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Are We Getting Smarter? Rising IQ Scores In the Twenty-First Century
hessian sends this excerpt from The New Republic:
"[A] person who scored 100 a century ago would score 70 today; a person who tested as average a century ago would today be declared mentally retarded. This bizarre finding — christened the 'Flynn effect' by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in The Bell Curve — has since snowballed so much supporting evidence that in 2007 Malcolm Gladwell declared in The New Yorker that 'the Flynn effect has moved from theory to fact.' But researchers still cannot agree on why scores are going up. Are we are simply getting better at taking tests? Are the tests themselves a poor measure of intelligence? Or do rising IQ scores really mean we are getting smarter? In spite of his new book's title, Flynn does not suggest a simple yes or no to this last question. It turns out that the greatest gains have taken place in subtests that measure abstract reasoning and pattern recognition, while subtests that depend more on previous knowledge show the lowest score increases. This imbalance may not reflect an increase in general intelligence, Flynn argues, but a shift in particular habits of mind. The question is not, why are we getting smarter, but the much less catchy, why are we getting better at abstract reasoning and little else?"
I have to abstract myself away from shit like Jersey Shore, Real Housewives, Survivor, Jaywalking, etc. The things I hear pass for intelligent conversation now scare and enrage me. I for one do not believe American's at least are getting any smarter.
Silence is a state of mime.
Most IQ tests are in written form, so they can only be administered to children and adults old enough to read. So, only people who've been exposed to at least kindergarten plus (for a lot of people) preschool.
I am not a teacher, but I would venture to say that a whole buckload of evidence-based developmental psychology has gone into improving the educational system since 1912. Plus, things like school enrollment have gone way up. In 1912 a lot of rural kids -- and most people lived in the country -- went to one-room schoolhouses.
So I would think that IQ scores should go up in the competency areas schools have been trying to cultivate. And I would say, thinking about how different the education system probably is today, I'd be more surprised if nothing had changed.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
100 years ago your day included throwing on overalls and going farming. Everything was X, Y, Z, you could write it down, follow it and have it work. Even the early industrial movement showed thinking that followed X, Y, Z. As humanity has progressed and started to apply philosophical ideals to tasks we have developed systems where a job that was once X, Y, Z is now a complex equation of variable introduction. Fundamentally everything has seen this shift, from farming up to global commerce. So why have the IQ score gone up, well I would say it's probably because of the mental level of application required to grasp the basic ideas.
If you practice at something for years, you get better at it. I played video games for a lot of years and now I'm a puzzle-solving genius by 100 years ago standards. It's all because of video games.
I know I'm personally getting smarter: recently stopped reading YouTube comments!
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
A cursory glance at the people in your local Walmart says:
No
I always figured it was because we're exposed to much more complex mental stimulation (brain exercise) at younger ages.
IQ test are not worth a lot. The summarising of "intelligence" into a single figure is hopelessly blunt.
Nice to see Pioneer Fund grant recipients Murray and Herrnstein getting a mention. Or are we supposed to forget the racist subtext of The Bell Curve?
Abstract reasoning used to be the almost exclusive province of mathematicians and philosophers. Now we teach it in schools.
I would argue that the mountain of choices we have available to us now compared to 100 years ago would account for some the gains in abstract reasoning measurements. 100 year ago: Rabbit A or Rabbit B didn't matter much. The store only had a few brands of any particular product, if they were even branded at all. Today - Shoes: sneakers, loafers, sandals, pumps, flat, Nike, Adidas, New Balance, Nunn Bush, Bass, brown, black, leather, synthetic, Air, laces, straps, etc. We have to choose what we think will suit us best, weight one choice against another hundreds of times per day. We have to weigh the inputs - advertising, peer pressure, style, function, preferences. All of this takes heavy reasoning capabilities.
There may be no "I" in team, but there's also no "F" in way.
Iodized salt.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
IQ is relative, so even if people were getting smarter on average, they should not score higher in IQ tests :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Mental_age_vs._modern_method
When an IQ test is constructed, a standardization sample representative of the general population takes the test. The median result is defined to be equivalent to 100 IQ points. In almost all modern tests, a standard deviation of the results is defined to be equivalent to 15 IQ points. When a subject takes an IQ test, the result is ranked compared to the results of the standardization sample and the subject is given an IQ score equal to those with the same test result in the standardization sample.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Despite being exceptionally bright, I never scored higher than 125 on the IQ tests they made you take in high school. Some years later I decided to try to get a high IQ to qualify for Mensa. After studying for only a month, I scored 145 on math and 132 on English. Can anyone make themselves appear smarter? Yes, despite the fact that many claim we can't.
Disclaimer: I may have been stoned to the bejezus when taking some of those high school iq tests.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
I don't think we're meant to know the answer to this one. Insert facts, or conspiracy theory here. I don't have time to read the full article, but what I would like to see is someone from *today* take a IQ test from "yesterday." If they do much better on today's, then its obvious that the test is easier. If they do the same on each, then that would make sense.
The other avenue takes us down the genetic/environmental train (neo-cons please step off), where we need to realize, if we are scoring higher on IQ tests that are the same, then we have to think about those two. I don't think genetic is going to play that large of a part - but could. Some of the smartest dogs are mutts, and we're all pretty mutt'ish here in the US. Also, we have a lllllllllot of things in our drinking water and foods that weren't around just 40 years ago. You could very easily say that nutrition helps cognitive thinking, however my experiences with people who base their decisions on emotions rather than fact, even thought they are very intelligent, makes me think twice about that.
Let's try a goto 10.... I don't think we're meant to know the answer to this one.
Nah, the bar's just getting lower.
I think the definition of "smart" is subjective. As Jerrod Diamond pointed out in his book "Guns, Germs, and Steel," a scientist from California looks "smart" on a university campus, but looks like a complete idiot in the New Guinea jungle, where he struggles to follow a trail or build a shelter or find potable water. Similarly, the New Guinean jungle-dweller can improvise all kinds of things in the jungle but doesn't understand how to cross the street or maybe even turn a doorknob. Going beyond Diamond's point, I would say the New Guinean doesn't *need* abstract reasoning or formal logic, but he does probably need to use his brain power in ways I can't really predict because I'd be an idiot in the jungle, myself. So, who is "smarter?" Their environments require different competencies.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
People who modded this guy -1 don't understand: what he posted is actually a very subtle IQ test.
Because they don't want anyone to feel left out. This is the age of pussies.
The gobal diet has improved and , believe it or not, environmental standards have improved.
Less exposure to heavy metals and diets rich in protein and fat.
I don't know in the US, but in europe nearly no one uses them anymore, they're considered just like puzzles that you can find on a weekly magazine. And it's weird that they are developed by psychologists, who are not exactly the smartest people around. It would be more appropriate if they were developed by physics PhDs or similar.
These test scores are sorting men and women into colleges, who from that point marry and start reproducing. So yes, there is a eugenic effect from the academic aspect of society.
Many researchers disagree with Flynn about the cause of the Flynn effect. Two other common hypotheses are that lower parasite load in children leads to better functioning brains and older people will have bodies under less stress. Better nutrition does essentially the same thing. There's a fair bit of evidence for these hypotheses. For example, if nutrition levels matter then one would expect a lot more movement on the low end of IQ than on the high end and that's exactly what we see. http://synapse.princeton.edu/~brained/chapter15/colom_andres-pueyo05_intelligence_Spanish-schoolchildren-nutrition-hypothesis.pdf. Meanwhile, a good case for the parasite load hypothesis can be found http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289611000286.
Yea the IQ test has to be reballanced every so often to keep 100 at average, and what 100 is now is actually higher than 50 years ago. It's not that people are getting smarter though. It's that people are getting educated. If your average 50 years ago has a 30% illiteracy rate then if you decrease the illiteracy rate then it will appear that the population has gotten smarter. In part, that is true, but having more people educated just means that we are getting closer to our potential. Our maximum potential might not be moving at all, but it's hard to say where that is until the majority gets their maximum amount of education.
See "Global Consciousness" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_consciousness and Jung's "Collective unconscious" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconscious
Whether this is some sort of all-extensive world-soul, or just the fact that people are more connected because of technology, we all seem to be moving toward thinking the same.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Surely if we really were more intelligent, we'd know the answer to the question "why are IQ scores improving?"
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I wonder what the total IQ of the House Science Committee is?
Well, seeing as how Idiocracy is fiction, I really don't see that as good evidence of anything. And even if IQ tests are really being dumbed down now --- which I doubt --- I doubt it was occurring already in 1951, when the short story on which Idiocracy was based was written.
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
Glenn Beck, Mitt Romney, Megan Kelly, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann. Do i have to go on?
a person who tested as average a century ago would today be declared mentally retarded.
Note decline in religiosity.
Also, despite widely held belief to the contrary, civilization might be killing off genetic lines of the stupid, which is good news, at least for /.ers who want to get some.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Social changes have meant the development of more intelligence in some areas but less in others. IQ tests only test some areas of intelligence.
but simply knowing facts is not intelligence. The reason the scores for abstract reasoning and previous knowledge are changing differently is because they're measuring two different constructs, usually referred to as "fluid intelligence" and "crystalized intelligence." I personally believe that long-term memory is not one of the things we usually think of as intelligent behaviors (e.g., problem solving). My wife's experience in medical school demonstrated that a lot of dumb people can test well. But also our environment is becoming much richer as access to mental exercise tools like books, software, Legos, the Internet, etc, explodes. And lots of research (e.g., this instantiation of Portal for rats from 1973: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347273800028 ) supports the notion that rich environments support intelligence.
The mind is the same as muscle in this one regard: exercise it and it becomes stronger. Video games, puzzles, /. posting, and complex problem solving at work all exercise and improve cognitive function. We may do more, rather than less, of this thinking thing because of advances in technology.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The mind is getting better, while the quality of the actual experience diminishes.
Let me elaborate.
We're getting better at predicting, survival, information. While the *thinking* part is actually getting faster and more developed, the connectedness and the affinity with the world is diminishing. we're thinking more "about" things, from "the stands", and are wrapped up in our opinions. But we're loosing out on the actual quality of life, on the being present and in the moment.
The sad thing is that it really doesn't make us happy. We can suck up way more information, like a sponge, but what does it really help us?
There are a number of variables in play:
- much better health levels for children
- no malnutrition (in the West, anyway)
- universal literacy and childhood education
Couple that with the fact that IQ tests are necessarily abstract and theoretical, something that matches far closer to our culture and daily lives today, and you've probably explained it.
A person could be a successful functional adult in the 1930s having dropped out of school at 8th grade. They could run their business, have employees and have a rather good life as a tradesman or farmer. Further, those trades and functions required a practical intelligence that is (afaik) never tested in such tests. I've had the pleasure of knowing a couple of individuals that have been - literally - mechanical geniuses, having a tremendously powerful intellect in terms of engines, motors, electricals (not 'electronics' ie circuit boards, etc), and when we talk about current events they're tremendously subtle and insightful. But I expect that they wouldn't 'register' as "high IQ" in a formal sense because they were relatively uneducated.
Further, I'm not sure if it's just me but everyone I know who actually talks about their high IQ (or worse, their mensa membership) is pretty immediately obviously a complete ass. Considering the high number of asses I meet daily, that would suggest that lots of people have high IQs, right?
-Styopa
... doesn't test for quality of thought. There are plenty of smart people that believe weird things or have strange political beliefs. You can just look at slashdot to see that just having raw intelligence != quality of thought. The human mind doesn't work like the enlightenment thought it did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ
THEORY 1: From parents word of mouth, to church (organized sermons), to printing press, to larger printing presses, to internet. See growth of world literacy http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:World_illiteracy_1970-2010.svg&page=1 Literacy allows ideas to travel like invasive species, wiping out stupidity. Some virulent strains of stupidity still survive, and the Youtubization (audio and video) phenomena may make other forms of communication to trump literacy. But for the period of the study, IQ or test taking ability would be expected to increase as literacy increases.
THEORY 2: As Jesus said to his disciple "Psst, walk on the rocks". If you are using the same test for intelligence, word is going to get around how to pass that test. We don't know what kind of native intelligence is getting lost in "illiterate tribes" as the succeeding generations become literate rather than stick to old ways. Evolution vs. Diversity... The extinction of languages makes it difficult to tell whether the surviving languages are testing for their own genes.
I'd go with theory 1. But it's possible that IQ tests may just be measuring the rate of growth of a western IQ invasive species which tests it's own strain of DNA. If Whales had fingers and became the dominant species and flooded the land masses, drowning land mammals, they'd measure something different and find a statistical improvement in use of Whale intelligence.
Gently reply
1. Twilight is considered a great book/movie by many.
2. People like Charlie Sheen and Kim Kardashian are considered celebrities.
3. People like Mitt Romney are serious contenders to be President of the United States, and people actually think he's a good candidate.
4. Sports are over glorified and players are often paid millions of dollars, but those teaching our kids to create a brighter tomorrow work for peanuts.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Oblig quote from the movie "Idocracy":
IQ testing computer: "If you have one bucket that contains 2 gallons and another bucket that contains 7 gallons, how many buckets do you have?"
Of course the correct answer to this question is: "At least two." That's because nowhere it was stated that those are the only buckets you have.
I thought that since the 90's the flynn effect had stoped and that IQ had held constant or in some places went backwards.
I'd remember the name of that law about questions in titles and No as an answer. Nevertheless I'm afraid that we are just getting better at passing those tests we are taught to pass. That might actually be all there is in being smart (optimal fit to the environment) but I'd be surprised that the essence of being smart can be captured by logic tests.
FTFA: "[A] person who scored 100 a century ago would score 70 today". So this means the scale has been adjusted and what we call average today would have been quite smart a century ago. You can't measure absolute IQ of a society, but you can do comparative studies of different societies or the same society at different times in its history.
Men supposedly have better spatial reasoning based on the tests of manipulating blocks or gears in space.
But this is a culturally relative test.
Give a female who cooks a blob of leftovers or dough and she can pick the correct container that will hold the container without waste or a lot of air space. Most men can't.
Give a female a pile of dishes and a dishwasher vs a male with the same dishes and dishwasher and the average female will more effectively load the dishwasher than the male.
These are both spatial reasoning puzzles which are more complex than those given on tests.
Females have spatial reasoning- most of them just didn't play with lego blocks.
The tests are biased to men. That's why men have "superior" spatial reasoning.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The reason is, IQ testing is subjective horseshit. People can be taught to think in a certain way, and people in an environment who think a certain way will do better than people who are in an environment where that 'way of thinking' isn't leraned/taught/reinforced.
When I started my first engineering job, I passed all of my courses pretty handily, but I still didn't know how to think for the job. My mentor told me this, and every beginning engineer he ran into had to learn how to think in the correct way. I spent all my co-op experience thinking for what was basically Engineering IT projects, and not product design stuff.
My IQ is a 142 by my last test, but it's only because of years of tech work. If I lived on a farm all my life and never did the variety of jobs I've done, there's no way I could score that.
Anything is possible with enough Adderall, Ritalin, and/or Modafinil.
The IQ tests are a measure of how well a person can notice differences in patterns and cognitive reasoning.
I think the reason why the scores have been raising over the years is for the simple fact that people are using those portions of their brain more, by either the higher literacy rate (reading requires pattern recognition to make words from letters) or simply using a computer interface that allows for quicker interactions than possible before modern times.
But since there is only so much grey matter in our heads, I'm sure we are growing more terrible at other functions the more we tune ourselves to differencing.
Malcolm Gladwell declares this a fact everyone. We can all go home now.
Abstract reasoning is exactly what IQ is supposed to measure, so that part seems a bit confused. But beyond that, I think if you look more closely what is happening is moreso that the bottom end of the range is coming up (as a result of more widespread basic education) than that the top end is rising (smart people are actually smarter.) This probably has more to do with nutrition and medical care than anything else.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
It's important to understand that IQ test were not designed to measure a person's aptitude, but rather measure a person's whiteness.
There was a series on several years ago (BBC :: Connections) where James Burke was describing the town criers
from the 15/16/1700's. He said that they would enter a town, and sing/chant the news for a couple of hours (or some time
like that) then leave. After a single hearing, people had memorized the whole chant. Try that today - ain't happening.
But, I'm pretty sure those people would never grasp the concept of an iPad.
I remember when my son was in school, I questioned some of the questions on the test for racial bias; the school was not
happy about that at all. They're so institutionalized in their system, it's outside of their scope to see the problem.
I truly could not stand the movie Idiocracy simply because the portrayal of such a dumbed down society absolutely terrifies and disgusts me. But as I listen to the news and how information is spoon-fed to society, and the type of crap that is called good entertainment I weep for our future.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
smarter or better at test taking?
In a 4th history close we looked at the Mismeasure of a Man. One of the largest topics was IQ testing. One of the earliest wide scale tests was done on soldiers in the US army. In tents...without verbal directions or written directions..on a primary migrates and child of farms who had never been to school. This test taker were pressured with louds to GO! Oddly almost everyone could solve a maze puzzle (think children placemate) but when it came to complete the picture people did badly. These people might never have seen a Gramma phone or a modern light bulb. At the rules where very strick that the bowling ball had to be in the man hand not in the air or rolling down the alley. The Avg. was further dropped by the fact that many soldiers where confused or didn't understand so they didn't do anything and left there exam blank. Today people take IQ tests in quiet rooms and in schools. They are reading the directions and often have seen similar problems before. No we're not getting smart we are just better prepped to take the test. In fact the test orginally was designed to find weaknesses in a child learn skills not designed to find the brightest and the best.
Life is like untied shoe laces; it always tripping you up and getting in your way.
Except your true 125 is showing because you haven't realized that Mensa is pack with idiots.
Just as an example, do some research on the Mensa Investment Club.
They've been dumbing down all the other tests, so why not his one?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
When I read something like this, I think that it is another piece of modern self-congratulation, the kind of thinking that leads to assuming that the ancients were so stupid that aliens must have visited them to help them stack rocks. But then I look at photographs of random groups of people from about 1880-1920 and think that about half of them look like slack-jawed functional morons.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Can't speak for Americans as I'm English but we are certainly not getting smarter.
Having grown up in the UK, lived in the US for a few years and now settled in Canada and working in a University I would claim that students are becoming less educated at least on arrival at university. This makes it far harder to determine whether their intelligence has changed. For example in the UK we used to learn simple calculus by the age of 16 for O'level maths. In Canada many students starting university even to do physics or maths have never seen any calculus. This is not because they are less intelligent but simply because they are less educated. Indeed they pick it up fast enough once they are taught it but of course the time spent teaching them this is now not available to teach them more advanced topics at the end of their degree.
At the same time, while I have no confidence at all that IQ really measures intelligence (just look at MENSA), it is interesting that IQ scores are rising given that it is a fixed measure of some mental capability. What this suggests is that we are doubly failing the next generation: school standards are dropping while students are becoming more capable of learning!
grasping 3 dimension concepts has become the norm, as has being able to think abstractly.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I personally think that this is evidence that IQ tests have some fundamental limitations. What they reflect is educational quality and exposure to culture. Take someone living in the most remote of villages, give him an IQ test and, assuming he could understand the language, he would be found to be retarded. Asian students are more likely to excel at IQ tests for the reason that culturally they're big into testing; that experience helps.
Humans have more knowledge than they've possessed at any time in history. That, however, doesn't make them any smarter. In terms of fundamental understanding we're no smarter than the Greeks were. In terms of human interaction, there's no difference whatsoever. Your average teenager would almost certainly come off as incompetent, uncouth and quite stupid compared to a teenager from prior eras. This is inspite their ability to operate and understand the operation of, on a basic level, modern technology.
But we are all exposed to massive amounts of information and technology does tend to require more learning from. So from that perspective we do have the appearance of being smarter. A problem I have seen, however, is that people know a little about a lot of things. They are incapable of comprehending the reality behind everything around them. It gives rise to unrealistic expectations. And I think it leads to gullibility. Advertisers and the entertainment industry capitalize on that tendency. And in effect they perpetuate stupidity because it's the thing that leads to more profits. There's a reason why American Idol and Monday Night Football have the most expensive ad spots; it's why prime time television and networks like Comedy Central are bombarded with constant advertising. The demographic that gravitates towards all that content is less likely to apply rational thought to purchasing decisions.
So, despite more practical knowledge humans are as stupid as they've always been.
I am not a teacher or psychologist, but I have to wonder if at least some of this can be attributed to the things we have to normally deal with on a day-to-day basis. Specifically, in how those "things" have changed over time. As an earlier poster pointed out, life was a whole lot simpler several decades ago. Technology was much simpler and therefore easier to understand. The average person interacted with fewer people, less technology, less variance in their daily routine. Now, in developed countries at least, people are forced to interact with complicated devices and many people who are not actually present (via phone, teleconference, email, whatever).
People used to be amazed by the telephone, back when it was first invented. Many thought the user was talking to the device, not through it. Understanding that the telephone enabled remote conversation is the type of abstract thinking I'm trying to get it here. Multiply this by the hundreds of devices we're surrounded by and it's no wonder that people think more abstractly than 100 years ago. People have to, in order to deal with all the technology.
There was a time when we functioned in a bicameral mind state ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Jaynes ) or subconscious state, as many animals today do. In such a state there are limits as to how much you can advance but you are far better in touch with nature, explaining how many animals respond to changing environment (i.e. crabs move inland and how far depending on major storm strength and where the storm make landfall and many other examples).
Man developed small societies while living in such an non-abstract mind state, as even apes and other animals today do, all for increased survival. But with man our subconscious or bicameral mind state could not keep up with the growing population and the story of the tower of babel .... Man created consciousness and abstract thinking and communication, eventually evolving in such developments as written language and the development and improvements of mathematics (abstraction) to the point of today we have abstraction machines we call computers. http://abstractionphysics.net/pmwiki/index.php
Are we getting better with abstraction use as a tool? Well considering one of the downsides of abstraction is that it open the door to deception and this along with the growing world protests of the people against nothing more than the fewer in positions of command at they cost of the people.... Via deception...
All in all its only natural in our evolution that we get better at understanding the limits and usefulness of abstraction as the tool it is. Such that we get beyond the false usefulness of deception. Especially when such deception is being used by the few to take from the many.
I present two points that indicate people are noticeably dumber today than in the past (without precisely defining how far back the past is).
First, consider an entrance exam (http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvardexam.pdf) to Harvard. The document is dated 1899. Take this exam then draw your own conclusions.
Second, the overwhelming amount of entertainment that is available 7x24 from an explosion of different types of devices sadly means that many, many more people have become consumers and many, many fewer people are producing content of any form (and by "any form" I mean, especially, knowledge and not simply entertainment).
I attribute the dumbing down of America to two main causes: greed (corporations want to sell you endless numbers of devices and all the entertainment you can afford, then when new technologies arise, sell you the same content numerous times (CD, DVD, Blu-ray, etc.)) and laziness (it's easier to consume mindless entertainment than to learn something new on your own).
Many people thought Idiocracy (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/) was hilarious. I found it a disturbingly possible paradigm of the future.
On a related note, I also find it disturbing that in spite of our spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually on education, today's students in America consistently place poorly among major industrialized nations. Citation: punch "worldwide rankings of students" into google (omitting quotes) and read some of the 84+ million hits.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Because someone else will clean it up.
Sounds pretty smart to me. And if they're lucky, they get a boob in their mouth when they cry.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Ask someone from MENSA
In an era when access to facts is a click or a tap away, it becomes much more important to be able to know how to use those facts, than to have a mental storehouse of them. Because the scope of human knowledge is orders of magnitude more than any person can grasp, we are forced to rely on the opinions of others in all but our own narrow areas. If I read an article on, say, a potential cure for cancer, I know I lack the scientific knowledge to replicate the research or even build a good mental model of what's supposed to be happening, biologically, except on a very crude level. So to make judgment, I have to engage in pattern-matching, not fact-checking. Does this article contain the kinds of keywords, phrases, and tone that I've come to associate with woo-woo fringe theories, or does it seem in line with things I already know to be factual? Is it presented in a forum which has a reputation for rigor, or is it in a site featuring articles on aromatherapy and aura reading? Does it discuss limited results, provide caveats, and discuss risks, or does it promise instant and universal cures with no drawbacks and talk about how "they" are "terrified" of this discovery?
This applies in virtually every field of knowledge. We can't judge most things on the facts, because we can't know all the facts. We have to rely more and more on pattern matching and abstraction to reach conclusions. Most of us devote our "locally hosted fact storage" to that data pertinent to our daily lives, our jobs, and our favorite hobbies. A big chunk of what's left goes to meta-information about how to GET facts when we need them, and what's left is devoted to deciding if what someone is presenting as a "fact" is actually true, and to evaluating the value of each fact as it weighs in our opinions.
(It's a common mistake that if a person disagrees with you, it's because he doesn't know the FACTS! Odds are, he DOES know them, at least if he's anyone worth having a disagreement with. He just *weighs* them differently, because people apply facts as a means towards achieving their values and goals. Only in Jack Chick tracts and the like do people suddenly change their minds because a random stranger spews a series of "things you didn't know!" at them. Hell, even if you can prove beyond doubt that a particular justification for an opinion is objectively wrong, people will retain the opinion and look for new "facts" to support it. (Note how no matter how many times someone debunks a particular myth about Obama, or Creationism, or 9/11, or "free energy", or vaccines, the people who believe in conspiracies never change their beliefs -- they just find some new "proof". "OK, so the original study that linked vaccines to autism was proven to be a complete and utter fraud? So what, there's plenty more "proof", and besides, I don't believe it was a fraud, it was a frame up by the evil corporations!")
Are you good at taking tests? Are you well read? Can you memorize facts? Can you read patterns in the English language? Do you understand subtext? Can you speak comprehensible sentences to get a salient point across? Can you write efficiently? Can you research facts and figures? These are all skills. These are all skills which are taught in American schools.
Can you do basic accounting? Can you install an OS on a computer? Can you balance an checkbook? Can you build a home from scratch? Can you paint an oil painting? These are all Trades, and this is also what American schools teach.
Do you want to know what intelligence is? Stringing those individual skills together to do something with it. I can memorize facts, speak, write and research. Does that make me good at my job? No. Being able to put those together in a way which you can interpret, extrapolate, and create new and unique ideas is intelligence. This is not what is taught in many American schools.
The funny thing is that the highest IQ score I have ever got is 90. I have two masters degrees and work in Cyber Security as an IT Architect. I am not below average, just not good at test taking and what ever skills that I was tested on the supposed IQ test. I never cared that I have a below average IQ, I and everyone around me knows I am smarter than average.
You see this everywhere. Culture evolves and develops, how is this suprising. ...unfortunately there's always some people that can't understand past history. Even just being exposed to the products of high intelligence, novel applications and combinations helps to restructure thought processes as one is exposed to things that are possible that they could not conceive of on their own. The more available stimuli, the faster the acceleration. One need only view the effects of video cameras and massive amounts of data on sports, whether it be football or MMA.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
IQ tests do not measure the things that you seem to think they do.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Why all the denial and knashing of teeth? Accept the Flynn effect as data, most likely the result of a vastly more technological society that requires more intelligence to run & live in. This even works for the one-third of intelligence that is attributable to environmental development. Human are nothing if not adaptable.
On the two-thirds genetic component of intelligence, it is likely that both women and men are selecting mates with an increased emphasis on intelligence, and decreased importance of other factors like health or strength. Nothing radical (3+sigma still won't get a date) just a central small shift.
In any case, the upside of intelligence has to pay for the downside (indecision, depression?autism?mental illness). Humans have always had this potential for increased intelligence, but before the upside never paid the downside. Now it increasingly does.
Isn't that now one of those special words that until about 2-5 years ago we could freely use, but now must be sensitive and not use anymore....????
[rolls eyes]
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The article tells us nothing about whether the change can be attributed to the slimming of a fat tail on the low side of the distribution in test-scoring ability. My understanding is that the renormalization of scores is done under the assumption that the underlying distribution is Gaussian-normal, an assumption that seems to be at least somewhat controversial. Could this practice be hiding evidence that could help explain the effect?
People aren't getting smarter, researchers are getting dumber. The more IQ tests people do in a lifetime (and that's what's been happening over past decades), the better they will get at it.
venture capital success in Silicone Valley scores millionaires with AS.
Hey, in the synopsis they used the work, retarted....*GASP*
That's truly excellent comedy work there, spelling "retarded" wrong.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
As Flynn demonstrates, a typical IQ test question on the abstract reasoning “Similarities” subtest might ask “How are dogs and rabbits alike?” While our grandparents were more likely to say something along the lines of “Dogs are used to hunt rabbits,” today we are more likely to say the “correct” answer, “Dogs and rabbits are both mammals.” Our grandparents were more likely to see the world in concrete, utilitarian terms (dogs hunt rabbits), but today we are more likely to think in abstractions (the category of “mammal”).
This is claimed to be evidence for Flynn's argument that we have shifted to more abstract thinking. A simpler explanation would be that more people today have been taught that dogs and rabbits are both mammals, and are simply recalling that fact, which doesn't call for abstract thinking.
I do not know if this is a poor example for making Flynn's case, or an indication of its weakness.
That sounds like the "Fair Witness" answer...Have you read "Stranger in a Strange Land"? Heinlein was a genious.
I can guarantee niggers are definitely NOT getting smarter. And no, this is not a troll, it is a proven scientific fact that niggers have an average IQ that is 25 points lower than whites, and 28 points lower than east asians. INB4 liberal white hating/white guilt, pussies voting this down.
I doubt it.
The best explanations for the Flynn effect appear to be improved nutrition and lessened childhood disease. Something like 80% of a babies metabolic output goes into brain function (20% for an adult). So any severe sickness or deficiencies in diet at a young age will always produce a negative impact on brain development (creating a bulge on stupid side of bell curve). The West has mostly wiped out serious childhood disease and famine creating a significant boost compared to places where things like Malaria and poor food and nutritional deficiencies still kill or negatively impact the development of huge numbers of babies.
Also intelligence is correlated weakly with brain size, and bigger people have bigger brains (anecdotally I found it very noticeable in STEM subjects at University how many tall and therefore bigger-brained men and women there were). The average size of humans has increased markedly during the last 100 years with better food availability (eg 5-10cm taller in China in last 30 years).
The genetically determined (Nature over Nurture) aspect of intelligence is contrary to the ideal of the improvable man - but unfortunately it does turn out that genetics dominates Intelligence, with something like .75 correlation between twins even if raised separately. IQ statistics and correlations are very strong and very clear and can be used to predict (with accuracy) a wide range of things about the behaviours and attainments of genetically differentiated groups groups in our society.
This does not go down well in politics or the humanities and has been decried by apologists such as Stephen J Gould. It is OK to recognise genetic differences if they are positive, such as hugely superior athletic ability of West Africans that dominate most sports they participate in, but do not mention average academic outcomes - or find factors other than genetics to blame.
Some of the interesting results of this strong tendency towards genetic determination of IQ are that you get regression to mean (smart parents tend to have slightly dumber children, but stupid parents tend to have slightly smarter children) leading to identifiable trends such as smart first generation immigrants who managed to get to the West then having children who are less talented. And also that your chances of being a genius are massively higher if you come from certain cold climate populations where survival appears to have hinged on non-violent economic competition (han chinese, ashkenazic jew), and massively lower if you come from other hot-climate gene-pools that appear to have placed greater emphasis on disease resistance and athletic/verbal/physical ability in benign climates with frequent warefare. This results in a very large difference of something like 2-3 standard deviations between the Ashkanazic Jews and some of the hot climate gene pools. Which is why given the nature of the tails of the bell-curve the Ashkanazic's are so massively over-represented in elite attainments (nobels etc) and hot climate gene-pools almost invisible. Again this is not popular or politically correct but is nonetheless real and is demonstrates the reality of IQ or 'G' even without needing to devise a test for it - relative differences in group IQ and the bell curve can be elegantly inferred simply from the proportions of individuals in various professions.
So sadly it appears that genes do determine IQ to a large extent, but selective breeding can change average IQ by up to 15 points within a few generations (ashkenazic jews had nearly identical genes to the local population wherever they lived, and yet were on average almost a standard deviation smarter). If we wanted to we could probably eliminate IQ differences between groups within a generation or two using Gatacca style technology.
Better nutrition. It's similar to the height change. Look at older homes in England and most have lower ceilings and doors while the wealthy grew much taller because of the better food. Willam Wallace who was a noble, no matter what they said in Braveheart, and was thought to 6' 6" tall. A friend was in Japan during the construction of Tokyo Disnyland and said it was like a sea of heads all the same height. He said by the time they were finished it had changed so much it was like any street in the US. The younger Japanese were eating burgers and fries and other dense foods. Most humans aren't genetically 5' 5" or less. The genetic average seems more like 6' and above even for men. The consumption of foods high in fatty acids especially fish has been shown to affect brain development. A hundred years ago for much of the US such foods would have been rare. The bulk of diet would have been bread and potatoes like most of the UK while in Asia rice would have been the major caloric food source. Historically high protein diets as in meat were found to affect brain development. Neanderthals had a much higher percentage of meat in their diets and some groups exceeded modern man in brain size. That trend may reverse now that we are eating a lot of junk food and fish are becoming more scarce. Also our cattle and other animals are raised on corn diets instead of grasses which reduce the fatty acid content of the meat.
Mental retardation is an actual medical term which is subject to the Euphemism Treadmill effect, where over time a term becomes an insult in common usage and the professionals have to find a new word that doesn't have the baggage associated with it to maintain professional integrity (Similar to the reason we call them "Bathrooms" today instead of "Water Closets" or "Toilets" as the two latter terms became too crude through common usage). Don't blame "political correctness" on this, blame crass people like Anne Coulter who use the medical term in a derogatory sense towards those who don't have the disability without any sensitivity to those who must actually live with the condition.
Replace the word "Retard' with "AIDS carrier," "Cancer Survivor," or "Quadriplegic" and try making the argument that the offense people take to your use of these terms to disparage others is just "political correctness." The reason you don't use these terms as insults is because these are human beings who can fight back. "Retard" is okay because the mentally retarded can't defend themselves. Coulter is a bully and a coward for using the term and defending its use.
People like Coulter who call the backlash against their use of these words "political correctness" do so because the word "ignorant" applies to them. They are ignorant of the suffering of others, ignorant of medical science, and ignorant of basic good taste. I used the world "retard" as an insult when I was a child, but I'm an adult now and I am educated enough to know how abusing that word abuses those who are living with this debilitating condition.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
Every psychology 101 textbook states that the "bell curve", i.e. normal distribution, is the distribution of IQ scores. This is in fact wrong; IQ scores are not symmetrically distributed. The left tail of the distribution is heavier than the right tail. I devised a new asymmetric distribution which more accurately models this.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0037025
I also cite a paper which has seen a reversal of the Flynn effect: more recent IQ points have been declining.
Teasdale TW, Owen DR (2008) Secular declines in cognitive test scores: a reversal of the Flynn Effect. Intelligence, 36(2): 121–126.
Leave him alone, he's just 100 years old.
It means what educators and others have been saying -- that critical thinking and higher order thinking skills can be taught. And we're doing a better job now of teaching them because we understand better what they are.
Intelligence varies with at least 21 factors
Some of the other circumstances and attributes that have been found to vary to a greater or lesser (but always significant) extent in relation with IQ (Bouchard & Segal, 1985; Liungman, 1975) - note that not all of these relationships support an environmental view.
Intelligence varies with:
Infant malnutrition (-ve)
Birth weight
Birth order
Height
Number of siblings (-ve)
Number of years in school
Social group of parental home
Father's profession
Father's economic status
Degree of parental rigidity (-ve)
Parental ambition
Mother's education
Average TV viewing (-ve)
Average book-reading
Self-confidence according to attitude scale measurement
Age (negative relationship, applies only in adulthood)
Degree of authority in parental home (-ve)
Criminality (-ve)
Alcoholism (-ve)
Mental disease (-ve)
Emotional adaptation
"No single environmental factor seems to have a large influence on IQ. Variables widely believed to be important are usually weak....Even though many studies fail to find strong environmental effects....most of the factors studied do influence IQ in the direction predicted by the investigator....environmental effects are multifactorial and largely unrelated to each other."
- Bouchard & Segal (1985), p.452
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
I never got an IQ test. But I placed in the top 0.8% of a national entrance test for engineering colleges. Since it ignored biology stream and the commerce stream I would guesstimate my national rank to be in the top 0.4%. Working backwards, that would give me an IQ score of around 130 + / - 5. My daughter took the test in second grade and scored 163. Sadly like all girls she lost interest in math, despite scoring 5 in AP calculus.
So yes the next generation is smarter than the previous generation, and I am deliriously happy about it.
There's all these things in history, recent history (from a historical perspective) which are just ... idiotic. This might help explain or be part and parcel as to why things that were not even *considered* by most people 100 years ago is now outright unthinkable.
Just the most obvious example - the fact that they kept up with frontal assaults loosing hundreds of thousands of soldiers a day for YEARS without reconsidering.
I think that computers have a lot to do with it. The way GUIs work, tends to resemble a certain subset of most IQ tests, which measures pattern-matching, and even young people today are basically required to learn how to use smartphones, tablets, PCs etc.. (1) Actual IQ tests may soon need a revamped test for abstract reasoning, which won't resemble the puzzle of how to use an ATM or other menu systems as much. Or which wouldn't resemble icons too much. (2) It would not surprise me if population scores on certain subtests had actually deteriorated over time, because classical fields of knowledge are not being emphasized as much as they once were, such as Ancient History, even though they'd still be relevant. But basic education today has found class time to be so precious, that Modern History or Technology topics need to be taught. I don't see a lot of common people discussing Descarte's Cogito these days, even though some understanding should exist of what it means and where it comes from...
so what your saying is all the politicians of canada are retards.
I agree.
How highly would an average intellect by today's standards, have scored on the first actual IQ tests a century ago? I suspect not so well either.
I figure this evolution results simply from the progression of culture and the popularisation of ICT. Our notions of science and culture are by definition at their highest points, while all of the previous material remains available, creating a wider and a denser range of knowledge and understanding. Alongside that, the great variety in interfaces and controllers forces us to make more abstract connections for simple tasks. In a sense, it functions much like a tidal wave. And in the same sense, society is somewhat nearing the point where crashing down on the shore begins to appear more likely than gaining substantially more in height. Consolidation is becoming paramount and for a while will further increase our IQ levels and other measures of intelligence as well as the need to let go of our arrogance.
Purely anecdotal and totally untested, but my hypothesis is this: with less need to actually remember things, we have more brain left over for purely abstract reasoning and logic.
My personal experience is that my memory sucks. I don't know if this is genetic, or just a result of being undisciplined about memorization when I was young and so now, in my middle age, its just the routine that I can't remember stuff. I always had trouble remembering and memorization was, and still mostly is, the primary tool used in public schools. However my logic and abstract reasoning has always been high, through the roof even. I would score high on such tests, as well as IQ tests. But I would fall flat on tests requiring lots of memorization (history, grammar, etc). I would even do bad on math, because I couldn't remember the formulas (or times tables). But I could logically figure it out. Sometimes over and over I would have to logically deduce how to solve a problem instead of just remembering the formula or method.
Today, with Google and the internet, I have to remember even less. Because I know I can find it. Or I can find somebody who knows. I am great with high concepts and abstracts knowing that I can just find the answer to the details when I need it (mostly).
So, I "blame" our information based modern society. I don't know how bad of a thing this is. It does worry me that people dont know how to do basic things anymore.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
People who start out to learn Computing will learn how to 'operate' a computer and its GUI. But there is a huge wealth of knowledge in Computer Science, which does not even pertain to the Graphical User Interface. Thus, certain tests even of 'computing comprehension' today could be flawed, because such tests sample the grasp of statements, while a person may not even know why a statement is valid or not so. 'Abstract thinking' would have been tested in 1912, by a subject explaining in essay form, or to the satisfaction of an examiner orally, of what "I think, therefore I am." means. The question could still be asked of people, why it's important to know this concept, even today. I wouldn't bank highly on 50% of the population giving the correct answer(s).
Just like they do in all other types of test scores, they simply lowered the requirements.
The best explanation is most likely not going to consist of anyone's favorite personal or political bullshit. Most likely it is due to better nutrition, much lower childhood morbidity and mortality, antibiotics, vaccines, the elimination of lead in paints, indoor plumbing, potable water, etc. Not very exciting, but these are things that have radically transformed human society within the past century and a half.
I didn't start using PCs until I was in my late thirties. By that time, I had already scored a very high IQ on the Wechsler exam.
I used computers at work and I had to navigate a poorly design database software that was difficult enough to convince many older workers that it was time to retire.
Then, I got a WebTV for my home and I was confronted with the task of keeping track of my surfing like an abstract maze in my mind and it wasn't just navigating from site to site, I had to remember how to navigate all the sites I went to and if that wasn't enough challenge, the websites kept reformatting their sites to make it even more difficult.
Then I bought a computer for my home and that was even more of a challenge because suddenly now I was not just a user, I was the IT department, too.
I'm 63 now and I'm bearing down on 30 years of computer use and today, I have my GSIII and my laptop and my desktop and I go about my lazy retirement days fully connected. What used to be my mobile phone is now a computer that I can use to do almost as much as either my laptop or my desktop, only it fits in my pocket.
It really never ends the challenges to my abstract thought, because, even if everything else was static, there are OS changes and new OSes and browser changes and new browsers and the places where you make all the settings change and they are in different places for different applications and the consist of layers upon layers.
I've really only scratched the surface because there are many things having to do with all these devices that I don't use and don't need to know at least until the need arises.
So, if you were born in the last 30 years all these devices have been part of your learning and entertainment milieu, so that organ in your brain-housing group has been building neural networks for tasks that the average American in the 20th Century did not grow up with.
Is it any wonder that abstract thinking skills are on the rise?
We really don't need to norm tests so much across generations, because the old die out and they aren't part of the sampling frame anymore.
I highly doubt that today we are smarter than those of old, it's just that we are smarter at different things.
Most of us if were transported back to 100 years ago would find our new found skills to be far less important that the skills pertinent to the day and we would then be considered less intelligent, regardless of what a test may reveal.
So, that's my opinion of what's going on.
Shouldn't it be mentioned somewhere that perhaps the reason shows and plots are getting better only because specialization in education is becoming more necessary? Instead of getting your neighbor Bob to film All in the Family, now you've got a guy who has studied cinematography for 4 years at USC Film school, so naturally you're going to get more complex and interesting shots. Likewise, you've got teams of Creative Writing majors writing the shows who probably have more or less skill in a particular area, like writing a dramatic fight scene, a great style of comedy, etc. What must be helping too is that with the ease of communication (internet) ideas and techniques spread more quickly. So you put all of those very specialized people together and make something better/more complex. I don't think that it's necessarily a result of greater "intelligence" in the entire group.
Indeed, Good Citizen, one must heartily agree. I suscribe to Jane Jacobs last book, Dark Age Ahead, so many have become sooo ignorant they are clueless to the vacuum of information they are missing --- and their answer to every fact is a resoundingly moronic response of....."Conspiracy theory, conspiracy theory!"
Today, nobody has a clue as to who owns anything, AND everything! Nobody can grasph that a David Rockefeller, worth an estimated $30 billion in 1960, is today ONLY OFFICIALLY worth $2 billion? ? ? ? ? (Please don't look at all those foundations, trusts, offshore trusts, offshore unregistered trusts, and various other types of trusts, land trusts, etc., where the Rockefeller, and du Pont, and Mellon and Koch, and Morgan-Schilling family fortunes are well-hidden and sheltered.)
A typically pinhead politician idiotically spews forth his notion of "responsibility of the rapee" (rapist's victim) and all the sheeple speak of that, as if it was mandated and officially mandatory --- instead of any real and value-laden issues of the present and future.
Few people can do arithmetic today, few still understand fundamental arithmetical relationships and correlations. We are truly screwed.....
An excellent study, run in three parts in the old (and pre-neocon/neolib present influences) Atlantic Monthly, back in the early 1970s, (believe it was by Jensen, but don't recall specifically), indicated that from empirecal data and evidence, the most overwhelmingly likely indicator of economic success in America was the family one was born into.
Jane Jacobs, in her book, Dark Age Ahead, neatly dispatches Jared Diamond and his "biogeography" thesis in just several clever sentences.
...." I mentioned to a friend he would one day be writing the intros for hedge fund managers' books --- and I've recently noticed I have been proven right .....
David Deutsch, the British physicist, on the other hand, completely demolishes Diamond's thesis in two to three pages in interesting and captivating book, Beginning of Infinity.
After reading Diamond's drivel in "Guns,
I couldn't watch them either. Especially that Jersey Shore train wreck!
Everybody I know who has ever watched Jersey Shore, and the only reason I have ever seen an episode, was because it was a train wreck. Similar to many of the other shows, I suspect that a large part of the viewing audience is watching it just to make themselves feel better because they see those in the show as so much worse than they are, not because they actually relate or like the show's subject matter.
The post seems to say there is more to intelligence than abstract reasoning. How else do you differentiate Man and beast other than the ability for abstraction (aside from the ability to communicate it, I guess). Every other aspect of the human mind is exhibited in other animals, but we are the only ones able to understand our world as a set of abstract concepts. Abstraction is vital in our ability to teach our offspring, to create new tools, to find new strategies. Behaviors that take evolution millenia to develop can be conceptualized and executed in mere seconds by a capable human.
Because I see nothing in reality that proves it. I can't trust getting change from anyone any more. Even dead easy math seems to be over many people's heads. Then there are the morons behind the wheel, the Romney voters, the Hoey boo boo fans. Perhaps there are enough people pulling the average way up but the world is chock full of retards.
"Why all the denial and knashing of teeth?
Obviously, because many of us realize that a vast number of the people we come in contact with are hopelessly ignorant, stupid and clueless. Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency???
A private equity thieving leveraged buyout debt queen, actually running for the presidency????
Voters entirely ignorant of President Obama's 100% neocon administration????
Union workers in Wisconsin, where the governor is attempting to end collective bargaining and other evil deeds, cheery former president, Bill Clinton, who stridently helped to end collective bargaining and turn Arkansas into a "right-to-work" state (anti-union, anti-worker) when he was governor?????
"More intelligent..." is highly, highly debatable....
Shit - takes 10 seconds on /. to know this is utter bullshit. Argumentative nature = up. Intelligence = down. Look at everyone who quote Wikipedia.
APIs, UIs, regulatory regimes (channels, frequencies, law) are all abstractions.
Machines have gone from the Mumfordian account of the machine to automatons. Rather than a lever being a mechanical process through which we apply bodily force to accomplish a task with cybernetic applied force feedback, a lever instead (through a force unrelated to the actual work being done) communicates an abstracted imperative to a machine that then carries out the task independently of us (and whose processes we must understand and anticipate, rather than experience phenomenologically), and that then reports back to us in equally abstracted fashion.
We don't start the boiler by shoveling coal and turning valves, we start it by sending it symbolic commands using one interface or another. We don't observe the water level by looking through a window, we "observe" it by noting the numbers on a display that it "reports" to us. The step that says that what we're doing when we start and monitor the boiler actually has something to do with water inside a tank is now entirely conceptual.
This goes 1000x for computing and network technology, which today is all about marrying the outputs of A to the inputs of B, and the outputs of C to the inputs of D, fitting A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, etc. in place between A and B or between B and C in order to translate said outputs to inputs appropriately.
To make these heuretic systems work (your iPhone connected to the network, the app store connected to your iPhone, the app connected to the app store, Dropbox connected to your app, your computer connected to Dropbox, and your iPhone connected to your computer, etc.) we have to be able to traffic quickly and accurately in abstractions.
These are what we loosely term "scientific reasoning" skills and "technological literacy" skills today. They're the primary intellectual and practical (as in relating to everyday practice) currencies of our age.
There was much less use for this stuff a century ago, unless you happened to be a scientist working in a few narrow areas.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The New Republic is reliably wrong. The Flynn Effect shows rising IQs, about 15-20 points or so, on average, from BETTER CHILDHOOD NUTRITION. It is that simple. Things like Iodine in early childhood make a huge difference in brain development. But there are still massive differences.
Blacks of West African descent in the Caribbean and the US have an average IQ of 85. Their near identical genetic cousins in West Africa have an average IQ of about 65-70. Those in West Africa have little iodine in their diet, as a result toddlers brains don't develop as well as their American and West Indian cousins. Flynn found this as well among Maori and Pacific Islanders, those with a western diet heavy on ...
IODINE ADDED SALT ...
Scored on average 15-20 points or so higher than those generations before, who had not.
Takeaways -- things like childhood nutrition, vacinnation, disease suppression, clean water, sewage treatment, can do a fairly significant amount of good on AVERAGE POPULATIONS (individuals will vary of course). In the aggregate, these are positive steps to make populations smarter. HOWEVER, there are hard limits imposed by evolution and biology on how much IQs can be raised, absent DNA manipulation. Blacks in the US and Caribbean still have an IQ that is 15 points lower than that of Whites, this has significant implications in that absent fiddling around with most Black DNA, Blacks will ALWAYS lag in things that REQUIRE HIGHER IQS just as Whites will always lag in things that favor Black people: running/jumping/strength/agility sports like football, basketball, the Men's 100 Meter Sprint (no White guy has been in the Olympic FINALS since the 1980 Moscow Boycott Olympics). This also means Black crime rates will be significantly higher than Whites, because of much larger proportions of Low IQ MEN who can't figure out that acting on violent impulses will negatively affect their lives. Such as lengthy prison sentences or getting shot. This also means that Hollywood lies about most Blacks being magical repositories of goodness, sedate HIGH IQ occupations, and spiritual wisdom is nothing but a Hollywood lie. Black people are neither a master race for athletic prowess on average, or untermenschen for lower AVERAGE IQ. They are just different.
But changing their IQs to White norms is not possible even with the Flynn Effect outside outright DNA manipulation (which is already been done in Mice for athletic effect). There is some progress to be made. But Blacks on AVERAGE are in the US still 15% lower on IQ scores; that has not changed for over forty years. And I would be leerly of genetic engineering people just to make them fit delusional lies of how every population group is the same.
So the Lake Woebegone Effect IS true!!!
A large number of pregnant women now avoid alcohol, increase their folic acid and iodine intake, an include small amounts of fish (omega-3/6 fatty acids, but not enough to damage through mercury intake).
A better measurement of intelligence would be to observe behavior. What do people read, watch on TV (the vast wasteland), see at movies and do in life? Our school system wants to increase everybody's self esteem. That's far more important to them than teaching reasoning and skills, which is far more difficult. Who in society has great self esteem? Criminals, who feel like their desires trump any of your rights. No wonder our schools have become hotbeds of bullying and discrimination. People years ago were more self-reliant. Does that mean they were smarter? I would say it does. Passing tests when you are taught how to answer the questions--teaching to the test--only makes one more likely to get a good score, not be successful in life.
Unsure of the total (couldn't be arsed to look up how many members are on it), but I'd bet good money they average less than 100. This is the obvious response you were fishing for, isn't it?
Idiocy is not just fiction. It is a commentary on modern society and a (exaggerated) prediction of many ill effects that the writer believes will happen given our current trend. Dismissing Idiocracy because it is fiction is just as bad as dismissing a statement because it used a metaphore. Both are making a point, and both are fictitious.
Is it just me, or does everyone on the entire internet claim to have an IQ ~150? Where is the other 99.9663019177% of the population?
Everyone believes, secretly or otherwise, that they could easily be a pro racing driver, but, well, you know, who has the time or the money...?
Almost nobody will put a tick in the "average", "below average", or "poor" box when asked to self-assess their own driving skill and ability. They will modestly claim to be "above average", while the more ambitious will select "excellent".
None of them can drive for shit.
It's more a comment on society in 1951, since that's when the story on which it was based was published...
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
We now value abstract reasoning skills and as such we practice them more.
...to suggest that members of society are becoming smarter. I base my belief upon society's ever declining standards in literature, art, music and science. Modern music has become less complex and far less acoustically rich in comparison to music 100 years ago. I mention this because I believe the quality of music in a given society reflects well the capacity that members of that society possess for advanced, abstract and innovative thinking.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We spend almost 16 years in school. If we would spend as much time body building as we spend brain building we would all be athletes.
Kids were calling each other "retarded" when I was in grade school. I'm pretty sure Coulter didn't invent it. But thanks for surreptitiously injecting your worthless political opinion into the discussion.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Perhaps this will force mensa to change their requirements (under the threat of false advertising).
Assuming that you have to be in the top 2% to be a member of mensa and younger people getting higher IQ score, for someone with an IQ enough to clear the 98% level, after a while, it probably won't be good enough (their raw test score won't be in the top 2% anymore). So you'd have to score high enough so that during your life expectancy, you wouldn't fall below the 98% level. If the current trends hold, you might expect to need a pretty high score on an intelligence tests to rank in the top 2% for the duration of your life.
Strangely, although new members of Mensa would be getting smarter over time, the average intelligence of a Mensa member relative to the rest of the world would likely be going down over time (unless they kicked out older members that scored borderline in the past order to maintain their stated top 2% charter, or were growing the group fast enough to overcome this trend).
Food for thought? (not that it matters any iota, but just a curiosity)...
Intelligence Quotient is tied to the mean intelligence of your age group. If you think that "IQ values you've seen are larger" than they used to, the people whose results you haven't seen will have has even lower results to even it out. So it could mean that the differences in perceived intelligence are growing, or you just had too small sample set.
Here's a link for you.
Iodizedsalt.
She made the willows dance
Take guys like Jefferson, Lincoln, Carnegie, Edison. Jefferson every today would put probably our best people to shame Jefferson had such a command of the language. As I have interviewed people over the past 3 decades I certainly thought they were better in the past. Some today are dumber than a box of rocks, yet they got good grades.
Offhand I suspect the testing is being dumbed down. Just like school is.
People are just as intelligent as they were in the past. One thing people today have over people in the past is a better change at getting an education, so they can use their intelligent for brainy stuff. People have better access to different types of food, so getting balance meals are easier. We have children to go school instead of working in factories and farms. For a lot of the world life is better then it was.
Has IQ tests been the same for the last 100 years? I mean, how can you say the average IQ was 70 if they didn't take the test? Sounds like a load of crap to me.
Be seeing you...
It might be worth considering the possibility that there are multiple types of intelligences. Most people don't fall into the extremes of an intelligence, but those who do often experience deficits in other intelligences (as far as I can tell).
According to Howard Gardner, there are 8 types of intelligences:
Source: http://www.cse.emory.edu/sciencenet/mismeasure/genius/research02.html
Existential intelligence has been considered for inclusion on this list, but Howard Gardner says "I find the phenomenon perplexing enough and the distance from the other intelligences vast enough to dictate prudence - at least for now" (http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gardner.htm).
If I had a time machine that could take me back to 1899, I don't think my newly acquired smarts would help me in getting into Harvard. Oh well. -Josh
A hypothesis: Increase in "subtests that measure abstract reasoning and pattern recognition" can be accounted for by recent generations' emphasis on right-brain thinking. See Daniel H. Pink's arguments in *A Whole New Mind*. See the hottest topics on TED: Innovation, Creativity (Ken Robinson), design thinking, "New Data on the Rise of Women" (Hanna Rosin) (interesting indirect confirmation of the current right brain thinking era: Women on the whole are biologically wired to be stronger in right-brain thinking and whole brain/holistic thinking; thus it's not surprising that they are gaining prominence in a global economy and contemporary workplace which increasingly rewards skills that are right-brain oriented (collaboration; EQ; creativity; divergent and lateral thinking; design/aesthetics; synthesizing connections from disparate, eclectic sources, among others)).
Also, the habitual ways we use the Internet and particularly social media technology has accustomed our minds to operating in a broader ("oceanic"), more holistic manner, able to intake large amounts of data and recognize patterns (though Nicholas Carr would lament that we are losing in-depth, sustained analytical thinking as collateral damage). (It is misleading to say that technology is merely a tool; the reality is that we are shaping technology as well as being shaped by technology. This of course is nothing new; this phenomenon can be observed in nearly every sustained technology wave in multiple civilizations across history.)
Education and training sectors are increasingly emphasizing the right brain.
Perhaps in another generation the pendulum will swing back to advancement of left-brain thinking (the "New Left-Brain Era"). Or what will become of the post-right brain, post-whole brain era? It's comparable to the MMA world now. After the Gracies introduced Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to the first UFC and demonstrated the necessity to cross-train in martial arts to deal with all ranges of fighting, MMA was born. However, since everyone is learning everyone else's arts now and becoming much more well-rounded, the wins are increasingly based more on individual virtuosity rather than system superiority (e.g. BJJ vs Karate). What will be post-MMA? When will another breakthrough, another paradigm shift come?
IQ is definitely fluid to a certain extent. Fixed intelligence vs malleable intelligence view (see Carol Dweck's Mindset on the growth mindset). At the upper reaches, however, genetic limits do apply. Even so, with genetic science, we will be probably be able to manipulate our genes, just like we exercise our muscles or diet to mold our body. So the whole concept of IQ may eventually become irrelevant: a Post-IQ society.
People just need to get over it on all this PC crap.
They are just WORDS after all....they can't hurt you unless you let them.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Yeah, try telling a 30 year old with the emotional development of a 4 year old to "just suck it up" and see how far that gets you. I work with developmentally disabled people, this "It can't hurt you unless you let it" crap assumes that people all have the self control to pretend not to be in emotional pain. Most of the DD segment of society can't even handle it when you tell them that you don't like their favorite TV show.
Everywhere they go, people sneer at them, make loud comments like "disgusting," or get up and leave a restaurant because they don't want to be close them, and you think it's PC crap that they might feel a little uncomfortable about the fact that everyone in this country seems to think it's ok to jokingly refer to people they don't like as retards?
Exactly what part of mentally retarded (slowed/delayed) don't you understand? I bet you're one of those people who uses racial slurs and gets upset when someone calls you a racist for it.
Hahaha, because children do it it's ok! Great political insight. I bet that's why you vote republican.
He didn't say she invented it, he said she is a jerk for defending its use. Work on your reading comprehension a bit there.
From the article:
" It urges us—researcher and layperson alike—to take the veiled bigotry of absolute genetic differences among races, genders, and nations off the table."
Researchers should take a possible explanation "off the table" for ideological reasons?
The article says"why are we getting better at abstract reasoning and little else?" Well what is intelligence? Isn't it simply "abstract reasoning and little else??
no, it could be a real neologism, about women who got married , divorced and then went on the prowl gain so they got "retarted"
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.
See subject
Hahaha! Was it OK when Rahm Emanuel called protestors retarded, then? You're a cretin.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.