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Average IQ scores seem to have been falling and population ageing may be why
- vixen99 9y agoOECD 2016 "Young people in England are the most illiterate in the developed world with many students graduating with only a basic grasp of English and maths, an in-depth analysis by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has found. The OECD report rated English teenagers aged 16 to 19 the worst of 23 developed nations in literacy and 22nd of 23 in numeracy. In contrast, pensioners or those close to retirement were among the highest-ranked of their age group."
- throwanem 9y agoDon't IQ tests control for that? I took one as a small child, and while I could read quite well, I don't remember needing to. It was a lot of "use these blocks to reproduce this diagram" and "given these three pictures, which should come next?" type of thing.
- andriesm 9y agoThe movie idiocracy comes to mind. Apparently the flynn effect slowed down. Some people hypothesize that the wellfare state has a dysgenic effect by redistributing income from high IQ (high income) people to low IQ (low income or wellfare recipients)... It effectively creates disproportionate economic incentives for having children, and some indications put heritability of IQ above 0.7
- Ygg2 9y agoFlynn effect didn't slow down. It actually reversed. https://theeconomyofmeaning.com/2015/11/12/new-study-shows-reversed-flynn-effect-no-more-rising-iqs/ https://theeconomyofmeaning.com/2015/11/12/new-study-shows-r... It's like https://xkcd.com/603/ https://xkcd.com/603/, except White Hat is is wrong on most accounts.
- thriftwy 9y agoIn 603, White Hat flies from arguments to preserve his naive positivistic view of the world where things fix themself magically. "You arguments are wrong because Flynn effect, and if this one is reversed then your arguments are wrong just because."
- matt4077 9y agoAnd by "some people" you mean social darwinists advocating eugenics?
- danieltillett 9y agoYou don’t have to be an advocate for eugenics to notice a trend. Everybody these days is a eugenicist in that they all support the idea of helping pregnant women give birth to health children by ensuring they are well nourished and given good medical support. The section of 20th C. eugenics that is controversial is the part that suggests that one section of society should have more or less children.
- ZeroGravitas 9y agoIt's not been established that there is a trend to spot. Here's a recent and fairly pro-eugenics survey of all the results they could find showing a reduction in IQ: https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2016-dutton.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2016-dutton.pdf And even they basically are only at the stage of saying "maybe there's a hidden trend, that's obscured by other trends moving in the opposite direction" (they think society becoming more abstract has caused a false rise in IQ, due to IQ tests measuring that socially taught facility with abstraction rather than raw intelligence, this may have disguised an actual drop in intelligence). So maybe it does help to have a preconcieved cause to spot this hypothesised trend. Regarding their hypothesis, it's kind of a philosophical question about whether you'd rather have a society full of uneducated bumpkins (not sure there is an english word for someone with raw intelligence but no education) with sharper reflex times or ability to discern colors, than a modern post-graduate who scores slightly worse on those tests but better on IQ. It's also somewhat unlikely that the former is going to be having less children than the latter, so they whole dysgenic thing seems to be on shakey ground.
- danieltillett 9y agoI think you are missing my point which is noticing a trend does not mean you are advocating for political position. Unless all the people I personally know are very unrepresentative of society in general I have a hard time believing that there is not a negative effect on IQ due to differential fertility.
- jrimbault 9y agoBut most people back then didn't go to university. And the OECD compares across 23 developed nations. Though, in my opinion, education quality has gone down. In France, 2010ish?, in my last year of high school (in one of the best parisian high school) there was a boy who couldn't read aloud a text without stumbling. I don't know if this would have happened in the past. But back then only 20k students reached that stage and now it's 200k. edit: stumbling/stuttering
- asfdsfggtfd 9y agoA stutter is a disability not a sign of lack of intelligence/education.
- jrimbault 9y agoHe didn't stutter when speaking. He just couldn't read as fast as he was talking so he had to stop every few syllables. In other words, he was 17 and couldn't read fluently. But he wasn't stupid. He was quite conscientious about his side business and bookkeeping. ps: I stuttered when I was a child.
- danieltillett 9y agoThe English word you want is not stutter, but stumble. Stutter (or stammer) is a medical condition, stumbling over words is the result of a poor quality education.
- jrimbault 9y agoThank you, I edited my original comment.
- danieltillett 9y agoNot a problem. English is an easy language to begin, but a very hard one to master.
- ZeroGravitas 9y agoBut that's just relative rank between developed nations. It would be like Ferrari finishing last in a 21st Century car race and concluding that cars are going slower that they used to.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- subroutine 9y agoIt seems like with just a bit more effort the authors could have made a stronger case for their theory that aging is significantly impacting IQ scores by comparing IQ scores among people of the same age (e.g. 20-30 year olds) from decade to decade. They could also look at how IQ changes over a lifespan; there must be some within-subject data available where the same people took an IQ test when they were <30 then again when >60.
- Idontknowmyuser 9y agoYou only do enough research to get the p values just right so you can publish. Scientists are not rewarded for more investigations that might weaken their theory.
- iTokio 9y agoP-hacking or how to sell your scientist soul.
- fortythirteen 9y agoAnd then a lazy journalist publishes a headline inflating the results, and the average person unquestioningly believes it, lowering our collective IQ.
- Alex3917 9y ago> They could also look at how IQ changes over a lifespan It doesn’t because it’s a bell curve. You literally can’t figure out your score until you already know the distribution.
- pizza 9y agoThe distribution of an individual's IQ (as a quantile in the group's aggregate, normalized IQ distribution) is not a dirac delta. It's not constant over a lifespan at one location. I think there would be significant noticeable losses in IQ due to social factors, too, and to a much greater extent than most people would appear to believe when they talk about the heredity of IQ but then think that means IQ determinism.. For example someone could test at 115 IQ, become homeless, then have something much closer to ~100. (Do not use "but someone that smart would never become..." as a cop-out..)
- air7 9y agoI like to play a little game I call "HN matter anti-matter" where I notice contradicting articles posted on HN and imagine them colliding and erasing each other... In this case: Yes, We Get Wiser with Age (nautil.us) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15346635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15346635
- uoaei 9y agoHow wisdom and smarts are each are measured are different, which could explain the apparent paradox.
- terminalcommand 9y agoI think being wise and being intelligent are different qualities. You might solve a puzzle in shorter time if you're intelligent, or remember more things. But if you're wise you will spend your energy to solve the right puzzle and remember the right things.
- amelius 9y agoHow do we measure wisdom? Is there a "WQ test"?
- thriftwy 9y agoWe also really need a test that measures risk-taking and ability to bend rules to achieve positive outcome.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- coffeevradar 9y agoThere's already the WC test. Which as one gets older one is less likely to pass.
- nradov 9y agoIntelligence beyond a certain level tends to cause hubris, which decreases wisdom.
- Ygg2 9y agoI don't get it. Why is population ageing affecting Flynn effect? Don't they test each new generation at same time? Or is this longitudinal study of a single generation (which is weird, since we can't measure IQ correctly at later ages). Alternative hypothesis. Presence of computers/phones reduces need for working memory, so it doesn't get exercised and leads to decline of it.
- danieltillett 9y agoEach generation is not a 1:1 descendant of the previous generation. Which individuals of the current generation that have children determines the attributes of the next generation. Now for 100 points guess which people (and what attributes they share) have been biggest contributors to the next generation.
- CPLX 9y agoI suppose I'll be the one to post the canonical recap of this concept: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YwZ0ZUy7P3E https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YwZ0ZUy7P3E
- danieltillett 9y agoThere is a reason Idiocracy has been described as a documentary :)
- thaumaturgy 9y ago...because the people describing it that way are ironically ignorant of world statistics? https://www.gapminder.org/ https://www.gapminder.org/
- Ygg2 9y agoI'm very wary of statistics. As the saying goes, there is lies, dirty lies and then there is statistic. A typical example is GDP is going in country X, which means X is doing better!!! Except mean salary is going down, which is a typical for a rich get richer, poor get poorer scenario.
- iam-TJ 9y agoBeing a long-suffering thoughtful inquisitive type that can turn their hand to anything I have spent many hours pondering why it seems that most people around me show traits of 'stupidity'. I've come to the conclusion 'stupidity' is not the issue; 'unthinking' is, and the specific sub-type is 'unable to apply logical analytical thinking'. I have a relation who, when challenged that the way they're doing some task is the opposite of optimal, responds along the lines "I thought ...". In this case it is a sure sign that no logical analytical thinking took place. Maybe the crux of the issue is that in general our societies have become so complex and fast-moving that technology, standard procedures (best practice), and fundamental measures of performance are changing so rapidly that very few individuals have the mental energy to keep up throughout their lifetime. Some I'm sure have become tired of it and given up thinking altogether. I would suspect many HN readers may have experienced this in their own highly technical fields alone. For the general population who aren't - or don't want to be - interested in the world in general it's easy to deliberately avoid learning simple tasks and instead 'leave it to an expert' and continue in ignorance, or to expect someone else to have done it for 'convenience', or not want to attempt it because of the dangers due to 'health and safety'. Here in the UK at least there's a very simple example of the culture behind this: the electric plugs on AC mains-powered equipment. In the 1970s when a new item of white-goods for the kitchen arrived it was unlikely to have a plug fitted to the cable although some equipment came with a plug - you fitted it yourself and were expected to have the basic knowledge required to unscrew, strip the insulation from the cores, attach wires to poles, screw-down, insert fuse of specified rating, and screw back together. It often had a piece of card slid over the prongs with a diagram to help. In the 1980s the cable almost always arrived with the cores cut to length and stripped and if you were buying a premium item the plug fitted by the supplier. By the 2000s the plug was always fitted and more often than not it was molded onto the cable; and yet some of these still have the wiring diagram card attached. The plugs mostly no longer required the 'lid' removing to get to and replace the fuse - there is a captive sliding carrier that pops out when pried with a flat-blade screwdriver. By the late 2000s the three metal prongs (earth longest, live and neutral slightly shorter) were encased in a plastic sheath which you have to remember to remove or else it won't fit into the wall socket. Now, all of these incremental creeping changes can be seen as product improvements to provide greater convenience. But the result is we now have several generations that have no idea about even the basics of the second most important technology in their lives: electricity (after water and food). They need an 'expert' to do it for them. Ditto for basic plumbing skills, routine car maintenance, and more and more I notice even preparing basic meals, cooking and baking from raw unprocessed ingredients. Oh, and a humorous anecdote on the subject of food: about 15 years ago a 17 year-old friend of mine was visiting for a week and I asked if she would like fish and chips (fried potatoes to the North Americans!). I grew up on a farm and so fetched the 25kg bag and selected some potatoes ready for peeling and chipping. This 17 year old (who ate chips from chip-shops frequently) had no idea that to make chips required peeling and slicing raw potatoes and was incredulous at the process; she 'thought' chips just grew as long square pieces of potato - see: "unthinking". I was left speechless that something that I considered so obvious and fundamental had escaped her for 17 years! Multiply these examples up for every major and minor aspect of coping in a modern technology-based society and the result is the appearance of 'stupidity'.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- titanix2 9y agoI can’t access the original study (sci-hub too slow), which countries are affected by the effect and which aren’t? It would be interesting if China, Japan, Korea aren’t affected while Western countries are.
- thriftwy 9y agoAt least Japan and South Korea are going to be hit by more severe problem: They'll have much fewer people to even take those IQ tests.
- sprash 9y agoNot a problem at all. Historically fluctuations in populations are the norm. Japan and South Korea has more than enough productivity to support everybody including the elderly. It is just a matter of distribution.
- thriftwy 9y agoI agree with you mostly, but they still have to steer through. Historically we had neither massive population aging nor Ponzi pension systems to worry about. Now we do.
- Sean1708 9y agoMaybe I'm being really naive here but (other than all being Asian countries) what attributes do China, Japan, and Korea all share that Western countries don't?
- throwaway6737 9y agoAn aging population is the obvious explanation--unless you can think of some other major demographic shifts that have occurred in these countries in recent decades.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- nradov 9y agoSome of the decrease may be due to increased obesity and reduced cardiovascular fitness. Those factors are known to reduce cognitive ability. They're also correlated with age, although lately even young people have been getting worse on average.
- jhoechtl 9y agoI attribute it to the incredible stupidity of our mass media. And 'TV' of what sort ever. It has been a good thing to be forced to watch dull content. At least it was informative at times.
- EGreg 9y agoWhat about the Flynn effect? Could it be this: http://www.advancedsciencenews.com/co2-on-the-brain-and-the-brain-on-co2/ http://www.advancedsciencenews.com/co2-on-the-brain-and-the-... https://thinkprogress.org/exclusive-elevated-co2-levels-directly-affect-human-cognition-new-harvard-study-shows-2748e7378941/amp/ https://thinkprogress.org/exclusive-elevated-co2-levels-dire...
- sin7 9y agoStopped somewhere around 2000.
- edko 9y agoIf IQ = 100 * mental age / real age, how is it measured in old age? If you are 80 and have an IQ of 50, would that mean you have the mind of a 40-year-old?
- Will_Parker 9y agoPedantic, but average IQ scores have stayed the same over the years, exactly 100.
- pizza 9y agoThis is always the case after they adjust the test. But the averages of generations can differ over time if they use the same test/sans adjustment. But there is a much stronger way to believe IQ is not the same over time : intelligence is not normally distributed, at all. It really is meaningless to try to measure intelligence samples and call them independent and identically distributed random variables, whether the 'population' is an individual at one snapshot or over time, or an individual in a group (whether over time or not). Intelligence is probably better measured by a power-law distribution than the normal distribution, whose key property is that it is the probability distribution that maximizes entropy/minimizes information. So maybe there would be a larger discrepancy (relative entropy aka Kullback-Leibler divergence) in measuring IQ as a normal distribution over time than expected (maybe that's the whole reason for the Flynn effect and the author writing this article..)
- 2_listerine_pls 9y agoFor that to be true, the scores would need to be adjusted over time.
- quantdev 9y agoOr maybe it's because, somewhat depressingly, IQ is highly hereditary, as research has shown for decades and new gene research is currently confirming, and people with lower IQs tend to have more children.
- Will_Parker 9y agoAnd connecting the two dots too loudly makes you into a monster.
- busemann 9y agoOf course, there's almost zero chance that the genes that represent high intelligence are equally distributed between races and ethnic groups. The whole field of intelligence research is a political minefield these days, at least in the Western world. In related news, France has lost 4 IQ points over the course of a decade: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289615001221 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289615... Quote: "Dysgenics and replacement migration are proposed as causes."
- gnbfrdjng 9y agoJust lazy.
- Mangalor 9y agoWell drawing strict conclusions in a field that's still highly debated by researchers does, yes.
- solveinequality 9y agopsychometricians largely aren’t debating the existence of intelligence, its variability, or the fact that it is heritable.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y agoActually... http://www.apa.org/research/action/intelligence-testing.aspx http://www.apa.org/research/action/intelligence-testing.aspx http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/iq-tests-are-fundamentally-flawed-and-using-them-alone-to-measure-intelligence-is-a-fallacy-study-8425911.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/iq-tests-are-funda... https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/iq-test-controversies-persist/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/iq-test... If intelligence were simple we'd know how to test for it. It isn't, and we don't. Not reliably, and certainly not in ways that are absolutely independent of culture and background. The UK used to have a concept called "mental agility", which seems to be closer to the abilities measured by IQ than the much more complex quality psychologists call general intelligence. You can have exceptional mental agility - the ability to remember and manipulate symbols and parse symbolic relationships quickly - and still be an utter idiot when it comes to dealing with some or all of reality. A high IQ will not protect you from ideological beliefs, especially if you grow up with no exposure to other viewpoints, from a lack of mental openness (not to be confused with a lack of curiosity), from "moral" perspectives that are self-reinforcing prejudices, from poor socialisation, and so on.
- lol2143651 9y agoMexico has an average IQ of ~90. Perhaps displacing large swaths of white america wasn't such a great idea.
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- ratsimihah 9y agoAgeing? How about tech dumbing us down?
- maw 9y agoIs "Is Google Making Us Stupid" making us stupid?
- lsd5you 9y agoThe premise of this article is flawed (to put it kindly). Surely no rigorous statistical study would fail to take age into account. So why is it even an issue (beyond a measuring technicality) being raised in a 'science' journal? I think it is clear that as a society we don't want science to be undertaken in this area and so consequently we end up with obscurantism (willingly or unwillingly). Or maybe we have already become to stupid to engage in science?
- empath75 9y agoIt doesn’t take much to bring eugenics supporters out of the woodworks these days does it.
- jstewartmobile 9y agoYep. Whole lotta people not knowing just how many shoulders they are standing on. A while back someone asked Warren Buffet what he would be under more primitive circumstances. Buffet's reply was... "lion food".
- rwnspace 9y agoWell... So what? As long as people are happy, literate and nice to one another I think fluctuations in IQ are not a huge problem in themselves. It's only a problem if you think democracy the system can't be improved upon, because you have to improve people to improve the output of democracies. I've seen some things mentioned here that utterly baffle me, and confirm my bias that IQ is good for understanding but has little relation to wisdom or 'overstanding'. I am very worried about what will happen if we start doing rash things like mass removal of autistic embryos from the gene pool. I've seen it suggested too often, compared to the amount of people I imagine are actually deeply informed enough about both to speak on such things. It's strange to me that such an idea is not automatically considered risky, or obviously married with unintended consequences. On the surface of it, you might increase the median IQ by a few points. But you'd also miss out on the next Newton, Turing, Einstein, Kant, Cavendish, etc etc (I've plenty of other speculatives). There's no free lunch. Shaking the Tree of Life and hoping something tasty falls out sounds very unwise to me. As far as I'm concerned the major problem for humans is not their absolute IQ levels - it's arrogance relative to engineering capabilities. Lastly: if we ever make it through climate change and out the other side with powerful AGI, I guess high IQ won't be as central compared to EQ or creativity, except as something that roughly correlates with both. Edited for clarity.
- alexasmyths 9y agoHow on earth can they not figure this out? I mean testing different age cohorts, should it be that hard?