34 ms·

IQ rates are dropping in many developed countries

• frabbit 7y ago
  The title is proof of its own assertion: rates are changes with respect to time units.
• stinkbreathmint 7y ago
  Can it perhaps be that people conducting such studies have reduced IQs overtime so the structure of the study has lost its accuracy? I mean getting a college degree is a lot easier than it used to be.
• z3t4 7y ago
  Should not look too hard on these numbers. When I took the military "IQ" test it consisted of 3d objects printed on paper - figuring out how the next rotation should look like, and understanding old/unusual words. I can guess they are still using the same test.
  • british_india 7y ago
    Those tests were focused on right-brain testing.
  • robbiep 7y ago
    ... you’re describing an IQ test?
• nudq 7y ago
  On the other hand, in a few years you won't need even basic literacy to thrive in developed countries. It'll be enough to grunt in the general direction of the nearest piece of smart furniture. Amazon will know everything about your physical, mental and emotional state needed to know what has to be dispatched, cost deducted automatically from your UBI account.
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • TomMarius 7y ago
    Is this really the future we want for humankind?
    • Nasrudith 7y ago
      The thing is short of being responsible for human extinction you never get to choose the future for humankind - only expand or limit their options. To give an absurd example your descendants may decide for some bizzare reason it would be awesome to keep pet dodos fenced in their yards. Given that dodos are long extinct immediately it is impossible. But if their biotech advanced enough to recover the DNA and clone them and either manually reconstruct or mutate the cloned base until an acceptable genepool was produced operation "yard-dodo" would once again be a possibility - although very remote.
    • sbmassey 7y ago
      Maybe we can speciate into grunting Amazon-prime-subscribing Eloi, and the technologically literate Morlocks who feed on them.
  • vincent-toups 7y ago
    You call that thriving?
    • baddox 7y ago
      Sure, why not? What is the point of literacy if, well, there is no longer any point of literacy?
  • contingencies 7y ago
    As someone designing what could be construed as smart public furniture, I absolutely agree. Such change is both economically and politically incentivized, and people will almost always err toward convenience. Some recent research[0][1] suggested that purchasing free time (through paying for convenience) makes people happier than material purchases. Further, potential criticism of such changes is swept under the rug as high end / high tech brands pioneering these services align themselves publicly with the fairytalesque yet disembodied/unassailable image of a "sophisticated" "urbanite" "consumer" who is "time poor" "cash rich" and thereby "successful" because they are "going places" (being content with where you are is unsexy). Moreover, they have "choice" so are "empowered" and can "express themselves" and "their aspirations" through "their choices" (read: spending / conspicuous consumption / subsequent social network image spam). The mythical "successful neighbour" or "keeping up with the Joneses": aspects of human social behavior (and thus capitalist marketing norms) are such a crock of shit sometimes. A motto for the future? iCaveman: I can't. [0] http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/07/18/1706541114.full http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/07/18/1706541114.full [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/science/study-happy-save-money-time.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/science/study-happy-save-...
• sanxiyn 7y ago
  I didn't know about this and it is very interesting. Primary study of interest is this: Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused. https://www.pnas.org/content/115/26/6674 https://www.pnas.org/content/115/26/6674
• pseudolus 7y ago
  There was an Icelandic study that tended to provide some support for the hypothesis to the effect that people with high educational achievement had fewer children which led to an overall trend of decreasing educational achievement in the population [0][1]. Proving the world is unjust, Mike Judge wasn't listed as an author and didn't even receive an acknowledgement. [0] https://www.pnas.org/content/114/5/E727 https://www.pnas.org/content/114/5/E727 [1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/16/natural-selection-making-education-genes-rarer-says-icelandic-study https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/16/natural-sele...
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  • angstrom 7y ago
    As much as a I like the movie it's worth noting that on such short timescales there's probably a more significant impact of nutrition differences and the failure of IQ measures across different society structures ie agrarian, industrialized, service oriented.
    • deleted 7y ago
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    • sanxiyn 7y ago
      The paper deals with the issue. It is measuring genotype score, not IQ, so failure of IQ measures is irrelevant.
  • Benjamin_Dobell 7y ago
    The article covers this: > One potential explanation was quasi-eugenic. As in the movie “Idiocracy,” it was suggested that average intelligence is being pulled down because lower-IQ families are having more children ("dysgenic fertility" is the technical term). > [...] > However, a 2018 study[1] of Norway has punctured these theories by showing that IQs are dropping not just across societies but within families. The studies would seem to contradict each other, which isn't all that surprising. [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/115/26/6674.full.pdf https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/115/26/6674.full.pdf
• rnernento 7y ago
  I wonder when we're going to collectively realize that this epidemic of stupidity is by far the greatest threat facing humanity. It's the reason we're having so much trouble addressing all our other problems, e.g. corrupt government, climate change, etc...
  • bshipp 7y ago
    I can't agree with that conclusion. There are plenty of brilliant idiots and idiotic geniuses in the world and it can often be more difficult to change the mind of a "smart" person who has drawn the wrong conclusions than a simple person who has done the same. Individuals who draw their sense of self-worth from their perceived intelligence a more likely to stand their ground, argue semantics, and log every cheap rhetorical grenade they can until they are blue in the face. For evidence of the irrationality of intelligent people, I proffer the example of every pointless university faculty departmental meeting, ever.
    • rnernento 7y ago
      Yeah, the legions of academics are definitely the reason the world is going to go to shit because of climate change. I'm sure they're also the ones who voted Trump into power. I bet they have very few good ideas about how to reduce corruption in government.
      • bshipp 7y ago
        The reason climate change is such a difficult political problem to handle is that it requires significant upfront cost but the resulting benefits are difficult to forecast and measure. As a society, we've encountered this time and time again over the past century. Think back to the whole 'acid rain' theme some of us lived through growing up. The phenomenon was discovered in 1972, but it took over 20 years before legislation with teeth was actually implemented, and 30 years before significant reductions were measured. And this was on a phenomenon with relatively few point sources responsible for a large portion of emissions, something fairly easy to regulate. There's no questioning the science behind climate change, IMHO, but the lack of definitive, practical action is due far more to an inherently myopic political process. Politicians have very limited incentive to look at any project with benefits beyond the date of their next re-election. You can blame it on Trump and his supporters, if it makes you feel better, but I'm hard-pressed to identify a democratic government which actually implemented policies which result in any significant real, measurable impacts on climate change. Democratic leaders are rewarded for appearing to take action, far more than would be if they actually did something.
• itamarst 7y ago
  This article is full of very explicit racism.
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • castlecrasher2 7y ago
    I fail to see how it's filled with racism. If you're referring to the theory that it's immigrants and poor people reproducing more, you must not have read the next paragraph before you got angry about it: >One potential explanation was quasi-eugenic. As in the movie “Idiocracy,” it was suggested that average intelligence is being pulled down because lower-IQ families are having more children ("dysgenic fertility" is the technical term). Alternatively, widening immigration might be bringing less-intelligent newcomers to societies with otherwise higher IQs. >However, a 2018 study of Norway has punctured these theories by showing that IQs are dropping not just across societies but within families. The article (and study) make it clear that IQs are dropping from parent to child, even.
  • foolrush 7y ago
    You aren’t wrong, and yet you get downvoted. SAT tests are rooted in eugenics theory. IQ testing, despite the original developer warning of incorrect application, was weaponized in that direction. Yet here you find yourself getting voted down. https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.ca/&httpsredir=1&article=1270&context=law-review https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=h... https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Intelligence-Testing-and-the-Beginning-of-Eugenics https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Intelligence-Testing-a... https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/01/assessment https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/01/assessment
    • fromthestart 7y ago
      So, hypothetically, if objective measures of intelligence show correlations with ethnicity, we should just ignore them because they're inconvenient? Isn't that a little irrational? How can you make any use of intelligence measures if you cherry pick according to your preconcieved notions of what you want them to show? What then is the point in practicing any sort of psychology or sociology at all, if your conclusions are so unscientific?
• deleted 7y ago
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• 5trokerac3 7y ago
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• amval 7y ago
  If I had to take a bet, I would bet on a combination of a shortened attention span and unknown long-term effects of technology on the brain development plus environmental factors (for example, it seems like plastics are having an impact in things such as fertility rates and our hormonal balance. This could cause other unknown effects). Interesting topic, in any case.
  • fopen64 7y ago
    me too, and I would bet one reason is making childrearing incredibly expensive and prone to problems, so intelligent people will avoid the ordeal whole the stupid ones have children because they perceive that as status-earning, if not a way to get welfare $.
  • notahacker 7y ago
    I suspect it means that kids today are a little bit less interested in logic puzzles than their parents, who were themselves turn a lot more interested in them than their grandparents, and IQ testing simply isn't robust enough to accurately capture generational differences in cognitive performance if there actually are any. Instability of IQ testing over time seems a less contentious hypothesis than earlier generations being on average too stupid to accomplish anything...
  • jqueryin 7y ago
    I would bet on too much screen time for the whole family; seen it first hand. Parents sitting on their devices all evening and not interacting with their children. It's a missed opportunity for learning, especially at a young age.
    • neilv 7y ago
      That's a disturbing image I hadn't considered. The parents I know (mainly CS people) have talked for years about "limiting screen time" of the kids, but I didn't consider that some other parents might have too much screen time themselves, to the point of shortchanging child early development.
    • icebraining 7y ago
• rb808 7y ago
  My first thought was that kids are spending more time on schooling and homework, and less on creative play and unsupervised time outdoors. Childhoods today are very different than 50 years ago.
  • masklinn 7y ago
    Were that the case, the highly regimented asian educational system would have yielded significantly sub-standard average IQs.
    • magduf 7y ago
      In Asia, kids regularly go outside without supervision. In Japan, kids as young as 7 or 8 walk themselves to school without their parents. That kind of thing is illegal in America.
      • fzeroracer 7y ago
        I'm pretty sure that has nothing to do with it, because in Japan kids generally have far less time to be kids due to the rigorous school system and testing focus. That in turn leads to Japan's increased rate of suicide among the youth.
      • zone411 7y ago
        It's not illegal: https://www.fastcompany.com/3055107/federal-law-now-says-kids-can-walk-to-school-alone https://www.fastcompany.com/3055107/federal-law-now-says-kid.... But it is frowned-upon by the society.
        • magduf 7y ago
          It's frowned upon, and a federal law isn't going to stop local cops from hassling parents. Remember, cops don't actually have to follow or enforce the laws, they can basically do what they want, and if you don't like it, your only recourse is to sue.
• ramblerman 7y ago
  Oof, this is a can of worms... Can you properly analyze the reasons behind this without going into ethnic differences in IQ? Is it happening in China for instance? I don't think we should entertain those studies personally, but I'm not sure you can honestly conclude anything about this without that data.
  • joeatyl 7y ago
    That head-in-the-sand approach doesn't make these issues go away.
  • Chris_Chambers 7y ago
    Why don’t you just commit to your opinion?
  • ggdG 7y ago
    > Can you properly analyze the reasons behind this without going into ethnic differences in IQ? The article mentions a Norwegian study [1] measuring an IQ decline within families. So it looks like the cause must be environmental. My pet theory is that reading as an activity has been replaced by the consumption of audiovisual content. [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/115/26/6674.full.pdf https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/115/26/6674.full.pdf
    • jcadam 7y ago
      I'd also wager that our increasing usage of computers (including/esp. the handheld kind) to perform tasks that used to require us to use our brains plays a role (e.g., I don't bother calculating the tip at a restaurant anymore, I just have a phone app figure it out for me). And this will only get worse... until we're like the Eloi, surrounded and dependent on technology no one understands anymore.
    • precisioncoder 7y ago
      See my comment above, the data in the Norwegian study is VERY suspect
• bluedino 7y ago
  Lower skilled jobs, leaving the brain to atrophy is listed as a possible cause. I'd be curious as to what effect having a phone in your face for 6 hours of the day has on IQ, compared to whatever the heck it was people did before social media.
  • wil421 7y ago
    I think it depends on the content. I had a book in front of my face for about 6 hours a day for 13 years in grade school. Not counting college. A majority of the content I watch on YouTube gives me more knowledge, from Programming to Fishing. A chunk of what I look at is absolutely junk and I feel like it rots my brain if I watch/read too much.
    • anoncake 7y ago
      > A majority of the content I watch on YouTube gives me more knowledge, Knowledge isn't the same as intelligence though. Maybe having effortless access to knowledge actually makes us less intelligent because we don't get to practice figuring things out ourselves as much.
  • deleted 7y ago
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• challenger22 7y ago
  One claim I imagine that no sociologist will ever be able to prove (or disprove)- If we are living in a crisis of confidence about society- one in which people are plagued by pessimism about too many humans causing global warming, secular stagnation, overpopulation, where all the low hanging fruits are already picked, lack of moral purpose, with the impression that humans are a plague upon the world- Won't the average pessimistic person care less about trying hard to do anything? And won't this manifest as less effort to be smart and just?
  • bbarn 7y ago
    Well, you can probably prove the feedback the average person receives from media has become more pessimistic, and if you assume some people respond to that feedback, that's a pretty easy line to draw.
  • malvosenior 7y ago
    I think it's really hard to be creative when you spend your time worrying about all of that stuff. Most of my peers spend an inordinate amount of time stressing out about every item you list. They get locked into ways of thinking that are nearly identical to each other and that lockstep voice bleeds out into other unrelated areas. There's a lot of group think. I don't worry about any of that stuff and have a lot of extra energy to explore random topics and generally more positivity to power my endeavours. It seems the like overt consumer marketing of the 20th century has morphed into a social/political marketing in the 21st century. Because this is a new phenomena people don't seem to realize it's happening and instead blindly contribute their mind the borg, so to say.
  • svachalek 7y ago
    It's an interesting thought but it's really hard to compare societal fears across generations. I grew up knowing that if the US or USSR saw a tactical opening, the world could literally just end in something like 11 minutes. Other generations worried about global cooling, overpopulation, Communism, crime waves, and all kinds of other things we can look back at as silly now but that doesn't mean they weren't equally stressed about them at the time.
• rblatz 7y ago
  Isn’t IQ standardized around 100?
  • nprz 7y ago
    > And if you're thinking, "Isn't the test set up so that 100 is always the average IQ?," that's only true because researchers rescale the tests to correct for improving raw scores.
• grenoire 7y ago
  Air pollution is also known to be a potential reason why the Flynn effect (newer generations of test-takers performing substantially better on older tests, accounting also for test familiarity) is declining; with the "IQ curve" over time plateauing. We know that increased presence of CO and CO2 reduces cognitive capacity on many areas.
  • khrbrt 7y ago
    Ashes Ashes did a podcast on this: https://ashesashes.org/blog/episode-07-last-gasp https://ashesashes.org/blog/episode-07-last-gasp And a related episode on air pollution in general: https://ashesashes.org/blog/episode-38-dead-air https://ashesashes.org/blog/episode-38-dead-air
    • beenBoutIT 7y ago
      IIRC, the off gassing from carpet that most of us recognize as 'new suburban home smell' takes 10 points off of a kid's IQ.
  • FabHK 7y ago
    Reversing, not declining.
  • FabHK 7y ago
    Carbon monoxide pollution has decreased (or been stable) in the countries I've bothered to check over the last decades (while the Flynn effect was in full swing): https://www.epa.gov/air-trends/carbon-monoxide-trends https://www.epa.gov/air-trends/carbon-monoxide-trends https://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/english/environmentinhk/air/data/emission_inve_co_C.html https://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/english/environmentinhk/air/data/... https://iir-de.wikidot.com/emission-trends-carbon-monoxide https://iir-de.wikidot.com/emission-trends-carbon-monoxide
• kkwteh 7y ago
  One huge assumption no one has challenged is the notion that IQ is a valid measure of intelligence. One reason to doubt this is that above a low threshold (80 IIRC), IQ has no correlation with salary.
  • rantanplan 7y ago
    Because... the higher the salary the higher the intelligence?
    • ahje 7y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle
  • roenxi 7y ago
    It is a little risky assuming correlation - hopefully salary is correlated with a sort of general economic contribution rather than intelligence. Intelligence isn't a prerequisite for contributing mightily. If intelligence was correlated with salary that would be a symptom of bad outcomes in the economic system. I'd expect that, but wouldn't be happy to see it. Eg, whoever is running the local plumbing small business is in a position to make a lot of money. The plumber might be smart or might not be, really shouldn't matter. I've seen situations where truck drivers make a higher salary than engineers. More intelligence almost correlated with a lower salary.
  • Dirlewanger 7y ago
    IQ's not the most robust measurement, but it is one of the best we have for predicting overall success in life.
  • factsaresacred 7y ago
    IQ measures intelligence, not how much the market values intelligence. Perhaps what you're getting at is 'how much does IQ matter' which is an interesting question. In modern society the answer is probably a lot. And when you factor in the negative correlation between intelligence and aggression / self-control, probably a lot more.
• Pepe1vo 7y ago
  This study seems to base its conclusions for the most part on a study from 2016[0] and a study limited to Norway[1]. Both of these studies base their findings on data from 1995-2005 (with the exception of the Netherlands and Britain which both span larger periods) this data itself is collected from variety of experiments with varying sample size and testing methodologies. There certainly appears to be something interesting here, but I'd be hesitant to draw any conclusions from this data the way TFA does, which reeks a bit of sensationalism. At best I'd call it something worth investigating more thoroughly, at worst it's statistical noise. [0] https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2016-dutton.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2016-dutton.pdf [1] http://differentialclub.wdfiles.com/local--files/assigned-topics-iq/End%20of%20Flynn%20effect%202004.pdf http://differentialclub.wdfiles.com/local--files/assigned-to...
  • jandrese 7y ago
    This is the kind of study where I expect in a few months to see headlines about IQ NOT dropping, and then more headlines about how IQ is dropping and in the end the whole thing is inconclusive. The more attention grabbing the headline is the more skeptical I am of the study.
    • magicnubs 7y ago
      Hasn't it only "fallen" by something like 1 point? That seems like it may easily be due to some (potentially very hard to identify) confounder.
      • rocqua 7y ago
        If it fell 1 point per 10 years, but used to grow 3 points, that is a much stronger change than the bare number suggests. (My numbers are made up and unsourced)
  • wcunning 7y ago
    I wish that I saw more of these comments on HN links to science articles that explain some research paper. From now on, every such comment that analyzes the underlying study's power and significance, I'm going to upvote, as a general policy.
• sergiomattei 7y ago
  Well, what can I say? We have access to all human knowledge at the palm of our hand, but we don't have the discipline to use it wisely. 1. The rise of social media is a huge contributing factor to misinformation and shortening attention spans. 2. Consumption, consumption, consumption. Most consume but don't create. 3. The unknown effects of technology on our brains. We're all just primates playing with extremely complicated toys. We don't know their effects on us. The next decades will be interesting...
  • ahje 7y ago
    > 2. Consumption, consumption, consumption. Most consume but don't create. That's where I'd put my money. All of a sudden, the need to consume crappy pop culture has exploded around us, and people simply don't do things any more -- "Netflix and chill" has simply pushed other activities aside. This is, of course, nothing new; it's just that modern streaming services deliver makes it so much more available than it was 30 years ago.
    • sergiomattei 7y ago
      Yeah, unfortunately for most people creative leisure doesn't exist anymore. Then again, this also has other factors (work taking over most of our time).
      • jddj 7y ago
        This resonates with me, and I want to get on board. But was leisure so much more creative with television and work rather than Netflix and work? I've had some conversations recently about how [my generation and socioeconomic group] would go outside more often as children because we only really had an hour or two of cartoons in the morning before the telemarketing-disguised-as-content started, but I'm also cautious about drawing too many conclusions because (purely based on my own experiences) I feel like people will search for an opportunity to explore or be creative if the environment is at all conducive to it. See: a lot of our early experiences with computers. Games (consumption) existed, but that didn't stop us wanting to modify them or explore how they worked.
• elorant 7y ago
  I wonder if social media play any role in this. People tend to consume a lot of crap which I guess make them less intelligent.
• lurker458 7y ago
  better insulation leading to poorer indoors air quality ? put enough people in a closed room and CO2 will build up quickly leading to drowsiness, slower thinking, etc.
• kemiller2002 7y ago
  This is totally my opinion, but I always think articles like these are totally bunk, laughably. I seriously doubt the world is getting dumber. I've seen these assessments, my kids have had to participate in them. I've found them to be either biased or subjective on several occasions. It depends on things like the disposition of the person giving the assessment. (I saw this on when seeing someone take the Stanford Binet assessment.) I'm not saying this happens on all of them, but that along with wild claims about IQs "dropping" makes me question their results.
  • whatshisface 7y ago
    If the biases are consistent on average then a change still matters. If I added or subtracted a random number between 0 and 100 to every reported IQ score in the world it would become virtually useless as a measure of each person, but the global average IQ would hardly change.
    • watwut 7y ago
      Biases are not random nor evenly distributed
      • whatshisface 7y ago
        IQ is normalized so that the average is 100. Since the bias has to balance between the people who read high and the people who read low, population-level averages turn out OK so long as they are over a large enough population so that the high readers and low readers are both present.
• precisioncoder 7y ago
  Very interesting. I started thinking about possible other reason's this could occur and checked into the data about the Norwegian study. The data was all from mandatory conscription so it couldn't be tainted could it? Guess again. At the same time that IQ started dropping Norway changed their conscription policy... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Armed_Forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Armed_Forces "In practice recruits are not forced to serve, instead only those who are motivated are selected.[14] In earlier times, up until at least the early 2000s, all men aged 19–44 were subject to mandatory service, with good reasons required to avoid becoming drafted." Hmmmm so IQ in the tested cohort started dropping when it was only tested in people who chose to take part in Military service rather than all 17-18 year old males? That seems like it could have another explanation... EDIT: So it seems I missed some info -> I went back and looked at the data in the study to see whether it used the preliminary research or only for successfully recruited candidates and discovered this: "Cohorts born before 1962 were subject to a different scoring norm, and cohorts born later than 1991 faced a radically different conscription process with less than 50% invited for in-person testing after completing a web-administered survey. As a result, representative data are not available for later birth cohorts. Data for immigrants are excluded as information on full family size and exact birth order is of lesser quality, while selection into scoring is markedly different as immigrants typically do not face mandatory conscription testing but need to self-select into conscription." So it seems the preliminary examination does not include enough information or the conscription in general has changed to radically for that information to be reliable. After more investigation it seems that basically they're saying that from 1980 - 1993 IQ rose, then fell again from 1993-2007 reaching roughly the same levels as previously. All data after that is tainted as too much has changed in the data source (conscription). However one very important point about this is that all data is pre-smartphone.
  • bshipp 7y ago
    This explanation isn't nearly as fun as all the wild speculation we're all posting below you. +1 for actually hunting down the original study and interpreting it. -1000 for spoiling our self-righteous party.
    • 7y ago
• jsjolen 7y ago
  I wonder if obesity can be at least partly to blame. Anecdotally I've talked to some teachers who say that children's media nowadays is simplified. Less 'difficult' words, always explaining (never leaving things to be figured out by the consumer).
  • varjag 7y ago
    Obesity is hardly a factor in Norway, where one of the studies was conducted.
    • jsjolen 7y ago
      There has been an obesity increase in all western countries, including Norway. Here's the best source I have on Norway: https://www.fhi.no/nettpub/hin/levevaner/overvekt-og-fedme/ https://www.fhi.no/nettpub/hin/levevaner/overvekt-og-fedme/ I wouldn't disregard it as a factor.
      • deleted 7y ago
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• british_india 7y ago
  People do not realize that READING is the single greatest way to increase one's knowledge and, in effect, IQ. The slow decline of reading as a source of information acquisition is a great way to explain what is going on. No other medium--not video, not podcasts--can equal the strength of reading as a mechanism for moving information into the human brain. READ.
• Nasrudith 7y ago
  Of course the IQ tests themselves are also long known to kinda suck at their job, clarity towards what they are actually measuring and let alone the actual causality. IQ brings to mind "screen time" as a trendy but useless metric as it is even worse than "print time" where the contents could be anything from pulp fiction and comic books to advanced textbooks qnd latest articles and more. Even the article lazily goes with the cliches of pop culture to blame (certainly not calling the Kardashians and their associated personal image cult/business venture anything but vapid) but this "issue" inevitably turns into yet another choose your own useless scapegoat based upon preconceptions fest based upon no evidence.
• eof 7y ago
  Wait a second. IQ is a weighted average. IQs “raising” in developing countries due to more modern problems to solve, would also manifest itself as “dropping” IQs in developed countries. This does not mean people are getting dumber, it just means there is a narrowing gap, which is good, not bad, assuming you want the best for all humanity.
• deleted 7y ago
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• bjourne 7y ago
  It is not true that dumber people have more children. At lest not generally: Cognitive ability and fertility among Swedish men born 1951–1967: evidence from military conscription registers "We examine the relationship between cognitive ability and childbearing patterns in contemporary Sweden using administrative register data. The topic has a long history in the social sciences and has been the topic of a large number of studies, many reporting a negative gradient between intelligence and fertility. We link fertility histories to military conscription tests with intelligence scores for all Swedish men born 1951–1967. We find a positive relationship between intelligence scores and fertility, and this pattern is consistent across the cohorts we study. The relationship is most pronounced for the transition to a first child, and men with the lowest categories of IQ scores have the fewest children. Using fixed effects models, we additionally control for all factors that are shared by siblings, and after such adjustments, we find a stronger positive relationship between IQ and fertility. Furthermore, we find a positive gradient within groups at different levels of education. Compositional differences of this kind are therefore not responsible for the positive gradient we observe—instead, the relationship is even stronger after controlling for both educational careers and parental background factors. In our models where we compare brothers to one another, we find that, relative to men with IQ 100, the group with the lowest category of cognitive ability have 0.56 fewer children, and men with the highest category have 0.09 more children." https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.0359 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.035... At lest for this group of men, higher iq correlated with more children. There might be something to the belief that dumb people procreate more, but it might also be a stereotype popularized by movies like Idiocracy.
  • jboles 7y ago
    > not generally: > among Swedish men born 1951–1967: evidence from military conscription registers What's that?
    • bjourne 7y ago
      What's what?
• Symmetry 7y ago
  One angle that seems to always get overlooked in these discussion is also the one that's tended to be the most important historically: the environmental bio-determinism angle. Eliminating malaria in an area, iodizing salt, reducing lead exposure, encouraging people not to drink while pregnant, and things like that have had very large effects on population IQ. Iodizing salt along increased IQs by about 10 points in areas like Chicago without much iodine in the water and where they didn't eat much seafood. So when I see something like this, presuming it's real, I'd first look at changes in diet, presence of environmental hormones from plastics, and things like that to explain it.
  • Symmetry 7y ago
    Another obvious explanation. We know that large increases in the CO2 in our indoor environments can decrease results on IQ tests. Is there a reason to think that small increase in the CO2 in the atmosphere wouldn't produce a proportionally smaller decrease in IQ scores? Or, hopefully, that better insulation causing higher levels of CO2 indoors in testing places wouldn't produce lower scores as another possibility.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• misiti3780 7y ago
  So, the Flynn effect is over?
  • sanxiyn 7y ago
    Yes. There has been LOTS of studies reporting the end of Flynn effect.
• cityzen 7y ago
  Curious how working memory factors into this. We recently had our kids tested for a bunch of things and although their IQ's were average their working memory was off the charts. We had never really heard of working memory and perhaps it's a new "thing" but it makes sense. From this page: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/keep-it-in-mind/201012/working-memory-is-better-predictor-academic-success-iq https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/keep-it-in-mind/2010... "The study also found that, as opposed to IQ, working memory is not linked to the parents' level of education or socio-economic background. This means all children regardless of background or environmental influence can have the same opportunities to fulfil potential if working memory is assessed and problems addressed where necessary."
• 29athrowaway 7y ago
  100 points of IQ is the mean. If scores consistently fall so will the mean.
• mattnewport 7y ago
  Evidence for this can be seen in the widespread misuse of the word rate.
  • floatboth 7y ago
    Any "widespread misuse" eventually turns into just "use". Linguistic prescriptivism is terrible. What people actually say determines "correct" usage.
    • mattnewport 7y ago
      > Linguistic prescriptivism is terrible. That seems rather... prescriptive. There is no central authority that dictates the use of the English language (that is both descriptive of reality and prescriptive in that I don't think there should be). Meaning is not purely a matter of emergent use however, it also derives from the meta discussion around that use and the collective attempts to codify use in dictionaries etc. In this case I'm being prescriptive and saying this is a terrible way to use rate and reflects typical journalistic mathematical illiteracy. Anyone and everyone is however free to ignore my opinion of course.
• Creationer 7y ago
  IQ is not equally distributed across the human population, and we are constantly discovering new genes which are responsible for fractions of it (or the opposite - aggressiveness and violence). If you move someone from say Sudan, with an average IQ of 70, to Sweden, with an average IQ of 99, then the average in Sweden will fall. https://www.worlddata.info/iq-by-country.php https://www.worlddata.info/iq-by-country.php IQ being unequally distributed makes sense when you consider that population groups have been separated for 10s of thousands of years and exposed to very different selective pressure, and the unequal level of achievement of different human groups historically and currently. This is also precisely why high-IQ couples should have children - to pass their valuable genetics and culture (to describe the high-quality upbringing that they could provide) to the next generation. Fortunately genetic engineering and molecular biology is advancing rapidly, where we can identify specific genes related to behavioural traits eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_A and eventually add and remove certain genes, or at least select certain embryos, based on desired changes. Richard Lynn has also written extensively on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_Global_Inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_Global_Inequality
  • zimpenfish 7y ago
    > The book was published by Washington Summit Publishers, a white nationalist publisher. > the Pioneer Fund[1] that has been a long time funder of research by Lynn His book is published by white nationalists and his research is funded by an avowedly white nationalist fund with roots in eugenics - I think he's -probably- grinding a fairly biased axe here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Fund
    • Creationer 7y ago
      According to the SPLC, which is hardly an independent or reliable organisation. These organisations like the SPLC don't fund scientific research to oppose or rebut the work done by others, they just censor the work and classify it as wrongthink instead.
• dfilppi 7y ago
  Or put another way, "human IQ test taking ability is declining".
• Creationer 7y ago
  The good news is that molecular biology is rapidly advancing to the point where we can identify specific genes contributing towards certain traits eg: Intelligence: https://www.cambridgebrainsciences.com/more/articles/22-genes-have-been-linked-to-intelligence https://www.cambridgebrainsciences.com/more/articles/22-gene... And aggression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_A As we continue to research, and hopefully one day allow embyro selection and gene insertion/deletion for genes linked these traits, we can resume the increase in IQ. Epigenetics complicates things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics but it just means we have more research to conduct!
  • inciampati 7y ago
    This may be more remote than you imagine. These conclusions treat complex multicellular organisms as additive linear functions of (a very low resolution image of) their genomes. We aren't close to understanding intelligence as it relates to cellular or molecular biology.
  • repolfx 7y ago
    Are you sure? https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/05/07/5-httlpr-a-pointed-review/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/05/07/5-httlpr-a-pointed-rev... There's good reason to believe most of the "single gene affects complex trait" stories are false.
• wayoutthere 7y ago
  Is it plausible that rising CO2 levels are slowly causing cognitive impairment? I recall seeing studies showing a link between the two; and this would be an outcome.
  • elefanten 7y ago
    The concentrations required for such effects are way higher than atmospheric CO2 changes that'll happen any time soon.
    • dv_dt 7y ago
      If the general atmospheric concentration of CO2 is higher, what might the effect be of indoor areas where one might be testing IQs. There was just a HN discussion on how high CO2 might get say in a regular bedroom overnight. How about a testing room with multiple people exhaling CO2, vs a slower diffusion rate from the outdoors? To what end effect, I don't know. But it's an open and interesting hypothesis to explore.
      • wayoutthere 7y ago
        Right; and I suspect this would explain the reason this affected more developed countries as they would have a higher percentage of people in urban areas with high localized CO2 levels even outdoors (e.g. breathing car exhaust while walking in Manhattan or sitting in traffic). It also stands to reason that higher global CO2 levels would have some sort of correlation to higher indoor CO2 levels. What’s really scary about this is that if such a cognitive effect were to be true, it would ultimately impact our ability to address the problem. But you’re right, no need to sound the alarm bells yet but I think this is something that needs to be looked into.
      • iguy 7y ago
        I'm pretty sure it would be swamped by changes in precisely how big the average testing hall is, and how its heating system works. I would not be surprised if typical school-air CO2 level has changed by 50% over the last century, but which direction I would struggle to guess. We have more indoor space per person now, but also seal buildings tighter. Especially in summer.
• rc_kas 7y ago
  This is all caused by advancement in medical technology. So many people are alive now that should have died during birth. So many should have died at younger ages that are kept alive due to medicines (that people depend on for life). Pain reduces your ability to think. So many people are alive but living in pain. In past decades those people would obviously not be alive.
  • timdiggerm 7y ago
    Why do you use "should" instead of "would"?
    • rc_kas 7y ago
      Yeah. True enough. Just looking at it all through the lens of survival of the fittest and evolution, I guess.
    • bthrn 7y ago
      The optimistic interpretation is that it was meant as "should have died <were it not for the advancements>"
• ranprieur 7y ago
  IQ is not intelligence. IQ is a number determined by a culturally biased test. The most likely reason scores are dropping, is that test-makers are not keeping up with changes in culture. People are 2019-smart and getting lower scores because they're not 1970-smart.
  • throwaway5752 7y ago
    I feel like you'd have to content with test reliability, correlation with other measures of intelligence, and the general multi-decade upward trend (not specific to 1970s, the Flynn effect). It's possible there is something to this.
  • aik 7y ago
    What does 2019-smart mean though? People's brains are optimized for better handing of super-stimulating entertainment? Does that translate into better problem solving and other important skills? Have the importance of those smarts related to those skills changed in 50 years? If not, adjusting the IQ tests to match these doesn't make sense.
    • baddox 7y ago
      I think it's more that "problem-solving skills" are only defined in terms of a set of problems, and the set of problems that are encountered in everyday life changes over time.
    • skywhopper 7y ago
      "What does <year>-smart mean though?" is the question you have to answer to make an IQ test. And it's impossible to answer. IQ test-makers have been getting it wrong in various ways since they started. All an IQ test can tell you is how well you do on IQ tests. If IQ correlates to other outcomes, that's because the test was designed (intentionally or not) to correlate with those other outcomes, not because IQ test-makers are meta-geniuses who know the answer to "What does <year>-smart mean though?"
      • xyzzyz 7y ago
• ardit33 7y ago
  I am going out of a limb and say that there is a chance that immigration is a factor as well. Pre 1990, the immigration in Europe was very limited, and after the fall of Communism there have been large immigration movements within Europe, and now from outside it. Two main reasons immigrants could cause IQ changes: 1. Genetic variation (you are actually not measuring the same population in the 80s, and the 2000's). eg, Denmark's minority/immigrant population has changed a lot since the 80s, going from 3% to almost 12% today. That could be affecting the score. You are not measuring just Danes, but 88% Danes, 8% Turkish, and 4% others..... 2. Lots of immigrants came either for economic reasons, or actually from WAR (Yugoslav wars in the 90s). Early child trauma, lack of nutrition, and the difficulties of restarting life somewhere could affect IQ scores, as we know environment, especially in early childhood could affect the score If these measurements are coming from the Army, but they are not actually differentiating from first/second gen immigrants and original Danes, and then they are not really indicating that the local (original) population is having a decrease of IQ. Mostly than the newcomers have slightly lower IQs. Since Denmark was mentioned in the article, here is a chart of their immigrant population change over time, and it is pretty drastic. From a homogeneous population to a more diverse one: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emil_O_W_Kirkegaard/publication/273063136/figure/fig1/AS:294935698919426@1447329558387/Immigrant-population-size-over-time-in-Denmark.png https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emil_O_W_Kirkegaard/pub...
  • bsaul 7y ago
    Wondered about that as well, but another article, linked in the original one, mentions the original study dismisses that hypothesis, since it happens between members of the same family : https://www.sciencealert.com/iq-scores-falling-in-worrying-reversal-20th-century-intelligence-boom-flynn-effect-intelligence https://www.sciencealert.com/iq-scores-falling-in-worrying-r... "In the new study, the researchers observed IQ drops occurring within actual families, between brothers and sons – meaning the effect likely isn't due to shifting demographic factors as some have suggested, such as the dysgenic accumulation of disadvantageous genes across areas of society"
  • inscionent 7y ago
    From the article: "However, a 2018 study of Norway has punctured these theories by showing that IQs are dropping not just across societies but within families. In other words, the issue is not that educated Norwegians are increasingly outnumbered by lower-IQ immigrants or the children of less-educated citizens. Even children born to high-IQ parents are slipping down the IQ ladder."
• anon1m0us 7y ago
  "It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. " -- Alfred North Whitehead What he is saying is that as civilization advances, the amount we need to think to survive decreases. We don't need high IQ's to survive anymore. While being smart is a selective criterion in a mate, other criteria will tend to overweight IQ when the amount of IQ needed to survive decreases. Thus, IQ will decrease as civilization advances past a certain threshold. Perhaps we have passed that threshold.
  • User23 7y ago
    Not really. He’s talking about the power of mathematical formalism. With a good formalism you just push symbols around following easily memorized rules without thinking about what they mean until you reach your final result.
    • anon1m0us 7y ago
      I disagree. I think the quote is more generally applicable than just mathematics. For example, we can now almost drive a car without thinking about it. We can order groceries just by saying, "hi alexa, please order me some groceries." You don't even have to think about where the car keys are or even how to drive.
      • helen___keller 7y ago
        What does that have to do with IQ though?
        • anon1m0us 7y ago
          IQ is a measure of one's ability to think, speed of thought, capacity of thought, memory, predictions of the future. A century ago you had to be smarter to survive than now because there were more problems to be solved by the individual. People still built their own homes back then. Grew their own food. Fixed their own cars. There were more constraints, so people had to be more clever to survive.
• gregoryexe 7y ago
  I would dare to add, "All according to plan"
• s_r_n 7y ago
  I wonder if the drop in IQ is related to the increase in wealth inequality in these past 50 years as well. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth) More cohorts of people are entering the so-called "lower" classes and with this likely comes factors that affect mental aptitude such as decrease in quantity of healthy food consumed and unchallenging jobs. This would agree with the study, which shows that families' IQs are getting lower with each generation.
  • microcolonel 7y ago
    > decrease in quantity of healthy food consumed Far as I can tell, this is the opposite of the trend, in the U.S. and Canada. > I wonder if the drop in IQ is related to the increase in wealth inequality in these past 50 years as well. Not sure what mechanism you think would enable that. Thinking that the richest people in society are, in relative terms, more rich than you than before has no obvious effect on anything related to IQ. Average and median PPP wealth and income continue to grow.
    • PhasmaFelis 7y ago
      > Far as I can tell, this is the opposite of the trend, in the U.S. and Canada. We've got an obesity epidemic. The average American is clearly not eating healthy. Maybe you misinterpreted the OP's statement? "Decrease in quantity of healthy food consumed" is awkward, but the intent is clear from context.
      • microcolonel 7y ago
        Well, a decrease from when? As far as I can tell, OP meant that the cited decrease is still under way, and hence contributing to an ongoing decline in average IQ.
  • pkaye 7y ago
    Is there large wealth inequality in Norway? That is one of the studies this article references.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• Circuits 7y ago
  How? If the majority of what determines an individuals IQ is genetic then how could it possibly have declined in the span of a few decades? Worst case scenario our predetermined genetic base line IQ is not improving as rapidly as it use to in the past. However, I don't think there is strong enough evidence to jump to that conclusion. From what I understand a simple bad attitude can dramatically alter an individuals test score. No, I think the testing methodology and the scale of the testing would have to dramatically improve before a statement like: "People are getting dumber." can be taken seriously.
  • theklub 7y ago
    Isn't this the plot of Idiocracy...stupid people have more kids?
    • Circuits 7y ago
      It is but how long does it take? I do not believe it is as simple as saying: Person A has an IQ of 102 Person B has an IQ of 104, therefore; the child will have an IQ of 103. There is no specific IQ gene and so I would imagine that it would take just as long from an evolutionary standpoint to decrease the average IQ as it would for us to loose our tails and stop living in tree's. It certainly wouldn't happen in a matter of 30 years. At least, I don't think it would... I could be wrong but I don't believe I am.
      • Sevii 7y ago
        Well if we didn’t devolved over the last 50 years something else must have changed to make the average person have a lower iq.
        • Circuits 7y ago
          That's not necessarily true, it could also be that the results are skewed and the argument is bogus.
      • burfog 7y ago
• dcre 7y ago
  There's no such thing as an IQ rate.
  • _emacsomancer_ 7y ago
    Surely IQ increase/decrease over time would give an IQ rate.
• hairytrog 7y ago
  I wouldn't worry too much. There is a feedback loop. Modern industrial society has a few core components like welfare, addiction, extreme individualism, inequality, and short term thinking that do not select for high IQ and are not amenable to fostering high IQ - we end up with DINKs and idiocracy and people just don't have to be that smart to survive and operate. There's very little need today to plan ahead, to figure things out, to do new things. But the assumption is that modern society needs some high IQ to operate. At some point, IQ drops to the point where modern industrial society fractures, and selection forces reemerge to favor IQ friendly environments. You should worry that about the possibility that recent tech has sidestepped the IQ feedback loop. That is, the tech is good enough without human input that it can sustain a low IQ society. In that case, it's downhill from here. Interesting read: http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.com http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.com
  • comboy 7y ago
    It seems to me that many people who have kids early (and often have many kids) are those who got them, even if not by an accident, then at least without thinking much about it. Those who try to learn as much as possible first, often decide that it overwhelms them. Planning ahead also seems to be correlated with better use of birth control. I agree that there is some evolutionary negative feedback loop but we are doing are best to work against it because that seems like a right thing to do. The feedback loop we haven't handled yet is automation which is increasing minimum IQ required to get a job.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• mutzp 7y ago
  All the comments that have mentioned immigration are flagged.
• paulpauper 7y ago
  If IQs are dropping so much and society is getting dumber, why is there so much innovation and discovery lately in physics, math, and computer science? Look at arxiv. Every week there are tons of complicated physics and quant finance papers uploaded there. Just don't buy this narrative, sorry. This is why these headlines are somewhat misleading. Just because mean IQs are falling does not mean that intellectual output must fall, so it's possible to have simultaneously lower mean IQs but more output if for example low-IQ populations have a higher fertility rate but otherwise tend to not procreate with high-IQ populations due to assortative mating. The good news is mating patterns are not random. People generally seek out partners of equal intelligence. The idea of a 'global iq' is somewhat fallacious. To take this fallacy to its logical extreme, imagine including house pets and other animals as part of such a score. suddenly, there should be no technology at all given that such a mean would be probably 50 or so. Rather, we should be looking at IQ by quantity for each 10-20 point interval of iq above 100, not by proportion.
  • sparky_z 7y ago
    The people producing those innovations and discoveries don't represent a random sample of the population as a whole.
  • lostmymind66 7y ago
    It's dropping, not dropped completely. It could take decades before we see a drop in intellectual pursuits as a result in a drop of IQ rates.
• mtnGoat 7y ago
  I feel like IQ testing is kind of junk science anyways. Depending on which questions I get, my mood, mental sharpness on that say and such, Ive scored in the top couple percentile a few times, but i don't think its indicative of anything aside from i'm good at taking that kind of test.
  • colordrops 7y ago
    Maybe for an individual, but do large cohorts have "moods"? Even if IQ tests only a narrow aspect of human intelligence, it's still something.
• screye 7y ago
  Is it possible that the IQ decline has to do with a reduction in sampling bias? In previous decades the group of people taking IQ tests might have belonged to a resource rich group. Now that IQ tests are more commonplace, we might finally be getting more signal from the below median side of the bell curve. The article didn't mention if these biases were accounted for, and it is a critical detail to leave out.
  • xyzzyz 7y ago
    Unlikely. We’ve had very good data from conscription registers, especially in the Nordics.
    • nwah1 7y ago
      Only for men, though. And in the case of Sweden, specifically, IQ and fertility were positively correlated for men who were born in the postwar period. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.0359 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.035...
    • edgineer 7y ago
      The last time I saw an article of this nature, a commenter pointed out that conscripts may be incentived to score lower on these tests. Isn't it true that many people simply don't care to score highly on them? This hypothesis seems reasonable to me, and yet I don't see any mention of it in the 2018 study [0] although they do address concerns about the conscript data in other respects. [0] https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/115/26/6674.full.pdf https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/115/26/6674.full.pdf
• onesmallcoin 7y ago
  IQ tests just seem to be a scale of how quickly one can get boerd of something, and stop trying.
• nwah1 7y ago
  Selection against intelligence should definitely not be ruled out, although there are various environmental issues that could be solved. Female obesity is known to lead to preganancy complications which cause cognitive deficits. Obesity in general is known to cause systemic inflammation which affects cognition and speeds up dementia. The opioid crisis and various other types of drug abuse lead to brain damage. Various nutritional deficiencies could play a role. Historically, iodine deficiency caused the condition of cretinism, but sub-clinical deficiencies can lead to more subtle effects. Sleep deprivation is known to cause cognitive deficits, and electronic lights and jobs with nocturnal schedules are more common now. Light pollution and spending too much time indoors during the day throws off our circadian rhythms. We still have various types of neurotoxins plaguing our environments. More people are living in urban environments now, which causes greater exposure to automobile exhaust. Coal plants are still spewing neurotoxins. Lead pipes are still common in many cities. High indoor CO2, from poor ventilation, is known to cause cognitive deficits.
  • j0057 7y ago
    Opioids, obesity and lead pipes are not common in Europe.
    • pixl97 7y ago
      While still far behind the US, obesity has dramatically increased in Europe, on average affecting 25% of the population.
  • craftyguy 7y ago
    Got any sources for that? Edit: lol, downvotes for asking for sources? "Hacker" "news" is just full of gems!
    • xwdv 7y ago
      You should only ask for sources if you attempted to find information and failed. All those things have been hackernews articles at some point, most recently the last one. Look it up.
• bamboozled 7y ago
  Well, this explains everything.
• p_man 7y ago
  One reason could be that less intelligent people on average get more kids. Especially here in Norway where you get generous support from the government for child care. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9781845409852 https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9781845409852
  • mcbuilder 7y ago
    That's basically the main premise of the flawed, yet hilarious, movie Idiocracy.
    • cwkoss 7y ago
      If anyone hasn't seen this movie, I highly encourage watching at least the intro, it's one of the best movie expositions ever IMO. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unoMMru4-c0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unoMMru4-c0
• gridlockd 7y ago
  My hypothesis: Sitting at a desk all day and getting no exercise makes you dumber and that's exactly where the trend is up: https://www.rba.gov.au/speeches/2016/images/sp-so-2016-09-21-graph2.gif https://www.rba.gov.au/speeches/2016/images/sp-so-2016-09-21...
• hansflying 7y ago
  Socialist countries are responsible for this. Smart people work a lot, have no children and pay HUGE taxes, but dump people stay at home and make a lot of children + receive money from Government. Recipe for disaster. Every socialist Country will fail earlier or later, just like USSR did.
  • nikanj 7y ago
    Yeah, that's why countries like Sweden and Finland are at the very bottom of all the PISA rankings /s
• lohszvu 7y ago
  Rich people are choosing to not have children. Poor people have a lot of children. Mass immigration of less-educated populations.
  • claudiulodro 7y ago
    > One potential explanation was quasi-eugenic. As in the movie “Idiocracy,” it was suggested that average intelligence is being pulled down because lower-IQ families are having more children ("dysgenic fertility" is the technical term). Alternatively, widening immigration might be bringing less-intelligent newcomers to societies with otherwise higher IQs. > However, a 2018 study of Norway has punctured these theories by showing that IQs are dropping not just across societies but within families. In other words, the issue is not that educated Norwegians are increasingly outnumbered by lower-IQ immigrants or the children of less-educated citizens. Even children born to high-IQ parents are slipping down the IQ ladder.
    • bhouston 7y ago
      That suggests environmental chemical pollution or something cultural like cellphones addiction or too much Netflix or 4G radiation is dangerous. It will be interesting to see what it ends up being.
    • mattnewport 7y ago
      > Even children born to high-IQ parents are slipping down the IQ ladder. It is expected that the children of high IQ parents have lower IQs than their parents (and that children of low IQ parents have higher IQs than their parents). That is just regression to the mean. How are they separating this from that effect?
      • clairity 7y ago
        > "That is just regression to the mean." that would certainly be true if IQ were independently and identically distributed (iid), but the point here is that IQ is hereditable (not independent nor uniformly distributed) and so should show, in the long run, measurable durability in those differences across lineages. it's likely not reversion to the mean (or more to the point, the mechanism is not simply statistical in nature).
• molticrystal 7y ago
  >Even children born to high-IQ parents are slipping down the IQ ladder. In part, this is regression to the mean. They do not explicitly mention this in the article.[0] [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=IQ+regression+to+the+mean&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=IQ+regression+to+the+mean&ie...
• ncmncm 7y ago
  This is the comment that suggests, speciously, that many of the other comments demonstrate the process presented in the article. The key omission from the article was any hint of a number. Without numbers there is no way to evaluate the claim. Is the purported decline within the range of noise of the measurements? The lack of numbers is usually a red flag indicating that the author does not want readers evaluating his claims for themselves.
  • lopmotr 7y ago
    While in this case, I've heard it before and it seems to come from actual scientists, so it's probably not just a journalist's imagination. But in general, I agree that it's frustrating to read articles about trends which don't show numbers, particularly graphs, making it difficult to judge. There are so many articles making scary claims like "X has dropped to half what it was a decade ago!" but it turns out that X fluctuates wildly anyway and the recession or whatever had a massive temporary effect on it. That said, my 2c is that high IQ causes people to become professionals and being a professional reduces the number of children they have. From my personal observations, poor people seem to have children as their purpose in life while professionals have other purposes and don't feel as much need for children. Contrast this to most of the last couple of millennia where the highest status men had lots of children to multiple mothers, and famines were common, which would wipe out the poorest people. The poorest people would have included those least able to climb the class hierarchy by being merchants or intelligently winning the games of politics. There also wasn't social welfare to enable the poorest people to support as many children as they want. It sounds like a breeding ground for intelligence.
• acd 7y ago
  Maybe smart phones are making the users so smart themselves? Maps replacing spatial awareness in the brain. In other word if you drive by GPS you do not have to remember the way, the gps device remembers. Social media replacing real social interactions Automatic translation replacing language abilities We are also increasingly disconnecting from the real world senses through devices.
  • xvector 7y ago
    One day we'll be one with our devices. True long-term evolution for humanity involves us taking the reins.
• FabHK 7y ago
  IQ rates? I think journalist writing quotient rates are dropping, too.
• fiftyfifty 7y ago
  Intelligence has been strongly linked with physical fitness, specifically cardiovascular fitness. Is it any surprise as humans have become less active that our intelligence has suffered as well? https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/quilted-science/200912/cardiovascular-fitness-is-linked-intelligence https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/quilted-science/2009... https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201312/can-physical-activities-improve-fluid-intelligence https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2785721/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2785721/ https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/regular-exercise-changes-brain-improve-memory-thinking-skills-201404097110 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/regular-exercise-changes...
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • toasterlovin 7y ago
    Correlation does not allow you to draw conclusions about causation. And there are other plausible explanations. Intelligence is highly heritable and negatively correlated with fertility. Also, there has been an overall increase in measured intelligence since IQ tests were first invented. Nobody really knows why. But this could be a reversal of that trend. And, importantly, people have been getting more sedentary during the entire extent of the increase. So it would be hard to square that with the hypothesis that this recent decrease being caused by less activity.
    • swsieber 7y ago
      I dont thin the top parent actually drew a conclusion. I read it as "These two things are highly correlated. Given that one went down, should we be surprised that the other wnet down?" Given that there was no concerted effort to move either of them, my answer is "of course not! They are correlated"
      • michaelmcmillan 7y ago
        Not sure if I agree. This is how I parsed it: humans have become less active → our intelligence has suffered as well
• stOneskull 7y ago
  fear is really bad for the mind. same with suppressing individuality for 'the team' and its 'approved' viewpoints. learning the right things to say, fearing thought police, etc, to the detriment of unique expression and problem-solving.
• petercooper 7y ago
  Since the mean IQ is fixed at 100 by definition, how does this work?
• xorand 7y ago
  Happy ones those who don't notice. Look at what passes as interesting in the media. Seriously now, partial reason probably is that life quality does not correlate with intelligence in the West. Maybe here there are some people reading this, who could confirm or disagree with the following. Coming from the East, one of my first persistent impressions was puzzlement when faced with barely human intelligence in a rather wealthy aspect.
• drilldrive 7y ago
  >But don’t rush to celebrate American exceptionalism: If IQs are dropping in other advanced countries but not here, maybe that means we’re not really an advanced country (too much poverty, too little social support). I couldn't help but laugh at this. Is the author trying to spin the USA as second- or third-world? We are the top global economy!
  • computerex 7y ago
    Top global economy indeed! With people having to choose between life saving medicine, food and rent. /s America is a 3rd world nation in many aspects.
    • Wheaties466 7y ago
      In what aspects? I can't think of any that I would want to compare to a third world country.
      • computerex 7y ago
        Healthcare for starters. People routinely have to hop borders over to Mexico or elsewhere to get affordable healthcare.
      • rhombocombus 7y ago
        Then you've never watched a loved one get bankrupted by medical bills and skip medicine because it's too expensive. It's a common tale here that is a fairy tale even in many developing countries. We have higher infant mortality than most of the developed world and 60-70% of bankruptcies here are because of medical debt.
        • Wheaties466 7y ago
          so in a third world country they'd just die instead of being bankrupt, is that better?
      • StanislavPetrov 7y ago
• kazinator 7y ago
  It seems obvious to me that the proliferation of mobile devices is going to make people dumber. People offload to these things tasks that were previously given to the brain. Some of those tasks were mundane; yet, even mundane tasks exercise the brain better than no tasks. The device substitutes for memory, both short term and long term. Why try to remember something? Snap an image, stupid! Lost? Doh, turn on GPS, crack open Maps. Why bother knowing anything by heart? The Wikipedia has your back; you can instantly access a detailed article featuring more than you'd ever want to know on almost any topic in any knowledge area. Skimming through text to find something? Just use search! Alphabetically searching through a paper dictionary? You're kidding, right? Paper magazine? Holy crap, why: you can't click on the table of contents. You have to read a number, then hold it in your head while finding a page that has the same number in the corner! Why would you do that to yourself? Devices can easily be turned into tools to boost cognition; that's just not fun though, and not how most people use them. Some games are good for certain cognitive skills. There are applications for learning. Mobile devices are great for foreign language learning: you can train your vocabulary, or review audio-visual materials, anywhere.
  • atdt 7y ago
    Why stop there? Maybe the decline started with the invention of writing. Here's Socrates: But when it came to writing Theuth said, 'Here, O king, is a branch of learning that will make the people of Egypt wiser and improve their memories; my discovery provides a recipe for memory and wisdom.' But the king answered and said, 'O man full of arts, to one it is given to create the things of art, and to another to judge what measure of harm and of profit they have for those that shall employ them. And so it is that you, by reasons of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring, have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.' (from Phaedrus)
• arthev 7y ago
  Intelligence may have been dropping since Victorian times: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000470 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028961...
• deleted 7y ago
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• Persecuted 7y ago
  Because we're being flooded with dumb immigrants from all over the world. Intelligence is heritable and race is real. Look at intelligence bell curves between the races. The answer is obvious and undeniable. The third world is dumb. Period.
• usgroup 7y ago
  I’m quietly hoping that at some point folks will stop trying to make The world compatible with the idea of IQ and do more of the converse instead...
• crispinb 7y ago
  It's fascinating to see how many people jump apparently with little pause feet-first with their pet theories, about which they seem to have no doubt. And this is on HN, which is supposed to be a bastion of rationality. Folks, it's OK to be uncertain. This is fairly recent research, the world is complex, and we don't know everything.
• cerealbad 7y ago
  this post will be highly incendiary do not continue reading if you have sensible vapors. why would high iq be a good thing as we head into global governance? people might get the wrong type of ideas and attempt a resistance which would slow the process down for another 100 years and get millions killed in civil global wars, probably using genetic/viral weapons. this would inevitably occur due to opportunistic high iq individuals seeking self-advancement through disruption, as it did during the american, french, bolshevik and chinese revolutions - all previous attempts at the same thing. you either create culturo-ethno-homogeneity in the species and get beyond history, or you revert back into endless conflict and power dynamics between disparate human groups which are all basically trying to do the same thing (cleanse the other groups and become genetically dominant by becoming homogenous, typically through conflict). you can thank this type of universalist acceleration to the abrahamic religions which inspired by pre-socratic, babylonian and far-eastern philosophies of monism lead to a viral spread of this unification-goal idea - which emerges as logical extrapolations of the 'human story', as a type of genetic mythmaking. lots of strategies can be used here, clearly the reproductive one employed by africans is successful since all that is left of non-african humans are traces of dna in more distant genetic groups, the vast genetic diversity in africa alone shows you that the strategy worked incredibly well there as a speciesglue - presumably the size of the continent and the rich conditions for early hominid life created many branches of humanity - which eventually were unified under the reproduction/conquest strategy of homo sapiens sapiens who then expanded perhaps out of necessity to the rest of the planet and out competed the other earlier hominid/erectus groups which may also have african origins following an early migration pattern. humans genocided and interbred with non-humans, and now there are only humans left (probably). we accept that early (urban) civilization prefers certain climate zones due to the dependency on animal husbandry and agriculture. clearly proto-human life also has ecological niches, probably not a lot of hominid fossils in antarctica, and the african continent was the most gentle and therefore overpopulated first - leading to the relatively rapid expansion of new invasive species globally, with distant islands like new zealand settled last. it makes perfect sense that it is happening again, and why a group which self-promotes it's high iq (european jews) are radically ethnocentric to the point of blood-law racism and are also involved as narrative shapers in the future discussion about who gets to keep unmixed genetic ancestry under the guise of religious and cultural traditions. and also why asian cultures become authoritarian and xenophobic. and also why intelligent people immigrate to other countries. and also why stupid people are more violent. all different strategies for genetic self-determination. to live in peace is the antithesis of life, and requires complete separation or unification, we will obviously do both by colonizing other planets and slowly mixing and engineering all humans into a tighter cluster of averages. big wars often create the post-war malaise which allows you an unprecedented level of power through complacency in the population to radically shift forward with unpalatable agendas. clearly the american media establishment through it's various parent companies and quasi-international conglomerates wants a big war, to slow asia, redefine nationhood, and rewrite history again.
• Lanz 7y ago
  IQ is known to be genetic. Natural selection has been interfered with by universal healthcare and social programs in many countries, where intelligence and educational attainment have become negative predictors of reproductive success, especially for women. The findings of this study should not be unexpected.
• 8bitsrule 7y ago
  I'd look hard at the tests first. Apart from the question of validity of the measures: it's possible that the standardized tests are not keeping up with the changing ways we interact with the environment. E.g., how many kids play with blocks these days? Building model skyscrapers, log cabins, model railroads? Outdoor games? -Unstructured- play time? Quite a bit different from Minecraft, physically and mentally. Or, possibly the testmakers are modifying the tests, but the new numbers are not readily comparable to the old ones.
• tuberelay 7y ago
  Premature infants have >10 IQ points drop, and as hospitals reduce their threshold of viability to 24 or 23 weeks, these infants often have really significant cognitive defects. Here in NZ around 1/3 of these infants will fail the end of year exams at age 15, vs 10% of the non-premature population. Fortunately this isn't "negative eugenics" it isn't a change in genes which cause this.
• joshsyn 7y ago
  A great time to be a capitalist.
• greendestiny_re 7y ago
  I recently managed to nudge my German cousin into reading. Having been raised on consoles and Spongebob, he never enjoyed the written word and was more of a thrillseeker, getting into trouble with a gang of his friends that landed him in custody for a couple months. I started talking to him about Goethe's "Faust", which I was reading at the time, and suggested he take it up. He told me his probation officer nearly fell off her chair when he said he was reading "Faust"; seasoned academics shy away from it. Yesterday he said he read through 2 GoT books over the course of a weekend and asked me if reading raises IQ. I cited that famous "Freakonomics" chapter that correlates having books with high IQ but can't define a causal link between the two. I told him reading allows us to see patterns in the world around us, which is what IQ testing tests for, therefore if he can detect patterns through reading that apply to the real world he'll be increasing his IQ by reading.
  • pergadad 7y ago
    While the link to is might not be clear, it certainly has been shown to improve empathy, which in itself is an important ability for success in life. Alos of course knowledge, awareness of the world, expressiveness/language skills/vocabulary, ...
• deleted 7y ago
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• lunias 7y ago
  I realize that IQ is normalized, but have the tests themselves evolved to better capture what it is that makes us "intelligent" in modern society? Not to say that the usual pattern recognition type test is no longer valid, but perhaps it is a lesser predictor of functional intelligence now that computers have shouldered a large amount of the cognitive burden traditionally placed on human brains? I believe that there could be a lessening biological imperative to be "intelligent" as more and more is provided to us rather than created / taken by us. We are more likely to be controlled today (of our own volition) than to seek out ways to control that which we currently do not. "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." - Thomas Gray (repurposed as a slogan for culture in 2019 and beyond)