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My personal opinion is that Flynn effect is a combination of factors that aid developing of brain: 1. Better nutrition and medical care. 2. Teaching abstract c

My personal opinion is that Flynn effect is a combination of factors that aid developing of brain: 1. Better nutrition and medical care. 2. Teaching abstract concepts such as predicate logic early on. 3. Increasing complexity of the world in terms of information streams. 4. Urbanization of population. 4. Mandatory schooling and various programs aimed at increasing graduation rate, which is proxy for total amount of time an average child is schooled [0]. I was writing out long and detailed argument based on clustering of scholars and their presence in ancient civilizations, but after realizing amount of details such argument would need to stand I gave up. My argument was along the lines of: presence of clusters of extraordinary scholars in ancient civilizations show that prospering economy[1], knowledge communication, and education play crucial role in preparing those scholars. [0] Now thinking about it - I think there should be strong correlation between average time children are schooled and standardized test scores. Probably also has additional wide variety of rippling effects including better economic growth. [1] An economy that is capable of bearing load of academia.

scholia 12y ago
> I think there should be strong correlation between average time children are schooled and standardized test scores. Surely the simpler explanation is that the tests don't really measure "pure" intelligence, and the results are affected by all sorts of social features, including a general familiarity with IQ tests. Time-in-school is part of that.
MaysonL 12y ago
Re clustering of scholars, prosperity is probably important, but Bloom's two sigma problem[0] probably contributes also. Would Aristotle have been anywhere near as profound without Socrates and Plato as predecessors? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_Sigma_Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_Sigma_Problem
- TrainedMonkey 12y ago
  That was part of my point, would kids today perform better without benefit of all the scholar achievements before them? I was arguing that academic development of a society is part of the reason for Flynn effect.

scholia 12y ago

> I think there should be strong correlation between average time children are schooled and standardized test scores. Surely the simpler explanation is that the tests don't really measure "pure" intelligence, and the results are affected by all sorts of social features, including a general familiarity with IQ tests. Time-in-school is part of that.

MaysonL 12y ago

Re clustering of scholars, prosperity is probably important, but Bloom's two sigma problem[0] probably contributes also. Would Aristotle have been anywhere near as profound without Socrates and Plato as predecessors? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_Sigma_Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_Sigma_Problem

TrainedMonkey 12y ago
That was part of my point, would kids today perform better without benefit of all the scholar achievements before them? I was arguing that academic development of a society is part of the reason for Flynn effect.