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it's already happening. IQ is already stagnating or even going down
by 64e23275635e 2mo ago
it's already happening. IQ is already stagnating or even going down
- dupontcyborg 2mo agoi’m not doubting this, but do you know if there are any studies on this already?
- exac 2mo agohttps://phys.org/news/2023-03-online-iq-scores-century.html https://phys.org/news/2023-03-online-iq-scores-century.html https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2023.101734 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2023.101734
- evil-olive 2mo agothat's a study published in 2023, analyzing data that ended in 2018.
- dofm 2mo agoRight but the question was: "Do you guys think we're going to see a de-evolution of human beings due to technology?" Not LLMs specifically. Insofar as I believe there is value in IQ tests, this is a technology-driven effect, most likely due to the impact of distraction and search result immediacy on sustained thinking. IQs used to just rise, year on year, because living in the world required more and more of the thinking that IQ tests measure. And now they don't.
- petesergeant 2mo agoHard not to see what you’ve just done here as an analogue of what the article is arguing against
- denkmoon 2mo agoUS centric data, absolutely useless. This is just measuring american decline, not civilisation changes.
- vidarh 2mo agoIt's also a first time decline afterany decades of steady increases. We have no basis for determining causality - it might just be that we've finally maxed out the possible gains from the causes underlying the Flynn effect.
- 64e23275635e 2mo agoI am the lazy human today, but this one is listing a few references: https://www.pressenza.com/2025/07/the-decline-of-the-intelligence-quotient-in-the-digital-age-cognitive-reconfiguration-and-global-trends/ https://www.pressenza.com/2025/07/the-decline-of-the-intelli...
- c048 2mo agoWhat's even more worrying is that I've heared plenty of people defend it as, "Younger generations are just intelligent in different ways compared to older generations." I'm halfway through my 30's and this downturn started with my generation, halfway through the 80's. I hope I'm missing something, because I still need to see a benefit for lower attention spans, lower comprehensive reading skills and lower critical thinking capabilities.
- wannabe44 2mo agoTo add, less articulate and somewhat overtly anti-intellectual. Why even learn something when you can ask the slot machine?
- Cthulhu_ 2mo agoThe anti-intellectualism is so weird to me, it feels like people get overly defensive and angry (a secondary emotional response to shame) when confronted with their own lack of knowledge / intelligence or when asked or challenged to use their own brain.
- drekipus 2mo agoThe benefits are increased productivity, consumer satisfaction, and shareholder profits
- Cthulhu_ 2mo agoHalfway through 30's means you were born in the 90's though, but other than that you're right, the advent of the internet, google, and rapid fire short form content has messed with our attention spans; the following generation grew up on the internet and saw the advent of high intensity videos and then short-form mobile-only infinite-stream short-form dashed-words videos.
- lelanthran 2mo agoYou should point out then that "border collies are just intelligent in different ways, too"
- voidUpdate 2mo agoIQ is calibrated so that the average IQ is 100. If the average IQ is going down, something has gone very wrong somewhere
- energy123 2mo agoIQ gets manually recalibrated downwards when people get stupider so it's mean 100 by construction.
- vintermann 2mo agoHmm, who does the calibration, and how scientific are they about it? Can we check their work?
- 64e23275635e 2mo agoI am not too deep into the science of it, but this video gives a good outline about IQ in general. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkKPsLxgpuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkKPsLxgpuY
- everfrustrated 2mo agoIQ is a relative measure not an absolute one. 100 IQ in 2026 can be massively different in absolute terms to 100 IQ in 1956. If you look at old test papers - the lack of intelligence in modern times is very stark.
- voidUpdate 2mo agoYes, but the comment was about IQ, not absolute intelligence. The median intelligence is, by definition, 100 IQ, so the median IQ cannot be decreasing
- debugnik 2mo agoThere's always a lag, you calibrate the test based on previous results, not future ones. If intelligence is decreasing I'd expect every IQ test to keep scoring a median lower than 100 unless taken immediately after calibration. Once it stops decreasing they'd converge again.