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Higher education has never been a worse investment. There's so little time or incentive to read, and it's hard to sit down and say "I'm going to read a book". I

Higher education has never been a worse investment. There's so little time or incentive to read, and it's hard to sit down and say "I'm going to read a book". It's hard to read a book and also watch tv and also talk to friends etc etc, but that's how we spend all day - constantly interacting with media or socially. I've had increasing trouble reading books for years. It stresses me out, I can't just sit for hours reading, I have things to do. It takes real... something - focus, mindfullness - to actually sit down and think in an explorative way that isn't strictly driven by work. This isn't that surprising. IQ tests a specific type of intelligence, and we probably don't leverage that sort of intelligence day to day. Instead, we create hyperfocused individuals and build structure and process around them so that they can collaborate. Being generally intelligent and having general problem solving skills is less and less important, or at least we treat it that way.

pojzon 4y ago
> Being generally intelligent and having general problem solving skills is less and less important. TBH looking at how the future is going to look like (no not utopia), those general skills seem to be more and more important on the contrary. Being “too specialized” will hurt society in the end.
- antihero 4y ago
  Division of labour has been a tool to make us dependent on the system and our overlords. People like Kropotkin have been saying this for quite some time.
  - tomrod 4y ago
    Darn that eusocial evolutionary pressure!
  - CryptoPunk 4y ago
BlargMcLarg 4y ago
>Instead, we create hyperfocused individuals and build structure and process around them so that they can collaborate. I agree and disagree. There are arguments in favor of both sides. Look at what happened in software development alone. Where you were only expected to push basic code before, many employers now expect you to be a flexible mini-IT department on top of having the social skills to communicate with customers and managers. At the same time, they specialized other things to a degree you're now a "dotnet developer", "java developer" etc., as if specializing in that direction was ever the goal of software development / computer science.
- staticassertion 4y ago
  I see this as just more hyper focusing in a way. Now I have even less time for exploratory pursuits, my "role" has expanded and thus takes more of my focus. So I have to think about more things, but it's all confined to the expectations placed on me by my job.
nottorp 4y ago
> It's hard to read a book and also watch tv and also talk to friends etc My hypothesis is the availability of low quality passive entertainment 24/7 - namely tv - is what leads to iq scores declining. When did tvs become affordable for everyone, 1970s perhaps?
- oriolid 4y ago
  From Finnish perspective, it's just not availability of TVs but the content too. Until 90s we had just two channels that were mostly showing content from public broadcasting corporation (Yleisradio) with some segments of commercial programming. Cable and satellite TV did exist but they were really quite uncommon (and kids had to learn English in order to watch them). I've understood that Norway where the paper is from was similar.
- sva_ 4y ago
  I'd go even further: I think people have a hard time dealing with abundance in many areas of our society. Take for example the abundance of food: Some people have a hard time dealing with the constant availability of anything you could wish for, and get fat. We've now come into an era where there is also an abundance of information: Pretty much anything you can imagine is just a button-click away. Young people in particular have to carefully select what information to consume, and there's a whole attention-economy built around wasting people's time, trying to manipulate them into buying shit they don't need. Humans didn't evolve in such conditions - everything was always scarce. So I think that's why a lot of people have a hard time dealing with it. I believe there's a huge potential market for software that acts in the interest of the user, helping to deal with this abundance of information (pretty much all software that currently exists mainly works to the benefit of the company, in particular ads/data collection). But it doesn't need to be that way. So let's build solutions.
lnxg33k1 4y ago
Is higher education the issue here? I know people with higher education that are willing to mute people with different opinions, I know people with higher education who fail to understand basic things, I think higher education gives you the expertise in a certain field, as you said, higher education creates machines that can help shareholders get rich, as italian I've read a lot about italian universities being ranked 1/1000th lower than US universities, but then I've lived with US people from Harvard in Berlin, it's of course just two example, but I was even questioning how the hell they survived that much, in sense that I had a flatmate asking how the trash bin worked, how the microwave worked or how the oven worked, with little to no awareness of the world, it's weird but yeah I think education from top universities is good for money but it has little to do with daily needed intelligence
- staticassertion 4y ago
  > Access to education is currently the most conclusive factor explaining disparities in intelligence, according to Ritchie. In a separate study that has not been released, he and his colleagues looked at existing research in an effort to demonstrate that staying in school longer directly equates to higher IQ scores.
  - lnxg33k1 4y ago
    Yes, I see, there is a study with some conclusions, but that doesn't mean that one has to ignore his life experiences, also because I would like to see what were the parameters of the tests, I have also other examples of people with higher education failing to understand how democracy basically works and wishing people with different ideas wouldn't vote, so yeah probably the study is right, and the parameters were general, I just find people with higher education more specialised but less functional in day to day stuff
- Mandelmus 4y ago
  > italian universities being ranked 1/1000th lower than US universities I don't even know what that means. That sounds like they'd be ranked only a tenth of a percent lower than US universities, which doesn't jive with the rest of your point.
icedchai 4y ago
I’ve found it more difficult to sit and focus in recent years. I blame pandemic-related anxiety for some of it, but not all. It’s mostly all the instant-on distractions available now, like the media you describe. The web in general discourages focus.
- karmakurtisaani 4y ago
  I put the blame on my kids.
  - loonster 4y ago
    Since my kids were born, I feel dumber. I do not think it is just due to aging. Maybe caused from years of lack of sleep.
- candlemas 4y ago
  Tabs were a mistake.
  - elijahwright 4y ago
    You are referring to browser tabs?
    - candlemas 4y ago
      Yes.
      - icedchai 4y ago
        I wish I could set an artificial limit on browser tabs (like, max 5 tabs.) If I open another tab, I have to pick one to close first.
nathias 4y ago
Thinking about higher education as an 'investment' is part of this problem. In Europe, we had the Humbold system of higher education, but sadly that was now eradicated in favor of the more utalitarian anglo style education. At least Italy still has the fairly classical approach.
- est31 4y ago
  What do you mean? Italy has applied the Bologna reforms, that were even named after an Italian university, no?
  - nathias 4y ago
    Yea, but for them at least the lower levels remain fairly classical, right?
    - pas 4y ago
      that would be surprising. ther are a usually few general courses (civics, economics, etc) at every undergrad, but these are usually low quality, mostly useless, and absolutely dwarfed by the usual introductory classes (usual STEM for STEM, etc) for example https://offertaformativa-unitn-it.translate.goog/it/l/informatica/cosa-si-studia?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://offertaformativa-unitn-it.translate.goog/it/l/inform...
    - bigbacaloa 4y ago
      Italian universities still fail students liberally and repeatedly.
- d0mine 4y ago
  “There are undeniably certain kinds of knowledge that must be of a general nature and, more importantly, a certain cultivation of the mind and character that nobody can afford to be without. People obviously cannot be good craftworkers, merchants, soldiers or businessmen unless, regardless of their occupation, they are good, upstanding and – according to their condition – well-informed human beings and citizens. If this basis is laid through schooling, vocational skills are easily acquired later on, and a person is always free to move from one occupation to another, as so often happens in life.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldtian_model_of_higher_education https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldtian_model_of_higher_...
ddanv 4y ago
Maybe this is an education availability problem? What are you doing to teach the young generation? I think the article is wrong. Kids if thought today are more intelligent than past generations.
- pas 4y ago
  it might be important to separate the hardware and software parts of intelligence. IQ tests mostly measure the hardware part (pattern recognition, working memory, spatial reasoning, attention to detail, speed, focus, reasoning about abstract rules) the software part is mostly about applied epistemological rationality, how good one's life strategy is, and how well one can execute that. (of course there's a hardware component to this too. someone with good emotional resilience, low neuroticism, high self-motivation achieves things with relative ease given the opportunities) then there's a measurement problem. if someone is taught the importance of attention to detail since they were very little, taught to control their emotions better (eg. boredom), then they will likely score better on the hardware test too. that said our collective knowledge is much greater than decades ago, our teaching methods are better too, but alas not everyone received the same top quality teaching. plus there is a big issue with the curriculum. most people are tragicomically underskilled in dealing with themselves and other people, hence they are bad at recognizing and solving problems that brutally impact their lives (and the lives of those around them). aaand of course there's the plain old resource availability problem (everyone inherits, the question is what. advantaged people get advantages with very high probability, disadvantaged people get disadvantages...)
RappingBoomer 4y ago
I grew up back in the days when many more people read books...there were used book stores everywhere...men sometimes carried a paperback book stuck in their back pocket...but that's not to say that everyone read a lot...but there was more reading in general...and one reason why we read more was that television was just not as good as it is today... and reading does develop a certain sort of intelligence that is important and is very useful...I saw my own youthful reading and its good effects in the computer science classes that I passed and where 80% of the class just could not do the work...intelligence counts....when you spend your youth reading books for hours a time, year in and year out, your brain grows "smart muscles"...and that makes it easier to focus on difficult problems... I saw a lack of that sort of intelligence when I worked for a large government agency and when people lacking in that sort of intelligence made a huge mess of designing the business processes for that agency...intelligence counts... society at large and especially those at the top pretend that intelligence no longer matters...but they are wrong...
- hackingthelema 4y ago
  > sometimes carried a paperback book stuck in their back pocket > and one reason why we read more was that television was just not as good as it is today... I feel like there's a little disconnect between these two statements. It's not that television is taking priority, it's that the times when people used to break out a book -- that they carried in their back pocket or purse! -- now break out their phones and engage with social media, or they check their work email, or respond to slack messages, or they get involved in texting, or they play some video game just to make the time go faster. I suppose some of them put in headphones and watch Netflix, but I don't see that often, to be honest. The world has gotten so busy and defaulting to 'on' that no one feels they can default to reading a book, but you can. You just have to decide to carry a book and, instead of breaking out a phone at those times to stay connected, you just let yourself be disconnected, and you read a book. Or meditate. That's how I go about my life, and frankly I don't understand why more people don't. I never use my phone unless it's an emergency. I get a lot more out of life meditating and reading books than checking my email, playing candy crush, and engaging with twitter.
bazzert 4y ago
> I've had increasing trouble reading books for years. I've experienced this as well, and the only solution I have found is to take periodic breaks from my phone and all social media. Within a day or two of minimizing phone use that natural curiosity and desire to learn and motivation to read reemerges.
jvanderbot 4y ago
No IQ test ever got me a good paying job, but my degree, the professors' contacts, and the experience of working in research absolutely did. The 10 years and many loans it took to get through bachelor's and PhD were the best and most important investment I made in myself to get out of the factories and warehouses and into an office with great pay, and oh incidentally an amazing job.
- jmprspret 4y ago
  I've had to do cognitive ability tests as part of job applications. The test questions are definitely reminiscent of those crappy online IQ tests.
- eurasiantiger 4y ago
  College education is treated as a litmus test for whether someone can figure out abstract things and produce useful output. Which is all fine and dandy, except that ”having a degree” is not really a pure measurement: it’s always confounded with a certain amount of wading-through-the-bullwhip tenacity (useless but mandatory curriculum -> non-questioning serf mentality) and a hefty slice of affluenza (outright bribery).
  - jvanderbot 4y ago
    I agree, but stated another way, college is also a test of 'can this person adapt and meet demands to excel in a new system', a skill which I believe is underrated, under measured, and hugely valuable.
    - brnaftr361 4y ago
      Nah, so far as I can tell: it's compliance. It asks the question "Will you do what it takes, even when it's irrational, to pattern yourself after our model?" Moreover it's painfully easy to exploit your way through especially if you're already rich. Just go doctor shopping with Mommy so you can get a 504 and accomodations and stimulant medications. If it selected for adaptation the curriculum would be different, things like figuring out the area of a circle using given materials, not abstract shit. If it selected for intelligence there would br a huge battery of exceptions, handicaps for the working class kids, because they have to put in way more effort than the kids living with their parents who are unemployed, likewise with non-traditionals.
scotty79 4y ago
> I've had increasing trouble reading books for years. Me too. But I read way more than I read when I devoured scores of books. I just do it in the web browser. I always had very short temper with books. If the book didn't captivate me with first few pages it never got read by me. I just moved to another one. I always really liked anthologies of short stories, because amount of the ideas to amount of text was the best there. Way better than when the author stretched just a handful ideas into a novel. So now, with internet filled with so many interesting texts I have real trouble with books, because my short temper got even shorter. I also know a lot more of the ideas than I did when I was younger so it's hard to encounter something novel to me. So a book, that's captivating, dense and novel is really a hard find. And others get ditched by me at some, usually very early, stage. I just have even less patience for them than I had ever before.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> It's hard to read a book and also watch tv and also talk to friends etc Some of my favourite time with two of my friends is going to a bar or restaurant in the afternoon and reading together. The tradeoff is I watch less TV and have basically disengaged from social media. But that’s more than worth it to me.
dahart 4y ago
There’s a bit of misconception here. IQ tests don’t require higher education, nor book reading. > Higher education has never been a worse investment. While I realize you’re talking about social investment here, the idea that TV and media are better investments of your time than earning a degree seems problematic at best. TV & media will, generally speaking, not help you get a better career, right? The Fed has published very recent stats in the US that people with a 4 year degree on average earn 2x the income of people without a degree. I previously suspected it was slightly higher, like maybe 10 or 20 percent, and I felt like that would be a big number, but the fact that it’s double across everyone in America is massive, and a bit mind blowing to me. The income gap is 3x if you get an advanced degree. That seems like a pretty good investment, doesn’t it?
- prometheus76 4y ago
  The debt part of the equation also needs to be considered for the investment. ROI is a huge factor. If it takes you 15 years to break even, the person who never saddled themselves with debt is now 15 years ahead of you income-wise and it will take you another 10 years to catch up to them as far as cumulative income goes. So what is being offered as a "great investment" is not quite as obvious to me.
  - dahart 4y ago
    That cuts pretty hard the other direction though. Going into debt on a house with half the income of other people around you is a huge reason why foreclosures happen. Worrying about 15 years is short-sighted too, that’s not very long. If you pay it off in 15 years, and then you have 2x the income of someone who didn’t go to school, you’re 35 making great money and in a job with better prospects and mobility than if you didn’t have debt but took a job that didn’t require a degree. This is, of course, statistically speaking. Some people do manage to do very well without a degree, but it’s pretty important to understand that it’s not even close to the average outcome. My personal experience with student debt was that it got me a job out of college that paid well enough that I paid off my student loans much faster than I’d anticipated. I thought it was going to be 10 years, but it was more like 3. (To be fair I didn’t borrow that much, and cost of college has been rising faster than inflation ever since I graduated.)
vorpalhex 4y ago
> I can't just sit for hours reading So don't. Read little bits here and there as you get a chance. I frequently read a few pages while I'm waiting for people to get ready, stuck in waiting rooms or sometimes in a slow moving queue. Paperbacks travel just fine.
nso95 4y ago
Quit social media..... learn to do just one thing at a time, it doesn't have to be like this.
lliamander 4y ago
> This isn't that surprising. IQ tests a specific type of intelligence... That's literally the opposite of what any empirical research on IQ shows.
- hirvi74 4y ago
  How truly "empirical" is said research or any research in psychometrics? I've seen many of the claim correlations of IQ with "success" like career trajectories, divorce rates, better health and longevity, etc.. However, I've yet to see any strong correlations. Does IQ have a correlation stronger than 0.5 with anything? IIRC, I am pretty sure parental income, or lack thereof, is a better predictor of "success" than IQ.
  - lliamander 4y ago
    > How truly "empirical" is said research or any research in psychometrics? My understanding is that IQ researchers invented a lot of the statistical techniques used across the social sciences today, and I think faired the "reproducibility crisis" fairly well. It's about as empirical as the social sciences get. > I've seen many of the claim correlations of IQ with "success" like career trajectories, divorce rates, better health and longevity, etc.. However, I've yet to see any strong correlations. Does IQ have a correlation stronger than 0.5 with anything? 0.5 correlation is pretty big in the social sciences. I mean, think about: there are probably hundreds or thousands of factors that influence your life outcome. Much of the differences we see tends to come down to what researchers call "non-shared environment", which is just a fancy term for all the random stuff that happens in your life. For a single factor to have such a large effect is pretty amazing. > IIRC, I am pretty sure parental income, or lack thereof, is a better predictor of "success" than IQ. A lot of which can be explained by the parents' IQ. IQ doesn't explain everything, not by a long shot. It just explains more than any other single factor, and should generally be something researchers should control for whenever they attempt to measure some other phenomenon.
daniel-cussen 4y ago
Yes, IQ tests spacial intelligence, a very European and male specific thing. But that is an actual form of intelligence, it's not a waste of time. Reading books. So at Stanford nobody watched TV. I think later Netflix, a bit. The only time I knew a peer was watching television was some girls in my dorm getting together to watch Gossip Girl, and only that. Just that show. And it was a very abnormal thing, nobody else anything at all. Keep in mind you can play eg Super Smash Bros at the library, there's a video game section in the library and you can play video games if you want. You can try out new titles. I did that. If you watch TV, you won't get into Stanford, basically.
- wutbrodo 4y ago
  I gather why it's male, but is spatial intelligence particularly European? IIRC, East Asians overall score noticeably higher than Europeans overall, all else held equal. And their relative underrepresentation in the US elides the fact that this is a huge proportion of the global population.
  - daniel-cussen 4y ago
    Well right. That's a great point, Asians do a lot better. And Jews. Although don't be categorical about it, I'm European-descendant and don't feel the slightest disadvantage compared to those groups. Though I did once, when I was changing schools, I was going to a school with Asian students, and I felt scared of competing with them academically, what if I couldn't compete? Whereas I had already competed against Jewish students, and them I could outscore. It turned out I could compete with Asians too, it was work but it was neck-and-neck. And neck-and-neck with the Jews in that school, different specific Jews, different story. The ideas and ideals of Asian academics produced very strong results, but were not unassailable. And in this case there was adherence to tradition, sticking to what works, so the ideas and ideals were similar to other East Asian cultures. So generalization was possible, at a first approximation. Well there's differences but they are hidden from first view, so for instance there's differences in study habits between North and South Choson Korea, the North students were systematically were scored adversarially but passed the Confucian Exam all the more. Those Koreans from the North (especially in the most mountainous regions) were doing exactly what Asian students are doing now in American Universities: "the more you push us down, the stronger we'll be, and the more success we will attain, the tighter the quota the more we'll fuck the quota." Same goes for Jews before the Holocaust. Hard, hardcore, especially with medical schools, I heard a story of Columbia (or NYU?) medical school refusing their own college valedictorian just because he was a Jew. Simple as that. But then...it got watered down, unconstitutional, I don't know, things just ain't the same. Still work like fuck, but...just not the same desperation. The muse that helped me most. The best muse.
lifeplusplus 4y ago
Also most books are 300 page long for no reason and have simple idea stretched with 90 stories
sureglymop 4y ago
In simplified terms, IQ tests test "logical thinking ability". It has nothing to do with reading or higher education. On another note, it also has nothing to do with empathy, ethical responsibility etc. so the glorification of someone with a high IQ sometimes baffles me a little. One could be a high IQ tyrant.

pojzon 4y ago

> Being generally intelligent and having general problem solving skills is less and less important. TBH looking at how the future is going to look like (no not utopia), those general skills seem to be more and more important on the contrary. Being “too specialized” will hurt society in the end.

antihero 4y ago
Division of labour has been a tool to make us dependent on the system and our overlords. People like Kropotkin have been saying this for quite some time.
- tomrod 4y ago
  Darn that eusocial evolutionary pressure!
- CryptoPunk 4y ago

BlargMcLarg 4y ago

>Instead, we create hyperfocused individuals and build structure and process around them so that they can collaborate. I agree and disagree. There are arguments in favor of both sides. Look at what happened in software development alone. Where you were only expected to push basic code before, many employers now expect you to be a flexible mini-IT department on top of having the social skills to communicate with customers and managers. At the same time, they specialized other things to a degree you're now a "dotnet developer", "java developer" etc., as if specializing in that direction was ever the goal of software development / computer science.

staticassertion 4y ago
I see this as just more hyper focusing in a way. Now I have even less time for exploratory pursuits, my "role" has expanded and thus takes more of my focus. So I have to think about more things, but it's all confined to the expectations placed on me by my job.

nottorp 4y ago

> It's hard to read a book and also watch tv and also talk to friends etc My hypothesis is the availability of low quality passive entertainment 24/7 - namely tv - is what leads to iq scores declining. When did tvs become affordable for everyone, 1970s perhaps?

oriolid 4y ago
From Finnish perspective, it's just not availability of TVs but the content too. Until 90s we had just two channels that were mostly showing content from public broadcasting corporation (Yleisradio) with some segments of commercial programming. Cable and satellite TV did exist but they were really quite uncommon (and kids had to learn English in order to watch them). I've understood that Norway where the paper is from was similar.
sva_ 4y ago
I'd go even further: I think people have a hard time dealing with abundance in many areas of our society. Take for example the abundance of food: Some people have a hard time dealing with the constant availability of anything you could wish for, and get fat. We've now come into an era where there is also an abundance of information: Pretty much anything you can imagine is just a button-click away. Young people in particular have to carefully select what information to consume, and there's a whole attention-economy built around wasting people's time, trying to manipulate them into buying shit they don't need. Humans didn't evolve in such conditions - everything was always scarce. So I think that's why a lot of people have a hard time dealing with it. I believe there's a huge potential market for software that acts in the interest of the user, helping to deal with this abundance of information (pretty much all software that currently exists mainly works to the benefit of the company, in particular ads/data collection). But it doesn't need to be that way. So let's build solutions.

lnxg33k1 4y ago

Is higher education the issue here? I know people with higher education that are willing to mute people with different opinions, I know people with higher education who fail to understand basic things, I think higher education gives you the expertise in a certain field, as you said, higher education creates machines that can help shareholders get rich, as italian I've read a lot about italian universities being ranked 1/1000th lower than US universities, but then I've lived with US people from Harvard in Berlin, it's of course just two example, but I was even questioning how the hell they survived that much, in sense that I had a flatmate asking how the trash bin worked, how the microwave worked or how the oven worked, with little to no awareness of the world, it's weird but yeah I think education from top universities is good for money but it has little to do with daily needed intelligence

staticassertion 4y ago
> Access to education is currently the most conclusive factor explaining disparities in intelligence, according to Ritchie. In a separate study that has not been released, he and his colleagues looked at existing research in an effort to demonstrate that staying in school longer directly equates to higher IQ scores.
- lnxg33k1 4y ago
  Yes, I see, there is a study with some conclusions, but that doesn't mean that one has to ignore his life experiences, also because I would like to see what were the parameters of the tests, I have also other examples of people with higher education failing to understand how democracy basically works and wishing people with different ideas wouldn't vote, so yeah probably the study is right, and the parameters were general, I just find people with higher education more specialised but less functional in day to day stuff
Mandelmus 4y ago
> italian universities being ranked 1/1000th lower than US universities I don't even know what that means. That sounds like they'd be ranked only a tenth of a percent lower than US universities, which doesn't jive with the rest of your point.

icedchai 4y ago

I’ve found it more difficult to sit and focus in recent years. I blame pandemic-related anxiety for some of it, but not all. It’s mostly all the instant-on distractions available now, like the media you describe. The web in general discourages focus.

karmakurtisaani 4y ago
I put the blame on my kids.
- loonster 4y ago
  Since my kids were born, I feel dumber. I do not think it is just due to aging. Maybe caused from years of lack of sleep.
candlemas 4y ago
Tabs were a mistake.
- elijahwright 4y ago
  You are referring to browser tabs?
  - candlemas 4y ago
    Yes.
    - icedchai 4y ago
      I wish I could set an artificial limit on browser tabs (like, max 5 tabs.) If I open another tab, I have to pick one to close first.

nathias 4y ago

Thinking about higher education as an 'investment' is part of this problem. In Europe, we had the Humbold system of higher education, but sadly that was now eradicated in favor of the more utalitarian anglo style education. At least Italy still has the fairly classical approach.

est31 4y ago
What do you mean? Italy has applied the Bologna reforms, that were even named after an Italian university, no?
- nathias 4y ago
  Yea, but for them at least the lower levels remain fairly classical, right?
  - pas 4y ago
    that would be surprising. ther are a usually few general courses (civics, economics, etc) at every undergrad, but these are usually low quality, mostly useless, and absolutely dwarfed by the usual introductory classes (usual STEM for STEM, etc) for example https://offertaformativa-unitn-it.translate.goog/it/l/informatica/cosa-si-studia?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://offertaformativa-unitn-it.translate.goog/it/l/inform...
  - bigbacaloa 4y ago
    Italian universities still fail students liberally and repeatedly.
d0mine 4y ago
“There are undeniably certain kinds of knowledge that must be of a general nature and, more importantly, a certain cultivation of the mind and character that nobody can afford to be without. People obviously cannot be good craftworkers, merchants, soldiers or businessmen unless, regardless of their occupation, they are good, upstanding and – according to their condition – well-informed human beings and citizens. If this basis is laid through schooling, vocational skills are easily acquired later on, and a person is always free to move from one occupation to another, as so often happens in life.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldtian_model_of_higher_education https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldtian_model_of_higher_...

ddanv 4y ago

Maybe this is an education availability problem? What are you doing to teach the young generation? I think the article is wrong. Kids if thought today are more intelligent than past generations.

pas 4y ago
it might be important to separate the hardware and software parts of intelligence. IQ tests mostly measure the hardware part (pattern recognition, working memory, spatial reasoning, attention to detail, speed, focus, reasoning about abstract rules) the software part is mostly about applied epistemological rationality, how good one's life strategy is, and how well one can execute that. (of course there's a hardware component to this too. someone with good emotional resilience, low neuroticism, high self-motivation achieves things with relative ease given the opportunities) then there's a measurement problem. if someone is taught the importance of attention to detail since they were very little, taught to control their emotions better (eg. boredom), then they will likely score better on the hardware test too. that said our collective knowledge is much greater than decades ago, our teaching methods are better too, but alas not everyone received the same top quality teaching. plus there is a big issue with the curriculum. most people are tragicomically underskilled in dealing with themselves and other people, hence they are bad at recognizing and solving problems that brutally impact their lives (and the lives of those around them). aaand of course there's the plain old resource availability problem (everyone inherits, the question is what. advantaged people get advantages with very high probability, disadvantaged people get disadvantages...)

RappingBoomer 4y ago

I grew up back in the days when many more people read books...there were used book stores everywhere...men sometimes carried a paperback book stuck in their back pocket...but that's not to say that everyone read a lot...but there was more reading in general...and one reason why we read more was that television was just not as good as it is today... and reading does develop a certain sort of intelligence that is important and is very useful...I saw my own youthful reading and its good effects in the computer science classes that I passed and where 80% of the class just could not do the work...intelligence counts....when you spend your youth reading books for hours a time, year in and year out, your brain grows "smart muscles"...and that makes it easier to focus on difficult problems... I saw a lack of that sort of intelligence when I worked for a large government agency and when people lacking in that sort of intelligence made a huge mess of designing the business processes for that agency...intelligence counts... society at large and especially those at the top pretend that intelligence no longer matters...but they are wrong...

hackingthelema 4y ago
> sometimes carried a paperback book stuck in their back pocket > and one reason why we read more was that television was just not as good as it is today... I feel like there's a little disconnect between these two statements. It's not that television is taking priority, it's that the times when people used to break out a book -- that they carried in their back pocket or purse! -- now break out their phones and engage with social media, or they check their work email, or respond to slack messages, or they get involved in texting, or they play some video game just to make the time go faster. I suppose some of them put in headphones and watch Netflix, but I don't see that often, to be honest. The world has gotten so busy and defaulting to 'on' that no one feels they can default to reading a book, but you can. You just have to decide to carry a book and, instead of breaking out a phone at those times to stay connected, you just let yourself be disconnected, and you read a book. Or meditate. That's how I go about my life, and frankly I don't understand why more people don't. I never use my phone unless it's an emergency. I get a lot more out of life meditating and reading books than checking my email, playing candy crush, and engaging with twitter.

bazzert 4y ago

> I've had increasing trouble reading books for years. I've experienced this as well, and the only solution I have found is to take periodic breaks from my phone and all social media. Within a day or two of minimizing phone use that natural curiosity and desire to learn and motivation to read reemerges.

jvanderbot 4y ago

No IQ test ever got me a good paying job, but my degree, the professors' contacts, and the experience of working in research absolutely did. The 10 years and many loans it took to get through bachelor's and PhD were the best and most important investment I made in myself to get out of the factories and warehouses and into an office with great pay, and oh incidentally an amazing job.

jmprspret 4y ago
I've had to do cognitive ability tests as part of job applications. The test questions are definitely reminiscent of those crappy online IQ tests.
eurasiantiger 4y ago
College education is treated as a litmus test for whether someone can figure out abstract things and produce useful output. Which is all fine and dandy, except that ”having a degree” is not really a pure measurement: it’s always confounded with a certain amount of wading-through-the-bullwhip tenacity (useless but mandatory curriculum -> non-questioning serf mentality) and a hefty slice of affluenza (outright bribery).
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  I agree, but stated another way, college is also a test of 'can this person adapt and meet demands to excel in a new system', a skill which I believe is underrated, under measured, and hugely valuable.
  - brnaftr361 4y ago
    Nah, so far as I can tell: it's compliance. It asks the question "Will you do what it takes, even when it's irrational, to pattern yourself after our model?" Moreover it's painfully easy to exploit your way through especially if you're already rich. Just go doctor shopping with Mommy so you can get a 504 and accomodations and stimulant medications. If it selected for adaptation the curriculum would be different, things like figuring out the area of a circle using given materials, not abstract shit. If it selected for intelligence there would br a huge battery of exceptions, handicaps for the working class kids, because they have to put in way more effort than the kids living with their parents who are unemployed, likewise with non-traditionals.

scotty79 4y ago

> I've had increasing trouble reading books for years. Me too. But I read way more than I read when I devoured scores of books. I just do it in the web browser. I always had very short temper with books. If the book didn't captivate me with first few pages it never got read by me. I just moved to another one. I always really liked anthologies of short stories, because amount of the ideas to amount of text was the best there. Way better than when the author stretched just a handful ideas into a novel. So now, with internet filled with so many interesting texts I have real trouble with books, because my short temper got even shorter. I also know a lot more of the ideas than I did when I was younger so it's hard to encounter something novel to me. So a book, that's captivating, dense and novel is really a hard find. And others get ditched by me at some, usually very early, stage. I just have even less patience for them than I had ever before.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> It's hard to read a book and also watch tv and also talk to friends etc Some of my favourite time with two of my friends is going to a bar or restaurant in the afternoon and reading together. The tradeoff is I watch less TV and have basically disengaged from social media. But that’s more than worth it to me.

dahart 4y ago

There’s a bit of misconception here. IQ tests don’t require higher education, nor book reading. > Higher education has never been a worse investment. While I realize you’re talking about social investment here, the idea that TV and media are better investments of your time than earning a degree seems problematic at best. TV & media will, generally speaking, not help you get a better career, right? The Fed has published very recent stats in the US that people with a 4 year degree on average earn 2x the income of people without a degree. I previously suspected it was slightly higher, like maybe 10 or 20 percent, and I felt like that would be a big number, but the fact that it’s double across everyone in America is massive, and a bit mind blowing to me. The income gap is 3x if you get an advanced degree. That seems like a pretty good investment, doesn’t it?

prometheus76 4y ago
The debt part of the equation also needs to be considered for the investment. ROI is a huge factor. If it takes you 15 years to break even, the person who never saddled themselves with debt is now 15 years ahead of you income-wise and it will take you another 10 years to catch up to them as far as cumulative income goes. So what is being offered as a "great investment" is not quite as obvious to me.
- dahart 4y ago
  That cuts pretty hard the other direction though. Going into debt on a house with half the income of other people around you is a huge reason why foreclosures happen. Worrying about 15 years is short-sighted too, that’s not very long. If you pay it off in 15 years, and then you have 2x the income of someone who didn’t go to school, you’re 35 making great money and in a job with better prospects and mobility than if you didn’t have debt but took a job that didn’t require a degree. This is, of course, statistically speaking. Some people do manage to do very well without a degree, but it’s pretty important to understand that it’s not even close to the average outcome. My personal experience with student debt was that it got me a job out of college that paid well enough that I paid off my student loans much faster than I’d anticipated. I thought it was going to be 10 years, but it was more like 3. (To be fair I didn’t borrow that much, and cost of college has been rising faster than inflation ever since I graduated.)

vorpalhex 4y ago

> I can't just sit for hours reading So don't. Read little bits here and there as you get a chance. I frequently read a few pages while I'm waiting for people to get ready, stuck in waiting rooms or sometimes in a slow moving queue. Paperbacks travel just fine.

nso95 4y ago

Quit social media..... learn to do just one thing at a time, it doesn't have to be like this.

lliamander 4y ago

> This isn't that surprising. IQ tests a specific type of intelligence... That's literally the opposite of what any empirical research on IQ shows.

hirvi74 4y ago
How truly "empirical" is said research or any research in psychometrics? I've seen many of the claim correlations of IQ with "success" like career trajectories, divorce rates, better health and longevity, etc.. However, I've yet to see any strong correlations. Does IQ have a correlation stronger than 0.5 with anything? IIRC, I am pretty sure parental income, or lack thereof, is a better predictor of "success" than IQ.
- lliamander 4y ago
  > How truly "empirical" is said research or any research in psychometrics? My understanding is that IQ researchers invented a lot of the statistical techniques used across the social sciences today, and I think faired the "reproducibility crisis" fairly well. It's about as empirical as the social sciences get. > I've seen many of the claim correlations of IQ with "success" like career trajectories, divorce rates, better health and longevity, etc.. However, I've yet to see any strong correlations. Does IQ have a correlation stronger than 0.5 with anything? 0.5 correlation is pretty big in the social sciences. I mean, think about: there are probably hundreds or thousands of factors that influence your life outcome. Much of the differences we see tends to come down to what researchers call "non-shared environment", which is just a fancy term for all the random stuff that happens in your life. For a single factor to have such a large effect is pretty amazing. > IIRC, I am pretty sure parental income, or lack thereof, is a better predictor of "success" than IQ. A lot of which can be explained by the parents' IQ. IQ doesn't explain everything, not by a long shot. It just explains more than any other single factor, and should generally be something researchers should control for whenever they attempt to measure some other phenomenon.

daniel-cussen 4y ago

Yes, IQ tests spacial intelligence, a very European and male specific thing. But that is an actual form of intelligence, it's not a waste of time. Reading books. So at Stanford nobody watched TV. I think later Netflix, a bit. The only time I knew a peer was watching television was some girls in my dorm getting together to watch Gossip Girl, and only that. Just that show. And it was a very abnormal thing, nobody else anything at all. Keep in mind you can play eg Super Smash Bros at the library, there's a video game section in the library and you can play video games if you want. You can try out new titles. I did that. If you watch TV, you won't get into Stanford, basically.

wutbrodo 4y ago
I gather why it's male, but is spatial intelligence particularly European? IIRC, East Asians overall score noticeably higher than Europeans overall, all else held equal. And their relative underrepresentation in the US elides the fact that this is a huge proportion of the global population.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  Well right. That's a great point, Asians do a lot better. And Jews. Although don't be categorical about it, I'm European-descendant and don't feel the slightest disadvantage compared to those groups. Though I did once, when I was changing schools, I was going to a school with Asian students, and I felt scared of competing with them academically, what if I couldn't compete? Whereas I had already competed against Jewish students, and them I could outscore. It turned out I could compete with Asians too, it was work but it was neck-and-neck. And neck-and-neck with the Jews in that school, different specific Jews, different story. The ideas and ideals of Asian academics produced very strong results, but were not unassailable. And in this case there was adherence to tradition, sticking to what works, so the ideas and ideals were similar to other East Asian cultures. So generalization was possible, at a first approximation. Well there's differences but they are hidden from first view, so for instance there's differences in study habits between North and South Choson Korea, the North students were systematically were scored adversarially but passed the Confucian Exam all the more. Those Koreans from the North (especially in the most mountainous regions) were doing exactly what Asian students are doing now in American Universities: "the more you push us down, the stronger we'll be, and the more success we will attain, the tighter the quota the more we'll fuck the quota." Same goes for Jews before the Holocaust. Hard, hardcore, especially with medical schools, I heard a story of Columbia (or NYU?) medical school refusing their own college valedictorian just because he was a Jew. Simple as that. But then...it got watered down, unconstitutional, I don't know, things just ain't the same. Still work like fuck, but...just not the same desperation. The muse that helped me most. The best muse.

lifeplusplus 4y ago

Also most books are 300 page long for no reason and have simple idea stretched with 90 stories

sureglymop 4y ago

In simplified terms, IQ tests test "logical thinking ability". It has nothing to do with reading or higher education. On another note, it also has nothing to do with empathy, ethical responsibility etc. so the glorification of someone with a high IQ sometimes baffles me a little. One could be a high IQ tyrant.