
Researchers find IQ scores dropping since the 1970s - danielam
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-06-iq-scores-1970s.amp
======
commandlinefan
I can't tell if it's because I'm just getting older or because I'm surrounded
by distractions (both electronic and caused by this open office nightmare
trend), but my ability to _concentrate_ seems to go down every year. When I
was in my 20's, I could focus on a math problem for hours at a time. Now, I
need to take a break and look at something else every 10 minutes. Is the world
changing to make it harder to accumulate knowledge and improve intelligence?

~~~
UnpossibleJim
Odd question, but do you read as much literature as when you were young? There
seems to be a fairly strong correlation between reading literature/fiction and
concentration in studies (and no, I don't have the sources on hand, I heard
mention of them on YouTube, of all places.. Boo, I know. Improper citation,
but what are you gonna do. Sometimes I listen to lectures when I work). I,
personally, had gotten into the habit of reading technical papers all of the
time and foregoing literature and fiction on the basis of "well, what good is
that doing me?!" and had noticed that my focus had been slipping. Now, this
could be anecdotal or I could have just needed the down time but, I started
reading some scifi (is that what Hitchhiker's Guide and John Dies is?) again
and my concentration seems to have gotten slowly better.... could also just be
time away from the screen. Though I do read on a Kindle Paperwhite, so who
knows.

~~~
AdamM12
I'm glad I found someone who mentioned this as I was going to. I've spent the
first month and a half of my summer reading books (4 down, which is more than
I've read in the past decade and a half combined) and I definitely feel as
though it has helped me focus more. I've been more disciplined about really
"reading aloud" the words in my head as opposed to when I was younger I kinda
just skimmed and didn't really take in what I was saying.

Edit: should say outside of assigned readings for school work. Which tend to
lean technical and are never fully read from cover to cover.

------
disgruntledphd2
This is an interesting study.

It is worth noting that the recent meta-analysis
([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24979188](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24979188))
showed no such effect across a wide variety of scales and countries.

However, the really interesting question here (which is possible to answer
because of the size and sampling of the Norwegian data) is what is happening
in Norway, for this effect to be occurring in what appears like a consistent
fashion?

In other words, we should in general rely on meta-analyses rather than
individual studies when looking at results like these.

~~~
vilhelm_s
Good comment!

The paper you link also specifically mentions the results from Scandinavia:

> Our study did not find evidence for the plateauing or decline of the Flynn
> effect in the United States, as has been documented in Norway (Sundet et
> al., 2004) and Denmark (Teasdale & Owen, 2008; Teasdale & Owen, 2005),
> respectively. Table 5.6 in the WAIS-IV manual (Wechsler, 2008) summarizes an
> excellent planned comparison of the WAIS-III (standardized in 1995) and the
> WAIS-IV (standardized in 2005) scores administered in counterbalanced order
> to 240 examinees. This table shows results similar to our meta-analysis,
> with average WAIS-III scores about 3 points higher than WAIS-IV scores. In
> addition, the effect was similar across age and ability level cohorts. To
> the extent that the United States and Scandinavia differ on at least the
> variables proposed to be related to the plateauing of scores in Scandinavia
> (e.g., family life factors [Sundet et al., 2004] and educational priorities
> [Teasdale & Owen, 2008; Teasdale & Owen, 2005]), we might anticipate the
> difference in IQ score patterns noted. For example, Scandinavia’s parental
> leave and subsidized childcare might be indices of optimal
> socioenvironmental conditions and are generous relative to the United
> States.

------
sambe
The article:

"The researchers also found some differences between family groups, suggesting
that some of the decline might be due to environmental factors. But they also
suggest that lifestyle changes could account for some of the decline, as well,
such as changes in the education system and children reading less and playing
video games more. Sadly, other researchers have found similar results."

The paper:

"we show that the observed Flynn effect, its turning point, and subsequent
decline can all be fully recovered from within-family variation. The analysis
controls for all factors shared by siblings and finds no evidence for
prominent causal hypotheses of the decline implicating genes and environmental
factors that vary between, but not within, families."

Is this bad reporting or am I mis-understanding the conclusion of the authors?

EDIT: I think I was misunderstanding the conclusion of the authors. They
believe they have shown that environmental factors are the main cause (from
skimming the full paper's discussion).

~~~
varjag
Sounds like an oblique way to say the upbringing is the problem.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Sounds like an oblique way to say that IQ tests are aimed at people brought up
by the 1960's educational system.

~~~
jabgrabdthrow
Bullshit, the tests are all pattern recognition and specifically avoid
anything that must be taught.

~~~
laumars
A persons education isn't just about learning facts. It's also about learning
approaches to thinking and problem solving.

A crude example would be these days people are less reliant on memorising
information as they were 30 years ago because search engines enable the
individual to find answers quickly. So you adapt your approach to a particular
subject to learn how to search for answers instead of how to memorize those
answers.

As an aside, since we are heading at pace to a future where our memory is
augmented by the internet; if for the internet offline for whatever reason
humanity could be thrown into the dark ages again with vasts sums of knowledge
lost.

~~~
astrodust
Then standardized tests came along and all kids learn is how to pass these
same tests.

US education is an atrocity.

~~~
pas
That's bullshit. Standardization can be done very effectively. If the tests
are different enough year by year.

That said College Board is a very big risk factor, because its process and
scoring is opaque.

US education is problematic because (inner city) children are not thaught the
value of education. When parents are crazy, it's hard to teach the kids.

~~~
sdenton4
As Busta Rhymes put it:

    
    
        "When even role models tell us we're born to be felons
        We're never gettin' into Harvard or Carnegie Mellon
        And we gon' end up either robbin' somebody or killin'
        It's not fair that's all they can tell us
        That's why you hustle hella hard, never celebrate a holiday
        That'll be the day I coulda finally hit the lottery
        I refuse to ever lose or throw my shot away
        Or chalk it up as just another one that got away."
    

Is the problem 'children not being taught the value of education,' or that
they /are/ taught that they're on a school-to-prison pipeline, without a lot
of hope for much else?

~~~
pas
I have no intimate knowledge of role models of every child, but how the fuck
kids in the hood end up with a racist dumbass as one is nonsense. Those are
not role models, those are the good old enemies of progress, the ethnophobes,
the good evangelicals, or the good mothers who won't let their precious Percys
play with Marquis.

It's not their fault that they are trapped, but the fact is still that. They
incorrectly under value long term goals like staying out of jail (the overused
example of making quick bucks by selling drugs), just like almost all people,
they just pay for it much more, since they happen to be poor.

------
yasp
I'm sure I'll be downvoted into oblivion for making the observation but surely
this isn't surprising given that people with lower IQs tend to have more
babies and have babies earlier in life than do people with higher IQs. [0]

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence)

~~~
Retric
That's a common myth. Higher than average IQ men have significantly more kids
it's less significant and possibly negative for women.

"More rigorous studies carried out on Americans alive after the Second World
War returned different results suggesting a slight positive correlation with
respect to intelligence."

Critically these children are often had latter in life making studies based on
younger age cohorts give different results.

Higher education also has a negative impact.

~~~
bakhy
> ...possibly negative for women.

I hope I won't be downvoted crazy for this, but wasn't feminism offered as an
answer to this? Better educated women have a bit more trouble having babies
and keeping their career, since lots of men find it offputting to be dependent
on their wives, due to traditional gender roles. Some developed countries have
experienced normalization of fertility rates, and I've heard that more gender
equality was a possible good explanation for this - more women can have both
the baby and the career... This would also fit with the phenomenon you
describe, of educated men having more kids, but educated women having less.

~~~
77pt77
>since lots of men find it offputting to be dependent on their wives

Source please. It could very well be the other way around or more likely a
mixture of both.

~~~
watwut
The ideology of male breadwinner is quite alive in more conservative and
evangelical circles. Man living in such social group whose women earn more
have lover social standing and consequently don't want it. Then there are
people who don't care and I know of no groups that would believe in women
being expected to he breadwinners.

So the bias would be toward that way.

~~~
textor
Ideology of independent working woman seems far more pronounced to me. We all
are expected to work, which necessarily makes having children – especially
early in life, when they have the highest chance to be healthy – a big bother
for women, and feminism doesn't help here in the least, even if it slightly
compensates for the issue of "ideology of male breadwinner".

~~~
watwut
"Ideology of independent working woman" is basically ideology of same
expectation on men and women. It does not compensate anything, bias in who is
expected to earn more goes other way. A single women does not need to earn
more then non-existent husband to feel enough feminine.

------
catwell
I wondered if it was related to breastfeeding, since it is known to have a
positive correlation. It turns out breastfeeding in Norway followed the exact
opposite trend: falling from the end of WWI to 1970, and picking up since then
( source: [https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Donor-milk-banking-
and...](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Donor-milk-banking-and-
breastfeeding-in-Norway.-Grøvslien-
Grønn/b7e9fe381364dcd8d118cfb5f7988ca60a56f7b8) )

------
danielam
I am reminded of a quotation from the first chapter [0] of McLuhan's
"Understanding Media":

"It is in our I.Q. testing that we have produced the greatest flood of
misbegotten standards. Unaware of our typographic cultural bias, our testers
assume that uniform and continuous habits are a sign of intelligence, thus
eliminating the ear man and the tactile man."

If IQ tests make tacit assumptions of this kind, could the shift in the
dominant media forms be playing a role?

[0]
[http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/mcluhan.mediummessage.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/mcluhan.mediummessage.pdf)

------
eruci
I feel much dumber now in my 40s as opposed to my 20s. I pretty much stopped
reading books after high school and am no longer able to solve certain math
problems. Instead, I read stuff like this article.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I went the opposite way, I didn’t graduate until I was nearly fifty.

------
SCAQTony
Perhaps the most logical explanation is that people don't have to be as smart
as they were when computers, the internet and DIY "recipes" are so readily
available. Even using a paper map is obsolete when a smart phone can verbally
direct you. How many people do math by hand now?

Example: California native Americans (Chumash) did not have to be smart. Every
day was a great day, food and water were everywhere from the ocean to the
valleys whereas in south America things were more difficult. Spaniards were
stunned by the Aztec capital being larger and more advanced than anything in
Europe. The Aztecs had astronomy, math, and domesticated turkeys for food.
They created all that because they had too.

Food in Mesoamerica: [http://tlmorganfield.com/food-mesoamerica-domesticated-
food-...](http://tlmorganfield.com/food-mesoamerica-domesticated-food-
animals/)

Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan:
[https://www.livescience.com/34660-tenochtitlan.html](https://www.livescience.com/34660-tenochtitlan.html)

~~~
ekianjo
> Even using a paper map is obsolete when a smart phone can verbally direct
> you. How many people do math by hand now?

hardly convincing since IQ tests usually don't depend on your level of
training or knowledge.

~~~
learc83
They try not to, but trying isn't the same thing as succeeding. IQ tests have
documented cultural biases, and we know that you can study and prepare for IQ
tests to improve your score.

------
classicsnoot
Why is every post asking questions WRT the effects of gender and migration
being caveated so dramatically? It would appear people are afraid to even ask
about what seem to be obvious relevant factors. There are noticable
differences in the IQ averages between gender groups as well as origin, but
the plasticity of IQ has also been established. The fear of reprisal and
condemnation for wrongthink is starting to resemble Puritan New England. I
sincerely hope we don't start burning witches...

~~~
alexandercrohde
Migration is a totally reasonable candidate, but if I imagine you're getting
downvoted for how you're expressing yourself (i.e. very emotional) rather than
what you're saying.

~~~
classicsnoot
When reason fails, emotions rise, but I take your point and appreciate your
reproof.

------
mendelsd
Related: "... data ... from the UK Biobank... suggests genetic contributions
to intelligence and educational achievement are currently disfavoured by
natural selection". [1]

[1] [https://www.economist.com/science-and-
technology/2017/12/19/...](https://www.economist.com/science-and-
technology/2017/12/19/data-from-half-a-million-people-show-that-natural-
selection-has-not-stopped)

------
bedane
Some french scientist makes a compelling case for correlating this drop with
the generalization of TV presence in homes. Found him : Michel Desmurget
[https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xpjec4](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xpjec4)

------
bitcharmer
I know a quite prominent MENSA member and according to him IQ tests are a
fundamentally flawed way of measuring intelligence.

Not only are there different types of intelligence but more importantly, the
current methodology is actually a test of one's ability to solve a very narrow
type of puzzles. This can be practised effectively increasing your score
significantly.

Does becoming good at puzzles mean I got any wiser?

~~~
dionidium
I'm not an expert in the field, but my casual understanding is that the
research shows basically the opposite to be true. That is to say that IQ is
generally predictive of success and/or ability across just about any dimension
you want to choose.

Said another way, if you had to hire somebody sight-unseen and you were only
allowed to know one piece of information about them, IQ would be the strongest
predictor of performance.

(I want to be very clear: that's not to say that the person with the highest
IQ will always be the best performer; it's just to say that _if you had no
other information_ , and you had to hire based on just one piece of
information, IQ would be your best bet.)

~~~
Scea91
You would have to define more formally what you mean by one piece of
information and even then I think there are counterexamples to your argument.

For example, If I wanted to hire a doctor I would prefer to know if the
applicant had medical degree over their IQ.

~~~
ben509
You don't need a formal definition, you just need to read more carefully:

> it's just to say that if you had no other information, and you had to hire
> based on just one piece of information, IQ would be your best bet.

You might prefer to know if they have a medical degree, but that knowledge is
already excluded.

------
learc83
This test was done for people being examined for military service. It looks
like Norway doesn't force military service, but does force people to be
examined.

Perhaps people just take a mandatory military exam less seriously than they
did during the cold war.

Also the culture of Norway is much less homogeneous than it was in the 70s and
it's impossible to completely remove cultural biases from IQ tests--not to
mention far more people who don't speak the language natively.

------
bloak
Rather than claim that "IQ" has fallen they should give some examples of the
particular questions which people have got worse at answering correctly,
because "IQ" doesn't really exist; all that exists is the normalised score
from a particular questionnaire.

I took an IQ test once. One of the questions that I couldn't answer was to
spot what was missing in a picture. It was the hat band. I can't tell you
exactly what kind of hat it was, but it was worn by a man and looked like
something I might perhaps see in an old film. One of the questions that I
could answer was to spot the odd one out in a list that looked something like:
spondee, dactyl, trochee, ... If people have got worse at answering those two
questions then I am not surprised.

~~~
bakhy
Sounds like a really bad IQ test. I took a Mensa IQ test once, and all the
questions were grids, 3x3, with various patterns in all cells except the lower
right one, and 6 (I think) offered answer patterns. You pick the one that you
think best fits into the overall pattern of the grid. Such a test seems much
better to me, since it does not depend on what you know, though I guess even
that might have some issues. Many popular IQ tests are really full of trick
questions that mostly depend on whether you've seen the trick before...

~~~
IggleSniggle
Pattern recognition ability is associated with higher false positives. Eg,
conspiracy theorists typically perform significantly better on pattern
recognition tests. A pattern recognition test is indeed measuring something,
but “intelligence quotient” may be a misnomer.

Full disclosure: I do very well on pattern recognition tests. I also am often
accused of “reinventing the wheel.” I think these are related; but then, I
would.

~~~
bakhy
You are implying that conspiracy theorists are unintelligent. Though it is a
very tempting assumption :) I don't know if it's fully warranted. From my
experience, ignorance is more essential to conspiracy theory thinking. People
lack the will and/or time to learn all they need to make sense of the world,
so they fall prey to overly simple, manipulative stories. And furthermore, it
is known that more intelligent people tend to be more naive... I'm not saying
you're fully wrong, lack of intelligence can surely help, but I think on the
whole it's more complicated than just a lack of intelligence.

~~~
IggleSniggle
On the contrary, I was trying to suggest that intelligence is a broad term,
and that being skilled at pattern recognition is a singular ability that is
one small sliver of what most people usually mean when they talk about
intelligence. IQ doesn’t really measure what most people believe it measures,
and may therefore be a misnomer.

~~~
bakhy
Ok, I misunderstood. I agree with you. I think it's an interesting situation -
the broader term is more relevant, but it's also less measurable. So we settle
for what we can measure and kinda forget that it doesn't capture the full
picture.

------
jeffreyrogers
The most important part of the abstract is this:

> The analysis controls for all factors shared by siblings and finds no
> evidence for prominent causal hypotheses of the decline implicating genes
> and environmental factors that vary between, but not within, families.

My first thought was the decline might be due to rising number of immigrants,
but this suggests that is not true. Instead it appears the decline is due to
some broader environmental factor that is common across all families. It also
suggests that this is likely occurring in the rest of the developed world as
well, since I can't think of anything obvious that's occurring in Norway that
isn't also occurring in the rest of the developed world.

------
lainon
Didn't read the article, but isn't IQ always steady?

100 the average, 130 top 2% etc.

Sure intelligence can change, but wouldn't IQ scores adjust to that?

~~~
Nav_Panel
From Wikipedia on the Flynn Effect: "When intelligence quotient (IQ) tests are
initially standardized using a sample of test-takers, by convention the
average of the test results is set to 100 and their standard deviation is set
to 15 or 16 IQ points. When IQ tests are revised, they are again standardized
using a new sample of test-takers, usually born more recently than the first.
Again, the average result is set to 100. However, when the new test subjects
take the older tests, in almost every case their average scores are
significantly above 100."

I believe the posted study is discussing the reason why this trend of
increasing scores might no longer hold.

~~~
lawlessone
>However, when the new test subjects take the older tests, in almost every
case their average scores are significantly above 100."

If all these people have tried one IQ test they're likely to perform better on
the older tests. just because they have a little more practice.

~~~
jarfil
Tests are usually not the same, but they are "the same kind", and it is
expected that practicing a kind of problem can give an advantage at solving
the same kind of problem in the future. It's pretty much a fundamental aspect
of learning.

------
JoeAltmaier
An oblique comment in the article about changing childhood behaviors - more
video games and less book reading - was quite telling.

Is the population simply culturally drifting 'out from under' the norm for the
test? Perhaps they could ask more video-game-related questions, and
renormalize. "Which NPC is likely to give you a quest?" kind of thing.

------
josephdviviano
Is it possible that the kinds of people military entering service has changed
over the years in Norway?

I haven't searched very hard, but it isn't clear how the
conscription/selection criteria has evolved over the years. These would be
very hard variables to properly control for.

~~~
vilhelm_s
Note that the intelligence tests are for people who are evaluated for
conscription, not the ones who are finally conscripted, so they cover a large
fraction of the population (80%-90% of males).

Since not everyone was given the test, there are indeed large selection
effects. The main technical contribution of the paper we are discussing
([http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/06/05/1718793115](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/06/05/1718793115))
is to try to estimate what the selection effect is.

They use a comparison of siblings. By comparing the score of brothers who were
both given the test, one can can create a model to estimate the score of one
brother from the score of the other. Then by comparing families where one
brother was given the test and the other was not, one can estimate how the the
probablility of the test board administering the test depends on the IQ of the
testee. Then given that curve, one can estimate the average IQ of the entire
population from the available test scores.

Their result is that selection bias hides some of the effect. That is, as the
Norwegian military got smaller, the selection board got pickier and tested
fewer (smarter) people, so if you just look at the average score you will not
see the full drop.

------
swebs
The same results were also observed in Denmark in 2007.

[http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/teasdale2008....](http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/teasdale2008.pdf)

------
jibjib
First time comment here; felt compelled after reading some of the comments.

Please make sure you all pay attention to your physical state while trying to
concentrate etc (for the people who’ve been seeing dips in performance and/or
getting “in zone”).

Only yesterday I noticed that I had somehow formed the habit of holding my
breath when reading/learning/absorbing anything complex.

Seems pretty ridiculous but I went from having a hard time understanding some
high mathematics to - when regulating breath appropriately - breezing through.

------
swoongoonz
I distinctly remember a professor in college saying that he felt like the
caliber of students enrolling every year declines. I was kind of offended, but
hey maybe we was right.

~~~
curtis
A much larger number of people attend college today than in the past. Since
most of the smartest people were probably already going to college, increasing
the size of the pool would almost certainly decrease the "average smartness"
of college students.

Alternatively, you could just say that historically college students were
disproportionately the "best students" during primary education, and
increasing the size of the pool would result in more people who were not as
good students attending college.

------
pfschell
Looks like they ignored the national origin of the people tested. Norwegian
IQs didn't drop. The average population of people living in Norway dropped.

The first chart in this link shows why:
[https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/statistikker/innvbef/arkiv/...](https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/statistikker/innvbef/arkiv/2010-04-29)

~~~
IkmoIkmo
> Using administrative register data and cognitive ability scores from
> military conscription data covering three decades of Norwegian birth cohorts
> (1962–1991)

Doesn't seem as if immigration played any role in this study.

------
Symmetry
When I read this one obvious explanation would be that as parents gets older
their gametes accumulate more mutations, especially men, and the children they
have later on in life suffer a bit. But that effect should be very small
compared to the effect sizes reported here.

The bit about fish eating makes me think this might relate to omega-3/omega-6
fat balances in our diets?

~~~
haikuginger
When I read this one obvious explanation would be that IQ tests are designed
with biased assumptions based on the cultural environments in which they were
designed, and that those biased assumptions become more and more foreign as
more generations pass since the test was originally designed.

See? I can speculate baselessly too.

~~~
Symmetry
There's certainly an advantage to taking IQ tests if you come from a culture
that values abstract thoughts relatively highly compared to concrete thoughts.
This is all based on Norwegian data and if there were some huge cultural shift
in Norway I might not know. But usually when you see big changes it's adding
iodine to the salt, or lead in the environment, or famines, or disease or
something like that. Seriously, iodizing salt added 10 points to the IQs of
Americans around the great lakes where iodine deficiency had been a big
problem.

And generally if it was a matter of shifting cultural environments I'd hope
that would be obvious from looking at the subtest scores.

------
murph-almighty
This is mostly irrelevant- I feel as though the phrase IQ has become so
diluted by jackasses on social media who feel a need to brag about their IQ.
Usually they got the results from some snake-oily trivia site. Because of
this, that whenever I see a study that mentions IQ I immediately doubt it.
What is a standard IQ test? What does it test for?

------
known
The more testosterone a man has, the less likely he is to hang around to help
bring up baby

[http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-
technology/2167977...](http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-
technology/21679772-changes-mans-testosterone-level-show-kind-parent-he-will-
be-pot-luck)

------
marojejian
The original article, btw: [https://sci-
hub.tw/http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/06...](https://sci-
hub.tw/http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/06/05/1718793115)

------
fejfieji
This is logically impossible for the population as a whole, because IQ is
defined as a relative metric. I.e. an IQ of 100 is (ideally) equal to whatever
the current median intelligence is.

It sounds like Norway's national service is just getting dumber by comparison.

------
ujal
I will probably never understand IQ and its purpose for real life problems. It
is either me who doesn't get it or all the people out there who lack
introspection to understand what exactly it was that enabled them to grasp
some new concept.

------
teilo
Could this also explain why Mensa's admission standards have been watered down
in recent years? I mean, on paper, they are still the same, but in practice -
not so much.

~~~
paulie_a
Personally I negatively judge members of Mensa.

~~~
astrodust
Anyone who pays an annual fee to prove they're smart...

It's like selling an "elevator pass". Too easy.

~~~
teilo
Easy has nothing to do with it. It's not like you have to renew an IQ test.
You either passed it, or you didn't. An expired membership card proves they
passed a proctored test just as well as an active membership does.

In any case, I agree with you in spirit. It's just bragging rights. I think a
lot of people renew just so they can say they are a member. But that's stupid.
It proves nothing. Nobody else cares. Nobody else is impressed. Want to show
yourself to truly be an ass? Pull out your Mensa card.

I truly don't give a f*ck. I was in for one year. Their journal and discounts
were not worth the price of membership. I already have friends and don't need
any more. It would have been a waste of money to renew.

------
jeandejean
It's hard to believe, I've read rather the opposite for quite a while,
especially recently with Enlightement Now from Steven Pinker. I should get
those references!

~~~
philipkglass
_Enlightenment Now_ highlights world-scale trends. This study highlights
Norwegian trends. It is possible -- even likely -- that some small subgroups
will exhibit trends that don't match the larger global trend. Norway's
population is only 0.005 billion out of a world population of 7.6 billion.

As another example, it is _simultaneously_ true that world manufacturing
output kept increasing even as Michigan's manufacturing diminished. There's no
contradiction between those two facts.

~~~
jeandejean
I understand your point. However, in Enlightenment Now, you see patterns that
are similar in all countries, especially Western countries. A country like
Norway going backward is very unlikely, especially on a sustained manner over
decades, no matter small the country is.

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cerealbad
the internet is quite addictive, the trick is to be a high functioning addict.
you'll be dumber, but all the richer for it.

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axilmar
How do these results correlate with the increase/decrease of wages and social
services in said country, I wonder.

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lawlessone
Couldn't have anything to do with all the extra carbon dioxide in the air
could it?

~~~
mac01021
I don't think there is any reason to suspect that over a hundred other causes:

Radiation from cell phones

Increased screen time for children

More pesticides in our diets

The fact that we have to think about a greater variety of things through the
course of a day has caused our brains to structure themselves for better
context-switching at the expense of a little bit of focus

et cetera

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startupdiscuss
Check the amount of sleep they get!

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rossdavidh
So, technically, it's only the Norwegians who are getting dumber.

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bthrm
I don’t know about Norway, but here in Spain the % of people who sign up to
the military who are immigrants has been steadily increasing these decades, so
a drop in IQ does not surprise me at all.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Why would immigrants have a lower IQ than native spaniards?

Also, does Spain only administer IQ tests to members of the military?

Or are you saying that members of the military have a lower IQ than the rest
of the population?

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bthrm
In TFA it says this drop in IQ was detected because of tests done to people
who sign up to the military. I’m talking about how there are more and more
immigrants joining the military here as years pass and that if in Norway the
same is happening it’s normal that IQ is dropping as I expect immigrants to
have a lower IQ than natives.

~~~
ctrl-j
>... I expect immigrants to have a lower IQ than natives.

Do you have any reason other than Xenophobia for expecting this?

~~~
swebs
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nations_and_intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nations_and_intelligence)

Do you have any reason to suggest all nations have the same average IQ?

~~~
ctrl-j
_If_ the controversial citations in the article you cited are true (which I
haven't read in detail, but seem questionable at a glance.) - unless the
predominant amount of individuals immigrating into Spain/Norway are coming
from countries with lower average IQs I would not expect it to have an effect
on the average IQ of Spain/Norway.

It also stands to reason that there is no reason to assume Spain is at the top
of the chart when it comes to national average - so they are most likely also
having immigration from countries with a higher average. This would mitigate
the effect of countries with a lower average, would it not?

Returning to the original point:

Because immigration usually entails an amount of merit and ability - the
successful immigrants are usually at the higher end of the capability spectrum
of the originating countries population.

Doesn't it stand to reason immigration would have either a minuscule or
positive effect on national average IQ?

~~~
swebs
Maybe pre-2015, but since the European Migrant Crisis, there has been a
disproportionate amount of migration from sub-Saharan Africa, which is the
region that scores lowest in those surveys.

[https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10840/spain-migrant-
crisi...](https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10840/spain-migrant-crisis)

