Is everyone getting a bit thicker?

Yes............but we still have some people smart enough to point it out which is a relief, right?

Since the Second World War, the IQ of young people was observed to be steadily rising. Dubbed the Flynn effect — named after the work of New Zealand intelligence researcher James Flynn — it described a phenomenon in which humans’ intelligence quotient was rising at a rate of about three IQ points per decade in the 20th century.

However, that has been shown to have topped out around 1975 with IQ scores now falling. “Recent years have seen a slowdown or reversal of this trend in several countries,” researchers wrote in a new paper, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/human-body/the-reverse-of-the-flynn-effect-science-suggests-we-might-be-getting-dumber/news-story/ce3475a0817e65bd6e7710cca8b55074

Researchers from the Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research in Norway studied the IQ scores of about 730,000 Norwegian men born between 1962 and 1991. They found that scores grew by nearly three percentage points every decade for people born between 1962 and 1975. But among those born after 1975, scores fell.

The cause of the IQ decline is due to environmental factors, and not genetics

http://time.com/5311672/iq-scores-decline-environment/


Here is the paper

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/06/05/1718793115

Peregrinus

We're not getting thicker. We're just getting less adept at taking IQ tests, which is not the same thing at all.

wexandproud

and to compound the problem , with the development of social media platforms there are more and more ways to show just how much thicker people have become

Fr_Dougal

Peregrinus

Peregrinus wrote: »

We're not getting thicker. We're just getting less adept at taking IQ tests, which is not the same thing at all.

Have to agree. Since they've fallen out of favour and people realise they're pointless, no one looks at them anymore or knows what types of questions come up.

begbysback

Based from the data sample of people I meet on a daily basis, I concur

Peregrinus

Deleted User wrote: »

Have to agree. Since they've fallen out of favour and people realise they're pointless, no one looks at them anymore or knows what types of questions come up.

Yup. In the 1950s and 60s they were all the go, and taken very seriously, and kids got quite a lot of exposure to IQ tests, and other similar tests, and had much practice in taking them. Also exposure to teaching methods derived from them.

But kids born from 1975 onwards are entering formal education from about 1980, and are being tested (in the context of army recruitment) from about 1993. They've had quite a different learning environment, which hasn't fostered the skills required to perform well in IQ tests to the same extent.

Basically, IQ tests are old-fashioned.

TheValeyard

Yeah everyone is getting dumbering butz me

Allinall

Will the sugar tax not sort it out?

jim salter

People are thick as fůck and getting thicker.

The inability to construct a sentence without using 'like' multiple times and 'super' to express fůck knows what.

Thank you X-factor, Live Island and all them dumbass shows that brain dead people are glued to.

https://youtu.be/BBvIweCIgwk

Mongfinder General

jim salter wrote: »

People are thick as fůck and getting thicker.

The inability to construct a sentence without using 'like' multiple times and 'super' to express fůck knows what.

Thank you X-factor, Live Island and all them dumbass shows that brain dead people are glued to.

https://youtu.be/BBvIweCIgwk

Add Friends to the list.

jim salter

jim salter wrote: »

People are thick as fůck and getting thicker.

The inability to construct a sentence without using 'like' multiple times and 'super' to express fůck knows what.

Thank you X-factor, Live Island and all them dumbass shows that brain dead people are glued to.

https://youtu.be/BBvIweCIgwk

Irony or what? ⬆️

topper75

jim salter wrote: »

Irony or what? ⬆️

Or is it a clever joke that flew over your head?
I'm paranoid as heck inside this thread.

El_Duderino 09

Peregrinus wrote: »

We're not getting thicker. We're just getting less adept at taking IQ tests, which is not the same thing at all.

Exactly this. IQ tests have been refined to more accurately test IQ.

They were actually a fairly blunt instrument when they were first created. Like anything else, they’re changing

Graces7

I remember them from the 11 plus/Scholarship exams in the UK to see which secondary school you were headed for.

I rather enjoyed them...They were organised and... safe.

endacl

Graces7 wrote: »

I remember them from the 11 plus/Scholarship exams in the UK to see which secondary school you were headed for.

I rather enjoyed them...They were organised and... safe.

The exams, or the schools?

RobertKK

I'm glad I am in my 40s

The research showed that IQ levels have been found to be falling in younger people.

Graces7

jim salter wrote: »

People are thick as fůck and getting thicker.

The inability to construct a sentence without using 'like' multiple times and 'super' to express fůck knows what.

Thank you X-factor, Live Island and all them dumbass shows that brain dead people are glued to.

https://youtu.be/BBvIweCIgwk

Your post would suggest the truth of this; if I could fathom it as English /Certainly written English skills have nose-dived.:rolleyes:

CalamariFritti

Id say half the population are thick anyway. And another 35% aren’t very bright. Just look at what most people do for entertainment. Reality tv and posting thick posts on Facebook etc.

Before social media we could live in blissful ignorance. But now we can see on a daily basis what everyone else is at. Scary stuff.
Puts a serious dampener on the idea of democracy and everyone has an equal vote. Half the people don t know what they’re voting about or what’s going on at all.
And yes I know. Who knows what’s really going on anyway? But I mean not having a clue whatsoever.

Boom_Bap

boobies uhuhuhuh

Hector Bellend

The vast majority of the human race has always been particularly stupid.

Nothing new there.

To quote Albert Einstein, “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.”

BobMc

thick not sure, ignorant, self centered, obnoxious YES

It would appear so..

Boom_Bap

My sensible thought out post of the day.


People are becoming too reliant on technology and are not exercising their brains, hence the drop in IQ.


Now for some related It's Always Sunny pics

endacl

Graces7 wrote: »

Your post would suggest the truth of this; if I could fathom it as English /Certainly written English skills have nose-dived.:rolleyes:

They certainly have!

dr.fuzzenstein

With right wing extremism IQs have definitely taken a sharp fall over the last 20 years.
Case in point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjuNuqIev8M

This man is a cabbage. Sadly it seems turning to te extreme right does that to a person.
Just look at Trump, Fox, Brexit, the AfD, the Austrian government and the right wing scene in Eastern Europe.
This has nothing to do with people not being able to take IQ tests.
This is the sharp decline of intelligence in the masses till there's nothing left but thick-browed, knuckle-dragging, drooling skinheads and their leaders who manage to look like a shaved ape stuck in a suit and even manage to utter a few sentences coherently.
I wish Idiocracy was true, the people in it are stupid, but harmless. Sadly people are becoming more hateful and fearful and they are becoming the majority. It was nice when humanity looked like it might turn to a more positive path in the 90's, but instead we are getting fear, hate, ignorance and bile and it looks like it's getting worse.

mariaalice

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

With right wing extremism IQs have definitely taken a sharp fall over the last 20 years.
Case in point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjuNuqIev8M

This man is a cabbage. Sadly it seems turning to te extreme right does that to a person.
Just look at Trump, Fox, Brexit, the AfD, the Austrian government and the right wing scene in Eastern Europe.
This has nothing to do with people not being able to take IQ tests.
This is the sharp decline of intelligence in the masses till there's nothing left but thick-browed, knuckle-dragging, drooling skinheads and their leaders who manage to look like a shaved ape stuck in a suit and even manage to utter a few sentences coherently.
I wish Idiocracy was true, the people in it are stupid, but harmless. Sadly people are becoming more hateful and fearful and they are becoming the majority. It was nice when humanity looked like it might turn to a more positive path in the 90's, but instead we are getting fear, hate, ignorance and bile and it looks like it's getting worse.

That's cheery!!

Wibbs

They found that scores grew by nearly three percentage points every decade for people born between 1962 and 1975.

But among those born after 1975, scores fell.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Peregrinus

Peregrinus wrote: »

We're not getting thicker. We're just getting less adept at taking IQ tests, which is not the same thing at all.

That's a handy cop-out for the thickos!

Although attention spans are gone to sh...

Wibbs

CalamariFritti wrote: »

Id say half the population are thick anyway. And another 35% aren’t very bright. Just look at what most people do for entertainment. Reality tv and posting thick posts on Facebook etc.

There can be a large dollop of snobbishness going on too. What people like tends to have a strong demographic influence. They could have the same smarts, but kids coming from generational wealth are more likely to be into opera and other "high brow" pursuits compared to kids from a sink estate. The latter are also less likely to be exposed to or encouraged into more education. Can change over time too. IE opera was very much a populist art form in the past. Shakespeare's stuff was aimed at a wide audience and populist with it.

People also have different priorities. Some prioritise more obviously "intellectual" stuff, while others don't. I have known a fair number of people who wouldn't be considered "too bright" by the general metrics, but who were more capable and more successful in their lives than others I've known with massive IQ's. I'd personally reckon that on average things like high mental and physical energy, determination and mental and emotional stability trump higher IQs.

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

With right wing extremism IQs have definitely taken a sharp fall over the last 20 years.
Case in point:

You tend to get idiots pooling at the extreme ends of anything. Simple answers are appalling to simpletons.

QV: Left wing, "progressive" moron, a while back.

sbsquarepants

Are people getting more stupiderer?

I think that's very inlikely!

PowerToWait

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

With right wing extremism IQs have definitely taken a sharp fall over the last 20 years.
Case in point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjuNuqIev8M

This man is a cabbage. Sadly it seems turning to te extreme right does that to a person.
Just look at Trump, Fox, Brexit, the AfD, the Austrian government and the right wing scene in Eastern Europe.
This has nothing to do with people not being able to take IQ tests.
This is the sharp decline of intelligence in the masses till there's nothing left but thick-browed, knuckle-dragging, drooling skinheads and their leaders who manage to look like a shaved ape stuck in a suit and even manage to utter a few sentences coherently.
I wish Idiocracy was true, the people in it are stupid, but harmless. Sadly people are becoming more hateful and fearful and they are becoming the majority. It was nice when humanity looked like it might turn to a more positive path in the 90's, but instead we are getting fear, hate, ignorance and bile and it looks like it's getting worse.

The guy in the clip is clearly not very articulate. He's probably not very intelligent. He's almost certainly from one of the lowest rungs on the social ladder as has been his family and peers for generations.

They're the guys who did the most menial and demeaning work, such as working 14 hours a day down coal mines, slaving in a knackery, die in mud filled trenches, sweat buckets in a steel factory.

He's almost certainly not innately hate filled / bigoted / sectarian. He is ignorant and being manipulated by the likes of Tommy Robinson.

There is nothing new in this. Has been happening basically forever, everywhere. The bible is full of similar things.

As to the Nineties somehow being some sort of oasis in the hell of man's inhumanity to man, get a grip.

You should look up the Balkan conflict, Srebrenica, Milosovic, First Gulf War, the fcuking Rwandan Genocide, Chechen civil war, Sierra Leone civil war, Somalia, Algeria, I mean the list is extensive and the consequences absolutely appalling.

PowerToWait

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Indisputably. Smartphones have had a very deleterious effect on declarative memory.

valoren

Thick by way of not realizing that using poor grammar when communicating makes you look like an idiot.

u ok hun?

rather than;

is everything ok?

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

jim salter

topper75 wrote: »

Or is it a clever joke that flew over your head?
I'm paranoid as heck inside this thread.

Quoted my own post there

jim salter

Graces7 wrote: »

Your post would suggest the truth of this; if I could fathom it as English /Certainly written English skills have nose-dived.:rolleyes:

Maybe you should read the post 2 posts down from this, where I quoted my own post. :rolleyes:

Sleepy

Peregrinus wrote: »

Yup. In the 1950s and 60s they were all the go, and taken very seriously, and kids got quite a lot of exposure to IQ tests, and other similar tests, and had much practice in taking them. Also exposure to teaching methods derived from them.

But kids born from 1975 onwards are entering formal education from about 1980, and are being tested (in the context of army recruitment) from about 1993. They've had quite a different learning environment, which hasn't fostered the skills required to perform well in IQ tests to the same extent.

Basically, IQ tests are old-fashioned.

Absolutely true. In the school my father attended during the 60's, they did IQ tests at least once a week: they were trained to do them exceptionally well because IQ tests were often a factor of recruitment into the civil service, the banks and other good jobs for life.

Consequently, the last time my father did an IQ test, he had a score in excess of 160 (the same level as a Stephen Hawking or an Albert Einstein). Now, to be fair to him, my Dad is an exceptionally intelligent person, but he'd be the first to admit those guys intellect would tower above his.

valoren

I'd liken IQ tests to a Rubik's Cube.

Give the cube to someone on the street and it's a mystery to solve the cube, you'd need to have a genius level intellect to solve it.

However, the intelligence part is looking to find out how it is solved, learning the algorithms, remembering them and applying it.
Thus something that was a mystery is now solved with relative ease.

It's the same with IQ tests. Once you realize the tricks, what to look for then, you can be a 'genius' and impress others in the same way someone able to solve the Cube impresses other people, the ability to solve it became something of a marker for someone 'intelligent'. The only intelligence displayed being the capacity to see a problem and resolve to solving it.

Roger_007

Whatever about people becoming thicker, they are definitely becoming less skilled at doing the myriad of jobs and tasks which people need to do in life.
I was just thinking about my grandparents who had many skills which subsequent generations have tended to 'leave to the specialists'.
My grandma made all her own clothes and also made curtains and bedclothes. She made all sorts of goodies and toys for us grandchildren. She was a fantastic knitter. She cooked everything from scratch.
My grandpa could turn his hand to carpentry, plumbing, electrical work or fixing anything that needed fixing. He maintained and serviced his car and any other machine that they owned.
My parents had no such skills and I don't either.

riffmongous

valoren wrote: »

I'd liken IQ tests to a Rubik's Cube.

Give the cube to someone on the street and it's a mystery to solve the cube, you'd need to have a genius level intellect to solve it.

However, the intelligence part is looking to find out how it is solved, learning the algorithms, remembering them and applying it.
Thus something that was a mystery is now solved with relative ease.

It's the same with IQ tests. Once you realize the tricks, what to look for then, you can be a 'genius' and impress others in the same way someone able to solve the Cube impresses other people, the ability to solve it became something of a marker for someone 'intelligent'. The only intelligence displayed being the capacity to see a problem and resolve to solving it.

Indeed, the odd time I've done one of those tests I've thought if I had seen the questions before or knew straight away what I was supposed to be doing I would do much better, instead of wasting a bit of time figuring it out for the first time. Which I actually thought was part of the point in doing them so rarely.. but then I found out that no, you can actually practice them.

Stone Deaf 4evr

PowerToWait wrote: »

The guy in the clip is clearly not very articulate. He's probably not very intelligent. He's almost certainly from one of the lowest rungs on the social ladder as has been his family and peers for generations.

They're the guys who did the most menial and demeaning work, such as working 14 hours a day down coal mines, slaving in a knackery, die in mud filled trenches, sweat buckets in a steel factory.

He's almost certainly not innately hate filled / bigoted / sectarian. He is ignorant and being manipulated by the likes of Tommy Robinson.

There is nothing new in this. Has been happening basically forever, everywhere. The bible is full of similar things.

As to the Nineties somehow being some sort of oasis in the hell of man's inhumanity to man, get a grip.

You should look up the Balkan conflict, Srebrenica, Milosovic, First Gulf War, the fcuking Rwandan Genocide, Chechen civil war, Sierra Leone civil war, Somalia, Algeria, I mean the list is extensive and the consequences absolutely appalling.

excellent post.

Irish Guitarist

Look at one of those 'reaction' videos on YouTube of some children being shown a tape or something. They can't even figure out how to put a tape in a tape recorder. It doesn't matter that they're just children or that no one uses tapes anymore, the point is no one over the age of about three should have so much difficulty putting a rectangular object in a rectangular hole.

Apart from that they have no curiosity about old technology. If someone had shown me a gramophone or something when I was that age I would have been fascinated by it.

What pisses me off is that people think this is somehow cute. It's far from cute that these kids own phones with more computing power than NASA had when they sent man to the moon but can't even figure out how an eject button works.

And then there's quizzes in which someone in their mid twenties can't answer a question and says "this was before my time". So they don't know anything about the time period before they were born then? This even happens when they're asked a question about music. "Elvis was before my time". These people seem to be unfamiliar with recorded music.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Lots of IQ test denialism on here.

Btw the online tests are not indicative of your true score. Proper test is one hour long in exam conditions.

joe40

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

Look at one of those 'reaction' videos on YouTube of some children being shown a tape or something. They can't even figure out how to put a tape in a tape recorder. It doesn't matter that they're just children or that no one uses tapes anymore, the point is no one over the age of about three should have so much difficulty putting a rectangular object in a rectangular hole.

Apart from that they have no curiosity about old technology. If someone had shown me a gramophone or something when I was that age I would have been fascinated by it.

What pisses me off is that people think this is somehow cute. It's far from cute that these kids own phones with more computing power than NASA had when they sent man to the moon but can't even figure out how an eject button works.

And then there's quizzes in which someone in their mid twenties can't answer a question and says "this was before my time". So they don't know anything about the time period before they were born then? This even happens when they're asked a question music. "Elvis was before my time". These people seem to be unfamiliar with recorded music.

At the same time a few years ago my wee boy probably aged about 8 at the time was playing minecraft. After a short period of time he intuitely worked out what to do and was explaining the different modes of play and how to get things, This was without any instruction. To me it looked very complicated.
Cultures and societies can change but human ability and genetics is fairly constant over thousands of years.
There is no point looking back to some kind of golden era when everything was better. All things considered, and taking into account all the negative aspects of modern living, I can't think of an era that I would rather be in right now. We're doing ok, compared to the past, when everything is taken into account

Dakota Dan

begbysback wrote: »

Based from the data sample of people I meet on a daily basis, I concur

It takes a fool to know a fool 😀😀😀

tigerboon

CalamariFritti wrote: »

Puts a serious dampener on the idea of democracy and everyone has an equal vote. Half the people don t know what they’re voting about or what’s going on at all.

But as long as it's the "progressive" choice and you're not a nazi (but still hate the Jews), isn't that the important thing

bnt

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Lots of IQ test denialism on here.

Btw the online tests are not indicative of your true score. Proper test is one hour long in exam conditions.

Yep. Some folks talk as if the people who design and run such tests are stupid, that they haven't thought about this kind of problem - that they're off in their own world, running these abstract tests that have no connection to the "real world". In the field of psychology, the idea that intelligence is a thing, and that IQ tests provide a reasonably-accurate relative indicator of it, is not controversial at all. Somehow, the results of IQ tests correlate strongly with other academic tests - the kind you learn for, such as the SAT and American College Tests in the USA. Quick example: here's a paper about the ACT and how it correlates with IQ and other tests. Then there's this in the NY Times about the SAT and IQ. I know some people in the USA disagree that the SAT, ACT, GRE or other academic tests are useful ... but they aren't going away, quite the opposite.

So yes, maybe you can learn for an IQ test, but the ability to learn effectively is part of what we call intelligence in the first place. It can be both learning on the spot - when seeing something for the first time (like a first IQ test) - and also the ability to absorb and use information over a long period.

In school we've all met students who are getting the same education as us, who don't have "socio-economic" disadvantages (being poor etc.) as a factor, yet still differ widely in how well they do. Some students manage to do well even when the education they get could be called "poor"; others never catch up, regardless of the high quality of the education they are getting.

So "denialism" is right - whether it's denial that intelligence can be tested, or that the results mean anything, or that intelligence is a thing at all. It's a controversial subject, one the gets a lot of academic scrutiny. There have been plenty of attempts to formally discredit IQ tests and intelligence in general, and yet the studies keep telling us that intellligence is real and can be tested.

Malayalam

A few years ago I got a notion to do a skite of those online IQ tests over a couple of days, having never done any IQ tests before, ergo no practise...and, since all of them reported that I'm a flipping uncommon genie ass, I'm affirming that they are remarkably and uncannily accurate.

:cool:

On the subject matter the biggest problem I see is the contemporary ignorance regarding history. It's like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind out there.

Sleepy

Roger_007 wrote: »

Whatever about people becoming thicker, they are definitely becoming less skilled at doing the myriad of jobs and tasks which people need to do in life.
I was just thinking about my grandparents who had many skills which subsequent generations have tended to 'leave to the specialists'.
My grandma made all her own clothes and also made curtains and bedclothes. She made all sorts of goodies and toys for us grandchildren. She was a fantastic knitter. She cooked everything from scratch.
My grandpa could turn his hand to carpentry, plumbing, electrical work or fixing anything that needed fixing. He maintained and serviced his car and any other machine that they owned.
My parents had no such skills and I don't either.

I'm seeing more and more people, myself included, starting to row back on this.

Maybe it's the sheer volume of education that's available to us on Youtube, forums and the internet in general or maybe it's just my demographic puts me in the midst of a lot of people who bought their first homes just before, during or just after the recession but I'm certainly not the only one in my group who tackles most DIY jobs myself rather than calling for a tradesman straight-away.
TBH, based on my memory of half the eejits in my year who went into trades, I'd trust my own instincts over their training.