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Submission of same article 490 days ago, with more than 100 comments in discussion thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8158510 https://news.ycombinato

Submission of same article 490 days ago, with more than 100 comments in discussion thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8158510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8158510 Each time I reread this article from The Atlantic (I have read it before, and it has been submitted to Hacker News on other occasions), I am astounded that the author seems never to have heard about actual data on IQ score trends, which are upward for countries all over the world. The phenomenon, which surprised psychologists when it was discovered, is called the Flynn Effect by most psychologists these days, because James R. Flynn (NOT a psychologist, which is why he was open to discovering the phenomenon) has done the most to document and report on the worldwide trend of rising IQ scores throughout the last century.[1] Anyway, the article kindly submitted here shows altogether too much concern about speculative harms by an author who ought to know that there are better statistics on these issues than those he cites.[2] [1] James R. Flynn, "Why Our IQ Levels Are Higher Than Our Grandparents'" https://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_higher_than_our_grandparents https://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_... The Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge "Beyond the Flynn Effect" http://www.psychometrics.cam.ac.uk/about-us/directory/beyond-the-flynn-effect http://www.psychometrics.cam.ac.uk/about-us/directory/beyond... [2] David Gorski, "The Food Babe’s war on 'chemicals' heats up again" https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-food-babes-war-on-chemicals-heats-up-again/ https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-food-babes-war-on-c...

ScottBurson 11y ago
I don't know why you would think that an upward trend in IQ scores necessarily contradicts a claim that we are adding neurotoxins to our environment. We've been doing that for many decades; it's entirely possible that we're doing less of it now, and yet the amount we're still adding is still having significant effects. As for why a downward trend in IQ wasn't noted in the first half of the 20th century, when we were ramping up our production of neurotoxins, that can easily be put down to improvements in nutrition. It's not inconsistent to note that, even though things are getting better, they're still not as good as they could be.

ScottBurson 11y ago

I don't know why you would think that an upward trend in IQ scores necessarily contradicts a claim that we are adding neurotoxins to our environment. We've been doing that for many decades; it's entirely possible that we're doing less of it now, and yet the amount we're still adding is still having significant effects. As for why a downward trend in IQ wasn't noted in the first half of the 20th century, when we were ramping up our production of neurotoxins, that can easily be put down to improvements in nutrition. It's not inconsistent to note that, even though things are getting better, they're still not as good as they could be.