11 ms·

Our IQs have never been higher – but it hasn’t made us smart

68 points by hawski 10y ago

SixSigma 10y ago
IQs can't be higher. The tests are designed to be normally distributed with an average of 100.
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  I was hoping nobody was going to make this obnoxious comment, but to see it being the only comment? What do you think you're contributing?
  - SixSigma 10y ago
    I shall obnoxiously answer a question with a question : What do you think you're contributing?
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      I'm not under the illusion that I'm contributing by calling a terrible post terrible. I just didn't want to stand idly by while you make such a pedantic and misleading non-correction.
      - ievahanordah 10y ago
        I'm continuing your argument by replying to you.
      - sctb 10y ago
        The thing to do is to respond civilly by presenting your disagreement as informatively as possible, so that we all have a chance to learn from it.
        Dylan16807 10y ago
        The explanation of the Flynn effect linked in the article is just fine. So I don't help teach by explaining. I almost explained anyway, but that would have detracted from my core message, that the initial comment was anti-understanding for the sake of pedantry points. In the future I'll add an explanation and be less snarky. But do understand this was not me being bad at disagreeing. Disagreeing was not the reason I posted.
- ideonexus 10y ago
  This statement is true, but a bit misleading. Yes, IQ tests are constantly being adjusted so that the mean is always 100, but the average person today will score above 100 on an IQ test from a decade or more ago. This is what the article is referring to when it asserts "Our IQs have never been higher." It is a factual statement and the basis for the "Flynn Effect," which has tracked our steady increase in average IQ for many decades now [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
tomkin 10y ago
I hate to say this, but IQ tests are BMI tests for the brain, and about as accurate. If a coffee, bad sleep, or a dose of Ritalin can change the result – at its very nature – it is not a scientific method of measurement (the ability to retest and get the same result). We could say it's a good read of a spectrum of mental capacity, but to suggest that IQ is capable of anything more is whack science.
- Kenji 10y ago
  Not to mention, there are groups like MENSA, of people who have a very high IQ, yet a lot of them are no more productive than the person of average intelligence. We are far away from having a good measure of intelligence.
  - wslh 10y ago
    My two cents: one of our employees is a member of Mensa and participates in a local branch organization. He always mentions how difficult is to reach consensus on basic organizational issues. No different that reaching consensus in a condominium. Having said that, I think the measure of IQ and related variables such us working memory capacity is very interesting and gives a lot of information about how you can peroform in specific situations. The problem is when you try to infer the individual outcome in a complex environment with a few variables.
  - iopq 10y ago
    But on average, the higher IQ group is more productive than the general population.
- coldpie 10y ago
  BMI is a perfectly valid first-order approximation of appropriate weight ranges for the 95% of the population who are not body builders.
  - tomkin 10y ago
    My argument is that no one can claim BMI or IQ is a scientific form of measurement.
scotty79 10y ago
"the major intellectual thing that disturbs me is that young people like you are reading less history" For me history is just fiction that by sheer accident actually happened (well kinda, because there's a lot of post-factum narrative in history that might be false as any other story). It's interesting that it happened but not that interesting to give it some value that trumps other factors that make fiction interesting.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >For me history is just fiction that by sheer accident actually happened (well kinda, because there's a lot of post-factum narrative in history that might be false as any other story). Nowadays I've just started assuming that real life is bad alternate-universe fanfiction. Someone, somewhere, in some other universe is enjoying a reasonable, functional universe that runs on clear rules instead of sheer perversity.
- mcguire 10y ago
  That must make it difficult to understand other people.
  - scotty79 10y ago
    Certainly I have trouble to understand why do you think that. Just not sure if that's because my perception of history or some other fundamental difference in our viewpoints.
- contingencies 10y ago
  History is interesting in terms of understanding how past events helped to shape the present, and this is true whether you consider the present an accident or not.
jasode 10y ago
Well, "smart" can mean above-average problem-solving abilities, and/or learning new cognitive skills at rate that's faster than the average population. Another definition of "smart" is the accumulation of knowledge and facts. The 2nd definition is what the BBC headline and James Flynn is talking about. He's concerned we're not "smarter" in the sense of not reading more books, and not knowing about history like The 30 Years War, etc. In contrast, when another writer like Joel Spolsky talks about "Smart and Gets Things Done"[1], he's emphasizing the 1st definition (aptitude). So yes, IQ and knowledge are decoupled from each other and can increase at different rates. E.g. there are a lot of high-IQ physicists out there that can solve crazy equations but are not interested in reading a bunch of history books. In JF's framework, this makes those scientists "dumber". [1]http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing...
- John23832 10y ago
  I agree. "Smart" and "Knowledgable" are often used interchangeably, when really they are sets that just so happen to overlap in some places. Ironically, the more "smart" you are, the less broadly "knowledgable" you are. PHD's are very "smart" but have narrow "knowledge". Whereas a mountainman, or someone living on their own of the land might have to have "knowledge" about many small things to survive, but might not be the brightest tool in the shed.
  - throwaway729 10y ago
    > PHD's are very "smart" but have narrow "knowledge" I'd be careful with both of those generalizations. PhD's aren't necessarily smarter than anyone else. On average, PhD's -- especially at top institutions -- probably typically have above average IQs. But I'd wager a guess that the same is true for non-PhD's working for top employers (or starting successful companies). Similarly, while it's true that PhD's have very deep knowledge about a very narrow topic, that doesn't preclude them from also having a lot of knowledge about many other topics. Especially since intellectual curiosity probably correlates better with PhD than raw intelligence.
rayiner 10y ago
The whole "young people don't read" angle is totally tangential. The article makes a big deal of it up front but never justifies it with a concrete tie-in to the research. As an older millennial that's gotten pretty cynical: why should I read? Most of what is written is just like this article: an attempt to mash some ideas together and explain an underlying phenomenon that the author doesn't really understand. I'm pretty bitter about how much time I wasted in school reading things that were bunk (wait, Columbus did what?) And as study after study gets debunked (until last week, I used to believe exercising willpower sapped physical energy--thanks HN), and "experts" can't agree on questions like what caused the financial collapse, I've become pretty convinced that most of the theories underlying public policy, diplomacy, and the course of history are pseudo-science if not outright fantasy. Millennials, I think, are utilitarian and unromantic. Fancy ideas in books don't hold much appeal to us because as the web makes information more available, we realize nobody knows what they're talking about.
- rch 10y ago
  Sounds like you might appreciate reading Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
- lilcarlyung 10y ago
  You hit the nail on the head with that last sentence.
- jib 10y ago
  I think that writing books about why people don't read books quite possibly is a bit of a self-congratulatory exercise. It's a bit like holding seminars on why people don't exercise at a gym, or about how bad it is that people don't learn to code at a developer convention, right? “I have a second book out this year that says to young people ‘for god’s sake, you are educated, why don’t you read!’”
- pfortuny 10y ago
  Read poetry: you will find wisdom, not science. Truth, not facts. Beauty, not data. Go to museums.
oldmanjay 10y ago
Those who fetishize history are doomed to annoy everyone about it
Kenji 10y ago
Going to university has completely destroyed my capability to appreciate novels. After years of reading maths/programming/electrical engineering books and the like, when I pick up a novel and it says "Tim said this, and Julie replied that", etc., I am bored out of my mind. Why should I care what they say, get to the point. You could compress this 700 page thing into 10 pages and barely any of the content is lost (in other words, low information density). I wish I could sill appreciate novels, but in most cases I can't. In my eyes, most novels are trash and there are only a few worth reading.
- taneq 10y ago
  It sounds like you're reading terrible novels (and I agree, most of them are terrible). There's some great stuff out there, though - very high information density. ;) Are there any genres you like?
  - Kenji 10y ago
    I like anything that is engaging. Sci-fi, fantasy, crime fiction. Doesn't really matter. I don't think the books are the problem. I am in the middle of a very, very good book ("Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman") and I can't even finish that because I can't get myself to just sit down and read.
- forgetsusername 10y ago
  >In my eyes, most novels are trash and there are only a few worth reading. Relatively few, maybe, in the context of all the books, ever. But there are far more "good" books than most people can read in a lifetime.
- jerf 10y ago
  "In my eyes, most novels are trash and there are only a few worth reading." That's actually the expected result, by the way. Sturgeon's Law, roughly "ninety percent of everything is crap", is one of those ha-ha-only-serious sorts of things. You can put math around it if you want; if the quality of a given type of media is normally distributed (probably with the bottom end cut off by it never getting published), the best of the best is generally much much better than the vast bulk of what is out there, and so if you measure by the standard of what the best puts out, almost everything is crap. One of the things that keeps the world going around is that we all have different distributions, though; what is for me a +6sigma novel might be well below average to you. I'd say to you that bloated page counts are definitely a common thing. It's what you get when you pay by the word. I'd also say that any story can be reduced to a couple of sentences, if you're being really cynical ("One day, Bob defeated the evil overlord and peace reigned throughout the land."). There are stories out there that are quite dense and everything has a point. But, yes, they are the exceptions. The trick is in finding them.
trebor 10y ago
Having capacity doesn't imply the desire or motivation to make use of it. IQ is "capacity" but it doesn't mean that we inherently make better use of our "greater" intelligence.
anotherarray 10y ago
In my country, unlike the US, it's legal to use psychological tests for hiring purposes. Still, as I grew my company, I've realized how inaccurate they can be. Some of the best performing testers couldn't demonstrate a long-term perspective or broad set of knowledge/opinions. Whereas they were terrific at solving puzzles, they couldn't accept or recognize a puzzle itself.
blueprint 10y ago
The quality of a person, as well as how well they can recognize what exists as it is, is determined by their degree of truthfulness.
aluhut 10y ago
So we got better in solving IQ tests?
ideonexus 10y ago
At the core of this article, to my mind (and ignoring Flynn's typical baby-boomer lament that kids today don't know what I know), is the false dichotomy of "nature vs nurture." The article claims that IQ is 80% predicted by genes by adulthood. It's the same point stressed by Charles Murray in "The Bell Curve," which suggested that government social programs were a waste because African Americans lacked the genes for higher IQ and were therefore doomed to poverty [1]. But then, as the article notes, if IQ is so reliant on genes, then why the Flynn Effect? Why are IQs collectively rising year-over-year in our society [2]? If it is the result of our modern society, where technology perpetually challenges us to think abstractly every waking minute of our lives, then wouldn't the Flynn Effect eventually level off at some point in the future? If it really is 80% genes (and I'm still waiting for my 23andMe results to identify the specific SNPs responsible for my Mensa membership) then how far can that 20% environmental influence take us? These are the most interesting questions to me. Our brains exhibit a high-degree of plasticity. Making students and teachers aware of neuroplasticity can have significant positive outcomes on their education [3][4]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect [3] http://www.edutopia.org/blog/neuroscience-higher-ed-judy-willis http://www.edutopia.org/blog/neuroscience-higher-ed-judy-wil... [4] http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec09/vol67/num04/How-to-Teach-Students-About-the-Brain.aspx http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec0... *edited for formatting.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Maybe IQ rises because people are learning to take IQ tests. I read in some HN posting: in the 40's folks registered ~70 on IQ tests (old tests found in drawers at some University). The questions were 'trick questions' and the test-takers weren't familiar, so answered pragmatically and were marked wrong. Example: "There are no Rhinos in Germany. Munich is in Germany. How many Rhinos are in Munich? A) 0 B) 1 C) 3 D)other" Folks would answer B. We imagine they are thinking "Well Munich is a big city, and probably has a zoo. There would be at least one Rhino in the zoo." Are they wrong? As an "IQ test question" they're wrong. But as a real-world issue, they're on the right track. Today people have encountered trick questions by the time they take IQ tests, so they do better. That might be all there is to it.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

68 points by hawski 10y ago

SixSigma 10y ago

IQs can't be higher. The tests are designed to be normally distributed with an average of 100.

Dylan16807 10y ago
I was hoping nobody was going to make this obnoxious comment, but to see it being the only comment? What do you think you're contributing?
- SixSigma 10y ago
  I shall obnoxiously answer a question with a question : What do you think you're contributing?
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    I'm not under the illusion that I'm contributing by calling a terrible post terrible. I just didn't want to stand idly by while you make such a pedantic and misleading non-correction.
    - ievahanordah 10y ago
      I'm continuing your argument by replying to you.
    - sctb 10y ago
      The thing to do is to respond civilly by presenting your disagreement as informatively as possible, so that we all have a chance to learn from it.
      - Dylan16807 10y ago
        The explanation of the Flynn effect linked in the article is just fine. So I don't help teach by explaining. I almost explained anyway, but that would have detracted from my core message, that the initial comment was anti-understanding for the sake of pedantry points. In the future I'll add an explanation and be less snarky. But do understand this was not me being bad at disagreeing. Disagreeing was not the reason I posted.
ideonexus 10y ago
This statement is true, but a bit misleading. Yes, IQ tests are constantly being adjusted so that the mean is always 100, but the average person today will score above 100 on an IQ test from a decade or more ago. This is what the article is referring to when it asserts "Our IQs have never been higher." It is a factual statement and the basis for the "Flynn Effect," which has tracked our steady increase in average IQ for many decades now [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

tomkin 10y ago

I hate to say this, but IQ tests are BMI tests for the brain, and about as accurate. If a coffee, bad sleep, or a dose of Ritalin can change the result – at its very nature – it is not a scientific method of measurement (the ability to retest and get the same result). We could say it's a good read of a spectrum of mental capacity, but to suggest that IQ is capable of anything more is whack science.

Kenji 10y ago
Not to mention, there are groups like MENSA, of people who have a very high IQ, yet a lot of them are no more productive than the person of average intelligence. We are far away from having a good measure of intelligence.
- wslh 10y ago
  My two cents: one of our employees is a member of Mensa and participates in a local branch organization. He always mentions how difficult is to reach consensus on basic organizational issues. No different that reaching consensus in a condominium. Having said that, I think the measure of IQ and related variables such us working memory capacity is very interesting and gives a lot of information about how you can peroform in specific situations. The problem is when you try to infer the individual outcome in a complex environment with a few variables.
- iopq 10y ago
  But on average, the higher IQ group is more productive than the general population.
coldpie 10y ago
BMI is a perfectly valid first-order approximation of appropriate weight ranges for the 95% of the population who are not body builders.
- tomkin 10y ago
  My argument is that no one can claim BMI or IQ is a scientific form of measurement.

scotty79 10y ago

"the major intellectual thing that disturbs me is that young people like you are reading less history" For me history is just fiction that by sheer accident actually happened (well kinda, because there's a lot of post-factum narrative in history that might be false as any other story). It's interesting that it happened but not that interesting to give it some value that trumps other factors that make fiction interesting.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>For me history is just fiction that by sheer accident actually happened (well kinda, because there's a lot of post-factum narrative in history that might be false as any other story). Nowadays I've just started assuming that real life is bad alternate-universe fanfiction. Someone, somewhere, in some other universe is enjoying a reasonable, functional universe that runs on clear rules instead of sheer perversity.
mcguire 10y ago
That must make it difficult to understand other people.
- scotty79 10y ago
  Certainly I have trouble to understand why do you think that. Just not sure if that's because my perception of history or some other fundamental difference in our viewpoints.
contingencies 10y ago
History is interesting in terms of understanding how past events helped to shape the present, and this is true whether you consider the present an accident or not.

jasode 10y ago

Well, "smart" can mean above-average problem-solving abilities, and/or learning new cognitive skills at rate that's faster than the average population. Another definition of "smart" is the accumulation of knowledge and facts. The 2nd definition is what the BBC headline and James Flynn is talking about. He's concerned we're not "smarter" in the sense of not reading more books, and not knowing about history like The 30 Years War, etc. In contrast, when another writer like Joel Spolsky talks about "Smart and Gets Things Done"[1], he's emphasizing the 1st definition (aptitude). So yes, IQ and knowledge are decoupled from each other and can increase at different rates. E.g. there are a lot of high-IQ physicists out there that can solve crazy equations but are not interested in reading a bunch of history books. In JF's framework, this makes those scientists "dumber". [1]http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing...

John23832 10y ago
I agree. "Smart" and "Knowledgable" are often used interchangeably, when really they are sets that just so happen to overlap in some places. Ironically, the more "smart" you are, the less broadly "knowledgable" you are. PHD's are very "smart" but have narrow "knowledge". Whereas a mountainman, or someone living on their own of the land might have to have "knowledge" about many small things to survive, but might not be the brightest tool in the shed.
- throwaway729 10y ago
  > PHD's are very "smart" but have narrow "knowledge" I'd be careful with both of those generalizations. PhD's aren't necessarily smarter than anyone else. On average, PhD's -- especially at top institutions -- probably typically have above average IQs. But I'd wager a guess that the same is true for non-PhD's working for top employers (or starting successful companies). Similarly, while it's true that PhD's have very deep knowledge about a very narrow topic, that doesn't preclude them from also having a lot of knowledge about many other topics. Especially since intellectual curiosity probably correlates better with PhD than raw intelligence.

rayiner 10y ago

The whole "young people don't read" angle is totally tangential. The article makes a big deal of it up front but never justifies it with a concrete tie-in to the research. As an older millennial that's gotten pretty cynical: why should I read? Most of what is written is just like this article: an attempt to mash some ideas together and explain an underlying phenomenon that the author doesn't really understand. I'm pretty bitter about how much time I wasted in school reading things that were bunk (wait, Columbus did what?) And as study after study gets debunked (until last week, I used to believe exercising willpower sapped physical energy--thanks HN), and "experts" can't agree on questions like what caused the financial collapse, I've become pretty convinced that most of the theories underlying public policy, diplomacy, and the course of history are pseudo-science if not outright fantasy. Millennials, I think, are utilitarian and unromantic. Fancy ideas in books don't hold much appeal to us because as the web makes information more available, we realize nobody knows what they're talking about.

rch 10y ago
Sounds like you might appreciate reading Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
lilcarlyung 10y ago
You hit the nail on the head with that last sentence.
jib 10y ago
I think that writing books about why people don't read books quite possibly is a bit of a self-congratulatory exercise. It's a bit like holding seminars on why people don't exercise at a gym, or about how bad it is that people don't learn to code at a developer convention, right? “I have a second book out this year that says to young people ‘for god’s sake, you are educated, why don’t you read!’”
pfortuny 10y ago
Read poetry: you will find wisdom, not science. Truth, not facts. Beauty, not data. Go to museums.

oldmanjay 10y ago

Those who fetishize history are doomed to annoy everyone about it

Kenji 10y ago

Going to university has completely destroyed my capability to appreciate novels. After years of reading maths/programming/electrical engineering books and the like, when I pick up a novel and it says "Tim said this, and Julie replied that", etc., I am bored out of my mind. Why should I care what they say, get to the point. You could compress this 700 page thing into 10 pages and barely any of the content is lost (in other words, low information density). I wish I could sill appreciate novels, but in most cases I can't. In my eyes, most novels are trash and there are only a few worth reading.

taneq 10y ago
It sounds like you're reading terrible novels (and I agree, most of them are terrible). There's some great stuff out there, though - very high information density. ;) Are there any genres you like?
- Kenji 10y ago
  I like anything that is engaging. Sci-fi, fantasy, crime fiction. Doesn't really matter. I don't think the books are the problem. I am in the middle of a very, very good book ("Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman") and I can't even finish that because I can't get myself to just sit down and read.
forgetsusername 10y ago
>In my eyes, most novels are trash and there are only a few worth reading. Relatively few, maybe, in the context of all the books, ever. But there are far more "good" books than most people can read in a lifetime.
jerf 10y ago
"In my eyes, most novels are trash and there are only a few worth reading." That's actually the expected result, by the way. Sturgeon's Law, roughly "ninety percent of everything is crap", is one of those ha-ha-only-serious sorts of things. You can put math around it if you want; if the quality of a given type of media is normally distributed (probably with the bottom end cut off by it never getting published), the best of the best is generally much much better than the vast bulk of what is out there, and so if you measure by the standard of what the best puts out, almost everything is crap. One of the things that keeps the world going around is that we all have different distributions, though; what is for me a +6sigma novel might be well below average to you. I'd say to you that bloated page counts are definitely a common thing. It's what you get when you pay by the word. I'd also say that any story can be reduced to a couple of sentences, if you're being really cynical ("One day, Bob defeated the evil overlord and peace reigned throughout the land."). There are stories out there that are quite dense and everything has a point. But, yes, they are the exceptions. The trick is in finding them.

trebor 10y ago

Having capacity doesn't imply the desire or motivation to make use of it. IQ is "capacity" but it doesn't mean that we inherently make better use of our "greater" intelligence.

anotherarray 10y ago

In my country, unlike the US, it's legal to use psychological tests for hiring purposes. Still, as I grew my company, I've realized how inaccurate they can be. Some of the best performing testers couldn't demonstrate a long-term perspective or broad set of knowledge/opinions. Whereas they were terrific at solving puzzles, they couldn't accept or recognize a puzzle itself.

blueprint 10y ago

The quality of a person, as well as how well they can recognize what exists as it is, is determined by their degree of truthfulness.

aluhut 10y ago

So we got better in solving IQ tests?

ideonexus 10y ago

At the core of this article, to my mind (and ignoring Flynn's typical baby-boomer lament that kids today don't know what I know), is the false dichotomy of "nature vs nurture." The article claims that IQ is 80% predicted by genes by adulthood. It's the same point stressed by Charles Murray in "The Bell Curve," which suggested that government social programs were a waste because African Americans lacked the genes for higher IQ and were therefore doomed to poverty [1]. But then, as the article notes, if IQ is so reliant on genes, then why the Flynn Effect? Why are IQs collectively rising year-over-year in our society [2]? If it is the result of our modern society, where technology perpetually challenges us to think abstractly every waking minute of our lives, then wouldn't the Flynn Effect eventually level off at some point in the future? If it really is 80% genes (and I'm still waiting for my 23andMe results to identify the specific SNPs responsible for my Mensa membership) then how far can that 20% environmental influence take us? These are the most interesting questions to me. Our brains exhibit a high-degree of plasticity. Making students and teachers aware of neuroplasticity can have significant positive outcomes on their education [3][4]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect [3] http://www.edutopia.org/blog/neuroscience-higher-ed-judy-willis http://www.edutopia.org/blog/neuroscience-higher-ed-judy-wil... [4] http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec09/vol67/num04/How-to-Teach-Students-About-the-Brain.aspx http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec0... *edited for formatting.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Maybe IQ rises because people are learning to take IQ tests. I read in some HN posting: in the 40's folks registered ~70 on IQ tests (old tests found in drawers at some University). The questions were 'trick questions' and the test-takers weren't familiar, so answered pragmatically and were marked wrong. Example: "There are no Rhinos in Germany. Munich is in Germany. How many Rhinos are in Munich? A) 0 B) 1 C) 3 D)other" Folks would answer B. We imagine they are thinking "Well Munich is a big city, and probably has a zoo. There would be at least one Rhino in the zoo." Are they wrong? As an "IQ test question" they're wrong. But as a real-world issue, they're on the right track. Today people have encountered trick questions by the time they take IQ tests, so they do better. That might be all there is to it.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]