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Not claiming that Idiocracy is accurate, however IQ scores have been declining. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/3283/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih
by everdrive 6mo ago
Not claiming that Idiocracy is accurate, however IQ scores have been declining. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/3283/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/3283/
- MidnightRider39 6mo agoImho IQ scores aren’t a sufficient measure of intelligence, it’s very shaky science at best
- lelanthran 6mo ago> Imho IQ scores aren’t a sufficient measure of intelligence, it’s very shaky science at best What do you propose as a replacement metric to determine if humans are getting dumber or not?
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- MidnightRider39 6mo agoNo idea. Why do we need to determine if humans are getting dumber or not?
- lpcvoid 6mo agoBecause it would explain what's happening in the world after 2019.
- pixl97 6mo agoWhat an odd question. What do you think intelligence actually is? What effects do you think it has when it goes up or down in mass?
- MidnightRider39 6mo agoI think it’s an essential question. I wouldn’t even know how to describe what intelligence means exactly. I’ve experienced very “smart” people make horribly stupid decisions and the other way round. Since I don’t know a way to describe what intelligent actually means I can’t tell if it’s good or not to have more or less of it. For some this seems to be a very “finished” topic, but we don’t have any widely accepted definitions of intelligence, not even for “less complex” organisms
- lelanthran 6mo ago> No idea. Why do we need to determine if humans are getting dumber or not? It seems to me, then, that your primary objection is not that IQ scores are inaccurate, but that intelligence shouldn't be measured in the first place? Which makes me think that you don't want anyone doing research into whether human intelligence is changing at all.
- MidnightRider39 6mo agoNo I think that our tools to measure and our definition of intelligence are lacking and are causing more problems than actually helping with anything. Or can you point to any obvious improvements that result from having measured “intelligence” for the last 100+ years? When my grandpa was a kid they would measure your skull and decide if you are smart or a subhuman based on that. Makes about as much sense as our current IQ tests…
- reliabilityguy 6mo ago> Imho IQ scores aren’t a sufficient measure of intelligence You may be correct. However, if the methodology of IQ scoring didn’t change, the change in score itself is worth of investigation.
- orwin 6mo agoDepends on the IQ test i guess? The one i did at 7 _definitely_ had a cultural component. I think it was 5 different tests, i distinctly during one of them thinking "if my parent didn't educate me on music there is no way i could have answered that, is this bullshit?". Then in the spatialization test i had a tangram, which incidentally, was a game i had since i was 4. Honestly i remember i scored high, but i also told myself how lucky that was that most of the question the psychologist asked me, i already read the answers (which might have been the point), and that they used a tangram because honestly i knew i would have scored poorly on that particular test, i have trouble visualizing stuff (mild aphantasia).
- ordu 6mo agoThe first IQ test was developed by Binet and Simon in France, and it was all about predicting academic success of children. Virtually all IQ tests are predicting academic success. Cultural component is a big part of it. For example music education is associated with better grades. Maybe no one knows how it works, but it does. No one knows what intelligence is, all the tests are like "lets identify a group of smart people (normally it is something like a group of high performing students), find correlates and build a test measuring correlates". No good definition of intelligence and no casual reasoning, just a correlative one. How IQ 100 becomes a median? Lets take a big enough sample, get their test score and then normalize numbers so median will be 100 exactly. The creators of tests know that you can't compare IQ numbers from different populations. You can investigate the difference, but a direct comparison is nonsense. Even comparisons between different age cohorts of the same population are questionable at very least. It doesn't mean that iq numbers are meaningless, but we shouldn't confuse them with intelligence, and we definitely shouldn't treat them as absolute numbers. They are relative measure.
- coldtea 6mo agoNot a sufficient measure of different kinds of mental agility (including emotional/social) maybe. But when it comes to intelligence needed for doing maths and physics and such, it's a very good proxy. And geniuses like Tao, also happen to scope very highly.
- MidnightRider39 6mo agoYea and there have been tons of Nobel price winners who have scored low. It’s a completely useless measure
- Rygian 6mo agoIs there any strong relationship between IQ scores and innate intelligence, as opposed to mental agility gained through education?
- coldtea 6mo agoYes. Which is why there are also IQ tests for pre-school kids. Besides the declining groups have the same education with the earlier ones.
- tovej 6mo agoAll of these effects are explained much better by social factors. If you're poor or discriminated against, you get less nutrition, less education, and face barriers in trying to improve both.
- coldtea 6mo ago>If you're poor or discriminated against, you get less nutrition, less education, and face barriers in trying to improve both. Which doesn't matter, since they measured rich and middle class, and poor and discriminated against both before and after. Did you think the new measurements were done at some ghetto and the earlier higher ones at Martha's Vineyard?
- tovej 6mo agoCould you please elaborate on why measuring the same group somehow eliminates social effects? Are you claiming social factors have remained constant during the measuring period? Because they very obviously haven't. If you're aware of the Peter principle, and how inequality compounds over time, then you know that the rate at which social factors change is correlated with their quantile values.
- singpolyma3 6mo agoIn general the methodology for IQ is highly questionable
- willis936 6mo agoInvoking IQ is not really a good way to dismiss pro-eugenics concerns. Edit: This is a brief video explaining why. https://youtu.be/UBc7qBS1Ujo https://youtu.be/UBc7qBS1Ujo
- everdrive 6mo agoI wasn't going for pro or anti-eugenics, just expressing that the Flynn effect has been reversing. At least from what I've read the trend is true _within_ families, which downplays potential pro-eugenics arguments.
- littlestymaar 6mo ago> Edit: This is a brief video explaining why. I knew what it was before even clicking on it. The “brief video” was a strong enough clue.
- ben_w 6mo agoAfter a while of going up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect While genes must play a part in this (if they didn't, all non-humans would also share our IQ*), genetics shift on a much slower timescale than the entire history of IQ tests. * This pattern matches to the Motte-and-Bailey rhetorical technique, ergo I am suspicious of people who try to tie genetics and IQ until they're clear they're not making a racially charged claim. Last I checked, there is no real evidence that human races are a meaningful genetic category, let alone that anything usually described as "race" correlates to any genes connected to IQ scores.
- AntiDyatlov 6mo agoHow can human races not be a meaningful genetic category? Aside from the phentoypical differences, the prevalence of some diseases varies by race.
- malfist 6mo agoWhat gene makes someone Asian? What gene makes someone black? What gene makes someone native American?
- ben_w 6mo agoBecause where you draw the lines for "race" is down to your own culture, not a constant dividing line that all cultures agree upon. To an American, race may be e.g.: {White, Black, Hispanic, Native American, Arabic, Asian}. To most Europeans, everyone who an an American would call Hispanic, we'd probably either call "Caucasian" (i.e. white) if their heritage is more from the Spanish side or Native American if their heritage is more from the pre-Columbian (Aztec?) side. If you're Chinese, they may say the ethnicities are "Han, Zhuang, Hui, Manchu, Uyghur, …" where those are all ethnic groups within China. Rwanda, infamously, would get you a distinction between Hutu and Tutsi; if you show me a picture of two people and ask me which was which, I wouldn't be able to answer, or even know if I was being pranked with any of the other ethnic groups in Africa. But more broadly, while skin colour is easy to spot from the outside, it's about as useful as hair or eye colour when it comes to correspondence with the huge range of invisible genetic variation.
- jfengel 6mo agoI'd be curious to know the average IQ of, say, climate deniers. I suspect it's still a perfect 100. I don't think it's about general intelligence. In some ways just the opposite: very smart people have a talent for convincing themselves that they are right. Unfortunately I fear it's more like EQ than IQ. The driver is more about the people. They do not like the kind of people who are trying to prevent climate change, and will apply their intelligence as hard as they can to avoid agreeing with them.
- wombat-man 6mo agoYes, it's hard for some to believe, but there are people in my family who are otherwise very intelligent but will not change their opinions on some things. Like climate change.
- semiquaver 6mo agoUnless you are a scientist directly engaging with the literature, you and your relative are both doing the same thing: trusting the opinion of peers and high-status people in your political clan about what is happening in the world. It just happens that people in your clan are telling the truth while the other one is lying. Neither side’s behavior can be considered “more intelligent” when you consider the vast majority of people on both sides are “opinion-takers” simply conforming to received social norms about what to believe about the world. The “opinion-makers” on both sides are undoubtedly intelligent, although you might prefer to call one side “cunning” instead.
- catapart 6mo agoyou don't have to be a scientist to directly engage with the literature. from mathematical proofs to directly observed phenomena to statistical certainties - it's all out there for you to engage with and feel secure in your findings just by having an internet connection. there's a qualitative difference in that evidence from the "sides" and therefore there is a qualitative and practical difference in the "more intelligent" side. "truth" is not incidental to the situation, it's the entire point of making claims at all. So a side that is making claims that turn out to not be true - whether you personally verify that or not - is a worse side, intellectually, than another.
- malfist 6mo agoIQ is a poor yard stick to measure intelligence with
- duskdozer 6mo agoCan't forget the new favorite: >Mild cognitive decline was noted after infection with the wild-type virus and with each variant, including B.1.1.529 (Omicron). Relative to uninfected participants, cognitive deficit (3-point loss in IQ) was seen even in participants who had had completely recovered from mild COVID-19. >Participants with persistent symptoms had the equivalent of a 6-point loss in IQ, while those who had been admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) experienced the equivalent of a 9-point loss in IQ. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/even-fully-recovered-survivors-mild-covid-can-lose-iq-points-study-suggests https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/even-fully-recovered-sur... https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2311330 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2311330