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Why Worry? The Two Scariest Charts In The World
Submitted by Erico Matia Tavares via Sinclar & Co,
There are plenty of things to worry about these days. A cursory look through today’s (13 Sep 14) drudgereport.com sets the tone: the Pope says WWIII is underway; a senior Democrat accuses the Republicans of endangering civilization; drones are invading the privacy of citizens; militias are blocking traffic in the Mexican border; Feds run a US$589 billion budget deficit; the UK might fall apart; the Ebola epidemic is getting serious in Africa; a mystery virus spreads to NY and CT (and we could not resist adding this one: Hillary Clinton is doing yoga).
With all of this in our minds it is easy to forget, or at least put in proper context, the extraordinary progress that mankind has achieved over the centuries against remarkable odds. World population has steadily increased, proving Malthus wrong. Serious diseases like polio and smallpox, which affected even monarchs and presidents over the centuries, have been eradicated. We can crisscross the planet in less than 24 hours and put satellites in deep space. The baby boomers and their offspring are the most prosperous generations the world has ever seen.
This shows that with enough intelligence, political will, common sense and perseverance most challenges we face as a species can be overcome. This should provide a decent amount of hope that we can tackle whatever we are facing right now.
So why worry?
Well, what will happen if we start losing those qualities and values as a global society? Which is why we believe that the following graphs are the scariest in the world today:
WORLD IQ LEVEL OVER TIME
Source: MailOnline, University of Hartford.
INDEX OF MILITARY EXPENDITURES OVER TIME (1950 = 100)(a)
Source: SIPRI.
(a) Based on NATO expenditures (in 2011 constant US$), the longest data series publicly available.
The average world citizen is getting dumber while our means of doing harm are increasing. This trend is clearly not our friend.
Consider the following.
Countries around the world today spend over US$1.7 trillion on weaponry - more than the total global investment in energy supply. Beyond the manufacturers and suppliers downstream, this produces zero economic benefits (weapons become obsolete very quickly and do not generate any returns; on the contrary as, well, they blow stuff up) and the associated costs add to already bloated government debt levels. And that’s US$1.7 trillion less available each year to improve world education, food and fuel availability, the environment and shifting global demographics, all critical issues of the 21st century.
Also concerning is the fact that control over these weapons can be quickly lost, creating the prospect of blowbacks, never ending conflicts and major tragedies.
Prior to 1991, the Soviet Union had more than 27,000 nuclear warheads and plenty of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium to triple that number. While there have been no confirmed reports of missing or stolen former-Soviet nuclear weapons (astonishing given all the political and economic turmoil since then), there is ample evidence of a significant black market in nuclear materials. How long before someone in that rapidly expanding pool of idiots gets a hold of some is anybody’s guess.
Note: accidents can happen as well, adding to the unease of handling this type of firepower. For instance, in 1961, a B-52 carrying two nuclear bombs broke up in mid-air, dropping its nuclear payload very close to Goldsboro in North Carolina. Five of the six fuses designed to prevent a detonation failed in one of the bombs, with only the last one averting a nuclear explosion. That was an unbelievable close call.
And now turmoil is spreading across the Middle East yet again. With all the conflict going on, anyone showing up and volunteering to fight for one of the sides will be given free food and weapons, courtesy of the associated regional and international powers. Will those weapons stay there, concerning as that might already be for local populations, or will they be used elsewhere, even if the conflict is contained or resolved? As we all know fundamentalists – probably the most idiotic of the bunch – are ready to do anything.
Humanity cannot risk its future falling into the hands of increasingly lethal buffoons. The stakes are just too high now. Hopefully our leaders are paying attention, but this should concern us all. Let’s try to be smart about it – while the smart is still going.
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Where's my burrito coverings?
Kansas 8th grade exam from 1895
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per m?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per are, the distance around which is 640 rods?
I disagree that humans are getting dumber, it's quite the contrary.
Today, the average idiot has at least an eighth grade reading level. 150 years ago, most people couldnt read AT ALL!
The FSA, as you guys call them, know how to operate their complex machines called Obamaphones. 30 years ago, if you explained to them what a cellular telephone is, they would laugh you out of the room as "some type of Star Trek sh*t" and that technology couldnt possibly exist.
When you guys compare some final exam from the 1800s to the crap taught in LA public schools, you have to remember only the wealthy could afford education for their children in the 1800s. There's private schools today that teach as much rigor.
Before you think that humanity is getting dumber, you have to look at the big picture. Then again, I'm a time lord, and I've seen at all.
An inability to read does not make you stupid, or unproductive. That is a fallacy pushed by the education establishment much like everyone should go to college. As if a world full of women's studies or art history majors could even figure out how to maintain or feed itself.
Education for education's sake. Yeah right. Give me five people with work ethic and I could rule the world.
enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1mgrTGeDPM
"Lethal Buffoon". I have read his comments on Zerohedge!
Idiocracy opening for those who haven't seen it.
I thought it was just comedy, but I guess it's becoming prophetic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icmRCixQrx8
You can bet that the World-IQ Level decline juxtaposes nicely with the rising amount of hours people watch television. Mush in - mush out. What else can we expect?
we're all Deltas now
hugs,
aldous huxley and the fabians
Common Core is all about dumbing down America.
Big thanks to Bill Gates....who also has that population control through vaccines thingy.
An increasing - and increasingly dumber - population with increasing military spending. Seems like the problem's solution is already underway. One nice large war consuming large amounts of cannon fodder - because clearly 'other methods' are not working fast enough.
The problem wioth this approach is that too many very stupid 'leaders' manage to survive the culling of war (and too many smart ones are saccrificed). In some ways War provides a reverse Darwinism - with the fit, brave and such dying while the 4F's, cowards and such survive. Look at Europe after WWI.
I seriously doubt people are getting dumber. More likely is that IQ statistics are being skewed by immigration from countries that are yet to fully experience the Flynn effect (increasing IQs as a result of better food, sanitation, and health infrastructure). ANy such trend will reverse itself within a generation, assuming society doesn't collapse in the meantime.
Guns proved to be wonderful for America. They saved us from enemies both foreign and domestic. I just wish the other free nations of the world would start pulling their weight.
It's NOT IQ that matters so much you mooks!
It's EXPERIENCE !
It's KNOWING when the fucking bear is going to kick your ass and eat you.
And when you are going to kick the bears ass and eat it that matters!
Duhhhh!
The problem is fixable without war, just shut down all foreign aid. If other countries complain just tell them we'll be glad to sell them all the food that they wish to give away. Of course the first place that would implode would be the kleptocratic circle jerk and debating society on Turtle Bay.
Sure glad we have organised religion by which we can swing our moral compass otherwise we'd be in a mess far worse than WWIII and the mutually assured destruction of the human race. Must be about time to sack all those men in frocks and employ someone who may be successful in selling the message, whatever the hell it is. Maybe a message like "Be good god fearing christians, love your fellow man, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, don't kill, don't adulter, don't covet, don't steal and then, if you have been good you will be assured of dying a horrible death prophesided in Revelations". Isn't it about time the men in frocks went back to the drawing board and reowrked the message, it's a little fucked up. Hitler alledgedly kills six million people and he is evil, god is prophesised to kill 7 billion and he is considered benevolent. Ah, I suppose it's just a fringe cult so who says it needs to make sense.
JS Bach - That and poor viewing choices on the web. In a world of modern conveniences, people lose the ability to think conceptually. We think in pyramids and build societies that grow into them.
At the top of the pyramid of thought is concepts like freedom, justice, truth. In the middle is issues like gay marriage or gun rights and at the bottom of the pyramid is endless detail.
Societies form for mutual protection. At that time more of the population is thinking conceptually. Those at the top of the pyramid begin pushinh wedge issues down which the populous become mired in. Distraction is what makes it easier to loot the population until there very basics are threatened.
It is a global village now. So I don't think it is raw intelligence that has declined but focus on healthy concepts that can propel a society forward. Pain wakens them, excess in nature attracts predators that do understand concepts they just package bad ones that enrich themselves as political compromise.
I don't think Obozo posts on Zerohedge.
Socialism epidemy ... could be worse than Ebola ... no need to think, no need to want, just ask your governement ...
It s too bad we don't get stat before the world war, maybe people are more clever after war, and making too happy generation hyppie making retards (that they will create war situation) ... i think in france Mai68 generation had made a lot of retards .... i think it s just a cycle ... which the duration evolves with life expectancy
I wish Netflix would just fess up and move it from the comedy section to documentary.
.
Well, communication skills are fairly closely correlated to comprehension skills...
Food for thought
I'LL BEGIN with an interesting debate that took place some years ago between Carl Sagan, the well-known astrophysicist, and Ernst Mayr, the grand old man of American biology. They were debating the possibility of finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
And Sagan, speaking from the point of view of an astrophysicist, pointed out that there are innumerable planets just like ours. There is no reason they shouldn't have developed intelligent life.
Mayr, from the point of view of a biologist, argued that it's very unlikely that we'll find any. And his reason was, he said, we have exactly one example: Earth. So let's take a look at Earth. And what he basically argued is that intelligence is a kind of lethal mutation ... you're just not going to find intelligent life elsewhere, and you probably won't find it here for very long either because it's just a lethal mutation ...
He pointed out that if you take a look at biological success, which is essentially measured by how many of us are there, the organisms that do quite well are those that mutate very quickly, like bacteria, or those that are stuck in a fixed ecological niche, like beetles. They do fine. And they may survive the environmental crisis. But as you go up the scale of what we call intelligence, they are less and less successful. By the time you get to mammals, there are very few of them as compared with, say, insects.
If nothing significant is done about it, and pretty quickly, then he will have been correct: human intelligence is indeed a lethal mutation. Maybe some humans will survive, but it will be scattered and nothing like a decent existence, and we'll take a lot of the rest of the living world along with us. — Noam Chomsky
http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20100930.htm
Maybe this is true if you believe something was created from nothing and we are just an arbitrary arrangements of atoms.
As most know this is ludicrous, the discussion above is extravagant navel gazing by educated but foolish people.
Look around and explain just how all what you see is there by chance.
sschu
sschu,
You wrote: "most know this is ludicrous"
Well, by reading Zero Hedge comments, I was in the impression that most people are stupid…. And, accordingly to this article, getting even dumber.
I should restate, "some" know this is ludicrous. "Most" is probably wrong, sorry.
As can be seen by the exchange between Sagan etal, intelligence is not a factor. These guys are clearly very bright, just seriously misguided.
Are you a proponent of what they espouse?
sschu
I favor biology (real science), psychology (to understand), and philosophy (to explain).
Critical thinking is the only way to switch off the propaganda to indoctrinate.
Let me give you a few examples of propaganda: Rational Consumer. Pray. Free Market. 72 virgins. Worship.… and the list is long.
http://www.amazon.com/Character-Physical-Messenger-Lectures-1964/dp/0262560038
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3mhkYbznBk“#t=31m20s”
I understand.
"Real science" as provided by Sagan etal provides little rational explanation to the universe. Their thoughts, while sounding intelligent, are based upon irrationality and foolishness.
How exactly did your brain form out of nothing? What was the genetic path between the formation of "life" and the human form as we know today? Belief in these ideas takes real faith!
Religion is a form of propaganda yes. But Jesus seeks a saving relationship with you, not religious dogma!
Give it a try, you may just find the rationality you seek!
sschu
"But Jesus seeks a saving relationship with you"
IQ Roll Call !!!!
ante up!
128...2007....not tested since...
141 - 2008.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
IQ is a standardized test with an average of 100.
Here's the real data on average IQ scores over time:
1951 = 100
1952 = 100
1953 = 100
1954 = 100
1955 = 100
...
QED
135-147 depending on how I'm feeling when I take the test. The more caffeine in my system the better my concentration...
But if you need proof that having a high IQ does not necessarily make you smart. I took the ASVAB back in 1978. I scored in the 99th percentile. I still enlisted, but I was at that point in my life..."young, dumb, and full of ..."
Not sure the point, but if it is belief in Jesus and IQ, I offer the following smart guys who were Christians:
Apostle Paul - read his letters, maybe the smartest of the bunch
Luther
CS Lewis
Tolkien
Copernicus
Galileo
Kepler
Newton
Boyle
As the saying goes, some ideas are so absurd only an intellectual could believe them. :-)
FWIIW, sschu
"Critical thinking"
"Critical thinking"...or Critical Theory....
Do you know the difference...?
"possibility of finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe."
You are a bit late to the "party"...or one of "them"....
Before the great wise Jew, Chomsky, Plutarch, among many, spoke of time "before the moon"...not symbolically.
The Electric Universe was very different before "they" rode in on their ship "the moon" in order to "stabilize" Earth and the solar system....
Saturn (upon which all religion and ritual is based) is home for "them", but in another dimension we cannot "see"...
They created all forms of religious and political control, including the "recycling" of our souls (reincarnation) until they are able to "incarnate" using genetic modification...which the NWO is hard at work helping them to do....
...and you thought this was all "science fiction"...
They are counting on it...it gives them your "permission"....
Escrava - Mankind is inserting bits of intelligence into energy. How long do you think it will be before we insert human consciousness into energy? I posit that intelligent life like our evolved back to energy. Such beings would have no use for anything here on earth so to me movies like Independence Day will never happen. I also theorize they won't communicate with us until we have reached a similar point of evolving back to energy.
Lets say nuclear war happened tomorrow. You would still have half the population if not more survive and repopulate, but the lessons of pain (biggest evolutionary lessons learned by pain) would do things differently to avoid such massive pain occurring again. Some additional food for thought.
I don't think it s totally true, but you ve got one point :
Einstein: I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots.
fascinating
Thanks for sharing that Four chan. May I share a theory with you?
If there's a Prime Mover (the energy source that some call God) that drives this blue marble, It is probably not actually infinite. Maybe It only has a defined quantity of spiritual energy that It can allocate to the third rock from the sun.
If this is so, it follows that as the population grows, the individuals within it necessarily lose intelligence. Mind you, I have done exactly zero research to validate my theory, but this loss of intelligence appears true in my own instance.
When I was in 9th grade(abt. 1971), an "official" school administered IQ test rated me at 126.
Today, I can take an online test that ranks me at 118. Did I get dumber or has the life-force simply been spread thinner?
I know it ain't the same test I took in '71, but still.
you got older
IQ does not decline as a result of age. It may decline as a result of neurological damage caused by disease.
(What was the published sigma on that test?)
If I were in acetinker's shoes then I would read that as a early warning sign of the onset of Alzheimer's Dementia. I would seek Medical advice from a trained and licensed specialist....NOT ME or most anyone else whom posts.
That is a substantial drop from 90+ percentile to 70th percentile.
There are theraputic approaches to delay the onset of symptoms. I am truly sorry acetinker.
If any reading this are Medical Doctors please concur with my educated opinion. Thanks.
iq is genetic and not environmentally effected. a couple with high iqs
will produce high iq offspring, one of high and low will fall closer to the
mean, and a low and low will produce a low iq. having kids with low
iq persons/races produce a diminished capacity group of offspring.
this is also why throwing money at education in low iq environments
doesn't work and also elevated testosterone in blacks and mexicans
the two lowest groups creates a random level of violence only stupidity
can deliver. all sad but 100% true.
Not true. There is a regression towards the mean.
Einstien's child was no Einstien.
Likewise parents whom have low IQs can, and do, produce children with higher IQ's.
As for racial capacities? I hate to write this but there was Selective Breeding using Slave stock to produce the desirable traits used in the Agricultural Industries of the 18th and 19th Centuries. Once again there will be a progression to the mean as decades pass...if we survive that long.
funny coincidence that this discussion comes up today, of all days.
took the GRE (4+ damn hours!) this afternoon.
IQ is a genetic trait, not subject to mean regression, but easily diluted. choose your reproductive partners carefully.
LOL, Tom! If you were in my shoes you'd realize that people who live in Georgia don't wear shoes! At least that's what Knuks alleged when I revealed my proximate location. Maybe it was someone else, I can't recall, having alzheimers and all.
Agree that IQ should not decline with age, and that the test I took in '71 was quite different from the 2012 test.
However, your intellectual leap based on a few words shared with another user is EPIC!
You know what? Me and Knuks are OK now. You, I'm kinda worried about.
Thanks for your concern, though!
My IQ has not declined whatsoever, thank you. But if I ever sense a slip in intellectual ability I will be headed to the Doctor post haste.
It does not matter if the questions on a particular test were different in 1971 versus in 2012.
Since IQ is based upon the amount of people answering the questions correctly, in different age groups, and then comparing your responses to other's responses, then a measurement can be made.
IQ is equal to the quotient of the intellectual age and the chronological age and multiplied by 100.
If you had 25,000 50 year olds asked a question, and, on average, 15% of them answered correctly then those whom answered incorrectly would be considered average or below average.
Of course this is done over many different questions and the averages are computed.
The questions really do not matter too much.
It is the collective responses and a comparison of your responses to their responses that give the indication of your IQ.
Of course you did NOT answer the most important question which I had. WHAT WAS THE SIGMA VALUE ON THAT TEST?
The original IQ test stood for Intelligence Quotient. Mental Age divided by Chronological Age. Obviously, test results would go down with age. The test was subsequently recreated and rescored for a normal distribution, for any given age cohort, mean centered at 100 (because, based on the old test 1=100%), with a SD of 15.
Regardless of how you may do on the test, your absolute score does go down with increasing age.
The brain begins to shrink in the mid 40's. Sorry.
Although, I suppose, if the atrophy hits you later than your cohort, you might see a spike in your IQ. Enjoy it for the few years that it lasts.
Oh, and just for shyts and giggles, do you consider wearing bifocals a sign of early alzheimer's? Yeah, didn't think so.
Just between me and you- I can disagree with you, and still respect your opinion. Tho' I'm not at all sure we radically disagree.
More to the point, is it atrophy? I say no. It is entropy, at least in my case.
Our mutual friend Tom baffles me. I don't think either of us comprehends him- we keep talking past each other.
He, quite obviously thinks he's really smart.
I on the other hand realize that what I know amounts to squat.
Is that irony? I'm searchin' my pitiful alzheimers ravaged brain for the word, can you help?
The sigma value? I haven't the foggiest- on either test. Besides, you asked snr-moment that question, not me.
There's another thing I find puzzling about our behavior- we accuse others of perceived faults which are in fact, our own.
Certainly, I did duh! So, in your estimation the test has become more difficult, or are you saying that world-wise experience makes you dumber? I would argue the opposite.
Too many young people I meet today are hollow minded, shallow, insipid shitheads who can't think beyond their next IPhone upgrade or that next 'degree' that will surely bring them fame and fortune. They're functional idiots on the conveyor belt to perpetual serfdom.
What say you?
I already answered this above. You are graded against a cohort of your same age. Tall Tom could have a point, more likely you took a lousy free on-line sample test.
Either way, cognitive function decreases with age. Beats the alternative.
Thanks for elaborating. There are almost too many contributing factors to determine the cause. Lower IQ folks certainly are more prolific, but I still posit that this is merely a symptom of my original thesis... maybe.
I'm surprised no one else caught this, but the IQ is dropping, because the questions on the test actually have more rigor now, than in decades past.
The very first IQ test was developed by Robert Yerkes, used on WWI recruits to determine their intelligence. To determine IQ They asked pop culture questions such as who is Velvet Joe?
Whites from New York would always do better because they were exposed more to pop culture than poor blacks in the south.
I highly recommend War Against the Weak by Edwin Black.
The Eugenics movement was developed in the late 19th/ early 20th century to deal with idiots, imbeciles, and morons.
Yet most of the comments on this article, and the article itself implies that the masses 100 years ago were all geniuses and we've all degenerated into idiots, when the Eugenics Movement was formed to deal with the idiots of their day.
Well, in a day when 100% of you time and energy was spent on feeding oneself, the consequences of failure were a bit more serious than they are today. This is completely ignored by most.
and they only feed us bullshit
so that's why they call it the fed
Your analysis is bias as you seem to think that only the US matters in global IQ calculations...
@Keyser
The article was about IQ dropping, hence that's what the topic is about. The article's analysis is biased to IQ, and I'm commenting on it.
Criticize the author of this article, not a poster commenting on their article.
Ooo! Ooo! I know who Velvet Jones is!
Is that good for +1 on the IQ? (Or -1?)
No. What No.9 seems to forget is that it's only good for a point if NOONE else does.
"Idiocracy" meet "the Truman show"
NOONE is not a word. You fail
at what? spelling? Seriously???
Always begin a sentence with a capital letter. Yes, you fail language arts as well as IQ.
Perfect! Thanks for the demonstration. I can't type very well either.
i think capital letters are a dying breed in this new world of hand held typing. there are more chinese writing (typing) in english than americans, so it will be up to them what comes next for 'merican.
I was trying to pronounce NOONE. I came up with "New-Nay".
Peter Noone was the frontman in Herman's Hermits.
First chart, Idocracy level is achieved in about 3 more years. Many Idiocracy "scenes" are now just everyday, commonplace events in our society. Tough to watch a "B" movie come to life.
You didn't notice that it was a documentary?
An average IQ of 91.7 is hardly genius level. In the U.S. in 1980 an IQ of 140 put you in the top 1/2 of 1% of the population, and IQ of 130 was the cutoff of the top 2%. Genius is the 150 and above level.
World IQ is falling because the populations of Africa and Latin America re rising rapidly, while the populations of China, Japan, Russia, Western Europe and the White population of the U.S. are all declining.
Average IQ is one of the best predictors of economic power and wealth of a nation.
The problem with low IQ populations is that they require such a large percentage of the intelligent just to administer and "herd" the dummies, drawing the most intelligent into government service and away from entrepreneurship and innovation. And in plebiscitary democracies a low IQ hater (think Maduro) can litterally tear a nation apart setting warring mobs slaughtering one another.
Thus low IQ increases the probability of major die offs.
"drawing the most intelligent into government service and away from entrepreneurship"
Strange - I have not observed this in line for my license renewal...
Sounds like it will take care of itself then
Eventually it willl.
Hence we have our very own "PopProb", with Conspiracy Types Foaming at the Mouth about actual problematic situations that can cause Major Population Reductions, Die-Offs, etc. - not to mention Mass Extinctions (we're seeing now on some species).
Uncle Sam will probably spend another 8 Trillion Dollars on the Military (probably more due to QE and Currency Devaluation) to secure the Mideast Oil Flow for awhile.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons
OUR PROBLEM IS EXACERBATED BY THE FACT THAT OUR KLEPTO-OLIGARCHS' SAGES ARE GEARED TOWARDS MAKING PLANS FOR DOMINATION VIA USURY AND EXPLOITATION.
Nukes held by RUS, CHN, and IND are probably the only thing that are keeping the Cartels and their Policy-Pets from launching Invasion-For-Keeps Campaigns 'round the World.
"I'm surprised no one else caught this"
Good call, Doctor! The entire concept of "IQ" is entirely subjective, since it is supposed to be a reflection of "natural, incidental learning"...which is entirely based on one's "environment"...duh!
But you'll find no open minds, here...especially when it comes to "any" black man or woman, no matter what their accomplishments...being smarter than the MidWest Clunks here....nope, cain't be....
This is the "last bastion" of the shrinking white "majority" who can't see past their noses and never "look up" to see their real oppressor....
In "double-blind" study after study, blacks espouse "conservative, family-oriented, Capitalist views"...just like the whites who hate them....its so very ironic and sad....like the charts.
Who mentioned blacks?
If a sharp sound is made the brains response time is measured, it is found to correlate inversly with the IQ test.
Therefore we can conclude that the IQ test is not subjective.
The Binet Scale went approximately as follows:
Normal —– IQ 85-115
Deficient —- IQ 71-84
Moron —— IQ 51-70
Imbecile —- IQ 26-50
Idiot ——– IQ 0-25
http://essorant.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/idiots-morons-and-imbeciles/
The key word here is “Deficient.” And what does that mean? It means somebody says someone else is deficient in something. Maybe it’s math skills. Or social skills. Or visual skills. Or guessing. Everybody’s “deficient” in something.
And the bottom line is that the person doing the evaluation gets to say which areas you are deficient in. That’s the fault of the standard IQ test; it's manmade.
Really??? Have you ever read about the Stanford Binet IQ test?
In 1916, at Stanford University, the psychologist Lewis Terman released a revised examination which became known as the "Stanford–Binet test".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford%E2%80%93Binet_Intelligence_Scales
America did not enter into World War I until April, 1917. The Selective Service Act of 1917 was not enacted until May 18, 1917.
SO YOUR POST WAS FILLED WITH MISINFORMATION...What's new?
To add to this...
As for "Cultural Bias"? I suggest that EVERYONE read "The Bell Curve" by Murray and Herrnstein.
Actually they did quite a job of removing any "Cultural Bias" by restricting the test to LOGIC and MATH. They found that the correlations with the other standarized tests, with supposed "Cultural Bias", to be quite high...rather extremely high.
As for the results...well they are rather controversial with one particular race scoring, on average, ONE FULL STANDARD DEVIATION below that of Caucasians.
And if you are determined to label me as a racist???
Well I was a FOSTER CHILD. I am German-Irish. My Foster Mother was married to a SYRIAN. She was a JEW. Then she remarried, after her divorce, to a Japanese man.
My adoptive brother is HISPANIC. He is married to an African American lady whom I happen to adore.
I come from one of the most COSMOPOLITAN BACKGROUNDS that you can imagine. (I cannot ever write that life has not been interesting...)
So let's go hunting you lying, racist slimeball.
My address is
12223B Woodside Ave.
Lakeside, CA. USA
I do not give a damn about anonymity. I invite your ass out. I call you out for the piece of shit that you are.
Too chickenshit???
This is Fight Club and I am into Project Mayhem.
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Chabris1998a.html
IQ Since "The Bell Curve"
Christopher F. Chabris
Herrnstein, a professor of psychology at Harvard with an impeccable reputation for scientific integrity, died of cancer just a week before The Bell Curve arrived in bookstores. This in itself may have had something to do with the frenzy of the public response. Had Herrnstein lived to participate in the debate, critics might have found the book harder to malign than it became when Murray, whose training was not in psychology but in sociology, was left to promote and defend it by himself.
Not that Murray, the author of Losing Ground (1984) and a vocal critic of the liberal welfare state, failed to do so energetically. But his lack of credentials as a hard scientist, and his overabundant credentials as a scourge of liberalism, made him a tempting target for an attack that was itself motivated as much by political as by scientific differences, and that was almost entirely focused on a side-issue in the book. That side-issue was differences in intelligence not among individuals but among groups--and specifically between whites and blacks--the degree to which those differences might or might not be explained genetically. So heated, and so partisan, was the furor at its peak that even President Clinton was asked about the book at a press conference. (He had not read it, but disagreed with it nonetheless.)
But the overreaction to what was in essence a moderate and closely reasoned book would also not have surprised Herrnstein in the least. If anything, it was a replay--actually, a more civilized replay--of what had happened to him after he published his first article on intelligence in the Atlantic in 1971. That article, entitled "IQ," besides bringing to public attention several points raised by Arthur Jensen in a 1969 paper in the Harvard Educational Review, offered a more speculative version of the argument that would be fleshed out and documented with NLSY data in The Bell Curve 23 years later.
Read more at link
I wish we had a ROFL button.
How can a person rest when high frequency white lights screams in their ear all niight?
http://www.nelsonstar.com/news/206826071.html
realizing that more then most things are manipulated synthesized abstractions of truth, that interpertation on logic can be disguised in a endless illusion, a repeating cyclical cycle of deception.
the truth is harder to understand then lies and thats why there is a differnece between education and inteligence, and a fine line between paranoia and skeptisizm, even cynicism.
"How can a person rest when high frequency white lights screams in their ear"
Said the night wind to the little lamb
Do you see what I hear?
Way up in the sky little lamb
Do you feel what I taste?
A bar, a bar
With Dancers in the night
Their boobs as big as a kite
Their boobs, oh man, what a sight....
"the truth is harder to understand [than] lies"
Dk....see chart one....
Yes, there are differenctl kinds of literacy. The bushmen of the kalahari were astonsished that a person could not recognize their own foot print...
Ethnographers have shown that most indigenous peoples know as much about their environments as modern scientists, the knowledge is just of a different sort and is not classified in the same ways.
Example: knowing the name of every species of plant, animal, and material, when and where and how to find them, what they're good for, and how to use them.
IQ tests mainly measure abstract symbolic cognition of the sort you need to perform calculus, program software, construct truth tables. That is the component of IQ that has seen the vast majority of improvement since testing began. The other kind - basically rote learning, like geography - has seen almost no improvement, it probably has even declined slightly - but it counts for little in the calculation of IQ.
These red-herring click-bait articles target the low-information crowd. The real scariest charts are ones like resource depletion rates, RoI in science, net energy and EROEI, population size and growth.
Let the accomplishments of the bushmen and their footprint reading skills speak for themselves shall we? They never got past the stone age which is pretty much the same story for the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. At any rate, my dog can track a rabbit's scent for quite some distance, does that give him a high IQ?
There's a significant difference between footprint recognition and developing a system to provide potable water to a community of people, finding sustainable farming methods to prevent death from starvation and successfully treating disease and illness.
This does come in extremely handy to know when one crosses one's own tracks that you have just walked in a very large circle. Conditions outlined here: http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/walking-circles.htm
Dad took me deer hunting in winter when we were young, and I was the one that pointed out to him that the tracks we had just come across were our own...
Knowing how to read is not a good measure of critical thinking and innovation.
Lots of "well-read" morons running about fucking things up today.
Dunno how "well-read" they are, but perhaps they can read well enough...if they were well read, they should have read The Creature from Jekyll Island, et al..
I don't think that the people you speak of are morons at all because they know exactly what they are doing in order to achieve their goals. I do however think that you've convoluted intelligence with morality.
The "Atomists" were ancient Greek philosophers who conceptualized the existence of the atom 2,400 years ago.
I don't believe IQ is going down, only that there are more dumber people breeding and surviving.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atomism-ancient/
You guys need to "Get Smart" I will take care of 99.
If there are more stupid people in the World and if the stupid people are breeding faster than rabbits then the AVERAGE IQ DECLINES.
No worries. Ebola will take care of this.
Please stop using up atmosphere.
Thank you
Wrong ! Intelligence has nothing to do with education. An intelligent person could be uneducated because he/she lacks the means to get that education. But no amount of education would make a moron, smarter.
These tests are a perfect example because you can compare what was expected from an educated person to know & solve back then, and right now, at the SAME level of education (say highschool graduation)..
The doctor is wrong. Most people who were not living on the frontier in the 1800s got an education. It wasn't expensive like it is today. The families who had children took turns giving board and room to the teacher that taught their children. My grandfather learned calculus in the 9th grade at a very small school. There have been no advances in education. Children are taught at the lowest level so that 'no child is left behind.' Learn what you are talking about doctor before you write the prescription. The other thing is, the article is talking about IQ in the world not just the US.
Actually, pre-civil war slaves had better literacy than most people today.
I didn't believe the gradations along the IQ axis were actually representative of IQ.
If they are, and in fact average IQ is around 91, and half the people are dumber than that,...
No wonder I'm so fucking frustrated all the time.
I'm surrounded by monkeys.
No IDIOT BOXES in the 1800s. A third graph would look like the second for hours of idiot box viewing per person and would show a steady progression throughout the same years. What the viewers view is called programming, a steady diet of propaganda, mind manipulation, filler (combines channel surfing and in the meantime programming) and enticements to consume.
When you need to be told what to think because your mind is vacant, you're an idiot, which is a whole lot more people these days compared to the 1800s.
dp
I would fact check your statement on readers from 150 years ago---In the Colonies during the American Revolution the literacy rate was around 96%. Parents took the responsability for there childrens basic life skills back then. Unlike today where that is defered to Democrat Indoctrination Centers (DIC's) AKA Public Schools where we can focus on saving cuddly Polar Bears and Johnny has TWO mommies--isn't he the lucky one!
False. Patently false. For an anectdotal study of your hypothesis, read George Washington's farewell address. And while reading it, consider these were the words of a farmer, that any American farmer could read and comprehend. By today's standards, his writing comes across as obtuse. Or, as was opined in Idiocracy, "he talks like a fag." This is because of the simplification of the domesticated mind over the intervening decades, particularly in the back-half of the 20th Century. This simple-mindedness is not universal. However, as their ranks swell, increasingly those who haven't undergone the metamorphosis are regarded as ... well, obsuse fag-talkers.
But for a more complete study, I would direct you to Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote Democracy in America in the 19th Century. One of his unique discoveries from his travels in America was nearly universal literacy, not only among the city dwellers but among farmers and ranchers. Beyond that, they all had a deep understanding of the makeup of their government, the Constitution, and more importantly the philisophical underpinnings of the same.
As for the technology you tout, I hate to break it to you but the vast majority of it was developed by people long dead. It was the illiterate dimwits of old who developed mathematics, electrical theory, the vacuum tube, transistor, integrated circuit, magnetic storage, binary computing, etc etc.
The average LOLer mindlessly poking away at their iGadget today couldn't begin to explain how it works, nor cares. On the other hand, were you to present that tech to people in days gone by, they'd be fascinated by it and obsessed with its operation. The opposite of what you suggest. Although we can't go back and test either of our theories, how about this - when radio was relatively new technology, many children spent their free time building their own in their bedrooms. Just to see if they could.
I hate to sound down on today's generations (of which I am one) - but the contrast between today and people back then is stark, at least in terms of the aggregate. We have nice toys, to be sure - hell I use most of them. But I never engage in the temporal narcisism of thinking that we're superior because we're in the here-and-now, and have all of this wonderful technology to take selfies, play video games, and watch porn with. Technology that would not exist if all of the underlying science and technological stepping stones depended on the average sheeple today to have come up with it. And, ironically enough, technology that is being used to enslave us ... because so many have lost the ability to critically think.
<slow...strong...clapping>
Well said, good sir. Well said.
Wrong, wrong and wrong. In the late 19th century most (white) children attended school (not just the rich) and they were taught the 3Rs by rote (and the strap). That was in one roomed rural schools, Catholic schools and city schools. They could parse a sentence, do long calculations and write a job application letter in formal copperplate.
Today the majority don't know the difference between to, two and too; need a calculator to work out change from 20 and cannot even read cursive (let alone write it).
Oh, and today one in 3 Americans cannot find the US on a world map and over half do not know that Africa is not a country.
Yikes some of the comments here are really interesting... I guess firstly Intelligence is largely determined by genetics, but only ~60% or so. The numbers are rather dubious though they more so are intended to provide a scale for different traits and which ones are more so determined by nature vs nurture.
That said, an IQ test does attempt to measure intelligence but it is not by any means the only or the best measure of intelligence. Intelligence is an abstract concept completely independent of the IQ test. Psychologists over time have barely even been able to pin down a good working definition of intelligence and different scientists who have studied intelligence over time have come up with multiple tests to try to measure it. Different tests have included various domains including reading, writing and mathematics, but also things that would be less familiar to a modern audience like musical intelligence, creativity, and physical intelligence (which has to do with hand eye co-ordination, sports etc.). Like I said there are many different tests that have been used to measure intelligence looking at some of these domains and even more than the ones I listed, and certainly the latter 3 are not anything you would see on a standard IQ test.
Overall the IQ test is used commonly because it is easy to administer, it doesn't require any particular skills or judgement really, it is cost effective, and as such it was adopted by the US education system as a standardized test. The point I'm trying to get at is: IQ scores may decline over time or increase but these scores are just an attempt to measure an abstract concept, you can't actually conclude that people are getting dumber just because the scores are going down. Intelligence is a lot more than just an IQ score.
Yikes some of the comments here are really interesting... I guess firstly Intelligence is largely determined by genetics, but only ~60% or so. The numbers are rather dubious though they more so are intended to provide a scale for different traits and which ones are more so determined by nature vs nurture.
That said, an IQ test does attempt to measure intelligence but it is not by any means the only or the best measure of intelligence. Intelligence is an abstract concept completely independent of the IQ test. Psychologists over time have barely even been able to pin down a good working definition of intelligence and different scientists who have studied intelligence over time have come up with multiple tests to try to measure it. Different tests have included various domains including reading, writing and mathematics, but also things that would be less familiar to a modern audience like musical intelligence, creativity, and physical intelligence (which has to do with hand eye co-ordination, sports etc.). Like I said there are many different tests that have been used to measure intelligence looking at some of these domains and even more than the ones I listed, and certainly the latter 3 are not anything you would see on a standard IQ test.
Overall the IQ test is used commonly because it is easy to administer, it doesn't require any particular skills or judgement really, it is cost effective, and as such it was adopted by the US education system as a standardized test. The point I'm trying to get at is: IQ scores may decline over time or increase but these scores are just an attempt to measure an abstract concept, you can't actually conclude that people are getting dumber just because the scores are going down. Intelligence is a lot more than just an IQ score.
Having new technology does not make a person more intelligent. In many ways, it makes them less intelligent. 100 years ago the average American kid knew how to do many things that kids today do not: e.g. farming, making things like butter, soap, wine, or bread, etc. Most kids today know only how to push buttons on an I-phone.
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These are just subjects that can be learned/memorized. The real question is are peoples' reasoning/thinking abilities diminishing. No doubt we are, as a society getting lazy, hence the lower test scores. Whether we are losing actual thinking capacity is another question.
Serfs, sharecroppers, slaves, factory workers in the industrial revolution, soldiers, farmers, coal miners etc. lacked critical thinking skills too.
They just got up, worked 16 hours a day, and did what it took to survive at subsistence level.
A lot of people act like lacking critical thinking skills is a recent phenomenon, when in reality, critical thinking skills for the masses is a relatively recent phenomenon.
That makes sense, until I read a Shakespeare play, and think "this was mass entertainment, 400 years ago".
Heh....I suspect the average dude was watching helluva more cock/dog/human fights than some poofy shakespeare fluff....
If it bleeds....it leads.
Critical thinking skills for you no. 9 would be a phenomenon.
Wouldn't last long in a coal mine without critical thinking skills.
Assuming junker troll had a problem with question #7 (again)
hey I'm no stupid guy but they never taght me that shit. so is it our fault or the teachers / govt for dumbing us down. and to think I am 46 and thought compared to what they teach now I was educated but I am man enough to say No and that pisses me off. this new generation does not care at all
Getzeegold: Now get your shovel and dig him up and ask that 1895 Kansas 8th grader:
1. Name the registers on a Z80 and explain what they do and don't do.
2. Explain the major differences between a Z80 and a 6809.
3. What is the difference between a bit and a gigabyte.
4. What is the functional difference between a BJT and a FET? Give all related equations between both.
Oh, hang on. Scratch that 4th question. Wait 5 years and ask him that one when he's a 13th grader.
I think we can even up the score.
Hell, just ask him the difference between a CRT and a flatscreen (although that is almost self-explanatory). Or the resolution of a HD flatscreen.
Ask him to explain the difference between a negro and a nigga (and ask him why I spelt it "nigga" and not "nigger").
I'm sure plenty of people here could also come up with questions to stump an 1895 8th grader, or even 1895 Mensa candidates.
I got several pieces of paper what say I'm smart, but send me out fishing with an illiterate fisherman for a week and see who looks smarter at the end of the week. Hell, watch us bait our hooks and you should have that worked out within 30 seconds. (Hint: NOT ME!!!) But give us a whole week so the illiterate guy can really rub it in.
Just because I can name the registers and program in assembly code on the following architectures: SPARC, ARM, AMD/INTEL, and the powerpc does not make me smart. It means I practiced (a lot) and perfected an art. BTW, I still have a strong desire to strangle most of the people that designed the original assembly language syntaxes. SPARC syntax does read the closest to English (i.e. left to right).
It also comes in handy when paying the mortgage off quicker than my fellow human being...and buying nicer toys.
It may of course appear to you that I am indeed pulling monkeys out my arse when I am doing verification or product or test engineering, but stick me into another profession and I would indeed appear to be dumber than a bag of hammers. Professions tend to develop their own unique language (clue: Black's Law dictionary) and without understanding the lingo, one becomes easily lost.
However, in closing, your whole hypothesis falls apart instantly when one considers people actually voted (sic) for Obama twice.
1. Hey, the other guy hit us with a bit of ancient vocabulary so I showed him that I too could play that game.
2. Yeah, people "voted" for Hitler too. Idiocy goes in and out of fashion just like everything else.
Chicago 8th grade exam from 2014
3. How many bullets do you put in your gun? A: As many as I got
4. True or False: Welfare punishes the MAN. A: Da Man!
5. True or False: In Chicago, Bribes are considered legal tender. A: True
6. Spell the word Cat. A: Kat
7. One gang has 40 Uzi's the other gang has 70 Uzi's. Where can Gang number 1 get more Uzi's? A: Chicago Police Chief Garry McCarthy
8. Two men are 20 miles apart. The first man is headed North carrying a TV at 5 MPH. A Homie is going south at 10 MPH. How long before the homie shoots and kils the first man and steals the TV that he just stole? A: He doesnt. The man was shot and killed and the TV was stolen long before he got there by someone else.
9. Prostitue 1, can give 3 Blow Jobs an hour. Prostitute 2 can give 12 Blow Jobs an hour. What is the name of the 2nd Prostitute? A. Rahm Emanuel
"the bell curve" said it all 20 years ago. a recommended read.
The liberals hounded Shockley until the day he died and beyond when he brought up the subject.
and yet he was documented correct, i read thqt thing 20+years ago and still think about what he had to say after all this time. i live in detroit as an observer so that has a lot to do with it.
There is nothing wrong with one racial group being, at the extremes, bigger, taller, stronger, etc. than other racial groups. Which one dominates the NFL and NBA? But it is quite something else to even hint that one racial group might have a slightly better or worse IQ in the aggregate. Somehow I think culture has a lot to do with it, as I watched the pressure exerted by Jewish parents on their children while growing up in the 50s and the similar pressures exerted by Chinese and Japanese colleagues in more recent decades. We can measure group performance far better than we can determine whether it's genetic or something else.
It's a pity that scientific inquiry is so bound up by PC these days, but that's just the progressive way: Everyone is free to speak, as long as it's exactly what they want to hear. Anything else is heresy. Look, if you dare, at Pelosi and her recent claim that Republicans taking control of the Senate will cause the end of civilization. http://news.yahoo.com/nancy-pelosi-civilization-jeopardy-gop-takes-senat...
Clearly the IQ of progressives is falling, and dragging the rest of us down with them.
so maybe pandering only works with low iq voters, dooming the intellectual left to dilution into muttdom.
Seems to me that if republicans taking the senate will end the world as we know it , good. I'm voting republican, hehehe. Can I sue pelosi if they don't?
What a difference a year makes
My same post received many down votes last year
Yes. We are currently reaping the harvest of the happy-go-lucky fun of the 60's and 70's. Welcome to the new utopia.
And does anyone take notice that this is yet another theme to justify an elite class ruling over the dumb animals?
We be far to stupid to know what is best for us, yes master, whatever you say master. You must be willing to be a slave and depriving one of education and self empowerment, pretty much makes most willing.
A little bit of SOMA, or maybe MJ, makes it all much more palatable.
Actually MJ use pisses one off at all big government theft and infringement of liberties. Seems to me the MJ movements right now are the only animated political movements of our day. Everything else has already been predetermined and everyone is just going threw the motions.
You just hit the nail on the head. If you have power, you have a justification.
Yes we Elites are lying, thieving bastards, but thats just how the world works.
Shut up and obey, you dumb fucks.
It pays to keep everything in perspective.
Facinghistory.org wrote regarding Alfred Binet (1857-1911):
“Binet believed that the Binet-Simon scale was simply a measure of a child's ability to perform specific tasks at a particular moment in the student's life. He felt that intelligence was too complex to be defined by a single number, and he warned against efforts to attach greater meaning to the results. Despite those warnings, in the United States Henry Goddard used the tests to identify levels of ‘feeblemindedness,’ and was convinced that these scores were reliable indicators of intelligence.
“In the spring of 1913, Goddard decided to prove the effectiveness of the test by sending two field workers to Ellis Island in New York harbor, the entry point for most immigrants. The two workers were told to "pass by the obviously normal’ immigrant and choose individuals from the great mass of ‘average immigrants" for testing. They selected 35 Jews, 22 Hungarians, 50 Italians, and 45 Russians. Based on the results of those tests, Goddard claimed that 80 percent of the Hungarians, 79 percent of the Italians, 87 percent of the Russians, and 83 percent of the Jews were "feebleminded."2,
http://www2.facinghistory.org/Campus/rm.nsf/PrintView/9DEDE045369DD5F18525707B0075F9D7?OpenDocument
As for truth about IQs or education, it’s impossible in today’s political correct climate.
Case in Point: Jason Richwine asserted in his 2009 Harvard Ph.D. thesis, “IQ and Immigration Policy,” that the average IQ of U.S. immigrants “is substantially lower than that of the white native population.”
In 2013 he co-authored a study of immigration for the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, contending that granting amnesty to illegal immigrants could cost the U.S. more than $5 trillion. When the Washington Post deliberately revealed Richwine’s thesis findings, Heritage quickly distanced itself from Richwine, stating that the claims of his Harvard thesis “in no way reflect the positions of The Heritage Foundation.” Richwine was forced to resign from the foundation.
And who can forget The Bell Curve “controversy” when Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray documented their researcg findings, some goint so far to suggest that research on race and intelligence should be banned.
You mean we're at 89 right now? That actually sounds about right, given most of the people I've interacted with the last few years. Pretty sure we've already passed the event horizon.
Plus, I think that graph was made by the same ones who do the whole Chicken Little global warming hand-waving thing. Just turn the graph upside down.
moron is 80.
today, a lot of people are zoned out on pharma, electromagnetism, mystery foods, and chemicals in the drinking water, etc. ymmv
What is happening is that, to the extent that IQ is related to genetics, we humans are devolving. Or maybe evolving to the next lower level? I've read that girls are having babies at earlier and earlier ages too. It's either all the chemical garbage humanity has introduced into the environment, or all the global warming that humanity has caused, or maybe it's simply that kids no longer go outside to play together. But at least eye-thumb coordination is at an all time high.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UadPqGscfI
That first chart doesn't concern me nearly as much as the second; never confuse intelligence with doing the right thing.
I would submit that most members of Congress, nearly every member of the judiciary, and even Obozo himself have higher than average IQ's.
That's never stopped them from screwing up the country.
Give me a slow, but honest man over an evil genius any day...
I think this is a terrible article.
First, I don't think a chart that forecast 90 years in to the future is worth much. I don't even know what's going to happen tomorrow, let alone in almost a 100 years from now.
Second, the two charts are different lengths of time.
Third, Emotional Intelligence is more important that IQ making the article and the analysis useless.
Yeah. I started out worried at the beginning, then was not worried by the end, but now that I re-evaluate the general IQ of the author I think he might have a point. Now worried for a second time.
Emotional Intelligence... Huh? No. Nothing's wrong. I feel fine. So? I break shit all the time. It doesn't mean I'm angry.
It's known as "EQ" emotional quotient - without it your high IQ won't get you far in life, because you are clueless as to how to "win friends and influence people." I know someone with 2 PhDs, who has asperger's ... and is always " second guessing " the actions of others, because for this person those actions never make sense. Terrible disability.
>and is always " second guessing " the actions of others, because for this person those actions never make sense.
Disability? Maybe he is simply correct in his assessment and it scares him to death.
What this article failed to include was a chart showing the decline of ethical standards. That could prove more dangerous than a decline in IQ.
Unless you define killing innocent brown people in far off lands as ethical behaviour. In which case,we seem to be in one big sick bull market.