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We're All Getting Dumber, Says Science (fastcompany.com)
dryriver shares a report from Fast Company: Researchers at Norway's Ragnar Frisch Center for Economic Research now have scientific proof of something we've long suspected -- we're all getting dumber. In their paper, "Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused," which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bernt Bratsberg and Ole Rogeberg report that IQ scores have been steadily dropping since the 1970s.
The study consisted of analyzing 730,000 IQ test results gleaned from young men entering Norway's compulsory military service from 1970 to 2009. They found that scores declined by an average of seven points per generation, a reversal of the so-called "Flynn effect" where IQ was seen to be rising during the first part of the 20th century. The decline may be due to environmental factors, but because the researchers couldn't find consistent trends among families, Bratsberg and Rogeberg discounted factors like parental education, family size, increased immigration, and genetics as significant causes.
The study consisted of analyzing 730,000 IQ test results gleaned from young men entering Norway's compulsory military service from 1970 to 2009. They found that scores declined by an average of seven points per generation, a reversal of the so-called "Flynn effect" where IQ was seen to be rising during the first part of the 20th century. The decline may be due to environmental factors, but because the researchers couldn't find consistent trends among families, Bratsberg and Rogeberg discounted factors like parental education, family size, increased immigration, and genetics as significant causes.
.... sounds exactly like one of those results that would vanish in a puff of annoyingly-irreproducible logic if anyone actually tried to replicate the underlying studies.
You know, like 90% of all other published research in the psychological sciences.
Or young men in Norway entering compulsory military service?
In the early 20th century, human living conditions, including improvements in sanitation, hygiene, and dietary needs being met likely all contributed to a net rise in human cogitative performance, however atmospheric CO2 levels have also been steadily rising in that time.
Then there's this.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
So yeah. Probably CO2 level rise has caught up to the benefits of improved standards of living.
One important thing about this study - it shows that there is not a strong genetic correlation with any of these findings. That means it is very unlikely that this represents any kind of "Idiocracy"-like trend of the 'dumb genes' outnumbering 'smart genes.'
Rather, as mentioned, it is a cultural/environmental set of factors.
If this is replicated outside of Norway, perhaps we've been making ourselves more dumb, either by forcing our less-well-off to live without access to education, or distracting ourselves in such a way that we no longer pass tests as children anymore.
On the skeptical side, while the Flynn effect studies counter for cultural-shift in popular knowledge pretty well - there could still be some measurement effect in there, like fewer students being able to cheat, or fewer administrators getting away with fudging numbers.
Ryan Fenton
IQ tests no such thing, and this study does no such thing.
This study shows a persistent trend in the cogitative capacity of enlistees in the general Norwegian population over several decades using a (mostly) consistent measurement battery of standardized test scores.
It makes no connection to education level.
IQ measures how quickly a person is able to grasp a concept or detect a pattern, and how well they are then able to apply that concept or make use of that pattern to solve a problem. It does little else. Its main detraction is that there are issues in communication, since the tests are tailored for people who are English speakers, and who are literate, which biases the results of illiterate people who are otherwise VERY intelligent. It itself does not actually measure your education level.
So, thats two strikes. Care to go for three?
Having done the army test in 2003, as all Norwegian 18 year-old males had to even if they didn't end up serving, I can tell you it was a three part timed test.
1) Mathematics
2) Linguistics (In Norwegian)
3) Logic/Pattern analysis.
Education comes into play in the first two, and the third one is more about figuring it out as you go.
You are then scored 1-9 in each of them as well as all the other testing such as hearing, vision and colorblindness.
Getting a little bored with the "Science" Says claims, like there's some governing body of authorised scientists that make things official.
I've started replacing that term in my mind with "some random dude claims".
Never happened. True story.
"Norwegians are getting dumber"
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
It's obvious, people aren't learning anymore and committing things to memory. They just rely on their electronic devices to answer every question without actually going to the process of acquiring knowledge that stays with them.... so less brain exercise = lower IQ.
Looking at how the comments here at /. have changed, I too see a pattern...
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IQ is actually defined as the common component of mental performance that is independent of domain and education. There are IQ tests that are independent of education and culture, but such tests are lengthy, costly, and tedious. That's why mass testing uses simpler tests that are calibrated for particular populations and are dependent on education, age, and culture.
Your test is calibrated for Norwegian 18 year olds; a Norwegian 18 year old that has more education than average would score better on the test, but the fact that he has more education than average would also strongly correlate with a higher IQ. If you give the same test to a Norwegian 30 year old, the results would be meaningless.
I started writing a reply, then realised that without more information it's hard to analyse the problem, and the article isn't freely available, unfortunately.
IQ tests don't test a single aspect of intelligence, and it matters what kind of tests have lower scores. Do these have more to fluid or crystallised intelligence? We could then further speculate what caused the particular change. For example, education has moved over the years to better address how girls learn, and it could have negatively affected how boys learn to think.
If younger generations are dumber, and people being born belong to the younger generations, then there's a net increase in dumb people.
If older people are smarter, and people dying belong predominantly to the older generations, then there's a net loss of smart people.
It follows that overall we as a species - which is clearly what the author meant - are indeed getting dumber.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Well ya, if they gave English IQ tests to young Norwegians entering military service, I suspect they wouldn't do as well as they could
My guess would be that the difference would be extremely low, Norway is consistently ranked in very top for English proficiency, you start with English in first grade and we don't dub English shows except for little kids. With Internet, YouTube etc. kids also get exposed to lots of material that's neither dubbed nor subtitled. The Harry Potter books sold ~1 million in Norwegian, ~200k in English so one in six preferred English and that's for kids. If you take any kind of higher education, expect English textbooks. Even though English doesn't have an official status, with a high number of immigrants and foreign workers pretty much everything exists in an English translation. Now if you go as far back as this study it would be different, but apart from cultural reasons we could easily make English our official language.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'm sort of in the ADHD camp. I've read a bit about the subject and somewhat adhere to the theory that a) ADHD isn't as much a disorder rather than a genetic predestination. Roughly 10% of society being Hunter/Gatherer (creative, priest, leader, rebell, etc,), the rest being farmers/settlers. It's a bit of a chicken/egg problem: Do I have low self-esteem because im ADHD or do I have ADHD as a symptom of low self-esteem? Or is both linked to brain performance or is both linked to lack of social proof for aberrant behavior (minimalist stoic)?
Childhood media consumption definitely plays into this, as it trains us to look for emotional states that are fully decoupled from the "mundane" reality around us.
I however have also noticed how much nutrition and psychological factors play into emotional wellbeing and how much that plays into brain performance.
Another thing that happened recently is that I finally had my nose-divider corrected (at the age of 47). I, for the first time in my life, can breathe properly. Or at least way better than before. The difference in my cognitive abilities is palpable. I can concentrate longer and deeper with less strain. I'm pretty sure that my confidence has risen due to that and that feeds back into my ability to concentrate. Sleep-apnosis is know to severely influence cognitive abilities (access to oxygen).
Last but not least, I've noticed how extremely nutrition influences cognitive performance. Processed foods make me less concentrated and more sleepy vis-a-vis organic fresh foods. Again, the difference is palpable.
Bottom line:
There are some theories about rising CO2 levels and whatnot, but I bet dollars to donuts that if IQ really is declining again across the board that childhood media consumption and nutrition are the most significant factors playing into this.
And I have some personal anecdotal evidence to back this up.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
At least the president is a 'stable genius'.
I still contend that computer usage makes smart people smarter and dumb people dumber (yet the now-dumber people think they're smarter).
If the US were any efficient in sending corrupt politicans to jail, you probably would need to convert a big city into a jail to handle all of em.
But as it's not, well..
As HuskyDog pointed out above, both these studies are using results from military screening I.Q. tests. A few decades back, afaik, military careers were held in higher esteem.. Perhaps more people these days just don't care as much about trying to look fantastic to the military, so when taking the tests, they just don't put in as much effort as they used to.
Oh, and another thing: it could also be that any trend towards lower expediency, even if accuracy improved by some factor, would appear as a I.Q. score decline. I bet people are gradually forgetting and/or not being informed that I.Q. tests are timed severely, and are taking more time to answer each question, and/or wasting more time on a tricky problem instead of making a best guess and quickly moving onto the next.. Too bad the paper is behind a paywall. I'd be very curious to see if only the final score was used, or if its components (accuracy / time) were also analysed for trends.
Anyways, until these scores are compared with another, properly administered, test dataset that is not within the context of military force, I'd prefer to remain a sceptic of these results.
While young Norwegians are a non random sample of the world population, your concentration on the figures instead show you have no understanding of statistics.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...just Norwegians are getting dumber.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
2) Linguistics (In Norwegian)
In Nynorsk or bokmal?
Near impossible task? How about a century old statistical technique. Every reasonable IQ test contains g-loadings, and the only thing you can meaningfully compare between IQ tests is the g-factor.
Exactly.
"You know, like 90% of all other published research in the psychological sciences." Or maybe 98% of that research is somewhat or mostly wacky?
Maybe the actual issue: The smart people in Norway are avoiding military service?
Another subject about Norway:
Norway is rehabilitative, not destructive, to those who commit crimes. Michael Moore's film, Where to Invade Next explored the system in Norway, and prompted articles like this one: Why Norway's prison system is so successful. Quote from that article: "... when criminals in Norway leave prison, they stay out. It has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world at 20%. The US has one of the highest: 76.6% of prisoners are re-arrested within five years."
Being destructive to those who commit crimes is another crime, a crime committed by the government.
I suggest that you review the definition of the word "Compulsory."
I suggest that you review the definition of the word "Unbiased." ... the tests are applied to *ALL MALE CITIZENS*. Since this is literally a sample size of "All male citizens of service age in Norway from the start year, to the terminus year", you are talking a very large and unbiased (by ethnicity, race, cultural upbringing, religious practice, affluence level, ... etc.) sample. The only demographic excluded is likely to be female gender, which I explicitly lamplit. Unless you want to make a compelling argument that women are intellectually inferior to men (*gigglesnort*) in the face of a wide number of well reviewed studies to the contrary of that assertion, there is no grounds to claim systemic bias of the sample.
It's systematically biased by sex. ...), healthcare system, and I could go on.
It's systematically biased by country of citizenship - which means by race, ethnicity, CHANGES in ethnicity due to immigration, residence, educational system, language, media exposure, diet, political events, disease exposure, environmental stresses (weather, pollution,
Generalizing from data collected on all draft-age Norwegian males to the state of the entire human race is one of the the kinds of misstep that cause "real scientists" to look down their noses at research work done in the "soft sciences". Did the authors actually make this "all of us" claim, or is it hype hung on their results by the media (or their institution's media relations group)?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Unless there is something VERY special about Norway, a wide-spread trend that cannot be attributed to education, gender, religion, or other environmental factor has pretty good predictive qualities, since the sample size is large, and unbiased (Only males tested most likely, but the service is compulsory, not voluntary.
Service in Norway is NOT compulsory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
About 60,000 Norwegians are available for conscription every year, but only 8,000 to 10,000 are conscripted.[2] In earlier times, up until at least the early 2000s, all men aged 19â"44 were subject to mandatory service, with good reasons required to avoid becoming drafted.
Besides that decline in conscription, actual numbers of conscripts are around 14% of eligible Norwegian males, cause "the number of applicants each year exceeds the needs of the Armed Forces".
Further, researchers aren't showing a decline of IQ in Norway, nor anywhere else.
They are working with a presumption of a decline in IQ and trying to hammer their "observation" peg into that presumed roundish hole.
Using administrative register data with information on family relationships and cognitive ability for three decades of Norwegian male birth cohorts, we show that the increase, turning point, and decline of the Flynn effect can be recovered from within-family variation in intelligence scores.
This establishes that the large changes in average cohort intelligence reflect environmental factors and not changing composition of parents, which in turn rules out several prominent hypotheses for retrograde Flynn effects.
I.e. They claim that they can explain presumed IQ decline by extrapolating measured in-family IQ decline.
Problem is - they don't actually have the data to show that. And they are blind to their own biases regarding all the preconceptions they are juggling.
From study's appendix it's pretty obvious that the IQ sample was both changing in structure AND reducing in sample size over the years.
Number of recruits born between 1964 and 1972 varied between 30440 and 32148.
1973-1980 we see a drop from 29159 down to 23900.
1981-1989 rises slowly from 23317 up to 26484.
But far more important is the fact that they are NOT ACTUALLY FINDING THE IQ DECLINE AMONG THE NORWEGIAN CONSCRIPTS.
All that they ARE accurately finding is that the number of IQ tests among conscripts has declined by 10 percentage points, over a decade.
From TFS:
Conscription test coverage declined substantially for cohorts born after 1980, with coverage rates falling from 93% in 1980 to 83% in 1991 (Fig. 3A).
So not only is the number of conscripts declining, number of conscripts taking IQ tests has declined even more.
Which they then take to consideration - and pull the following nonsense out of the thin air.
Focusing on families with sons in the first two parities and plotting the share of unscored younger siblings by the observed IQ score of the older brother, lower scoring firstborns were more likely to have unscored younger brothers (Fig. 3B).
The problem is exacerbated toward the end of our data window: Among the 198-1991 birth cohorts, fully 30% of those whose older sibling scored in the bottom IQ bracket have missing IQ scores.
As sibling scores are correlated, this implies that low-ability males are less likely to be scored, and that the selection was stronger for the cohorts born in the late 1980s than for those from the 1960s and 1970s.
I.e. Not only are they ASSUMING correlation between IQs of sibli
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens