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Average IQ scores seem to have been falling and population ageing may be why

newscientist.com

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Re: Average IQ scores seem to have been falling and population ageing may be why

#101

Post by jrimbault »

dpark wrote: post #90
jrimbault wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But most people back then didn't go to university. And the OECD compares across 23 developed nations. Though, in my opinion , education quality has gone down. In France, 2010ish?, in my last year of high school (in one of the best parisian high school) there was a boy who couldn't read aloud a text without stumbling. I don't know if this would have happened in the past. But back then only 20k students reached that st…

> I don't know if this would have happened in the past. Let us assume the answer is no for the sake of argument. Does that necessarily mean the quality of education has dropped? Not necessarily. It could mean that 30 years ago this boy would have failed to graduate. This doesn't mean that the education was any better then, only that the requirements for graduation are lower now. The top and average students today mig…

All good points :)

Re: Average IQ scores seem to have been falling and population ageing may be why

#102

Post by coldtea »

0xFFC wrote: post #76
jchb wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me take a guess. Comparatively low immigration rate. Hardly accept any refugees (28 individuals accepted by Japan in 2016). Be able to support yourself or be (quite literally) kicked out. High barriers to citizenship.

Are you serious? Let me ask you how many of immigrants are grad students or prople with high tech jobs? Is it one of the stupidest thing to say drop in IQ is connected to immigrants! It is greatly disappointing to see this kind of nonsense in HN which is kind of home for many hackers and programmers. Hearing these kind of stupid ideas in C-Span? Who cares? But HN, that shows how low our societies has become.

>Let me ask you how many of immigrants are grad students or people with high tech jobs?

Depends on the country of entry and the country of origin.

The majority of latin America immigrants in the US, or African immigrants in France for example will be nothing like "grad students" and "high tech jobs".

>Is it one of the stupidest thing to say drop in IQ is connected to immigrants!

It's actually a pretty decent explanation. If different countries have different average IQs (which we know to be correct) and if the mass immigration is not of the "grad student" type (which we also know to be correct), then it's a good explanation, assuming there's no other factor that we neglected to examine. Remains to be seen if this is indeed the case or if there's another cause (or perhaps multiple causes).

>It is greatly disappointing to see this kind of nonsense in HN which is kind of home for many hackers and programmers. Hearing these kind of stupid ideas in C-Span? Who cares? But HN, that shows how low our societies has become.

You are ranting. This is not a reasoned argument against the parent's argument. This is what's anti-hacker and anti-science.

Re: Average IQ scores seem to have been falling and population ageing may be why

#103

Post by busemann »

Will_Parker wrote: post #97
quantdev wrote: post #91

Or maybe it's because, somewhat depressingly, IQ is highly hereditary, as research has shown for decades and new gene research is currently confirming, and people with lower IQs tend to have more children.

And connecting the two dots too loudly makes you into a monster.

Of course, there's almost zero chance that the genes that represent high intelligence are equally distributed between races and ethnic groups. The whole field of intelligence research is a political minefield these days, at least in the Western world.

In related news, France has lost 4 IQ points over the course of a decade:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289615...

Quote:

"Dysgenics and replacement migration are proposed as causes."

Re: Average IQ scores seem to have been falling and population ageing may be why

#104

Post by dpark »

0xFFC wrote: post #80
swsieber wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would make sense - immigrants usually aren't native speakers. Given that most IQ tests have portions that rely on linguistic ability... So it's not that their IQ is lower - it's that they test lower. I am curious as to the distribution of jobs amongst immigrants.

Have seen any scientific IQ test other than fakes ones on internet? The portions are well discrete. IQ test has nothing to do with linguistics ability (at least we don’t know it) and most of IQ test don’t require you to read or write anything.

> Have seen any scientific IQ test other than fakes ones on internet? ... IQ test has nothing to do with linguistics ability ...

The most widely used IQ test has explicit verbal testing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wechsler_Adult_Intelligence_...

Re: Average IQ scores seem to have been falling and population ageing may be why

#105

Post by Ygg2 »

danieltillett wrote: post #44
Ygg2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but your explanation conflicts with the article explanation.

Not at all as there are two effects going on. You become dumber as you get older (I unfortunately know this from personal experience), while the average intelligence of each generational cohort can also be changing through differential reproduction.

Yeah, but you becoming dumber as you get older won't affect scores, assuming each generation is tested at same point in their life. That's why I asked about their method.

Re: Average IQ scores seem to have been falling and population ageing may be why

#106

Post by soundwave106 »

0xFFC wrote: post #80
swsieber wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would make sense - immigrants usually aren't native speakers. Given that most IQ tests have portions that rely on linguistic ability... So it's not that their IQ is lower - it's that they test lower. I am curious as to the distribution of jobs amongst immigrants.

Have seen any scientific IQ test other than fakes ones on internet? The portions are well discrete. IQ test has nothing to do with linguistics ability (at least we don’t know it) and most of IQ test don’t require you to read or write anything.

People who have some form of autism spectrum would disagree: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-hidden-potent...

Re: Average IQ scores seem to have been falling and population ageing may be why

#107

Post by busemann »

0xFFC wrote: post #80
swsieber wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would make sense - immigrants usually aren't native speakers. Given that most IQ tests have portions that rely on linguistic ability... So it's not that their IQ is lower - it's that they test lower. I am curious as to the distribution of jobs amongst immigrants.

Have seen any scientific IQ test other than fakes ones on internet? The portions are well discrete. IQ test has nothing to do with linguistics ability (at least we don’t know it) and most of IQ test don’t require you to read or write anything.

I don't know why this is downvoted, it's completely correct.

Most IQ tests these days are specifically designed to be valid measurements of intelligence despite different cultural and language background of the person taking the test, similar to this one:

https://iq-research.info/en/start

Re: Average IQ scores seem to have been falling and population ageing may be why

#108

Post by Ygg2 »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #73
danieltillett wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a reason Idiocracy has been described as a documentary :)

...because the people describing it that way are ironically ignorant of world statistics? https://www.gapminder.org/

I'm very wary of statistics. As the saying goes, there is lies, dirty lies and then there is statistic.

A typical example is GDP is going in country X, which means X is doing better!!!

Except mean salary is going down, which is a typical for a rich get richer, poor get poorer scenario.

Re: Average IQ scores seem to have been falling and population ageing may be why

#109

Post by monort »

air7 wrote: post #10

I like to play a little game I call "HN matter anti-matter" where I notice contradicting articles posted on HN and imagine them colliding and erasing each other... In this case: Yes, We Get Wiser with Age (nautil.us) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15346635

Fluid intelligence is falling since teens, crystallized intelligence rises well into old age.

Re: Average IQ scores seem to have been falling and population ageing may be why

#110

Post by burkaman »

quantdev wrote: post #91

Or maybe it's because, somewhat depressingly, IQ is highly hereditary, as research has shown for decades and new gene research is currently confirming, and people with lower IQs tend to have more children.

Why would this effect suddenly present itself in 2004? Why hasn't it caused average IQ to decline for all of human history?

"A recurrent fear during the past century is that the mean IQ level of populations will decline because persons with lower IQ scores have above-average fertility. Most microlevel data demonstrate such fertility differentials, but population IQ levels have risen rather than fallen. In this article, a simple two-sex model shows that negative fertility differentials are consistent with falling, rising, or constant IQ distributions. Under a wide variety of conditions, a constant pattern of fertility differentials will produce an unchanging, equilibrium distribution of IQ scores in the population. What matters for IQ trends is how the IQ distribution in one generation relates to the equilibrium distribution implied by that generation's fertility differentials. Intuition fails in this important area because it does not account for the macro structure within which micro results must be interpreted."

- http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/230135

Also note that there is "a strong inverse correlation between early life intelligence and mortality".

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_epidemiology#Overall...

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