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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-det
by 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 agoAnother 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.