IQ Scores Have Been Dropping For Decades And The Reason Is NOT Genetic

[managing]

Intelligence and metabolism

The devices used to measure reaction time in drivers' education courses also give a good indication of a person's intelligence

I don't care if it was RP that said it, equating reaction time to metabolism is grossly reductionistic. To use that intermediary to then argue that metabolism equals intelligence is doubly reductionistic. A relationship for sure, but you can't give up reason in the name of parsimony.

 

[Iceman2016]

This may sound like sacrilege, but here goes anyway... Could it be that intelligence as we envision it in our current world is overrated?

Less intelligent people often seem happier or perhaps more at peace (accepting?) in their lives. I believe that it's been documented that intelligent people suffer more from depression, anxiety, and other mental health related issues.

I see a lot of unhappy intelligent people with the level of unhappiness seeming to increase the more intelligent the person is. I see a lot of very happy or at peace people who work in manual labour and various other non "academic" types of work.

Just sharing some of my personal observations.

 

[Andman]

This may sound like sacrilege, but here goes anyway... Could it be that intelligence as we envision it in our current world is overrated?

Less intelligent people often seem happier or perhaps more at peace (accepting?) in their lives. I believe that it's been documented that intelligent people suffer more from depression, anxiety, and other mental health related issues.

I see a lot of unhappy intelligent people with the level of unhappiness seeming to increase the more intelligent the person is. I see a lot of very happy or at peace people who work in manual labour and various other non "academic" types of work.

Just sharing some of my personal observations.

this has been my experience as well

 

[x-ray peat]

This may sound like sacrilege, but here goes anyway... Could it be that intelligence as we envision it in our current world is overrated?

Less intelligent people often seem happier or perhaps more at peace (accepting?) in their lives. I believe that it's been documented that intelligent people suffer more from depression, anxiety, and other mental health related issues.

I see a lot of unhappy intelligent people with the level of unhappiness seeming to increase the more intelligent the person is. I see a lot of very happy or at peace people who work in manual labour and various other non "academic" types of work.

Just sharing some of my personal observations.

this has been my experience as well

Freedom has it's price. Ive seen this sentiment heavily portrayed in the media and to me its smacks of propaganda. This type of thinking leads to an acceptance of a post Democratic neo-feudal world where your betters will make all the tough decisions for you. It is one of the main themes of Brave New World. Of course the upside is that you will come to enjoy your servitude.

Predictive Programming hidden in plain sight.

 

[x-ray peat]

The truth is actually the opposite. IQ is positively correlated with happiness.
The relationship between happiness and intelligent quotient: the contribution of socio-economic and clinical factors. - PubMed - NCBI
CONCLUSIONS:
Those with lower IQ are less happy than those with higher IQ. Interventions that target modifiable variables such as income (e.g. through enhancing education and employment opportunities) and neurotic symptoms (e.g. through better detection of mental health problems) may improve levels of happiness in the lower IQ groups.

 

[Andman]

The truth is actually the opposite. IQ is positively correlated with happiness.
The relationship between happiness and intelligent quotient: the contribution of socio-economic and clinical factors. - PubMed - NCBI
CONCLUSIONS:
Those with lower IQ are less happy than those with higher IQ. Interventions that target modifiable variables such as income (e.g. through enhancing education and employment opportunities) and neurotic symptoms (e.g. through better detection of mental health problems) may improve levels of happiness in the lower IQ groups.

a scene from a superhero-movie and a study praising education, mental health detection (=subsequent therapy and/or ssris?) not convinced tbh ;(

 

[x-ray peat]

a scene from a superhero-movie and a study praising education, mental health detection (=subsequent therapy and/or ssris?) not convinced tbh ;(

I'm not here to convince you one way or the other. However the science is pretty clear that Intelligence and happiness are positively correlated. A lot of people share your erroneous belief and I am just proposing a reason for that.
Here is Lisa Simpson agreeing with you.

You may wish to review the quotes on the big lie posted above. The negative correlation only begins to show up with people in the genius range.

 

[Andman]

Intelligent People More Likely To Suffer From Mental Illness

maybe lisa simpson would like to have a look

 

[x-ray peat]

Intelligent People More Likely To Suffer From Mental Illness

maybe lisa simpson would like to have a look

Those studies apply to genius level intelligence and were done on members of Mensa. That is very different than Iceman's statement that more intelligent people are less happy and less intelligent people are more happy. Only about 1/4 of 1% of people are considered to be geniuses so I wouldnt say that it's conclusions are very applicable to most people.

 

[mt_dreams]

so we started with intelligence declining, then moved on to the different religions possibly being the culprit for the low scores. we've now moved onto intelligence makes you less happy, so if happiness is desired we should try and be less intelligent.... nice work guys.

there's been a couple of cases where people were missing 99% of their brain, and they lived completely normal functioning lives. intelligence is more than just memorizing & comprehension. monkey see monkey do is done by even the most simplistic of organisms. I'll take the mavericks any day of the week, even if part of their brain function is messed up.

 

[Waynish]

The reason IQ has decreased has lots of causality in the physical. Because the mainstream uses dna as the primary and sometimes sole physical indicator, they will confuse causality once again.

 

[haidut]

I think you're right, but I don't think that the issues of mass immigration have much to do with IQ. Cultural assimilation is just impossible when large numbers of immigrants are forced on the native population.
Funny that @haidut mentions The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The author of those books is obviously a propagandist with some pretty extreme gender politics and a clear agenda. Most Swedes are actually scared to death to criticise the new wave of immigrants for fear of social ostracization or even legal consequences.
The burden is not on the native population to assimilate mass numbers of people from undeveloped countries who they never asked to come there.

I brought up the movie simply as a reflection of the local culture. I have friends in Scandinavia and also follow their local politics. The anti-immigrant parties in all 3 countries gained a lot of seats over the last 15 years. Same in Germany, Italy, Hungary, Austria, etc. Personally, I am not pro-immigration. Just noting the rather obvious increase in anti-immigration sentiments in Europe and USA. Maybe it's a good thing they increase, maybe not. But they are increasing.

 

[haidut]

This is a terribly conceived argument though.

Reaction times clearly are much more related to the nature of one's interaction with the world and not intelligence. Its easy to see how thought and reflection have become the preferred mode vs reaction. To equate response time to intelligence is laughable.

Reaction times are considered reliable predictor of intelligence. Intelligence, like reaction times, can vary quite a bit on a day to day basis and even seemingly simple events like poor sleep the night before or slight hypoglycemia can affect IQ quite a bit. Most of intelligence is fluid, there is no good evidence for static intelligence. I am not a believer in innate (genetic) intelligence, but epigenetic changes in metabolic robustness (or weakness) can be passed on to subsequent generations and that's what mainstream science interprets as the genetic component of IQ.
Mental chronometry - Wikipedia
Mental chronometry - Wikipedia

 

[Ideonaut]

I highly doubt that. I will look into the study tomorrow.

There are so many dysgenic policies and technologies introduced in the last 70 years, that I believe they are the main reasons for the decline in intelligence.

Second to that is probably the mass immigration of people with a lower average intelligence, as others have already suggested.

Third are environmental factors (decline in food quality, pollution, TV, education ...).

From a common sense perspective this assessment rings true to me. Point one: The powers that be, in their quest to maintain and extend their overlordship, want and have achieved dumbed down, passive, non-thinking and therefore non-threatening subject populations through fluoride in water, poisons in food, toxic vaccinations, toxic "education," propaganda that suppresses intelligence, etc. Point two: the opinion that heredity does not play a major role in intelligence is out of touch with reality. If Han Chinese were the virtual sole genetic group in subsaharan Africa, as they are in China, subsaharan Africa would be threatening to take over the world economically instead of being the basket case it presently is. Point three: environment, is no doubt a factor, but I don't see that the cited study shows that it is the main one.

 

[managing]

Reaction times are considered reliable predictor of intelligence. Intelligence, like reaction times, can vary quite a bit on a day to day basis and even seemingly simple events like poor sleep the night before or slight hypoglycemia can affect IQ quite a bit. Most of intelligence is fluid, there is no good evidence for static intelligence. I am not a believer in innate (genetic) intelligence, but epigenetic changes in metabolic robustness (or weakness) can be passed on to subsequent generations and that's what mainstream science interprets as the genetic component of IQ.
Mental chronometry - Wikipedia
Mental chronometry - Wikipedia

I am aware of the support for it, I just find it terribly reductionistic. The support for it that does exist is on the evolutionary scale (and that I agree with). IOW, higher metabolic species developed intelligence more/faster. But its ability to explain differences in intelligence among individuals of the same species is non-existent.

There are mental tasks best accomplished fast and those best accomplished slowly. You can also reason from particulars like, for example, Stephen Hawking apparently had a rocking metabolism, and Mike Tyson is a genius.

I do agree that the notion of (intraspecial) intelligence's genetic origins are incomplete at best. However, it also tracks quite nicely with family lineage, yet with notable outliers. But mother's metabolism just doesn't seem to explain it at all. About the only support I've seen for that is very limited, and relates only to cortical glucose utilization and not metabolism broadly writ.
Evaluation of a “mental effort” hypothesis for correlations between cortical metabolism and intelligence - ScienceDirect

 

[Iceman2016]

we've now moved onto intelligence makes you less happy, so if happiness is desired we should try and be less intelligent.... nice work guys.

Up until now, I've only conveyed a personally observed correlation... not causation. Furthermore, I don't think anyone posting here is saying they would explicitly choose happiness over being less intelligent either if that were the case.

 

[Iceman2016]

The reason IQ has decreased has lots of causality in the physical. Because the mainstream uses dna as the primary and sometimes sole physical indicator, they will confuse causality once again.

I agree with this. I think the most direct explanation for a reduction in IQ (or other measures of intelligence) is a broad deterioration/reduction in general health parameters.

 

[mt_dreams]

Up until now, I've only conveyed a personally observed correlation... not causation. Furthermore, I don't think anyone posting here is saying they would explicitly choose happiness over being less intelligent either if that were the case.

i didn't post that in reference to you or anybody else. that's the reason why i didn't quote anybody. i was merely humorously seeing the evolution of this thread, and the way it was bouncing around from one dogma to another. i see lots of humor in the ignorance is bliss ideology. the film ideocracy mentioned elsewhere is a good ex of how i view it.

 

[DaveFoster]

The study is based on IQ in Norway. Food for thought;

Seems importing populations with poor educational standards/attainment isn't explored by the article, but is something that is undoubtedly a factor.

IQ doesn't increase with accumulated knowledge. As the "intelligence quotient," IQ measures reasoning ability; for example, a person with greater intelligence (say 100 IQ), and a person with lower intelligence (say 80 IQ) have vastly different reasoning capabilities. IQ represents an exponential, and not a linear function, which entails that a person with a 100 IQ has a far superior reasoning ability compared to that of an individual with an 80 IQ.

If a 100 IQ person and 80 IQ person both attend the same lecture, they will have varying abilities to grasp additional complex concepts and integrate them into existing models.

Two quotes from evil collectivist/statist philosophies spring to mind;
"The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one." - Adolf Hitler
&
"A lie told often enough becomes the truth." - Vladimir Lenin

Both of those misattributed quotes birthed from post-war propaganda.

There's no evidence that Lenin ever said the "Big Lie," and here's the full "Big Lie" quote from Mein Kampf, where Hitler refers to Jews and Marxists as the "expert liars." He argues that Jews and Marxists framed (lied to incriminate) General Ludendorff, commander of the German Army in the Weimar Republic during WWI. Hitler argues that Ludendorff embodied the most vehement support for the war, and in undermining the latter's authority, "the Jews and the Marxists" discredited German nationalism, depressed German morale and weakened German solidarity, which led to the loss of the war, imposition of the Treaty of Versailles and a period of economic hardship following the First World War.

"But it remained for the Jews, with their unqualified capacity for falsehood, and their fighting comrades, the Marxists, to impute responsibility for the downfall precisely to the man who alone had shown a superhuman will and energy in his effort to prevent the catastrophe which he had foreseen and to save the nation from that hour of complete overthrow and shame. By placing responsibility for the loss of the world war on the shoulders of Ludendorff they took away the weapon of moral right from the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the Fatherland to Justice.

All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

It would never come into their heads [those of the broad masses] to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying."

— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X[1]
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