151–160 of 164 posts
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The best mathematicians are also not very good at solving the hardest problems though. By definition.
Aren't the best mathematicians the best at solving the hardest problems? I don't see how you can argue this without assuming an arbitrary scale for being "good" at something.
Framing this as a pattern across the entire industrial world is a bit misleading. Looking through the data at Math Scores since 2015 shows big country level split: Japan: -3 S Korea: -1 Singapore: +1 Taiwan: +9 --- Germany: -45 France: -38 Sweden: -33 US: -10 This is an issue with the western industrialized world. Which ought to make the analysis simple since we can look at what those countries have done differently…
While the examples above just draws trolls pushing an immigration angle, consider these other countries: Finland -45 Bulgaria -38 Malaysia -62 Israel -33 Serbia -44 Indonesia: -24 Full data is on Table 2.9, page 101 in the report: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results-volum...
Since you and others have brought up immigration I felt the need to review this thesis. For the OECD plotting foreign born population against Pisa math changes gets a decent correlation (Spearman r = −0.384; p = 0.017). Obviously foreign born is an imperfect proxy for classroom demographics, but it's a start. Definitely a trend, not a huge one, but hard to ignore. I'm honestly surprised that it is not discussed much in a 400 page report with correlation plots between composite indices (a sign of a very extensive data analytics project). Total failure on the part of the researchers). Putting aside any racial claims, I would leave open the possibility that training a large percentage of kids in a language they don't really understand is not likely be be as effective as speaking a language that they do understand. Seems pretty obvious actually. In fact if you drop the English speaking countries from the OECD list (English is very commonly spoken across the globe), then the correlation coefficient goes up to −0.55; p = 0.001).
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Intelligence is probably at least partially inheritable. If intelligent people have fewer children you expect intelligence to go down eventually.
Not that quickly though.
And so you'd see that easily in a single generation. It'd be akin to if tall people (or short people) began removing themselves from the gene pool in significant quantities. You'd immediately (well at least once people reached their adult height) see a significant increase or decrease in average heights.
IQ scores in most of the Western world began reversing sometime from the 90s to early 00s. [1] That link is for the US but similar stuff has also been observed in most of every Western/OECD nation. By contrast they're still rapidly increasing in the 'Global South'. You'd expect this to manifest in reduced test scores and reduced quality of outcomes across a breadth of fields over time paired with the inverse happenin…
See how in your own link one of the authors says indeed how the decline in results is because we have gone too woke: Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent. “It doesn’t mean their mental ability is lower or higher; it’s just a difference in scores that are favo…
She finds that people are scoring significantly worse on most measurable aspects of IQ and so she concludes that they may simply be getting worse at taking tests? Let's imagine in a parallel world (or China...) she did the same study and found that scores were increasing. Would she have suggested it may simply be because people are getting better at taking tests? Almost certainly not, because it's a highly improbable explanation with no foundational basis whatsoever. If you don't think the tests you're using to evaluate something are evaluating that thing, then why would you use those tests?
So why would she make the claim in one scenario, but not the other? Because of ideology. We obviously want IQs to be going up, and so the ideological value is given at least equal weighting, if not more, against the significantly more probable 'natural' explanation when the 'natural' explanation goes against ideological desires.
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Score results aren’t alone sufficient proof about whether a ban on phones in school is successful or not. Phones also enable classroom distractions, waste teachers time, and enable antisocial behaviours kids like the engage such as bullying.
> Score results aren’t alone sufficient proof about whether a ban on phones in school is successful or not. If the scores aren't increasing as a result of it, then why are we doing it? We're clearly not asking for legitimate input from the people who are actually impacted by these policies (students). Also, everything "enables" bullying. Bullying is not a problem that's caused by things. It won't go away when you tak…
Re-read my initial comment.
> It won't go away when you take the things away.
You don't know what safeguarding and harm minimisation means, do you?
IQ scores in most of the Western world began reversing sometime from the 90s to early 00s. [1] That link is for the US but similar stuff has also been observed in most of every Western/OECD nation. By contrast they're still rapidly increasing in the 'Global South'. You'd expect this to manifest in reduced test scores and reduced quality of outcomes across a breadth of fields over time paired with the inverse happenin…
> Why this is, is an interesting question but it hits on too many taboo topics. What are those "taboo topics?" Can you state this plainly rather than obliquely?
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I get the feeling you want to blame "woke" ideologies for this decline. Please correct me if I'm wrong. In my opinion we just have it too easy nowadays. Too much entertainment, screens and not enough challenges to keep kids thinking they need to be as sharp as they can be.
I think you nailed it with "too much entertainment", it's a shame your comment comes bundled with other stuff that's getting it downvoted.
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Aren't the best mathematicians the best at solving the hardest problems? I don't see how you can argue this without assuming an arbitrary scale for being "good" at something.
It can be simultaneously true that a group of not very good at something and that that group is the best at doing something.
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Not that quickly though.
People beat around the bush but the heritability of IQ is extremely high, modern studies put it around 80%. So if one group has an IQ of 140 and another of 100, it'd imply about 32 of those 40 points are generally able to be explained by genetic factors. For some contrast that tends to be around, or a bit above, the estimated heritability for height. And so you'd see that easily in a single generation. It'd be akin t…
The report notes “The change in mean scores that can be explained merely by the changing composition of the student body, however, never exceeds a few points.”
So for Portugal for example about 10% of the drop might be attributable to immigration. But the other 90% to something else.