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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

#131

Post by burkaman »

lsd5you wrote: post #128
burkaman wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 articl…

The most likely explanation is the prior to perhaps 200 years ago the differentials were different. (Also having lots of children may not result in a lot of descendents, so is an insufficient measure). This would be due to the fact that in an era before universal rights and universal economic security there were reproductive consequences to intelligence (or lack of). So there is no evolutionary pressure. Evolution is…

> there is no evolutionary pressure

Please take another look at my second link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_epidemiology#Overall...

If there's some analysis of evolutionary pressure over time I'd be interested to see it, although I'm not sure it can really be quantified like that.

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

#132

Post by lsd5you »

The premise of this article is flawed (to put it kindly). Surely no rigorous statistical study would fail to take age into account. So why is it even an issue (beyond a measuring technicality) being raised in a 'science' journal? I think it is clear that as a society we don't want science to be undertaken in this area and so consequently we end up with obscurantism (willingly or unwillingly). Or maybe we have already become to stupid to engage in science?

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

#133

Post by Lyle-Cantor »

lsd5you wrote: post #128
burkaman wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 articl…

The most likely explanation is the prior to perhaps 200 years ago the differentials were different. (Also having lots of children may not result in a lot of descendents, so is an insufficient measure). This would be due to the fact that in an era before universal rights and universal economic security there were reproductive consequences to intelligence (or lack of). So there is no evolutionary pressure. Evolution is…

People confuse the normative and the descriptive. Everything you say is basicly correct. But it's horrible so it can't possibly be true. But why should evolution not be horrible?

Evolution does not care about our ideology. If we don't account for it and nerf its edge, though forms of selection that don't cause suffering to conscious creatures, like embryo selection or genetic engineering, then we will have to wait for Malthus to provide sufficient selection pressure to ensue our survival or extinction. This fingers-in-ears approach to biological reality would be concerning if countries like Korea and China weren't poised to exploit embryo selection and genetic modification for increased health and IQ, thus likely forcing more reactionary countries like us in the west to adopt them, too.

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

#134

Post by yasp »

klenwell wrote: post #130
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.

Actually, reading James Flynn's book What Is Intelligence?, I got the impression that environment and culture plays a huge factor in IQ. Genetics is a factor, obviously, too. But accepting IQ as a mostly function of race or sex, which some people are always itching to do whenever this is brought up, is reductivist. In his book, Flynn attributes part of the mysterious increase in IQ during the 20th century to the spre…

>James Flynn, namesake of the secular increase, finally agrees that these IQ gains are not g factor gains [1], but believes that they still represent economically relevant skill gains. This is doubtful for two reasons: first, because measures of aca- demic ability over time do not reveal any concomitant Flynn-like gains [2, p. 8; 3]. Second, because we know from large-scale military re- search that almost all the predictive power of IQ tests in training contexts comes through g alone [4, p. 129].

[1] Flynn, JR. The Flynn Effect: Rethinking intelligence and what affects it

[2] Flynn JR. Searching for justice: the discovery of IQ gains over time. Am Psychol 1999;54:5–20.

[3] Flynn JR, Weiss LG. American IQ Gains From 1932 to 2002: The WISC Subtests and Educational Progress. Int J Test 2007;7:209–24.

[4] Ree MJ, Earles JA. The ubiquitous productiveness of g. In: Rumsey MG, Walker CB, Harris JH, editors. Personnel selection and classification. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erl- baum; 1994. p. 127–36.

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

#135

Post by lsd5you »

burkaman wrote: post #131
lsd5you wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most likely explanation is the prior to perhaps 200 years ago the differentials were different. (Also having lots of children may not result in a lot of descendents, so is an insufficient measure). This would be due to the fact that in an era before universal rights and universal economic security there were reproductive consequences to intelligence (or lack of). So there is no evolutionary pressure. Evolution is…

> there is no evolutionary pressure Please take another look at my second link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_epidemiology#Overall... If there's some analysis of evolutionary pressure over time I'd be interested to see it, although I'm not sure it can really be quantified like that.

Whatever the truth, that section is poorly and contradictory.

'A strong link between cognitive ability and the risk of death.'

'A 15-point increase in intelligence was associated with a decreased risk of mortality of 32%.'

Wikipedia suffers a bit from not trying to be too neutral!!

Local cases of intelligence not helping with mortality/reproduction in todays society are not contradictory. This is the (dysgenic) thesis that intelligence does not help. Although increased mortality is perhaps a little harder to explain, but again hardly irreconcilable - I could speculate many plausible explanations.

To address your point, I feel it is intuitively true that we do not have positive evolutionary pressure. If indeed IQs are now falling despite the flynn effect then for intelligence at least here is the evidence for insufficient evolutionary pressure.

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

#137

Post by rihegher »

Lyle-Cantor wrote: post #133
lsd5you wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most likely explanation is the prior to perhaps 200 years ago the differentials were different. (Also having lots of children may not result in a lot of descendents, so is an insufficient measure). This would be due to the fact that in an era before universal rights and universal economic security there were reproductive consequences to intelligence (or lack of). So there is no evolutionary pressure. Evolution is…

People confuse the normative and the descriptive. Everything you say is basicly correct. But it's horrible so it can't possibly be true. But why should evolution not be horrible? Evolution does not care about our ideology. If we don't account for it and nerf its edge, though forms of selection that don't cause suffering to conscious creatures, like embryo selection or genetic engineering, then we will have to wait fo…

"if countries like Korea and China weren't poised to exploit embryo selection and genetic modification for increased health and IQ" Increasing IQ could only make sense for me if the society would know how to integrate people with High IQ. But for now we are far from it with 50% of high IQ people failing their education cursus and having issues interacting socially

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

#138

Post by Lyle-Cantor »

rihegher wrote: post #137
Lyle-Cantor wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People confuse the normative and the descriptive. Everything you say is basicly correct. But it's horrible so it can't possibly be true. But why should evolution not be horrible? Evolution does not care about our ideology. If we don't account for it and nerf its edge, though forms of selection that don't cause suffering to conscious creatures, like embryo selection or genetic engineering, then we will have to wait fo…

"if countries like Korea and China weren't poised to exploit embryo selection and genetic modification for increased health and IQ" Increasing IQ could only make sense for me if the society would know how to integrate people with High IQ. But for now we are far from it with 50% of high IQ people failing their education cursus and having issues interacting socially

We will soon have the selection power to select for many traits simultaneously. Also, much of the problem super high IQ people have is the result of being surrounded by people much less capable than themselves. If we seize the high-IQ alleles and distribute them to the proletariat this would not be an issue.

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

#139

Post by mcguire »

danieltillett wrote: post #29
Ygg2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but they are mentioning aging. Do you mean that the older men having children is reducing IQ of future generations?

Older men having children probably does reduce the IQ of future generations given they will pass on more mutations, but no this is not what I meant. Think of all the people you know, think of how smart each person is, and then count up how many children each person has. Unless you you know a very small number of people I think you will see what I mean.

nanomoose's suggestion of "immigrants" is dead. I'm not entirely sure what your comment has that his does not.

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

#140

Post by thaumaturgy »

Ygg2 wrote: post #108
thaumaturgy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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.

Well, that's true, data is sometimes misleading, mis-reported, or manipulated. It really is much better to just stick to what we believe in our guts to be true.

Belief in the face of evidence to the contrary has been accomplishing great things all over the world lately.

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