People ARE getting dumber (14 I.Q. points dumber)

[gavinmcinns]

Here is the study I meant to link to (its peer reviewed up the ass) -> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000470

Don't bother reading it, I didn't. I assumed that this study was a supporting the above, this is crap->University of Hartford published a study on population growth and IQ. ]]http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/BRBAKER/

Results show the the average person in the western world today is dumber by a significant margin than he was 100 years ago. So to all the naysayers who think that people are just as dumb today as they were back then, it looks like the evidence isn't with you. I think someone even said that people were getting smarter? Maybe if you live in sri lanka.

The fact is Americans and the cushy european nations have gotten lazy, and laziness breeds stupidity. Its a bitter pill to swallow, and maybe ignorance is in this case bliss, however I just can't help myself. I'd like to see someone rebut in an intelligent way.

 

[ohnoitsabear]

Ummm, what exactly does this have to do with gaming? Shouldn't this be in off-topic?

Anyway, this isn't a study published by some fancy university, this is a poorly written paper somebody did for their introductory sociology class. So I don't think I would call this primo scientific research. And let's not forget that the only thing IQ tests have been shown to accurately measure is how good somebody is at taking an IQ test, so even if IQ levels have dropped a bunch (which I have not seen any evidence of one way or another), that doesn't really mean anything.

 

[Lilani]

I just want to point out that one of the "sources" cited at the bottom of that page are this [http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/IQ/1950-2050/] page, which spends a moment talking about something called the "Flynn effect."

The Flynn effect is an undisputed yet enigmatic aspect of IQ testing. Shortly after the first IQ tests were standardised, it was observed that the scores of those taking them tended to rise from year to year, as much as 15 points (one standard deviation) per generation. To maintain a mean score of 100 for the population on which IQ tests were standardised, test makers were forced to make their tests increasingly difficult over the years. In other words, to get the same IQ score as your father, you must perform equally well on a substantially tougher test than he took.

If, for whatever reason, everybody were getting smarter, this would be wonderful news indeed. But a glance at the numbers shows that something very curious must be going on here. If IQ were, in fact, rising at a rate of 15 points per generation then, if the mean IQ of today is 100, that of our grandparents' generation would have been about 70?generally considered the threshold of mental retardation. Clearly, anybody who's spent time with their grandparents and other folks of that generation knows that's utter nonsense.

I haven't read the whole thing, but I read this in particular because the first thing I wondered was how standardized were these tests in the first place. And while I don't know all the ins and outs of this "Flynn Effect," to me this says there is a LOT of uncertainty when it comes to pinning down human intelligence to an objective number. If they're having to tamper with their tests like this to account for strange fluctuations in results, that to me says the results weren't completely reliable to begin with.

Another two sources I found were The Daily Beast, the site run by Glenn Beck and his ilk of hyper-conservative loons, and another source which I shit you not is called:

"American Intelligence Compromised by Blood Transfusions
Librul news today"

Seriously, I copy and pasted that directly from the sources area, look for yourself. Needless to say these are not reliable sources for any sort of project that revolves around human intelligence. Also, given the way the sources aren't cited in any official academic format (hell, they aren't even in alphabetical order), I think it's safe to say this is NOT an official research project sponsored by the university. It looks like a student project hosted on the Hartford web site, something which is commonly done in universities these days as a way of turning in and presenting projects. I have no idea what this is, but if it's really any sort of academic venture it is a joke at best and I doubt they got good marks for it.

 

[gavinmcinns]

Ummm, what exactly does this have to do with gaming? Shouldn't this be in off-topic?

Anyway, this isn't a study published by some fancy university, this is a poorly written paper somebody did for their introductory sociology class. So I don't think I would call this primo scientific research. And let's not forget that the only thing IQ tests have been shown to accurately measure is how good somebody is at taking an IQ test, so even if IQ levels have dropped a bunch (which I have not seen any evidence of one way or another), that doesn't really mean anything.

Here is another guy affiliated with "Vrije Universiteit in Brussels, Jan te Nijenhuis of the University of Amsterdam and Raegan Murphy of the University College Cork in Ireland. that came to this conclusion" : http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/researchers-western-iqs-dropped-14-points-over-last-180634194.html
No evidence? Look at what passes as entertainment. Shows, movies, games, all are moving toward the worthless bang bang twenty minute long action sequence/setpiece. I've haven't done any hard research, but come on, if you enjoy any of these mediums, you must've noticed the glut of crap that has been elevated into the mainstream. People used to lineup for hours to go see Doctor Zhivago or Gone with the Wind, now, neither of these movies are particularly mind blowing, but they were at least cerebral to an extent, and I'm talking about the mainstream here. Gaming had a period where it embraced the cerebral, partially because of technical limitations but the lion's share of the credit goes to the passionate, inspired minds of the early period who saw all the potential. At a point, population expansion lowers IQ. It just makes sense. As you broaden the base, you need more chattel to support the pyramid, it's not an opinion, empirically speaking you'd have to be blind not to see this trend in society. Not everyone can be a rocket scientist or a derivatives analyst or a ceo.

 

[deleted139124]

DELETED

 

[gavinmcinns]

I just want to point out that one of the "sources" cited at the bottom of that page are this [http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/IQ/1950-2050/] page, which spends a moment talking about something called the "Flynn effect."

The Flynn effect is an undisputed yet enigmatic aspect of IQ testing. Shortly after the first IQ tests were standardised, it was observed that the scores of those taking them tended to rise from year to year, as much as 15 points (one standard deviation) per generation. To maintain a mean score of 100 for the population on which IQ tests were standardised, test makers were forced to make their tests increasingly difficult over the years. In other words, to get the same IQ score as your father, you must perform equally well on a substantially tougher test than he took.

If, for whatever reason, everybody were getting smarter, this would be wonderful news indeed. But a glance at the numbers shows that something very curious must be going on here. If IQ were, in fact, rising at a rate of 15 points per generation then, if the mean IQ of today is 100, that of our grandparents' generation would have been about 70?generally considered the threshold of mental retardation. Clearly, anybody who's spent time with their grandparents and other folks of that generation knows that's utter nonsense.

I haven't read the whole thing, but I read this in particular because the first thing I wondered was how standardized were these tests in the first place. And while I don't know all the ins and outs of this "Flynn Effect," to me this says there is a LOT of uncertainty when it comes to pinning down human intelligence to an objective number. If they're having to tamper with their tests like this to account for strange fluctuations in results, that to me says the results weren't completely reliable to begin with.

Another two sources I found were The Daily Beast, the site run by Glenn Beck and his ilk of hyper-conservative loons, and another source which I shit you not is called:

"American Intelligence Compromised by Blood Transfusions
Librul news today"

Seriously, I copy and pasted that directly from the sources area, look for yourself. Needless to say these are not reliable sources for any sort of project that revolves around human intelligence. Also, given the way the sources aren't cited in any official academic format (hell, they aren't even in alphabetical order), I think it's safe to say this is NOT an official research project sponsored by the university. It looks like a student project hosted on the Hartford web site, something which is commonly done in universities these days as a way of turning in and presenting projects. I have no idea what this is, but if it's really any sort of academic venture it is a joke at best and I doubt they got good marks for it.

Here you go http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000470

Woodley is affiliated with 4 respected european universities.
This is not an isolated study. This is a serious research project. And while the flynn effect is an interesting insight into how the IQ tests are created and administered, it has no bearing on this study since they are testing reaction times. "Rather than comprehensive IQ test scores declining over time, researchers focused on declining reaction times?a metric that correlates with general intelligence" http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2013/05/26/think-fast-are-we-really-getting-dumber/.

 

[gavinmcinns]

No evidence? Look at what passes as entertainment. Shows, movies, games, all are moving toward the worthless bang bang twenty minute long action sequence/setpiece. I've haven't done any hard research, but come on, if you enjoy any of these mediums, you must've noticed the glut of crap that has been elevated into the mainstream. People used to lineup for hours to go see Doctor Zhivago or Gone with the Wind

First of all, crappy art and entertainment have existed in every era. Second, I guarantee you that people have been saying things like this since the beginning of goddamn human civilization. "People nowadays can't appreciate real music/art/entertainment! They're too busy listening to that newfangled devil jazz/rock/rap! Why can't they appreciate the classics?"

Sounds like nothing new to me

Those WERE the dumb people saying that, the smart ones were inspired by jazz, rock, and rap. You make it sound like the mainstream is one person saying a thing. It's a collective sea of consciousness, zeitgeist sort of thing. Collectively, the zeitgeist has fallen so far, as has the mainstream's acceptable standard.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

Has this been a peer reviewed study? Because I found a spelling mistake:

Since people with lower I. Qs tend to search for others like them does it not make since that they would also look for people of similar economic standing?

Would it be considered ironic that the writer of an article about lowering IQ levels Misspells the word 'sense'?

There's also this line:

Evidence found by doctors states that another possible explanation for the decline in average I.Q. is via blood transfusions They found that the blood not only carried a small amount of the person but it also carried the information that allowed them to think. They did a transfusion between two people, one was intellectually very advanced and the other was one person who was considerably lower on the I.Q. ladder. The recipients of the blood became confused over time and their ability to maintain their previous level of I.Q. was indeed noted to be in jeopardy. The result of this experiment was that in blood donation centers all across the countries, the recipient was asked to put their I.Q. into the forms they were required to fill out.

I would very much like to see this evidence. I mean, that's just mad.

EDIT:

not to mention this chart is absolute balls:

I mean, take half a second and actually study that chart, it's so full of crap you could stick it in a slurry tank and use it as fertilizer.

Every single country depicted on that graph the "average IQ" for every single country listed is higher in 2010 than it was in 1950, which to me would directly disprove the entire point of this whole article. Yet the overall Average IQ counter (in dark blue) plummets uniformly for no freaking observable reason unless they are actually hiding the important data that showing a falling of IQ, because it sure as hell isn't related to the main countries listed on that graph, which as I stated earlier, are all rising uniformly directly opposing the whole argument that IQ in these countries is falling!
The actual 'projected data' line only starts at 2050, so unless the guy that wrote this beamed down the Hadron Collider I find the data that he apparently was able to collect for the years 2014-2050 highly suspicious for hopefully obvious reasons.

and I have to say I like the bit where China, which is rising at a steady rate all the way up to 2013, just randomly dicks itself up in 2030 and starts falling because why the hell not.

Seriously, who came up with that chart, what were they smoking at the time, and can I slap them in the face with a wet kipper?

This... this is just...

 

[synobal]

I just want to point out that one of the "sources" cited at the bottom of that page are this [http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/IQ/1950-2050/] page, which spends a moment talking about something called the "Flynn effect."

The Flynn effect is an undisputed yet enigmatic aspect of IQ testing. Shortly after the first IQ tests were standardised, it was observed that the scores of those taking them tended to rise from year to year, as much as 15 points (one standard deviation) per generation. To maintain a mean score of 100 for the population on which IQ tests were standardised, test makers were forced to make their tests increasingly difficult over the years. In other words, to get the same IQ score as your father, you must perform equally well on a substantially tougher test than he took.

If, for whatever reason, everybody were getting smarter, this would be wonderful news indeed. But a glance at the numbers shows that something very curious must be going on here. If IQ were, in fact, rising at a rate of 15 points per generation then, if the mean IQ of today is 100, that of our grandparents' generation would have been about 70?generally considered the threshold of mental retardation. Clearly, anybody who's spent time with their grandparents and other folks of that generation knows that's utter nonsense.

I haven't read the whole thing, but I read this in particular because the first thing I wondered was how standardized were these tests in the first place. And while I don't know all the ins and outs of this "Flynn Effect," to me this says there is a LOT of uncertainty when it comes to pinning down human intelligence to an objective number. If they're having to tamper with their tests like this to account for strange fluctuations in results, that to me says the results weren't completely reliable to begin with.

Another two sources I found were The Daily Beast, the site run by Glenn Beck and his ilk of hyper-conservative loons, and another source which I shit you not is called:

"American Intelligence Compromised by Blood Transfusions
Librul news today"

Seriously, I copy and pasted that directly from the sources area, look for yourself. Needless to say these are not reliable sources for any sort of project that revolves around human intelligence. Also, given the way the sources aren't cited in any official academic format (hell, they aren't even in alphabetical order), I think it's safe to say this is NOT an official research project sponsored by the university. It looks like a student project hosted on the Hartford web site, something which is commonly done in universities these days as a way of turning in and presenting projects. I have no idea what this is, but if it's really any sort of academic venture it is a joke at best and I doubt they got good marks for it.

You've restored my faith in humanity for today. I really loath it when people are like "lol people are dumber today, just look at the tv shows people like" and "didn't you see idocracy?" crowd. I'm generally a pretty freaking negative person but I'm an optimist when it comes to humanity as a whole.

 

[Salsajoe]

Funny how I just discussed with my father how I think it is a stupid way of measuring intelligence.
As far as I know, is it not just a way of measuring memory and recognising patterns etc. you know, logic stuff?

 

[gavinmcinns]

snip

Wrong study, please take a look at the correct one that analyzes reaction times

 

[Hero in a half shell]

snip

Wrong study, please take a look at the correct one that analyzes reaction times

Ahhh, that looks a lot more professional and actually seems to have been written by a sane person. Very well, I was just sitting at my computer having a hernia reading the last one.

Carry on people, don't mind me.

 

[thatonedude11]

There are many problems with the study you showed and your own conclusions.

1. The study relies on the fact that there is a correlation between reaction time and intelligence. First off, correlation does NOT equal causation. In addition, while reaction time is used to measure intelligence, it is far from the only thing used to measure intelligence, and isn't even the most important thing measured. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_time]

2. Intelligence is vaguely defined at best, and is very difficult to measure. The ways we measure intelligence are highly influenced by our environment, with some measurements saying genes only influence 20-40% of our intelligence [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_and_intelligence]. In fact, one study has shown that children born into poverty and abuse who are then later adopted into middle class households see a rise of 20 IQ points on average. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ]

3. As ohnoitsabear pointed out, intelligence is rather meaningless. An intelligent person can lack social skills, common sense, patience, or motivation, all things necessary to succeed. On the flip side, there are people with low intelligences who have done fantastic things, because they have those traits I listed above.

Also before anyone asks, I have looked through the study itself. I would like to see some peer review on the topic though, as I am no psychologist, just a dumbass who can use Wikipedia.

 

[gavinmcinns]

snip

Wrong study, please take a look at the correct one that analyzes reaction times

Ahhh, that looks a lot more professional and actually seems to have been written by a sane person. Very well, I was just sitting at my computer having a hernia reading the last one.

Carry on people, don't mind me.

Yea sorry about that, I made myself look like a tit and pulled the wrong thing without even reading it. I'm not a scientist, I like to think of myself as an empiric, and through observation I've been saddled with this unshakeable feeling that the culture is becoming less rich, more diluted with worthless crap with no soul, less introspective.. an analogy I like to think of.. and this speaks to the study's conclusion that population growth is a factor in lower reaction times (hence general intelligence).. think of a recipe that uses a lot of vegetables. You ca make an excellent stir fry with about half a pound of vegetables, but what happens when you double everything in the recipe? It becomes watery, crap. Why? Because the vegetables have water in them, and it screws up the ratio. This is akin to, if you double the population, more of those kids are going to come from low income, low intelligence families, ad stupider shit becomes popular because it's easy to understand. Not to mention that it's cool to not try hard and be dumb in high school, so people destined for greatness get dragged down into the pit of this mentality.

 

[gavinmcinns]

There are many problems with the study you showed and your own conclusions.

1. The study relies on the fact that there is a correlation between reaction time and intelligence. First off, correlation does NOT equal causation. In addition, while reaction time is used to measure intelligence, it is far from the only thing used to measure intelligence, and isn't even the most important thing measured. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_time]

2. Intelligence is vaguely defined at best, and is very difficult to measure. The ways we measure intelligence are highly influenced by our environment, with some measurements saying genes only influence 20-40% of our intelligence [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_and_intelligence]. In fact, one study has shown that children born into poverty and abuse who are then later adopted into middle class households see a rise of 20 IQ points on average. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ]

3. As ohnoitsabear pointed out, intelligence is rather meaningless. An intelligent person can lack social skills, common sense, patience, or motivation, all things necessary to succeed. On the flip side, there are people with low intelligences who have done fantastic things, because they have those traits I listed above.

Also before anyone asks, I have looked through the study itself. I would like to see some peer review on the topic though, as I am no psychologist, just a dumbass who can use Wikipedia.

So are you saying general intelligence is a subjective trait that isn't possible to measure or fully define?

And I think it's overstated this: "Correlation doesn't imply causation". That is inaccurate, there are many many many many instances where correlation does imply causation, particularly when the correlation coefficient approaches 1.

 

[Racecarlock]

So, why do people have to enjoy smarter entertainment? Why should people worship the art house? Why is only thought provoking stuff worthy of discussion?

Look up symphony of science the quantum world. It has millions of views.

Captcha: Poland Spring: Describe this brand with any word(s).

Hmmm, I think "Flammable" will do.

 

[gavinmcinns]

So, why do people have to enjoy smarter entertainment? Why should people worship the art house? Why is only thought provoking stuff worthy of discussion?

Look up symphony of science the quantum world. It has millions of views.

Captcha: Poland Spring: Describe this brand with any word(s).

Hmmm, I think "Flammable" will do.

Smarter doesn't have to mean arthouse, in fact arthouse often shelters vacuous nothings that cant create anything worthwhile. Smarter to me means more detail. That's it. More detail enhances everything, if call of duty could go in depth into the machinations of the military industrial complex, political battles between presidents and generals behind the scenes, then itd be a cerebral experience worth doing.

GTA for example, goes into immense depth and detail, and therefore is worthy.

 

[thatonedude11]

So are you saying general intelligence is a subjective trait that isn't possible to measure or fully define?

That is exactly what I am saying.

And I think it's overstated this: "Correlation doesn't imply causation". That is inaccurate, there are many many many many instances where correlation does imply causation, particularly when the correlation coefficient approaches 1.

Eh, you're kinda right. Correlation usually means that a relation should be explored or researched further. There are many situations where other factors effect both variables that are being looked at.

With regards to reaction time vs. intelligence, according to wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_time], the correlation is at most .49, which isn't the strongest correlation out there. In addition, reaction time can be reduced or influenced, as Olympic sprinters and people chewing gum tend to have lower reaction times then the mean.

 

[Ruzinus]

I've haven't done any hard research, but come on

Perception Bias HOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Seriously, think for two damn seconds. Do you think Gone With the Wind is the one movie that happened that year?

NOW I SHALL QUOTE THE STUDY.

high-IQ people are more productive

....ahahahahaaaaaaaaaaa

hahahaaaaaaaaaaaa

hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Wow.

How can you take seriously anyone who uses an idea so monumentally stupid as that as one of the pillars of their argument?

 

[Bad Jim]

Good grief. On the one hand, we have the Flynn effect. IQ test scores have improved generation by generation since they started measuring IQ. On the other hand, we now know that reaction times have decreased.

Maybe this is just me knowing nothing about psychology, but can't help thinking that IQ test scores are more reliable than reaction speed. You don't need intelligence to react quickly. Flies have much better reaction speed than humans, but they have trouble finding their way through the open half of a half open window.