wednesday October 24 2018, @10:41AM (7 children)
Love to see correlations between falling IQ scores and time spent on social media.
(Score: 3, Touché) by isostatic on Wednesday October 24 2018, @11:26AM (5 children)
1997 was about the time Chips and Dips changed into Slashdot wasn't it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:06PM (4 children)
Well, Linux was just starting to catch on around that time... You think it's a virus?
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:10PM (2 children)
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.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:08PM (1 child)
:-) 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
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.
It was hopelessly permanently pegged by the output of my sarcasm generator.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday October 25 2018, @07:08AM
Correlation does not equal causation. But now that you mention it. When Linux first came out, 1991 if I recall correctly, the majority of Finnish youth were being sucked in by something called "Windows" that could run something called "video games". Now those of us interested in computer science and operating systems of course switched to this new "Linux" thing as quick as possible. But those others, well, they were drawn to the dark side, where rings of power and Bill Gates bound them, and they became stupid, as they no longer sought to understand the logic of the DirectX that made their gaming possible. And then, of course, all was lost. Ready Player One levels of stupidity ensued, and it is now that the Millennials have begun to realize what has been lost. There is hope for the future. A faint hope, but a hope nonetheless.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:11PM
I was going to say something similar, but about the Web in general. Wasn't it about 1997 that the general population began to realize the existence of them intarweb tubes?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1) by gtomorrow on Wednesday October 24 2018, @10:43AM (2 children)
Yes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @11:26AM
No.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:14PM
Losing cognitive function through atrophy. (Atrophy is not a special form of trophy. Unless you mean a trophy for participation, so that the dumbest don't feel left out while diminishing the honor given to those who truly excel.)
Not less-well red, but more orange.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:11PM (5 children)
20 comments and nobody mentioned neither Idiocracy [wikipedia.org] or Idiocracy [xkcd.com]?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:16PM (1 child)
People were too busy drinking their Brawndo.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:18PM
It can all be solved with more electrolytes!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:21PM
Mention the obvious? That's quite dumb!
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday October 24 2018, @05:17PM
Well that's simply the result of too many stupid Millennials running around.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by e_armadillo on Wednesday October 24 2018, @07:17PM
Was too busy watching "Ow My Balls!"
"How are we gonna get out of here?" ... "We'll dig our way out!" ... "No, no, dig UP stupid!"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:36PM (2 children)
With even crapier music they keep overcoming themselves every time. This dumb music influences all the young, who in previous generations have had better stimulating music that made their brains to develop to higher standards. Nowadays they have no more this privilege and the sistematic exposure tomainstream crappy music make their intelligence stagnate.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:26PM (1 child)
Try listening to classical music. That is, music from before 1997.
When did Reality TV become a thing?
When did Cable TV stop doing documentaries and new content and become nothing but reruns and marathons or reruns?
When did video game consoles start becoming popular?
When did news stop being about facts and start being about entertainment?
(Several of the above items demonstrate my axiom that: advertising destroys everything it ever touches)
Now we have anti vaxxers. Chemtrails. Homeopathy. FoxNews. Trump. The Deep State. Sovereign Idiots. Etc.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday October 25 2018, @09:07PM
>chemtrails
OT but I picked situations that make a difference in temperature extremely unlikely to explain the persistence of some chemtrails.
Think never seeing intermediate chemtrails. They either disappear when the plane is still around, or they persist for hours and hours.
Think two planes, same part of the sky, same time, same apparent dimensions and speed, so there can't be much of a difference in height, upper one short trail, lower one trail through all the fucking sky. A colder lower layer, an warmer upper layer, no apparent interference or wind.
Think the implausible excuse of an increased air traffic, as I am 20 miles from an airport and had seen planes since the 70s. Chemtrails, as seen in first person and in photos of trusted origin, look like a thing of this millennium.
Think a chemtrail with a small hole (engine problems? LOL! or maybe a corridor of warmer air that doesn't minimally affect the nearby cold air?)
I don't care whether you believe my observations, but please refrain countering with the retarded argument that conspiracies need everybody on board (people will mind their own business especially when career or wage is on the line).
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:57PM (5 children)
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
(Score: 1) by TheFool on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:01PM
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)
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
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)
Yeah, but... <blink> was introduced in 1994 [montulli.org] and it took a while to make it on geocities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday October 25 2018, @09:09PM
Finally, a solid trail to investigate.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:01PM (5 children)
What a coincidence: large numbers of immigrants began entering Europe - including Finland - in...wait for it...the mid-1990s.
There's a lengthy article on Slate [slate.com] that discusses this. About halfway down, they mention that some scientists have suggested immigration as the cause. They then refute this idea by calling such scientists "racists and cranks". Sad: When a hypothesis isn't PC, people skip the scientific step of examining it objectively and jump straight to the ad hominem attacks.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @01:42PM (2 children)
I've often thought that those who take PC as a religion tend to be the least intelligent among us. Their value judgments are almost always based upon emotion and seldom have any objective logical or reasoned components. When presented with incontrovertible and objective proof that a position they hold is wrong, they double down and start the name calling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:36PM (1 child)
What a coincidence! All the right-wing nuts I met do the same - needless to say they weren't PC, most were not even polite.
It must be that the PC trait is not a cause for the issue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @05:59PM
Right wing "nuts". As I said, "they double down and start the name calling." Perhaps you could have made a point that politics in general as religion is indicative of lower IQ, but the name calling doesn't give you much high ground to make any point at all other than to prove mine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @09:28PM (1 child)
As pointed out elsewhere, the figures are from the draft results which didn't include those immigrants back in '97.
Other people suggested the internet or media is to blame. The problem is IQ tests were never about intelligence. They were, and are, about testing puzzle solving skills that were found statistically linked to academic success. The premise was that those skills can't be / aren't typically exercised so they have to be innate. Well, correlation does not imply causation was never more right considering the Flynn effect mentioned in the title and the dozen other outliers IQ tests failed to account for over the years. Most damning is the fact the tests had to be repeatedly modified to account for minorities (Jews first. Then Asians. Genders from day 1. Other counties made similar changes to their version of the tests) failing the tests but still succeeding in Academia.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday October 25 2018, @04:50AM
There's also a body of data (going back to the 1800s) that found twitch reflex speed correlates positively with IQ -- basically, if the brain processes faster, that's what higher IQ is. In geek terms, bus speed correlates with apparent CPU performance.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Wednesday October 24 2018, @02:11PM (4 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:09PM (1 child)
Yep, being cuddled, not allowed to have any independent thought, and told you can lop off your dick anytime you feel like is probably net negative.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @07:55PM
Not having to learn the difference between being cuddled and being coddled. Oh, the irony of modern neo-conservative illiterates complaining about the lowering of general intelligence, and literacy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @03:21PM
When did GMO crops start to become prevalent in our food supply?
When did pesticides like RoundUp become widely used?
Those are more started in the late 70s.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @12:18AM
They should definitely track recreational drug use too.