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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: 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.
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