We're All Getting Dumber, Says Science (fastcompany.com) 558
dryriver shares a report from Fast Company: Researchers at Norway's Ragnar Frisch Center for Economic Research now have scientific proof of something we've long suspected -- we're all getting dumber. In their paper, "Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused," which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bernt Bratsberg and Ole Rogeberg report that IQ scores have been steadily dropping since the 1970s.
The study consisted of analyzing 730,000 IQ test results gleaned from young men entering Norway's compulsory military service from 1970 to 2009. They found that scores declined by an average of seven points per generation, a reversal of the so-called "Flynn effect" where IQ was seen to be rising during the first part of the 20th century. The decline may be due to environmental factors, but because the researchers couldn't find consistent trends among families, Bratsberg and Rogeberg discounted factors like parental education, family size, increased immigration, and genetics as significant causes.
The study consisted of analyzing 730,000 IQ test results gleaned from young men entering Norway's compulsory military service from 1970 to 2009. They found that scores declined by an average of seven points per generation, a reversal of the so-called "Flynn effect" where IQ was seen to be rising during the first part of the 20th century. The decline may be due to environmental factors, but because the researchers couldn't find consistent trends among families, Bratsberg and Rogeberg discounted factors like parental education, family size, increased immigration, and genetics as significant causes.
The so-called Flynn Effect... (Score:3, Insightful)
.... sounds exactly like one of those results that would vanish in a puff of annoyingly-irreproducible logic if anyone actually tried to replicate the underlying studies.
You know, like 90% of all other published research in the psychological sciences.
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I find the current voting patterns and ideals to be akin to what happened during the Great Depression. As much of this is from the end of the Great Recession.
There are problems so let’s blame the other guy.
The problem happened with the current system so let’s shake it up.
We as a world culture had kicked out working, stable and mostly positive government for a different one because a strong arm personally is focused on a pain point of the system.
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How would you try and replicate the measurement over a period of time that has already passed?
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For what it is worth, the previous findings were done more or less the same way. This one should have replicated the previous findings, and didn't. Thus the attention.
For those that work in the area, this is something of a big deal.
Smart people in Norway avoiding the military? (Score:3)
"You know, like 90% of all other published research in the psychological sciences." Or maybe 98% of that research is somewhat or mostly wacky?
Maybe the actual issue: The smart people in Norway are avoiding military service?
Another subject about Norway:
Norway is rehabilitative, not destructive, to those who commit crimes. Michael Moore's film, Where to Invade Next [imdb.com] explored the system in Norway, and prompted articles like this one: Why Norway's prison system is so successful [businessinsider.com]. Quote from th
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That's terrible. How do they stay in business?
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Is that the Errol Flynn effect?
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I think there might be a grain of truth to it.
In the first half of the 20th century people were plain ignorant.
In the first half of the 21st century they all have a box in the corner of the room throwing out disinformation 24/7 as if it were God's Own Truth. I'm not just talking about Fox News, I include all the crap on the History Channel, the evangelical channels, etc.
The problem ain't what you don't know, the problem's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
(eg. that's not a Mark Twain quote...)
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Someone mod this the hell up; I have too big of a mouth to use my own points.
So because a few nutters were given a bigger voice by exponentially increasing communication technology over the 20th century, mean's were all getting dumber?
On the other hand, maybe it does stretch further than Norway. So far I have here:
- At least one idiot here that thinks the plural of anecdote is data
- At least one idiot here who doesn't know anything about history. Really, not attending church every Sunday used to be a crime in almost all of Europe. But you know, a stupid channel that everybody but ol
Re: The so-called Flynn Effect... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah yes, 40 years ago was a classic time in cinema. It's too bad we no longer get such intelligent fare as The Swarm [youtu.be], Laserblast [youtube.com] and everyone's favorite The Star Wars holiday Special [youtu.be]
Or maybe... just maybe... you've forgotten that 99% of what was produced back them was garbage too, just like 99% of what's produced today.
Re: The so-called Flynn Effect... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly right sir. I get so annoyed when people say "back in the old days..." because the same effect applies on many levels.
Old people today act like the USA is so much more violent and riddled with crime when in reality we have considerably less violence and crime.
The vast majority of books, movies, tv and music produced in the past was also mass produced garbage put together by executives rather than artists. The stuff that everyone remembers is remembered precisely because they were the bright exceptions in the garbage pile and so survived to be picked up by later generations.
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Old people today act like the USA is so much more violent and riddled with crime when in reality we have considerably less violence and crime.
They also hate it when you show them the hard data from local police, the FBI, etc. Crime really is very low, but it is against the propaganda campaign. My personal feeling is that we've reached a point where crime is too low. Crime can be the relief valve of an oppressive government, and our corporations do tend to make things fairly oppressive at times.
Re: The so-called Flynn Effect... (Score:3)
Crime in the US is still significantly higher than any other developed country.
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The difference is that there is now a huge world market for Hollywood movies. Because of this, the studios try to create movies that will also appeal to other cultures around the world, so they all kind of end up with a one-size-fits-all feel to them. In addition, they also want them to be easy to translate to other languages - or at least easy enough to follow for someone who knows some English but it isn't their first language. So they simplify a lot of the dialog and avoid using big words. The end re
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In the olden days it was 99% garbage and 1% quality, now it's 100% garbage. Where are today's films that compare to the golden age of cinema?
You must not have seen Deadpool.
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True, but in the modern information age we can know far more wrong things than before, eg. Oprah, 'History' Channel...
This study might be reflecting the effect of all that misinformation. Everybody now thinks they're experts on complicated stuff but before they didn't even have an opinion.
eg. Vaccines, Climate change.
Opinion trumps pesky facts, real scientists and doctors aren't held in high esteem any more (or even listened to).
Wait, all of us? (Score:3)
Re:Wait, all of us? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless there is something VERY special about Norway, a wide-spread trend that cannot be attributed to education, gender, religion, or other environmental factor has pretty good predictive qualities, since the sample size is large, and unbiased (Only males tested most likely, but the service is compulsory, not voluntary. That means *All male citizens*, not "Those that show up to the recruitment office".
It means the sample is very very large, and that the trend is pervasive and wide-spread is pretty interesting.
To rule out that something is indeed special about Norway, it needs to be replicated with data from other geographic regions-- but so far it is a pretty compelling argument using raw statistics.
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Unless there is something VERY special about Norway, a wide-spread trend that cannot be attributed to education
TFS did not exclude "education". It excluded "parental education"...in other words home schooling...as a factor.
Bratsberg and Rogeberg discounted factors like parental education, family size, increased immigration, and genetics as significant causes.
IMHO in the US it's government-run public schools, the DoE, and the teacher's unions who are the chief causes (but not the only ones). The US spends more on education per student than anybody but the results suck the whole bag-full.
If the US is to have any chance of halting it's decline it must totally re-think the entire current education system, not just throw more money at it or make meaningles
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Do you suspect the GP was homeschooled?
Might wanna check those preconceptions... (Score:3)
Unless there is something VERY special about Norway, a wide-spread trend that cannot be attributed to education, gender, religion, or other environmental factor has pretty good predictive qualities, since the sample size is large, and unbiased (Only males tested most likely, but the service is compulsory, not voluntary.
Service in Norway is NOT compulsory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
About 60,000 Norwegians are available for conscription every year, but only 8,000 to 10,000 are conscripted.[2] In earlier times, up until at least the early 2000s, all men aged 19â"44 were subject to mandatory service, with good reasons required to avoid becoming drafted.
Besides that decline in conscription, actual numbers of conscripts are around 14% of eligible Norwegian males, [globalsecurity.org] cause "the number of applicants each year exceeds the needs of the Armed Forces".
Further, researchers aren't showing a decline of IQ in Norway, nor anywhere else.
They are working with a presumption of a decline in IQ and trying to hammer their "observation" peg into that presumed roundish hole.
Using administrative register data with information on family relationships and cognitive ability for three decades of Norwegian male birth cohorts, we show that the increase, turning point, and decline of the Flynn effect can be recovered from within-family variation in intelligence scores.
This establishes that the large changes in average cohort intelligence reflect environmental factors and not changing composition of parents, which in turn rules out several prominent hypotheses for retrograde Flynn effects.
I.e. They claim that they can explai
Re: Wait, all of us? (Score:5, Informative)
I suggest that you review the definition of the word "Compulsory."
It means you don't have a choice in the matter. Or, that the tests are applied to *ALL MALE CITIZENS*. Since this is literally a sample size of "All male citizens of service age in Norway from the start year, to the terminus year", you are talking a very large and unbiased (by ethnicity, race, cultural upbringing, religious practice, affluence level, ... etc.) sample. The only demographic excluded is likely to be female gender, which I explicitly lamplit. Unless you want to make a compelling argument that women are intellectually inferior to men (*gigglesnort*) in the face of a wide number of well reviewed studies to the contrary of that assertion, there is no grounds to claim systemic bias of the sample.
Hence unbiased.
Re: Wait, all of us? (Score:5, Funny)
I suggest that you review the definition of the word "Compulsory."
Somehow, the fact that you’re having to explain what “compulsory” means - in juxtaposition to the topic at hand - seems both very hilarious and very apt.
Re: Wait, all of us? (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe someone from Norway or simply with more insight can shed some light onto this. Wikipedia tells me that there's about 60k people available for conscription every year. But only up to 10k is actually conscripted. Even considering changes in population groth both numbers over a period of 39 years (from 1970 to 2009) don't come close to the 730k IQ test that were conducted. Of course the source is Wikipedia which provides some links to articles on news sites.
There could still be some bias. If you also consider that you can avoid being conscripted via other means. Up until 2012 there was also the option to do alternative civilian service (Sosialtjenesten) instead of military service in Norway.
Their findings are interesting nonetheless.
Re: Wait, all of us? (Score:5, Informative)
For example when is the IQ test conducted? Before they are conscripted into service of before that as an evaluation of their abilities?
During the intake ("sesjon"), up until 2009 all males had to go through that even if they'd be dismissed afterwards as not fit for service, conscientious objector or whatever. Then they'd choose to draft some of the people deemed fit for duty. That's probably why the study is to 2009, from 2010 they added a pre-screening because they did have a lot more candidates than they actual needed. And now the process is gender-neutral, everybody goes through the same pre-screening but in practice you don't get called into service unless you want to. Though it theory they can now draft all men and women of service age if shit happens, of course we'd never have time to equip and train them in an actual emergency.
That debate was actually quite funny, originally it was mostly men complaining that why should they waste a year living in bunk beds and digging trenches and the women don't while the women were generally against it. The turning point was certain people taunting like "awwwww, of course us big strong men will protect you delicate little flowers" and feminists going "oh heeeeeeeeell no we can defend ourselves thankyouverymuch where's that's uniform?" Once it became their own cause then it was pretty much a done deal. Kinda like sex and porn, if it's women being what men want it's all hiss boo, if it's women embracing their sexuality then yeah hurrah. Even if it's doing exactly the same...
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Things worked differently here in my country. I got dismissed after a hearing test discovered something I didn't even knew. I knew that I have tinnitus on my left ear because of a gun 'accident' when I was a kid. But apparently I have some hearing loss on one of my ears. And they couldn't let me work near heavy machinery or with power tools according to them. I didn't even get to the infamous part where they fondle your balls. I suppose if I went just a year before that (some reforms happened
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For example when is the IQ test conducted?
This study isn't all too different than other similar (but now historical) studies on US populations. True, large panel studies like the NLSY are more traditional panels, but they don't do a good job of tracking between-cohort change over time, like studies in the TFA are well suited to do (with caveats: e.g. no females in this case).
This is just one case that bucks the trend, but it's a serious one.
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Norway gives their young people the choice of doing community service as an alternative to national service in the Army. Only 10% of the population go to university. The majority of the population lives in small towns of 10,000 or less all along the fjords on the Eastern side of the country, with four larger cities (Trondheim = 120,000, Stavanger, Oslo = 500,000, Bergen = 265,000). There really isn't much air pollution apart from the cruise liners that use sulphur based coal. Main food in Norway is fish.
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Being kind to the GP I suppose it could be not quite everybody. Conscientious objectors, people exempt on medical grounds, people whose fathers have connections to the oil industry ...
Nah. Fuck that, he's a tard.
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If it's anything like the similar-sounding Danish test, you can be a conscientious objector all you want, but you still have to take the test. Medical grounds only applies if you can't realistically get to the testing location.
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Don't know of a group of people with an average IQ of 85 so I'll assume that all people outside the western world are to be considered very very stupid indeed (that's a racist and completely untrue assumption but so is your idea).
If I did my numbers correct that would lead to a decrease of 3 IQ points, that is by taking the number of immigrants not from western countries and multiplying by 85 adding the rest of the population and multiplying with 100. An IQ of 97.
So even if your idea was correct it doesn't
Unbiased? (Score:3)
I suggest that you review the definition of the word "Compulsory."
I suggest that you review the definition of the word "Unbiased." ... the tests are applied to *ALL MALE CITIZENS*. Since this is literally a sample size of "All male citizens of service age in Norway from the start year, to the terminus year", you are talking a very large and unbiased (by ethnicity, race, cultural upbringing, religious practice, affluence level, ... etc.) sample. The only demographic excluded is likely to be female gender, wh
Re:Wait, all of us? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wait, all of us? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is there any particular incentive to do either well or badly in the test? Does it affect your military service in any way?
The point I am getting at is that military service was to get more or less acceptable then this might affect the motivation of those taking the tests.
Simplified Example:
Many years ago potential conscripts thought "Gosh, my turn to do my bit for my beloved country. I'd better try really hard in these tests".
Today potential conscripts think "Bah, why do I have to do this stupid military service? I really can't be bothered".
Result: Noticeable decline in IQ results!
Re:Wait, all of us? (Score:4, Informative)
You will not be exempt from the service due to low scores in either, instead what happens is that the scores determines which kind of service that you will be sent to if you are included. So if you score low on IQ and low in physical then you will be spending your entire military service sorting laundry and other incredible dull tasks. And there is also no bragging rights in "Hey I score low in the military IQ test!!!".
Don't know how the situation is in Norway but back when we had compulsory military service in Sweden you would include your service record score (after the service you would be graded on your performance) when you applied for a job and if you haden't performed your service then some employers would see that as suspicious (aka are you a mad hippy stoner or are you simply unfit for anything).
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I an American who was drafted, I had gone into the family business instead of college so didn't have a deferment. The solider administering the test told us doing well on the test optional, we were going into the Army no matter what our scores were but doing well meant getting a better position. For me it turned out better than that. A few days before I was supposed to go to Army boot-camp I got a call from a Navy recruiter. My scores qualified me for one of the Navy's "A" schools. They had a special reserv
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Problem with that is that if the recruiters want you to serve anyway you are going to be put in cannon fodder training.
It is much better to do well on the IQ and perception tests and fake being physically too weak to serve.
Having an inconvenient allergy or two might be useful too.
That way, if you have to serve you will probably get a position as a signalist or get some command training.
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Probably atmospheric CO2 (Score:5, Interesting)
In the early 20th century, human living conditions, including improvements in sanitation, hygiene, and dietary needs being met likely all contributed to a net rise in human cogitative performance, however atmospheric CO2 levels have also been steadily rising in that time.
Then there's this.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
So yeah. Probably CO2 level rise has caught up to the benefits of improved standards of living.
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I saw an article posted here a while back claiming that co2 is also really messing up plants. If I recall, they were becoming less nutrient rich or something like that.
(On top of that, they are breeding plants to have more sugar and less focus on nutrients to boot)
Re:Probably atmospheric CO2 (Score:4, Informative)
Not "is messing up", but "could mess up in the future" in that very specific way, should CO2 trends continue.
The idea is that food crops will grow faster and pack on more sugars (starches) in their seed, thereby diluting the amount of nutrients per calorie. They tested this by pumping in additional CO2 and confirmed their theory, grains grown in enhanced CO2 environments have greater yields with more calories per hectare, but less nutrients per calorie.
This all assumes a static set of strains, with no action taken by farmers and seed producers to create different varieties that better exploit the conditions, and that grains are important for providing things beyond their core starches.
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It is probably a multitude of courses.
Beside CO2 we have another massive pollution, especially indoors, that is artificial lighting. It messes on a lot of scales with our bodies, most prominently with our sleep patterns. /. a couple of months ago, that we big problems with prolonged sleep-deprevation, which factors in to this.
Sleep has a direct and immense effect on our mental capabilities. There are a lot of studies out there, some even featured on
Another point, from a pure personal perspective, that our c
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Important note - the opposite of 'Idiocracy' (Score:5, Interesting)
One important thing about this study - it shows that there is not a strong genetic correlation with any of these findings. That means it is very unlikely that this represents any kind of "Idiocracy"-like trend of the 'dumb genes' outnumbering 'smart genes.'
Rather, as mentioned, it is a cultural/environmental set of factors.
If this is replicated outside of Norway, perhaps we've been making ourselves more dumb, either by forcing our less-well-off to live without access to education, or distracting ourselves in such a way that we no longer pass tests as children anymore.
On the skeptical side, while the Flynn effect studies counter for cultural-shift in popular knowledge pretty well - there could still be some measurement effect in there, like fewer students being able to cheat, or fewer administrators getting away with fudging numbers.
Ryan Fenton
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I would like to see the same analysis performed in several geographic regions as well, then correlated against geological data for atmospheric CO2 concentrations over time.
I suspect that there is a connection. Just evaluating from multiple localities over time would do well to establish the trend as a real trend, and not just a large anomaly.
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or distracting ourselves in such a way that we no longer pass tests as children anymore.
I suspect it's that coupled with "no child left behind act" style legislation, that lowers education standards.
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No, it merely fails to find a strong genetic component; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There are many genetic and non-environmental effects that they simply wouldn't have been able to measure in this study.
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Or maybe we just stopped training people to be good at IQ tests.
An IQ test is just a bunch of questions designed to test various skills that are thought to be indicative of "intelligence". You can improve your score with practice, without necessarily becoming some kind of intellectual or capable of getting a PhD in theoretical physics.
Teaching bad changed a lot since the 70s.
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You say the same thing every time.
The question is how much you can improve your score with training & practice. Not that much, or there'd be people with time & nothing better to do pushing their scores into the 400 range and beyond. Heck, in Korea they'd probably make a televised sport of it.
It's called diminishing returns. If Usain Bolt trains twice as long he doesn't run twice as fast.
And yes, I say the same thing every time too. Difference is, I'm right.
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Except that there have been external inputs.
Diets have changed, chemicals present in the air and water have changed, the education system has changed, lifestyles have changed.
Any or all of these things may be relevant.
"Science Says" (Score:2, Insightful)
Getting a little bored with the "Science" Says claims, like there's some governing body of authorised scientists that make things official.
I've started replacing that term in my mind with "some random dude claims".
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"some random dude claims"
“... and provides supporting evidence to back that claim”
You forgot to include the part you likely find rather inconvenient.
Re:"Science Says" (Score:4, Insightful)
I've started replacing that term in my mind with "some random dude claims".
If you used to judge the content of the study by who wrote it, you were never interested in "science" anyway. Science was always done by some random dude. That doesn't make it any more or less right.
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Getting a little bored with the "Science" Says claims, like there's some governing body of authorised scientists that make things official.
I've started replacing that term in my mind with "some random dude claims".
Some "random dudes" from the past were named Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and Galileo Galilei, whom ironically the latter was almost burned alive for heresy for the science he was reporting at the time. It used to take some serious guts to come forward with claims in society. Threats against the accepted norm were met with punishments ranging from ridicule to death back in the day.
Today is we reward liars. Fake news is still cheap entertainment for the brainless masses, which is enough to make any fact
The caption should have read... (Score:3)
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Or "Norwegians are getting dumber, but are still smarter than Americans".
Television? (Score:2)
Commercial television (Score:2)
It's the commercialisation of television. Free market competition has no mandate to educate. Education takes a lot of effort - which equates to money in market terms.
And of course that's applies equally to Facebook.
our species is turing back in to apes (Score:2)
https://i.imgur.com/kE8ckkn.pn... [imgur.com]
"we" are not (Score:2)
IQ is pretty much fixed within the first few years of life, so "we" aren't getting dumber. Younger generations are less intelligent than older generations according to this research.
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If younger generations are dumber, and people being born belong to the younger generations, then there's a net increase in dumb people.
If older people are smarter, and people dying belong predominantly to the older generations, then there's a net loss of smart people.
It follows that overall we as a species - which is clearly what the author meant - are indeed getting dumber.
"Young men entering Norwegean army" vs "We All" (Score:2)
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It's obvious, people aren't learning anymore (Score:2)
Pattern (Score:3)
Looking at how the comments here at /. have changed, I too see a pattern...
Unfortunately not enough info (Score:4, Interesting)
I started writing a reply, then realised that without more information it's hard to analyse the problem, and the article isn't freely available, unfortunately.
IQ tests don't test a single aspect of intelligence, and it matters what kind of tests have lower scores. Do these have more to fluid or crystallised intelligence? We could then further speculate what caused the particular change. For example, education has moved over the years to better address how girls learn, and it could have negatively affected how boys learn to think.
Air quality, nutrition and brain performance (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sort of in the ADHD camp. I've read a bit about the subject and somewhat adhere to the theory that a) ADHD isn't as much a disorder rather than a genetic predestination. Roughly 10% of society being Hunter/Gatherer (creative, priest, leader, rebell, etc,), the rest being farmers/settlers. It's a bit of a chicken/egg problem: Do I have low self-esteem because im ADHD or do I have ADHD as a symptom of low self-esteem? Or is both linked to brain performance or is both linked to lack of social proof for aberrant behavior (minimalist stoic)?
Childhood media consumption definitely plays into this, as it trains us to look for emotional states that are fully decoupled from the "mundane" reality around us.
I however have also noticed how much nutrition and psychological factors play into emotional wellbeing and how much that plays into brain performance.
Another thing that happened recently is that I finally had my nose-divider corrected (at the age of 47). I, for the first time in my life, can breathe properly. Or at least way better than before. The difference in my cognitive abilities is palpable. I can concentrate longer and deeper with less strain. I'm pretty sure that my confidence has risen due to that and that feeds back into my ability to concentrate. Sleep-apnosis is know to severely influence cognitive abilities (access to oxygen).
Last but not least, I've noticed how extremely nutrition influences cognitive performance. Processed foods make me less concentrated and more sleepy vis-a-vis organic fresh foods. Again, the difference is palpable.
Bottom line:
There are some theories about rising CO2 levels and whatnot, but I bet dollars to donuts that if IQ really is declining again across the board that childhood media consumption and nutrition are the most significant factors playing into this.
And I have some personal anecdotal evidence to back this up.
My 2 cents.
Doesn't matter (Score:3)
At least the president is a 'stable genius'.
Brain Outsourcing to Software (Score:5, Insightful)
I still contend that computer usage makes smart people smarter and dumb people dumber (yet the now-dumber people think they're smarter).
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This does not match my personal experience. In self reflection I have outsourced a large portion of my long term memory to search engines, my attention span is vastly shorter than it used to be, and both my willingness and ability to deeply engage problems have decreased dramatically in the last decade. I am much dumber than I used to be.
It "feels like" I only think wit
Many such articles over the decades (Score:2)
function of a time (Score:2)
It seems to me this is just a function of time we live in, and the hedonistic culture we kinda trend towards. Too much comfort basically, it's just a chase to get bigger screen tv, more RAM, better phone with more storage so you can dump more stuff on it, more comfortable couch, black friday sales 50 % off everything, etc.
People that have it hard(er) and are forced to think and improvise to survive (an
But what about the spread? (Score:2)
That is just the average change. Are we told anything about the standard deviation - is that moving, possibly broader or shrinking.
Is it possible that some of the population are getting dimmer (or whatever IQ tests measure) but that the number of "geniuses" is increasing too.
Apparently... (Score:3)
...just Norwegians are getting dumber.
Nothing new (Score:2)
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IQ tests no such thing, and this study does no such thing.
This study shows a persistent trend in the cogitative capacity of enlistees in the general Norwegian population over several decades using a (mostly) consistent measurement battery of standardized test scores.
It makes no connection to education level.
IQ measures how quickly a person is able to grasp a concept or detect a pattern, and how well they are then able to apply that concept or make use of that pattern to solve a problem. It does little else
Re:IQ does not measure intelligence (Score:5, Informative)
Having done the army test in 2003, as all Norwegian 18 year-old males had to even if they didn't end up serving, I can tell you it was a three part timed test.
1) Mathematics
2) Linguistics (In Norwegian)
3) Logic/Pattern analysis.
Education comes into play in the first two, and the third one is more about figuring it out as you go.
You are then scored 1-9 in each of them as well as all the other testing such as hearing, vision and colorblindness.
Re:IQ does not measure intelligence (Score:5, Informative)
IQ is actually defined as the common component of mental performance that is independent of domain and education. There are IQ tests that are independent of education and culture, but such tests are lengthy, costly, and tedious. That's why mass testing uses simpler tests that are calibrated for particular populations and are dependent on education, age, and culture.
Your test is calibrated for Norwegian 18 year olds; a Norwegian 18 year old that has more education than average would score better on the test, but the fact that he has more education than average would also strongly correlate with a higher IQ. If you give the same test to a Norwegian 30 year old, the results would be meaningless.
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IQ is actually defined as the common component of mental performance that is independent of domain and education.
No it's claimed to be that not defined to be that. You can't simply define something to achive a near impossible task and pretend it actually does so. Well, I mean you can pretend...
There are IQ tests that are independent of education and culture, but such tests are lengthy, costly, and tedious.
Sounds like they're not IQ tests then. Also [citation needed].
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Near impossible task? How about a century old statistical technique [wikipedia.org]. Every reasonable IQ test contains g-loadings, and the only thing you can meaningfully compare between IQ tests is the g-factor.
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2) Linguistics (In Norwegian)
In Nynorsk or bokmal?
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Well ya, if they gave English IQ tests to young Norwegians entering military service, I suspect they wouldn't do as well as they could
Re:IQ does not measure intelligence (Score:5, Informative)
Well ya, if they gave English IQ tests to young Norwegians entering military service, I suspect they wouldn't do as well as they could
My guess would be that the difference would be extremely low, Norway is consistently ranked in very top for English proficiency [www.ef.no], you start with English in first grade and we don't dub English shows except for little kids. With Internet, YouTube etc. kids also get exposed to lots of material that's neither dubbed nor subtitled. The Harry Potter books sold ~1 million in Norwegian, ~200k in English so one in six preferred English and that's for kids. If you take any kind of higher education, expect English textbooks. Even though English doesn't have an official status, with a high number of immigrants and foreign workers pretty much everything exists in an English translation. Now if you go as far back as this study it would be different, but apart from cultural reasons we could easily make English our official language.
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If the US were any efficient in sending corrupt politicans to jail, you probably would need to convert a big city into a jail to handle all of em.
But as it's not, well..
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As HuskyDog pointed out above, both these studies are using results from military screening I.Q. tests. A few decades back, afaik, military careers were held in higher esteem.. Perhaps more people these days just don't care as much about trying to look fantastic to the military, so when taking the tests, they just don't put in as much effort as they used to.
Oh, and another thing: it could also be that any trend towards lower expediency, even if accuracy improved by some factor, would appear as a I.Q. score
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It is NOT education! (Score:2)
1st) as flawed as IQ tests are, they make a strong effort to avoid testing for one's education because the whole purpose is to measure your ability to think.
2nd) a great education can make you smarter but if you don't use it, you lose it.
3rd) The USA public school decline since the late 70s has nothing to do with this study, that has to do with the American public which polled higher for education as a priority so then the Republicans took it up as a major issue when previously it was lower on their list an
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