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Dumb & Dumber - Scientific Proof That People Are Getting 'Stupider'
Submitted by Michael Snyder of The American Dream blog,
Are people dumber than they used to be? Were previous generations mentally sharper than us? You may have suspected that people are getting stupider for quite some time, but now we actually have scientific evidence that this is the case. As you will read about below, average IQs are dropping all over the globe, SAT scores in the U.S. have been declining for decades, and scientists have even discovered that our brains have been getting smaller over time. So if it seems on some days like you woke up in the middle of the movie “Idiocracy”, you might not be too far off. Much of the stuff that they put in our junk food is not good for brain development, our education system is a total joke and most Americans are absolutely addicted to mindless entertainment. Fortunately we have a lot of technology that does much of our thinking for us these days, because if we had to depend on our own mental capabilities most of us would be in a tremendous amount of trouble.
Sadly, this appears to be a phenomenon that is happening all over the planet. As a recent Daily Mail article explained, IQ scores are falling in country after country…
Richard Lynn, a psychologist at the University of Ulster, calculated the decline in humans’ genetic potential.
He used data on average IQs around the world in 1950 and 2000 to discover that our collective intelligence has dropped by one IQ point.
Dr Lynn predicts that if this trend continues, we could lose another 1.3 IQ points by 2050.
One IQ point does not sound like a lot, but when you go back even further in time the declines become a lot more dramatic. For example, a psychology professor at the University of Amsterdam named Jan te Nijenhuis has calculated that we have lost a total of 14 IQ points on average since the Victorian Era.
And we don’t need a professor to tell us that this is true. Just go back and read some of the literature from that time period. Much of it is written at such a high level that I can barely even understand it.
There is other evidence that people are getting stupider as well. For instance, SAT scores in the United States have fallen significantly in recent years…
There appears to be a disturbing trend in American high schools. If we judge the quality of education by the scores that students get on their SATs, then it appears that things are getting worse.
Since 2006, the overall average SAT score has fallen by 20 points, dropping from 1518 to 1498 in 2012. Scores are also down in each of the three categories tested, with reading dropping 9 points, mathematics dropping 4 points, and writing falling 9 points. It’s a fair bet that students aren’t becoming less intelligent, so exactly what is going on?
And this decline in SAT scores is not just limited to the past few years. As the following chart from Zero Hedge demonstrates, SAT scores have been declining in America for decades…
There are even some scientists that are convinced that this decline in the mental ability of humans goes back for thousands of years. Some blame genetic mutations for this decline, and others point to the fact that our brains have been getting smaller. For example, just check out what one study conducted at Cambridge University concluded…
An earlier study by Cambridge University found that mankind is shrinking in size significantly.
Experts say humans are past their peak and that modern-day people are 10 percent smaller and shorter than their hunter-gatherer ancestors.
And if that’s not depressing enough, our brains are also smaller.
The findings reverse perceived wisdom that humans have grown taller and larger, a belief which has grown from data on more recent physical development.
The decline, said scientists, has happened over the past 10,000 years. They blame agriculture, with restricted diets and urbanization compromising health and leading to the spread of disease.
Most of us today just assume that people are smarter than they ever have been before.
Most of us today look down on our ancestors and mock them for being so primitive.
But the truth is that if we had to go up head to head against them in mental challenges, we might find ourselves greatly humbled.
At the end of this article, I have posted an eighth grade exam from 1912 that was donated to the Bullitt County History Museum in Kentucky.
As you can see, it is far more difficult than anything that eighth grade students have to do today. In fact, most eighth grade students today are doing pretty good if they can point out the United States on a map of the world and can string a few sentences together.
I should know – for a short period of time I once taught eighth grade students.
So when I first came across the exam posted below, I was amazed at how difficult it was.
Could you pass such an exam?
I don’t know if I could.
But these are the kinds of questions that eighth grade students were expected to be able to answer back in 1912…
-Through which waters would a vessel pass in going from England through the Suez Canal to Manila?
-How does the liver compare in size with other glands in the human body?
-How long of a rope is required to reach from the top of a building 40 feet high to the ground 30 feet from the base of a building?
-Compare arteries and veins as to function. Where is the blood carried to be purified?
-During which wars were the following battles fought: Brandywine, Great Meadows, Lundy’s Lane, Antietam, Buena Vista?
A full copy of the exam is posted below. Please notice the absence of multiple choice questions where a student can guess by circling an answer. In the old days, kids were actually expected to be able to think and to be able to write…
So what do you think about all of this?
Do you believe that people are actually getting stupider?
And is “stupider” actually a word?
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Wrong, we did, had plenty of TV but we spent so much time outside - up to the very early 80's - running around. Even some younger than I said this continued until the very early 90s then it all fell apart.
A good test is to get any made for TV movie, or any film with normal young actors in it, 1976-1983. Notice how slim the kids are, because everyone spent their spare time running around outside, in the front yard, in the woods, whatever.
Gregory's Girl, Poltergeist, Boy in a Bubble - look at the stock footage of normal, non-extra, non-actor wannabe kids walking to school. Rail thin.
Someone told me recently that no one play pick up sandlot baseball or whilffle ball any more.
Why?
1) The kids are all addicted to tech, inside on the couch
2) Everyone thinks the world is unsafe, parents won't let them out
3) No one wants the liabilty of having some random kids play ball on their lot, scrap their knee, and the parents go nuts and sue
Saw a relative's kids Little League game. Gets them out on the diamond, he shouts "
Safety First!". Comes back and tells me that all the men have to have background checks to work a LL team. What the heck? The country and culture is finished.
I blame TV.
and fast food and not enough fish
Since when does knowledge = IQ. It doesn't mean that you have a lower IQ if you haven't been taught certain facts or methods.
Very true. But "stuff" is easier to test. Native intelligence is a tricky thing and often enough really smart people are just labeled as wierd because the things they notice about the real world do not comport with the shared illusion called "civilization".
Well you know what they say about illusions; nice work if you can get it.
The world always did and will again belong to the swift and the intelligent.
I wouldn't be so sure about that.
Darwinism doesn't mean that the fittest survive.
Darwinism means that whatever survived must have been fittest--whatever the hell that was.
You can't do Darwinism prospectively. You can only assess evolutionary fitness in retrospect.
Or, as ancient wisdom put it, back when people were smarter:
"I looked, and saw under the Sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, but that time and chance governeth them all."
dupe du de dupe
So, do you think the people that write essays like this are getting more stupider?
All in we are probably over US$100T in debt. How sharp is that?
It's fucking genius. The dumb ones are those doing the lending.
Then they must be mensa candidates in Zimbabwe!
We have conquered nature and do not struggle to survive. Struggle with the natural world makes you sharp (not the same thing as smart, but looks the same, so close enough) and we have it easy and have had it easy for thousands of years. During that time the native intelligence that got us through the night has been allowed to erode.
Happily, sharp is about to enjoy a return to fashion. There is no role left for the dumb and the grim.
I donno, seems to me current 8th graders know quite a bit. I wonder how many people know what a complete 8th grade "test" looks like now-a-days. ( I don't ).
I don't care WHY it is happening as much as that it is happening and I'll bet every 1 pt loss on the IQ test correlates to another 8M uneducated people without hope for blue collar work which would be bad enough but that they will now be supported at $30K per year by those with the higher IQs is what is really galling. Welfare used to be a humanitarian effort by the 9 out of 10 that worked...now it is federal tithing by the 4 out of 10 that work.
I'm just glad our fearless visionary politicians are gettin' sharper!
Look on the bright side. It means more spots for all you runners up. It also means its easier to impress, dazzle, bullshit and rob the mob.... with impunity, as has been abundantly demonstrated.
I like to think the gene pool is self correcting. The gene pool selection process is not PC. All decisions are final. If the cockroaches win again, none of us will be around to appreciate this, so make good use of the time you have. Keep in mind, oral sex is the best liberal arts major for career advancement.
AND, that most of those with the poor IQs are being elected into Congress is particularly worrisome.
IQ tests are bullshit social engineering propaganda. There is no correlation between standardized IQ tests and the real world. Crime statistics are more accurate measure. Congress: not in prison. Anthony Weiner: no longer in congress. Luck is a factor...
Could this be what you get when "instant gratification" and a "work-ethic lacking" society collide?
Sometimes it takes a while to "reason" things out, maybe longer than the 7 Sec. attention span that so many now have.
I would prefer President Camacho to Barry Soetoro.
Camacho was very effective controlling hecklers.
The unending waves of radiation may sink it.
Idiocracy is a really funny movie. But after you watch it you start to reflect on what is going on with education and literacy levels and it doesn't seem quite so funny. People a hundred years ago may not have had cell phones but they had a much better ability to understand the world around them. In addition, they made an effort (and as described in the article) to have and were required to have a level of basic intelligence that is well beyond what we see today. People then knew how the technology worked. Some people could even build a house with a hammer,saw, and a square. Now it's all magic and all people know how to do is plug it in.
Caved in last week and bought my daughter an iPod Touch. One week later and we're having to impose usage limits. Next thing she'll be drinking Brawndo.
Building a house is not Magic, it's Mexicans.
"One man's magic is another man's engineering." --Robert A. Heinlein
iPod Touch - "Engineered for maximum funness"
Appropriate word "funness" in light of the context of this article
This whole article is bullshit. People 100 years ago were way less capable than people today because technology raises all boats. This nostalgia bullshit is getting out of hand. Education, health, and nutrition standards have risen consistently over the last 200 years.
Check out this picture if you think technology is making us anti-social
http://i.imgur.com/WkHHpZ1.jpg
I contest your assertion that nutrition has gotten any better over the last 200 years (especially the last 50).
Food is more plentiful today and food supply is more predictable thanks to the oil revolution (cheap energy), but nutritionally pound for pound food today is nowhere what it was in bygone generations.
You are wrong.
Go up to any 23 year old that finished their secondary education and ask them what the subject or object of an English language sentence is.
Ask them this:
"If I go to the store to buy groceries and the total is 16.22 and I hand the clerk 21.72, what do they give me and why?"
Young people cannot do this, it cooks their mind, and unless they can punch it into the register, they are lost.
They can use an iPhone, that's not an educated life skill any 6 year old child can do that, your grandmother can learn it, it's not that hard. But maths in the head? Magic to a 23 year old.
I am not speaking hypothetically, this change making mind block happens weekly to me.
moar like nig and nigger
http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/08/13/340091377/unicef-report...
US: ILLEGAL ALIENS ESTIMATED AT 20 TO 38 MILLIONhttp://www.capsweb.org/press-releases/illegal-aliens-estimated-20-38-mil...
http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/06/immigration-rivals-agree-senate-bill-w...
Another chart drawn by someone who knows how to use a spreadsheet.
There is not enough water in Africa even for the current population, least of all more of the same.
Appeals to technology are no excuse for lack of clue.
Here I can make a prediction as easily as they can. Africa will fall to under 10 million total within 50 years and that will have become the end of that.
You really aren't that informed, sad.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-17775211
Given the Average General IQ of Sub-Saharan Africans is 70, the population boom there would be expected to make a dent on global scores.
A 60-page review of the scientific evidence, some based on state-of-the-art magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of brain size, has concluded that race differences in average IQ are largely genetic.MRI studies, Trans-Racial Adoption studies, Racial Admixture studies, Regression to Racial Mean studies, and 60 other psychological/physiological life-trait race measures, eliminate any environmental or cultural hypotheses for long standing and significant racial IQ differentials.
http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/04/26/Race-differences-in-average-...
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen30years.pdf
All men of every race have larger brains than women. And all women are genetically and developmentally different than men.
Just say'n
Don't know if I buy the whole race-related intelligence score thing. Seems fishy to me. The whole IQ thing seems silly. If blacks made their own tests for IQ they might outscore whites, and if that happened what would the whites say except that the test was biased and thus meaningless, which of course would be correct in all cases of such tests.
Meh.
Not enough to run with. Don't see the point.
Apparently you can't read and/or comprehend, not a good sign.
Not enough to run with? There are mountains of data showing significant differences in intelligence between various races. They've been studying this from all kinds of angles since the 1960s. As the poster above mentioned, even when correcting for education levels, or studying black kids adopted by white parents/white kids adopted by black parents, biracial people, etc. the results still hold.
On the flipside, there is not a shred of evidence indicating any kind of equality in intelligence between races. It's always the same old chestnut: study shows racial differences in IQ, study is called "racist", study is ignored, few years later scientists come up with another method to look at intelligence, shows same results, study is called "racist", study is ignore, etc. rinse and repeat.
Separately, there is also a mountain of historical evidence - name one meaningful technological invention, social invention, or anything representing any kind of progress, that came out of black Africa? The vast majority of the world's collective legacy of productive thought and tech has emerged from two places: white West and yellow East.
O.T.-
name one meaningful technological invention, social invention, or anything representing any kind of progress, that came out of a muslim country?
Within the last 50 years, or 500 years.
Scary, ain't it?
IIRC, the average IQ of the Pygmy (Mitochondiral Eve's relatives - yes, Modern Homo Sapiens pretty much kicked off with Eve's and Pygymy's Foreparents) is around 50. Whoever benefits "functionally" from CHN's Infra Investments might get added bonuses of IQ Ponts for themselves and their Children. The CHNamen sent there - espcially the novices, understudies, and apprentices - certainly are.
As Africa/CHN mutually build out (near)modern Infrastructure on a massive scale, Team_USA can't modernize or refurbish it's own Infrastructure - e.g., the Golden Gate Bridge Renovation Projects in SF required calling on CHN Suppliers.
IIRC, the World Nation-State IQ Averages are so skewed, it's distrurbing to see how many people have sub 100 Level capabilities. THAT'S OUR PROBLEM. TPTB/MICs/Oligarchs/Ideo-Theocrats(Vatican, Mason, Cult, Radicals)/Klepto-Ochlarchs are profiteering on that knowledge.
This is simply a precursor to Societal Collapse and a aptly described in Kornbluth's Novella, "Marching Morons". And the CHNamen are now marching through Africa. HeyNow!!!
http://mysite.du.edu/~treddell/3780/Kornbluth_The-Marching-Morons.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons
American "Exceptionalism" - once applicable to Pioneers of Industry - now stands for "remedial" abilities of the degenerates. The Elites and the Masses are both born with "The FAIL".
Of course people are getting stupider. Once upon a time the smartest, strongest, fastest would survive but with the advent of the welfare state and big government you are guaranteed a living regardless of how stupid you are and regardless of how many mouthes you bring into the world while those with decent IQ's are too busy making money to have more than one kid if any.
Matters are made worse by the fact that specialzation robs the brain of producing new neural paths and networks and hence lateral thinking is thwarted.
"Once upon a time the smartest, strongest, fastest would survive"
That still is the case. Amongst chimps.
Brains might be getting smaller, but something else is getting bigger. Women do the selecting, more so these days than ever before. They have always liked rude, rough emotional men as opposed to reliable, steady, smart ones. Give your average modern woman the choice between large brain and large dick, the second will win almost every time and trust me, they know who has it and who doesn't.
Meh
Too busy blogging about the VMA's. Let me know when you have something better to talk about.
Nature has it that if you don't use, you lose it. Not exercising leads to muscle atrophy, obesity, bone loss, and atrophied brains. Everything in society now is about having other people do the business of life for you.
It's really no wonder why we got here.
Just watch a Shakespeare play, and remind yourself that four hundred years ago in London, this was mass-market entertainment. We have definitely become stupider.
You sayin' Game of Thrones isn't a good as Shakespeare?
Those who can, DO
Those who can't, TEACH
Those who can't teach, RUN FOR OFFICE
Seat belts laws. Safety at work laws. Foreign food aid. Medecine. Lawsuits about how hot coffee is.
Yes on average the human race is becoming dumber. Nature and wars used to cull the dumb ones. Now we save them all, and there are a lot of them. It brings the average down.
I tried to tell everyone last week we'd reached peak dumb.
http://youtu.be/r1s1DOUNA-g?t=12m30s
Peak stupidity is not even close but may draw closer if Hillary is elected president.
.
Stupid is listening to a pol, crat or bankster. Especially after 30 when experience alone should be enough to inform one of their mendacity.
An American, not US subject.
When you build a hive, there's no need for the workers to have large brains.
Just curious, how long do you think "we" (define "we") have been a hive?
Not arguing, actually curious what you think is the figure.
I guess the world bankocracy would be the foundation of the hive since it shapes the politics and determines the size of governments. "We" then would consist of dollar friendly countries and those who chooose to run their printing presses in concert since that moves them toward socialist/fascist systems.
Not bad.
I was going to propose the same role to the rise of organized religion, in particular the Abrahamic variety, which enjoy a great deal of leverage in the twin prong of -- on the one hand -- obeying an invisible God who can only be understood via the intervention of a very few well-placed clerics, and on the other hand the attraction of heaven after death for the truely obedient.
Great hive stuff, right there, and pushes back our inception as mindless fear slaves (at least in the west) to around 1,000 years ago.
Yeah wake me up when the next season of The Lardassians is on.
yo waz up wit dat?
Give the eligibility of president, vice-president and Governor of Kentucky.
Debt slaves have no time to rest, think, and understand. And TPTB want it that way, since that's "best for all". It'slaves, tupid.
In the past, Darwin's law make sure that dummies wouldn't survive. Now they're subsidize to survive and have lots more kids
The sad fact is that it is usually the Ph'd rocket scientists that get us into trouble!
No chart was really necessary. Just reference the second election of Obama.
People are dumb today because they lack CRITICAL THINKING. In other words, they lack the ability to sort out the realities of the world for themselves, instead latching onto whatever idea / book / news story / tweet that catches their attention and offers them a quick, comforting, easy answer to life's complex problems.
There are many factors that are leading to this decline: a sick culture, a corrupted media, technology that makes us lazy, terrible education, a decline in reading and literature, and a terrible diet.
These things all reinforce each other - the terrible education makes people ignorant of nutrution and the dangers of artifical chemicals in food, so they eat bad food and get fat, dumb, and sick. The TV tells them that they are fat, dumb, and sick beacause they don't adhere to <insert latest fad diet>. The popular culture tells them that it's OK be to fat, dumb, and sick, and that everyone is a unique special snowflake. The media says: don't worry about being fat, dumb, and sick, here, watch this 10 hour marathon of American Gladiators instead.
The movie "Idiocracy" got it right, unfortunately.
I don't think things will change until the current power structure collapses and other, better cultures rise from the ashes.
I'm in total agreement with your statement about a lack of critical thinking. It requires too much effort for most. Typically, someone will latch on to ideas, and emotions that are a comfortable fit, that don't disturb their sense of equilibrium. Anyone paying attention will know a group of people who seem to "share" the same identity, excepting fairly minor differences in personal habits. They always have their own set of rules that define that sub culture, with it's own rewards and punishments. Humans being the social animals that they are, this will be an ongoing set of impulses to manage, and for some of us, to overcome in ourselves and others.
For decades, we have been trending toward a sickly type of self absorbtion, devaluation of intelligence, and lack of introspection. Couple that with an ingrained "victim" mentality that dictates that you are "oppressed" if people use words you don't like. Even 20 years ago, that bullshit would have been laughable to most. Survival of the fittest has given way to triumph of the whiners, and mental weaklings. They outnumber us significantly.
For me, part of the antidote to this cultural rot has been to develop practical skills, hold myself accountable for my success or failure (however I choose to define that), and to develop autonomy to the highest degree possible in my personal, and professional life. If you're looking for meaningful change, start with yourself.
I must be defective compared to most people, because my critical thinking gene kicked in at age 13. I sat through university and many times thought, especially when PC values began to slowly creep into the lectures in the late 70's, ""that's bullshit and here is why ABCDE"".
Apparently the debt load scared everyone into compliance and no one rocks the boat any longer.
FORWARD!
They don't want to mention the I or D words, (immigration, demographics)
To bad you can't change IQ like nationality
Nehhhhhhh.... I mean, mehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
no wonder the new trol...err...posters seem of a lower quality here!
Downvote away fux.
A government of stupid people and by stupid people, can smart phones save them?
Stay tuned.
HEY! I resemble that remark!
When in doubt, blame the weather.
Having been an educator for 25 years and delving into assessment and evaluation literature for much of it, I can tell you that such historical comparisons are meaningless for any number of reasons but primarily because you are comparing apples and oranges with respect to both test-takers and curriculum focus.
As well, your heading scientific 'proof' is misleading. Proof is only relevant in mathematics and jurisprudence, not science and especially not social science.
Http://olduvai.ca
So, since you're in education, do you think the average, or above average for that matter, 8th grade student, could pass the above test? Heck, I doubt they could get 50%.
Much of what the test 'tests' is not part of current curriculum. Curriculum has changed significantly in 100 years.
Here's a relevant example of a system-wide test I had to administer when I taught grade six. There was a question pertaining to research skills--something I taught thoroughly after ten years of post-secondary education (four degrees)--but none of my students were capable of answering. Why? Because the question referred to a picture of a library catalogue card which none of my students had seen because they were at the start of computerized systems and that's what they used. The feedback that came back for the school was that we needed to focus more on research skills! I got into an argument with my principal and superintendent over that one...even had a guest editorial in our local paper and local cable channel debate with a trustee. That's how useless such testing is!
And I say this after being a school administrator for the last fourteen years of my career.
Here is why you are wrong, again.
They need to learn this skill also.
Books do not change over time unless you print new editions. If you have a physical book printed in 1900, it is obvious if it was altered. Everything is not online, and the ability to be able to understand a card catalogue and Dewey system is needed to be able to do real research in a real library with physical objects that cannot be edited by teenagers trying to win over their love interest.
Every pdf research paper can be changed by anyone, then republished and no one will know. All websites are the same.
A book cannot be edited in such a fashion.
We had colour TV when I was a teen, but I understood why, and watched, old films in black and white. Try to get someone under 35 to watch anything that is not widescreen HiDef. Their mind simple clicks off because '"ït is not as good as the new"". Black and white film would cause them to simply shut down, or laugh. They don't want to engage with any technology that was not invented before they were in high school. If it was not invented in the past 4 years, their minds slam shut.
They cannot fix anything, and call someone to do all repairs.
They have lost their independence, resiliency, and ability to solve problems, to use langauge correctly and explain why, to do maths.
...and their ideas...you should hear the nonsense you rammed into their skulls that they repeat fresh out of University.
I guess you did ''a good job'', crippling their minds for life.
You are the problem. I teach outside the USA and other nations are not brainwashed by your concerns.
Being able to add in one's head in case the electricity turns off, or you hand a bartender cash for your drink and someone, either the bartender or customer, should be able to do the maths in their heads about change made without turning around to type it into a machine or smartphone.
The USA would improve immensely if we returned to teaching what those 8th graders were tested on 102 years ago, with the additional modern geography and science. It is stupid to spend any time teaching technology to children, they will master it in their spare time in minutes. There is not one reason to have them have a computer class in school, they will only spend it wasting time and fooling the teachers.
Anything remotely approaching PC values will result in the first administrator being fired, no nonsense any longer - but you will drone on and on justifying your advanced degree and certification, obfuscating what needs to be done.
You are part of the problem the instant you write that we cannot make such historical comparisons, the inability to judge and make comparisons is the first victim of PC and modern pedagogical theories in the USA.
Your values and education are part of the problem.
Also consider that your education was brainwashing, and that it is in error.
Example? That you hold the value that "such historical comparisons are meaningless for any number of reasons but primarily because you are comparing apples and oranges with respect to both test-takers and curriculum focus.".
Everyone must watch the movie 'Idiotocracy'. Sadly It is already coming to pass.
Of course people are getting increasingly stupid. Just look at who they're electing to be their leaders. Forgetting his race for a second, what are the chances that someone such as Obama would have gotten elected 100 years ago; or 50 years ago for that matter. To quote Tocqueville: “When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education . . . the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint . . . . It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold. . . . they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters.”
I believe that we have reached such a time.
Soon it will be imperative to elect a female President
Which may not be a totally bad idea so long as
we follow Italy's example of electing Cicciolina
to Parliament by a write-in vote.
While in office, Cicciolina supported:
sex educationin schools,
protecting the environment,
stopping nuclear proliferation
and defending animal rights.
On two occasions, Cicciolina is reported
to have attempted to end the buildup
to the Gulf War by offering her own body.
"I am available to make love to Saddam Hussein
to achieve peace in the Middle East," she said.
Didn't know who she was, so I looked her up. Man, she was totally hot. I would definately vote for that.
A similar idealogue named Wilson was in power 100 years ago.
*Beholden to the interests of bankers.
*Eager to get involved in European affairs.
*Advancing a one world government agenda.
Helpful is "The Public Be Suckered", I guess.
http://patrick.net/forum/?p=1223928
I call it Algo Duping and/or "The Grays" where folks can't tell the difference between virtual and real world values. When someone from the real world approaches someone with a "virtual" perception, you do look stupid sometimes. What do you think caught the VA, too much virtual and not enough real world values, and of course money.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2014/03/virtual-worlds-real-world-we-have...
So what are we teaching kids, virtual or real world values? Might be something to that question maybe? Virtual Unreality, new book that came out from one of my favorites, Professor Charlie Siefe who also wrote the book, "Proofiness, the Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception". I recommended the book for all the avid Facebook users:) Only the codemasters have control and you're just in there to play and feed the bots.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2014/06/virtual-unreality-maybe-good-read...
Of course people are dumber. And getting even worse. Want more evidence? Check the comments section of any ZH article about science. What you'll find there is a time travel to the middle ages.
actually that's more a sign ZH has become *popular* and are receiving large influxs of the unwashed masses.
"People Are Getting Stupider"....
So who cares, anyway??? Our computers
are getting smarter real fast, so very soon
we won't have to think at all....
(indeed, we're almost there already)...
The brave new world of amoeboid lemmings
is every politicians utopian dreamworld....
.
Now that Corporations can speak, it's only
a matter of time before computers get the vote..
(Diebold already has that scenario down pat)
It is remarkable that SAT scores have declined considering the SAT exams are easier now. I had to add 70-100 points to compare my SAT score from the nineties to the current version, which means SAT scores should be higher on average. Looks like the author of this article scored an 800 on their own SAT exam.
I'm not sure how this test is much different than today's tests (one of those questions is testing the Pythagorean theorem; that is, A^2 + B^2 = C^2; another just asks which battles were fought during which wars). In fact, I'm pretty sure I learned the Pythagorean theorem in 4th grade? 5th, maybe? The Suez Canal is a no-brainer unless you're a dolt when it comes to geography.
I wouldn't put too much stock in the SAT. That thing is designed for people who actually study to do well on it. It ISN'T intended as an intelligence test. I got a 1230, 1340, and a 1440 on it in the three times I took it. Did I gain intelligence points during that period? No. I studied for it. Had I studied even more for it I would have scored 1500+ on a 4th try, and had I studied HALF as hard for it as I did a few years later for my state's bar exam I would have been close to 1600.
All this to say, who gives a shit about some geography test from the early 20th century anyway? All this test goes to show is how equally impractical tests from those days were as well. I don't use anything I learned from college or grade school, and judging by this test, it appears not much has changed.
Several reasons human are less intelligent than every before are quite obvious. I'll list a few below. But first, recognize that any sensible meaning for "intelligence" does not mean (or even include) memorization of what authorities have told us. While a good memory certainly is a valuable asset (one I don't have), memory and intelligence are different. In fact, arguably having a great memory tends to temp one to get ahead by memorizing whatever the current "authorities" claim, rather than turn on those mental abilities that are intelligence, and those processes we employ to investigate and understand reality.
I didn't make an effort to order the following reasons that humans have been getting less intelligent. Also, the following all interact and tend to reinforce each other.
Evolution: When less intelligent human beings produce more children that live to reproductive age, then evolution favors less intelligence going forward. When humans can just sit around, collect welfare, unemployment and other "benefits", the less intelligent tend to take more advantage of these systems, produce more (also less intelligent) kids. This also tends to propagate into subsequent generations more than might be expected, because kids tend to mimic their parents when they get older.
Experience: What makes a human being intelligent? While it is likely that some humans are born with "better" (potentially more intelligent) brains, that potential is not realized under all circumstances. A kid that grows up solving real world problems (out of necessity due to their environment, or out of passionate interests or goals), develops a vastly more of their potential intelligence into real intelligence than a "good kid" who simply obeys "authority", memorizes what "authorities" say or teach, and regurgitates when "appropriate". Of course a "bad kid" who simply disobeys "authority" and rejects everything "authorities" say or teach may also fail to develop intelligence too. However, the scrutiny and punishment directed at "bad kids" does give them incentive to develop certain narrow kinds of intelligence to evade the authoritarians. Often, however, they do not develop forms of intelligence required for efficient productive action (like long term thinking and planning).
Environment: High fructose corn syrup [often laced with mercury and other heavy metals] and other poisons in most foods the past decade or three definitely degrate mental processes. Simply lack of appropriate nutrition due to modern industrial farming techniques also impact brain development and nutrition.
Individualism: Only individualists can develop intelligence. One might immediately object and say collectivists can be brilliant too (albeit in crafty and diabolical ways). One must look at this issue carefully before one comes to such oversimplified conclusions. First of all, most high-level advocates of collectivism are craven, diabolical individualists. What I mean is, they are highly skilled scam artists. Just because the fraudulent medicine they advocate and sell is "collectivism" doesn't mean they believe in collectivism themselves (and certainly not for themselves). Just look at all the political millionaires (Clintons, Bushes, Obamas, etc) who are individually rich and powerful, and make no effort to actually live anything like the life of collectivism. All these people care about is themselves, which makes them an individualist (certainly in any mental or practical sense of the term). Yes, they are EVIL individualists. But they are individualists. To be an individualist is important, but not enough (need to add honesty, ethics, productivity and benevolence to be a good individualist). When it comes to intelligence, being an individualist is important because it makes you constantly look at reality (sometimes including other humans), identify the interrelationships, and decide what actions are best to take to get desired outcomes. This exercises those mental processes that are intelligence.
I could go on and on. As I write this, I keep seeing more and more topics and angles I could address. The real key to intelligence is to actively [and passionately] look at reality, struggle to identify as many aspects as possible of nature of reality, how they [can] relate and interconnect, and experiment with reality to test your abilities and develop new ones.
But today, humans are more and more like little cogs in a big machine that they don't even understand. They do what they're told, because part of the machine (or "matrix"), and for practical purposes know very little about the nature of reality, the nature of organisms and mankind and the nature of consciousness. And so they tend to just "buy things off the shelf at the store", never substantially investigate or understand anything, and not produce anything but some trivial widget in the massive corporate and cultural machines they are an tiny component of.
Most humans today take so little responsibility for themselves and their own actions, they never practice the processes necessary to develop intelligence. Which is why humans are screwed at this point in history... they've let the predators decide everything for them, and accept with nary and objection.
PS: That test may be more difficult than current ones, but it contains a great many defective aspects (including a very substantial emphasis on memorization of "facts" declared by the current "authorities"). The mind-numbing influence of religious authoritarianism 100 years ago has been largely replaced by the mind-numbing influence of political authoritarianism today. The consequences are a bit different, but both are very bad.
Not even close. When DNA copies itself each generation, mutations are errors in the process - at the rate of 1 in 10 billion. Mutations are never benefical, and errors add up. Simple as that.
Evolution: When less intelligent human beings produce more children that live to reproductive age, then evolution favors less intelligence going forward. When humans can just sit around, collect welfare, unemployment and other "benefits", the less intelligent tend to take more advantage of these systems, produce more (also less intelligent) kids. This also tends to propagate into subsequent generations more than might be expected, because kids tend to mimic their parents when they get older.
What do mutations have to do with my comments? The issue is this. If morons have more kids (due to welfare and other influences), then more kids have moron teachers for the first 6 years of their lives, and more moron influences for the first 20+ years of their lives, and less exposure to intellectual variety or complexity.
Because the largest factor in intelligence is genetics. Even morons can begat genius children but the odds lessen with more damage to the genome each generation. You identified a symptom, but not the root cause.
What do mutations have to do with my comments?
No, the largest factor in intelligence is... how you operate your consciousness, especially in the early years when you form [lifelong] intellectual habits, which is also when your intellectual activity configures your neural net. To be sure, genetics probably does play a role, but not that aspect of genetics that we call "mutation".
No, the largest factor is genetic. You cannot train a monkey to talk can you?
Although I pretty much agree with everything you said, I believe that you left out the single most important factor of declining intelligence; particularly in the last quarter century or so. I firmly believe that modern technology, starting with the radio, and more so with TV, computers, smartphones and texting, have decimated the collective intelligence of the Western world. And while I certainly use all of those gadgets, probably much more than I should, I am firmly convinced that they are the #1 intelligence killer. My own IQ tested in the high 120's, 40 years ago in high school. I seriously doubt I could break 100 today.
I do think those things play a role, mostly because they involve endless repetitive acts with little or no creative or productive results. I spend a lot of time on computers, but I'm writing technical software to perform sophisicated processes. So not everything on computers are mind-dulling, but most things are. I've never owned a cell phone, video game console, ipad, iphone, iwhatever, etc. In fact, I've never owned a television, stereo, radio, walkman, etc... so I'm pretty "out there". And actually, for about half my adult life I've lived without a phone [or equivalent] of any kind.
Yeah... except that people aren't less intelligent now than they were back then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
This is just a bunch of bullshit. Don't assume people are less intelligent just because Michael Snyder, Doomsday Blog extraordinaire told you so.
We are not assuming.
Anyone who is over 50 who has exposure to young adults who are not their offspring can see this trend. New hires are morons, addicted to technology, and lack basic mechanical knowledge about almost everything.
They cannot do maths in their heads, they cannot make change, they cannot write using a pen and paper, their penmanship resembles that of a 5 year old, they do not know what a subject and an object is in a language context.
All of the above are things someone my age could do by 5th grade in the USA.
They are idiots, and their University education is inferior to what I knew by elementary school.
But they have insanely, delusionally, high self esteem, know all of the PC brainwashing, and know how to post a selfie to Vine or Instagram or Facebook.
Some of them were actually stunned that some humans who speak English still use words like ''lame".
Yes, the young are so superior to the old. /sarc
Bunch of useless, brainwashed, smartphone addicts.
Must be why we hired only hungry recent female immigrants in the office. They actually knew things, worked hard, and had a brain.
Yes, the trend is very obvious.
I would also point out the very well known fact that a great many Chinese are very smart, and very capable at many activities (including intellectual), but until recently were almost entirely incapable of highly creative intellectual feats. Which goes to show that the environment one grows up in definitely matters.
Another fact I can see is... how much dumber adults are today. Perhaps this has always been true, but I have seen large numbers of smart people get much dumber as they got older. They should get smarter as they learn more, but instead they get dumber. This can be caused by brain-destroying heavy metals in about half of products that contain high fructose corn syrup (or other similar intentional or pollution related factors), or from intentionally letting their intellect rot out because collectivism favors dimwitted morons over highly creative individuals. Many smart people get tired of being abused for their smarts, and so they give in, go along, and gradually become stupid. I could be wrong, but I think this didn't happen so much previously (until senility, of course).
I attribute my outlier status to not getting married, no debt slave chain on my neck, no massive students loans (I had them, paid them, a pittance per month), no debt, mortgage, kids, child support assessment, alimony, ex wife, wife and so on.
Since I had the time to sit, and think, and write, and research, I had the luxury of thinking.
I know many men my age who worked worked worked and then got divorced and they were so busy that they really do not understand how the world works now. They were too busy providing, career, job, corporate ladder climbing. It blots out all intellectual activities.
Now the worker bees have even more distractions, no one has books, everyone has a massive 108 inch 3D flat screen.
It used to be that you could tell the lower classes by how big a TV they debt leveraged into, and they had no books.
Now, everyone aspires to the big TV and no books - even the upper classes.
Yes, and major congratulations! I too never got married, never had kids, never borrowed money (not even mortgage, cars, student loans, nothing), etc. And I develop very frugal habits starting when I was very young. Most people I've known earned a lot more than me over the years and decades, but they're all in debt, have endless obligations like those you listed, and virtually no savings. Once the oligarchs steal their retirement accounts (probably by forcing them to hold 50% or more of their retirement assets in US government bonds as hyperinflation kicks in), they'll be "dead meat" as far as options.
The only major difference between us in these regards is, I'm female. So while it doesn't apply to us (not married), I might have been able to get a better (unjust) deal in divorce court than you.
One way to describe the problem with mankind is this. We are extreme outliers, when in fact we should be the status-quo, and the behavior of normal people today should be what is "outliers". Or in many cases, impossible (because in a non-fiat world NOBODY would lend oodles of money to morons who put 0% to 1% down on expensive homes, cars, yachts, education and other toys they can't afford.
But the main two factors I attribute my outlier status to are the following. At age 4, I realized with complete clarity and certainty that I could not learn about reality by asking adults (I've discussed the reasons in ZH messages before, so I won't repeat them unless you want to know). I realized the only way I could learn was to perform my own first-hand observations, my own first-hand thinking and reflection, and draw (and update when appropriate) my own provisional inferences about every topic. And the second factor was the fact I got utterly, totally and passionately addicted to science (starting with astronomy, which provides the basis to grapple with the most extreme scales and perspectives), and engineering (to design and produce my own optics, telescopes, computers, software, etc). In other words, I've been an extreme outlier since I was 4 years old... and have never been seriously tempted to become "normal" ever since.
Move to another country, and you will realise that large pieces of reality are just incorrect.
I don't think it is bias, or propaganda, or even poor education - many people simply repeat truisms that are just false.
One is that Americans are dumb. Give me a camera crew, an editing suite, an afternoon in Brussels and I can make that city appear to be the capital of the Islamic State. The videos are edited for Europeans to feel smug, yet they cannot figure this out.
Another is that Asian women are submissive, subservient and obedient. I really cannot figure out where this comes from, but if you have ever listened to a Chinese wife talk on the phone to her husband you could think of many adjectives to describe her, but none of those three.
Another is the perception of other countries wealth and their government style. China is more Capitalistic than the UK, USA or Canada. The USA is more socialist than China, and so on.
999 parts of 1000 about reality are not in any book.
Well, in fact I did move to another country, about 3 years ago. But I already knew almost every official and conventional characterization portrayed in western nations was blatant nonsense (like you said, roughly 99.9%).
Yes indeed. I take a lot of heat when I say something like "we cannot learn about reality via language (by reading or hearing language), we must learn by first-hand observation, first-hand thinking, first-hand reflection, drawing provisional inferences by means of our own rigorously honest and careful mental processes, and by keeping our provisional inferences "honest" by continually checking and updating them when confronted with new observations, experiences, thought and reflection.
Almost nobody wants to hear that... they want to regurgitate what their favored "authority" jammed into their brain (usually whatever makes them feel better).
Well, I was originally an "Asian girl", until I left Taiwan/China in my early 20s, and nobody since has ever called me submissive, subservient and obedient. In fact, I suspect that's about diametrically opposite how people see me.
However, clearly I'm an extreme outlier in a great many ways, and not much like a typical Chinese (or typical human for that matter). Fortunately I don't have a husband to abuse... hahaha. Lucky [nonexistent] him. I get along great with honest, ethical, productive, benevolent people of all shapes, sizes, sexes, ages and other characteristics, which means... somewhere around 0.1% of the population. Lucky me!
Since the predators-DBA-government and predators-DBA-corporations pretty much control the mainstream media everywhere, pretty much everyone on the planet has a grossly erroneous idea of what their own fictional "nation" is like, as well as every other fictional "nation" on the planet.
Yup, books are not the place to learn. They sometimes contain hints worth considering and following (especially on very narrow [technical] topics), but like you said, overall 99.9% of their contents are false or misleading, and they are also missing 99.9% of fundamentals and most important insights.
Evolution: When less intelligent human beings produce more children that live to reproductive age, then evolution favors less intelligence going forward.
Ok; so let's have no more drivel about man having evolved from apes!
Throughout most of human history (before "welfare"), humans who were too lazy or incompetent at operating their consciousness got selected out of existence. So being smart used to mean you survived, you had more kids (because you survived), and thus evolution favored increasing intelligence. This evolutionary force is now inverted in much of the world. That is an clear and obvious fact.
Define the following forms of government: Democracy, Limit Monarchy, Absolute Monarchy, Republic. Give examples of each.
Hmmm I think they forgot Oligarchy
Give three duties of the President. What is meant by the veto power?
Only 3? Apparantly, he can do whatever he damn well feel like doin'.
Name three rights given Congress by the Constitution and two rights denied Congress.
Spend Money, Spend Moar Money, Who cares, we'll just print some moar on Tuesday
Describe the manner in which the president and vice-president of the United States are elected.
Money, Moar Money, & Jamie Dimon's draft pick.
In america, we always take the crib sheet into the test.
http://www.bullittcountyhistory.com/bchistory/schoolexam1912ans.html
[Define the following forms of government: Democracy, Limit Monarchy, Absolute Monarchy, Republic. Give examples of each.
Hmmm I think they forgot Oligarchy]....
also left out our present form of government-Plutocracy..
although "Lunacy" would be a far more apt description.
Pretty good, with a minor correction.
Under the Constitution, control of money was in the hands of the People, and not the Government/Congress.
"Name three rights given Congress by the Constitution and two rights denied Congress."
It is a trick question.
The Constitution doesn't give anyone any rights at all.
It gives authorities and prohibitions. Eighteen of them are listed in Article 1 Section 8.
And the Congress is denied no rights. Congress is an organization, not a person. It doesn't have RIGHTS, and hence what it does not have it cannot be denied. However Congress is prohibited from performing a large number of activities, such as make an ex-post-facto law, pass a bill of attainder, place an export tax on articles exported from a State, grant a title of nobility, or give preference to the ports of any particular State.
Answers to the author's questions:
1) Cannot be determined. To determine relative intelligence you would have to have a common objective standard. There isn't one. IQ is just a number applied to differentiate takers of so-called IQ tests. The fact is that no one has a good grasp of how to test intelligence, and there are very good reasons why. They include the fact that there is no commonly accepted definition of intelligence. Such defnintions necessarily include value judgments that prioritize some mental faculties above others.
The question is like asking whether a fiat currency is losing value at any given point in time on a world where there are no physical commodities to act as a numeraire.
2) No. The proper construction is 'more stupid'.
However the nature of education has changed a great deal, and the requirements of human society have changed a great deal, such that we value memorizers and synchophants more, and independent thinkers, men of reason, and men of actual physical and material skills less.
TL;DR
A few more things:
This is NOT "scientific proof" that people are getting more stupid. The SAT isn't even correlated with an IQ, unlike the LSAT.
Apparently, Mr. Snyder's poor analytical skills preclude him from recognizing the distinction between "scientific proof" of a decline in intelligence and a mere decline in SAT scores... another victim of the modern age, perhaps?
Also, IQ scores have seemingly increased since the 1930s in most developed nations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#IQ_group_differences
Hogwash. The tests are centered on 100 by design. If scores dropped a point, it needs recalibrating. IQ tests and SATs have never been presented as a timeless intelligence test good for all cultures across all millenia.
The only intelligence we've ever been naturally selected for are in 3 categories: making money, getting women, and not getting killed. That's why we hate this cruel, dumb world.
Most interesting comment:
The only intelligence we've ever been naturally selected for are in 3 categories: making money, getting women, and not getting killed.
I think that compatition has over taken co-operation, leading to new skills in the jungle.
But I started at the bottom off the graph, nice to see everyone catching up.
I don't want to spound like a dick. But something happened in the 70's that caused a whole new demographic to take SATs.
This article is such bullshit it's hard to even know where to begin.
If there were ever a prime exhibit for the type of idiocy, slapdash "scientific" calculations, and mindless pontificating emblematic of our slow-witted age, it would be Mr. Snyder himself.
ad hominem
See my above 4 comments jackass. This was merely an addendum to those.
Are people stupider?
You would be punctilious in assuming that.
Look around. People are clearly fatter, dumber, lazier, poorer and, according to a recently published study, men aren't as physically "manly" as they were two generations ago, but I haven't actually verified this last point.
Spelling is not related to IQ. My highschool graduating class was 1974. I'm so old I'm beginning to forget but I'm still smart enough for bumfuck UCLA. IQ is not related to laziness. Lots of lazy hippy bums came out of Venice California to be well lazy hippy bums that freeload off of the low IQ government official's stupid-ass policies. High IQ people are entitled to live a free lunch lifestyle because it is very difficult for federal bureaucrats to stop them. Up my FAFSA Yellen MuthFukka is a political protest statement that attests to the injustice of centrally planned governments.
But what about natural selection and darwinism and all the other stupid crap people say? I always chuckle whenever people bring those things up when someone makes the news by being a moron and these people ignore that it's the morons who are the ones breeding so much and if natural selection/darwinism is legit then it favours stupidity and the mroe the stupid gene gets passed on the more it is likely the species makes itself extinct which doesn't really seem to fit the theory of natural selection to me.
I do think people are dumber now than they were even twenty years ago but I am skeptical of people being that much dumber now than centuries ago given the stupid shit people believed in and did back in the day.
The species as a whole is just dumb and is dumb enough that it thinks it is smart and advanced and has so much hubris. I think it is that hubris and the belief it is smarter than it really is which separates humans of the modern era than back all those centuries ago where those people didn't think they were all-knowing like humanity does now.
The problem is caused by a mixture of genetic tinkering and entropy.
Misleading title. He's observed losses of IQ in the UK, Canada, Denmark, the USA, and Australia. Western countries, by no means the whole of the planet.
Given the fantastic amounts of unadulterated BS we're fed on a daily basis in Western countries, no wonder plenty of us can't think anymore.
I want to emphasize just how little most people know about the world and to make the point about how important real knowledge is. In our modern world we are constantly assaulted with so much data, information and noise that it is often hard to stay focused. How people live their lives and the quality of those lives is important in defining our existence and society.
With all the debate about gay marriage, gun control, funding pre-k, and such we should put high on our agenda the goal of crafting a better, smarter, and overall improved society. Programs to promote and teach better parenting should be considered and made a focal point of in this endeavor. More on this subject in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/07/crafting-better-society.html
I got scientific proof with Hiroshima. It's a flat line after that.
I doubt 10% of the population today could pass this 8th grade test. Intelligence Quotients aren't declining, but standards have collapsed.
We now know what else GMOs and chemical contamination are doing to us...
Here we are in a country where the same people that declared ketchup a vegetable so they could falsify nutrition statistics smurf these figures, and all you bright lights are speculating about "what it all means" like chickens scratching for gold.
Marvellous.
For perspective, I never successfully graduated high school, due to unforeseen circumstances (e.g. I was homeless at the time). Nonetheless, I was still able to achieve my GED while in Basic Training and obtain my B.S. in Education after leaving the military. Upon joining the military, I had to take the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery), to which I scored a 94. I am not stating this to make myself feel narcissistically exceptional, rather, that the Valedictorian of my school scored a 38. The person who had scholastically outdone me in every facet imaginable, was an idiot. Let this show who we send to the best schools and elect into our higher offices, and those of us who served them in uniform.
Cheers,
What do you call an Irishman who lays about all day?
(Say this aloud) Paddie -O' Furniture
What do you call an Irishman who lays about all day?
Convict
Innate intelligence have actually risen by about 0.3% per year since the 1930's . The Flynn effect.
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2013/01/brain-waves-and-flynn-effect.html
Full explanation to this trend can be found here....http://paulsnewsline.blogspot.com/2013/12/african-americans-as-percentag...
What is an IQ in concrete objectively identifiable terms? Can we identify one so accurately that we can conclusively say person #1 has an IQ of EXACTLY 100 but person #2 has an IQ of EXACTLY 99?
No. We cannot. Because an IQ is not a concrete value. It is an assertion of intelligence using knowledge and some logic tests as proxies to subjectively determine relative levels of several mental talents and then weld them together into a homogenous 'quotient'.
Do the tests neceesarily prioritize some mental talents over others?
Yes they do.
Do the relative priorities of different types of intelligence change on different versions of the tests?
Yes they do.
Is there general agreement that mental talent A is necessarily more important than mental talent B?
No there is not - at least nothing that has retained 'generally agreed' status for even a decade, much less a generation or lifetime.
So, two people take two different tests to determine intelligence. The test differ on delivery date - by about 60 years. The tests differ in prioritization of types of intelligence as contributors to intelligence. They differ in numbers of questions pertaining to any particular type of mental ability. They differ on which are considered the 'right' answers to the questions - because many 'generally accepted' correct answers 60 years ago - or even 25 - are no longer 'generally accepted'.
Without a common yardstick you can measure nothing. And by the way, there's no Rosetta Stone between versions of intelligence tests, either.
The same guy could take the same test two times and give the exact identical answers to that test - with the only difference being the date he took the test. Because some of the 'answers' have changed in the intervening 60 years he would get a different score.
It's bullshit.
The fact is that a huge portion of IQ testing is dependent on 'common knowledge' at any period in time.
Common knowledge isn't. It is not common across time. And it isn't all knowledge.
The fact is that wise and intelligent men make many assertions and few double blind tests to validate those assertions. Their students accept most all of the unvalidated assertions along with the validated ones because that is part of humans' social nature - acceptance of authority.
And it gets worse.
People almost always get the results they expect when testing any particular thing. That's why the scientific method was needed, to DISPROVE rather than prove.
But even that is usually not enough to clear the field of the veritable forest of false assertions. Because people see what they expect to see on negative tests too. And this is why the double blind test was invented.
A double blind sets up the test such that no one recording results and making conclusions knows what the expected answer is - and have no choice but to reference the data.
Even that isn't great - because the test designer also has biases, and will find it very difficult to filter them out of the structure of the test.
So, the fact is that we know a fraction of what we think we know - even scientifically. And the rest is simply dogma.
Yet these are the MEANS we use to measure intelligence at the granular level. Then we weld the answers that were in congruence with our expectations (expected isn't necessarily right because conventional wisdom isn't conventional, and often isn't wisdom). And then we make subjective evaluations about certain sections of the test being more important than others, and weight accordingly them when scoring the 'test'.
It is bullshit.
But in this case it is also bullshit that deigns to interpret this deeply flawed data in a way that reinforces a branch of study long discredited - Eugenics, the theory that rising living standards support the genetically unworthy more than the worthy leading to a decline in the physical capabilities of both through a lack of pre-breeding mortality - eg evolution.
It is bullshit.
If you spend much time reading victorian era writings then you will develop an improved understanding of the language they used. I would submit that for technological reasons alone a victorian era person would find modern discourse along with its multitude of contractions 'BTFD', 'IMO', etc, to be similarly baffling.
That a modern person finds Victorian era writings difficult to understand is not surprizing. Much of language is context. Victorians were born into that context. Modern readers require some adjustment time.
Nobody who is not setting up a silly sophomoric straw man argument, would claim that there is any difference between an IQ of 99 and an IQ of 100: look up "standard deviation", and note that the standard deviation of IQ distributions is normalised to 15 IQ points.
But what can be said with certainty, is that IQs of 135 and above are rare (only about 1% of people test that high); and once you get above 140 there is such a cognitive difference between the individual and the median that they are almost different species, and it is exceeedingly rare that an innovative person is anywhere within rifle range of the median.
If human development depended on the innovative capabilities of people with IQs of 100, we would never have emerged out of the Dark Ages. There have been exceedingly rare exceptions: Feynman apparently claimed to have tested at 120 as a kid - if that is true, I bet he did not take the test remotely seriously.
See this table of IQ frequencies, and note that THE PEOPLE BELOW THE MEDIAN GET A VOTE.
I measure stupidity in units of FUD. No one (including me) knows exactly what a FUD is or can individually identify them.
My measurment shows you have a high FUD score. I counted a lot of FUDs (things that neither I nor anyone else can identify) in your statements. (How did I count a thing that, admitedly I cannot identify?)
A FUD differs from an IQ only in the number of people writing about it, and the titles those people hold.
Shall we make up some more non-fixed, non-objective units of measure, which no one can individually identify and then propose to measure things by them?
This is fun!
I just came up with another one: A BEQ - a Bestial Equivalency Quotient. It is an chemical measurement used to determine the degree to which a person's neurological chemicals resemble those of a paramecium..
But no one knows exactly how much one BEQ is.
That drop of spittle that just flew from your enraged lips scored either 42 BEQ or 134,309,234,384,785 BEQ. No one can say for sure. Because, again, we don't really know how much one BEQ is.
Standard distribution, my ass!
If you can't precisely measure one unit of a thing, then the unit is useless as a measure.
IQ is a scientism, an attempt to present amphorous non-objective data as though it had the reliability of physics.
It doesn't. Psychology hasn't done the basic work to define their units of measurement and hence all their measurments are bullshit.
Similarly the DSM is FUD.
The article is SPOT ON to anyone like me who is over 65 years old.
Idiocracy is imminent http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvIweCIgwk
This should come as a surprise to exactly nobody who understands the interaction between politics, reproduction and economic outcomes.
The poor have a lower opportunity cost of their time, and are (on average) less able to properly analyse the costs and benefits of additional children; they are also in a position where marginal utility of additional money is high (especially if there is no need to work for it).
The rich have a higher opportunity cost, and are better able (on average) to understand the ramifications of an extra child on their household budget. They are (relatively) in a position where the marginal utility of money is lower.
Now, put a subsidy on the bottom. The poor (and dumb - sorry, but a natural corollary of dumbness is poverty, though not vice versa) reproduce at above replacement, while the rich become 'concentrated' - assortative mating (like breeding with like) means that eventually you see the behavioural and psychological profile that userd to be exhibited by the bottom decile, in the bottom quartile, while the top quartile 'rarifies'. This is exacerbated when you subsidise the Deltas.
There is a brilliant site (I will look it up and edit this comment DONE) run by a Scando professor of statistics, where you can plot fertility against educational achievement and income, and do it over time. The time path of reproduction is downward as income rises, and it's downward as years of education rise (and gets egregious when women get post-secondary education and actually become economically highly-valued).
How does this square with political objectives, given that the political class is absolutely aware of this phenomenon, and is not remotely squeamish about 'calling it like it is' - i.e., a subsidy on the reproduction of the Deltas (using Huxley's taxonomy)?
Well, the political class has significant incentive to have a large and growing mass of absolute fucking idiots who can be easily (mis-)directed; the additional productivity growth through technological progreess will not be offset by retarded proles until genuine Idiocracy-like levels of retardery is seen at the median.
Read the OECD's PIAAC studies: the median adult in the OECD does not reach levels of literacy, numeracy or problem solving that satisfy the OECD's guess as to the minimum level of competency required to deal with the exigencies of everyday life.
That OECD study is very large-sample (166,000 individuals) and covers fully 1/6th of humanity, and it's not hyperbole to state that this region has been the economic and innovative 'engine room' of humanity for the last 400 years. And we now see categorically that its adult population is cognitively incapable (at the median) to read and understand a newspaper article of any complexity (e.g.: less than 1% of OECD adults is capable of determining the truth value of an article in the presence of subtle rhetorical biases [OECD (2013) p65]).
It's worth noting that for the US, younger==worser: individuals aged 16-24 were more than 2 standard deviations below the median OECD score (OECD (2013) Fig 2.3b, p73): less time on North-Korea style saluting the flag might be called for.
This is a travesty: bear in mind we are more than halfway through our second century of mandatory State-run education, and that State education bureaucracies are among the largest - usually second or third behind health and welfare bureaucracies (although in the US the Death Machine - the Department of Invading Other People - is the largest by aggregate cost due to 'long tail' costs).
This "stupidity at the median" has not happened by accident. The stupid are subsidised for reproducing; they are ill-equipped (cognitively, meta-cognitively and financially) to raise children; they experience household stress that manifests in an entire generation of children growing up welfare-dependent in single-parent households; and then those children reproduce with each other. Rinse and repeat.
Take a look (and be horrified) -
OECD (2013), OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First Results from the Survey Of Adults Skills (pp63-67 give an overview of what adults can do at each of the five assessed literacy levels; pp75-78 do the same for numeracy; pp 87-90 do likewise for problem-solving)
OECD, "The OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC)" , 2010 (boring methodological document)
Rammstedt et al (2013) PIAAC 2012: Overview of the Main Results (p5 gives the mapping from raw test scores to the 5 assessment levels; p9 gives the median score/PIAAC level for each OECD country; p7-8 give examples of test criteria for the different levels).
And now for the bold-ALLCAPS sting in the tail: ADULTS BELOW 'LEVEL III' GET A VOTE. That is fucking horrifying for anybody who thinks about how long-tailed and complex any political platform is.
Servia and Roumania? I don't believe that I could locate them either.
DIVERSITY - coming to a stupid(er) town like yours soon
More stupider. Duh!
At the time I went to grade school the USA was number one in the world in education and science. Today, the USA is ranked 22 out of a possible 23 nations in science and education.
Dumb people are easier to herd up and control and the dumbing down of Americans has been an ongoing program to subvert the American education system by the traitor criminals in charge.
Take note of the 5th grade level of many of the posts on ZH.
dont be radickyulus dud
Yes, but ask the question in that same 1912 test what "lol" means and guess what.... they all would have failed. Lol.
Yes, but ask the question in that same 1912 test what "lol" means and guess what.... they all would have failed. Lol.
Yes, but ask the question in that same 1912 test what "lol" means and guess what.... they all would have failed. Lol.
I want to rail about the negrah holding our scores down but man do I see lotta whitey trash nowadays. Something is afoot.