IQ among Americans is falling

[Landon Caeli]

One thing I'm sure of is that memorizing loads of stuff isn't very impressive at all. We have computers and AI now to serve that purpose.

What's a greater quality than being a good memorizer, is being a problem solver, who can come up with original ideas to solve existing problems. Creative thinking is everything!

...I have no idea what an IQ test uncovers in people, but if it's not creativity, then it's not a useful test.

 

[hislegacy]

IQ scores among Americans are falling. The evidence seems to be that it is due to environmental changes, possibly due to social media consumption and screen time:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/13/health/falling-iq-scores-study-intl/index.html

I know the more I listen to Main Stream Media - the dumber I feel.

I think it is a vaste right wing conspiracy involving Russian collusion - there ya go - my IQ just dropped 10 points

 

[The Barbarian]

One thing I'm sure of is that memorizing loads of stuff isn't very impressive at all. We have computers and AI now to serve that purpose.

Interestingly, one Greek philosopher (I think Plato) argued that writing was a bad thing, since it reduced the necessity remembering things.

What's a greater quality than being a good memorizer, is being a problem solver, who can come up with original ideas to solve existing problems. Creative thinking is everything!

So two very bright guys ended the conundrum of Zeno's paradox "proving" that motion was impossible,by introducing the concept of limits into math. Creative, but logical.

...I have no idea what an IQ test uncovers in people, but if it's not creativity, then it's not a useful test.

Turns out, it's pretty good at predicting academic success in college for affluent white kids. Not so good with other ethnic groups. As I said, it measures the cognitive skills you need to do well on an IQ test.

 

[The Barbarian]

I think it is a vaste right wing conspiracy involving Russian collusion - there ya go - my IQ just dropped 10 points

Hmm... that's actually a testable assertion. They keep data on average IQ by state.

Average IQ by State 2024

worldpopulationreview.com

Turns out, average IQ for states is negatively correlated with the percentage of people in that state who voted for Donald Trump in the last election.
Three caveats:
1. Correlation does not mean causation. It might be that lower IQ and voting for Trump might both be caused by some other factor.
2. And high IQ, IMO, is not necessarily a scale of intelligence in all cases.
3. There are exceptions for both red and blue states. Some of it is explainable by percent of immigrants in each state, and some of it is not. Immigrants are a good example of how cultural bias skews IQ results.

 

[hislegacy]

Hmm... that's actually a testable assertion. They keep data on average IQ by state.

Average IQ by State 2024

worldpopulationreview.com

Turns out, average IQ for states is negatively correlated with the percentage of people in that state who voted for Donald Trump in the last election.

I would have to have an incredibly low IQ to believe that over half the voters in the US are low IQ. How much of a complete imbecile would one have to be to honestly believe that half of the voting populace are low IQ -

IMHO - When a person becomes myopic to the point of their world view is only one side is right and the other is 100% wrong - I believe it is a sign of surrender of intelligent discourse for political beliefs.

 

[hislegacy]

IQ scores among Americans are falling. The evidence seems to be that it is due to environmental changes, possibly due to social media consumption and screen time:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/13/health/falling-iq-scores-study-intl/index.html

Perhaps - serious now - if our institutions of education would focus on academics over should Johnny wear a dress - or other social engineering issues we would do better intellectually.

Want an example - this is the eight grade exam from 1912 - no calculators - no computers.

Compare that to 3 in 10 eighth graders have a hard time reading today

Older Students Who Struggle to Read Hide in Plain Sight. What Teachers Can Do

Going back to basics may get to the root of the problem.

www.edweek.org

 

[durangodawood]

Perhaps - serious now - if our institutions of education would focus on academics over should Johnny wear a dress - or other social engineering issues we would do better intellectually.

Want an example - this is the eight grade exam from 1912 - no calculators - no computers.

View attachment 348483

Compare that to 3 in 10 eighth graders have a hard time reading today

Older Students Who Struggle to Read Hide in Plain Sight. What Teachers Can Do

Going back to basics may get to the root of the problem.

www.edweek.org

"Who first discovered the... Pacific Ocean?"

???

 

[driewerf]

In the 70s people had the patience to listen to a record. Remember them? 45 minutes of the same band.

Where is the time that people listened to Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen (2h45m)?

 

[The Barbarian]

I would have to have an incredibly low IQ to believe that over half the voters in the US are low IQ.

Actually, it's always true that half of the population has a low IQ. By definition. Anything less than 100 is a low IQ. The score required to get a 100 is constantly revised so that this is the case.

It's like the old "Geek Test" for high school students. "If you could have only average IQ, but be the most popular kid in the school, would you do it? The nerds would of course reject that. But for nearly half of the kids in the school, it would be a win/win situation.

IMHO - When a person becomes myopic to the point of their world view is only one side is right and the other is 100% wrong - I believe it is a sign of surrender of intelligent discourse for political beliefs.

Not every American is a Trump follower. In fact, not every Trump follower accepts that idea.

 

[The Barbarian]

"Who first discovered the... Pacific Ocean?"

???

Well, the Eurocentric view at the time would be "Balboa." But he wasn't even the first European to do so.

Marco Polo certainly observed it long before Balboa. And historians knew that, even then.

I'm guessing that these "tests" aren't typical of any school system in that day, and likely many of them are modern forgeries, formatted to look old.

 

[hislegacy]

Not every American is a Trump follower. In fact, not every Trump follower accepts that idea.

Nor is every American an avid supporter of the far left - in fact very few of the rabid left accepts that idea.

oh, and not everything Trump does is wrong. Not everything Trump says is wrong - not everything Trump writes is wrong. Just saying....

 

[The Barbarian]

Not every American is a Trump follower. In fact, not every Trump follower accepts that idea.

oh, and not everything Trump does is wrong.

He fast-tracked COVID-19 vaccines, for example. No one is perfectly incompetent. But he comes close.

 

[hislegacy]

Not every American is a Trump follower. In fact, not every Trump follower accepts that idea.

He fast-tracked COVID-19 vaccines, for example. No one is perfectly incompetent. But he comes close.

He closed traffic from China while being called a racist -who knows how many lives were saved.
He instituted Opportunity Zones that heled minority business owners
He essentially closed the borders - Joe is allowing millions more cross un vetted
He kept inflation at 1.4% - it only took Joe less than a year to bring it up 645% higher
He kept us out of international wars - Joe has 13 unnecessary deaths on his watch
He got the EU nations to carry their fair share of the costs - never seen before
He completed a four decade old promise of moving the embassy to Jerusalem
He kept oil prices low without depleting the national oil reserve
Pre-covid he had one of the most robust economies in modern history


If he comes close - Joe must be a hair's width away.

 

[The Barbarian]

He closed traffic from China while being called a racist -who knows how many lives were saved.

Damning analysis of Trump's pandemic response suggested 40% of US COVID-19 deaths could have been avoided​

• A report on the Trump administration's policies suggested 40% of US COVID-19 deaths were avoidable.
• Compared with six similarly wealthy countries, the US failed to protect citizens' health in the pandemic.
• Trump publicly downplayed COVID-19 and often undermined health guidelines.

Damning analysis of Trump's pandemic response suggested 40% of US COVID-19 deaths could have been avoided

A medical journal compared the number of US COVID-19 deaths — the highest in the world — with the deaths in similarly wealthy countries.

www.businessinsider.com

Trump's programs were structured to disadvantage minority business owners.

Black-owned small businesses were much less likely to receive federal coronavirus relief loans from small banks than they were from online lenders, a new study concluded.
...
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was launched under the Trump administration to provide forgivable loans to businesses that rehired or kept workers on their payrolls. It was part of a package of measures meant to bolster the worsening economy during the pandemic. But an analysis of $517 billion in emergency small-business loans found that a majority went to larger businesses, which also disadvantaged minority-owned businesses.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ppp-bias-black-businesses/2021/10/15/b53e0822-2c4f-11ec-baf4-d7a4e075eb90_story.html

Summary​

The statistics for the entirety of Donald Trump’s time in office are nearly all compiled. As we did for his predecessor four years ago, we present a final look at the numbers.

• The economy lost 2.9 million jobs. The unemployment rate increased by 1.6 percentage points to 6.3%.
• Paychecks grew faster than inflation. Average weekly earnings for all workers were up 8.7% after inflation.
• After-tax corporate profits went up, and the stock market set new records. The S&P 500 index rose 67.8%.
• The international trade deficit Trump promised to reduce went up. The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services in 2020 was the highest since 2008 and increased 40.5% from 2016.
• The number of people lacking health insurance rose by 3 million.
• The federal debt held by the public went up, from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion.
• Home prices rose 27.5%, and the homeownership rate increased 2.1 percentage points to 65.8%.
• Illegal immigration increased. Apprehensions at the Southwest border rose 14.7% last year compared with 2016.
• Coal production declined 26.5%, and coal-mining jobs dropped by 16.7%. Carbon emissions from energy consumption dropped 11.5%.
• Handgun production rose 12.5% last year compared with 2016, setting a new record.
• The murder rate last year rose to the highest level since 1997.
• Trump filled one-third of the Supreme Court, nearly 30% of the appellate court seats and a quarter of District Court seats.

Not a complete disaster. But hundreds of thousands of dead Americans is a pretty bad result. And it was avoidable if he had just been honest with us and did the right things at the right time.

 

[hislegacy]

Thank you for your opinion and colorful reply.

Everytime I read rags like the Washington Post it feel like my IQ drops ten points.

But that is just my observation

 

[Robban]

One thing I'm sure of is that memorizing loads of stuff isn't very impressive at all. We have computers and AI now to serve that purpose.

What's a greater quality than being a good memorizer, is being a problem solver, who can come up with original ideas to solve existing problems. Creative thinking is everything!

...I have no idea what an IQ test uncovers in people, but if it's not creativity, then it's not a useful test.

Your Torah makes the simpelton wise.

Psalms 119:130,

"Your opening words illuminate, enlightening the simple."

Consider,







from Tanya 1796



"What profit has a man of all toil that he labors under the sun?"

Only man`s labor "under the sun"
i,e,
toil in mundane matters does not realize any profit.


The labor of Torah, however, is "above the sun"and does indeed profit a man.

Even with the toil of Torah, if one does it for his own glory..............

it belongs to the category of"Labor under the sun" and there is no profit in it.

 

[SimplyMe]

As I noted some of the new posts here today, I started to recall something I saw some years ago -- that the number of words known and used by Americans has declined over the last 50+ years. Basically, the claim of this paper is that young adults currently know 12.5% less words today than young adults did in the 1970s. While not direct evidence of a lower intelligence today, it is interesting in that it seems to further support the idea.

 

[FireDragon76]

As I noted some of the new posts here today, I started to recall something I saw some years ago -- that the number of words known and used by Americans has declined over the last 50+ years. Basically, the claim of this paper is that young adults currently know 12.5% less words today than young adults did in the 1970s. While not direct evidence of a lower intelligence today, it is interesting in that it seems to further support the idea.

Look at the popularity of paraphrased Bibles, like the New Living Translation, most of which have significantly reduced reading levels to reach a wider audience. The Revised Standard Version is considered to be at a 12th grade reading level, in comparison.

At our church, one of the readers still uses the King James Bible. My grandfather was a highschool dropout but could still read the KJV.

 

[dzheremi]

I would have to have an incredibly low IQ to believe that over half the voters in the US are low IQ. How much of a complete imbecile would one have to be to honestly believe that half of the voting populace are low IQ -

Forgive me if I'm out of turn here (IQ is not exactly one of my research interests), but doesn't IQ more or less follow a standard 'bell curve' distribution wherein the median is 100, and roughly half of the population are on one side of 100 and the other are on the other side of 100?

In other words, it might not be true that "over half" of the voters are of below average IQ (query whether over half of voters voted for Trump in 2020...), but roughly half would not be a bad estimate, since that's how the distribution plays out.

Being of sub-average IQ in this context is not the same as saying someone is stupid. Think about it like any other statistic you might find concerning the ranking of states: Since we have an even number of states, it's unavoidable that any ranking of them will have half below whatever the threshold is for the median, and half above it. Does that mean that states 26-50 are automatically full of idiots? Of course not. It just means that in terms of where their state statistically falls, they're in the lower half of the distribution. I've lived in some very rough places in terms of their statistical rankings (e.g., when I lived in New Mexico, we were often tied or had recently been tied with Mississippi for the very bottom of various rankings), but on an individual level, I met many people in those areas who would be considered incredibly smart and creative by any measure.

 

[dzheremi]

The Revised Standard Version is considered to be at a 12th grade reading level, in comparison.

We are always told at my work (tutoring 4th-12th graders) not to consider grade level when helping students, as "what they ought to know" often has little to no bearing on what we actually see in their writing. To be sure, there are some 6th graders who can write circles around high school students, and some students who you might assume have never seen a proper sentence in their entire lives. Often the latter is a result of likely L1 interference (sometimes I can even tell when they're translating 'in their heads', as the result often bears something approaching a 1:1 correspondence to the syntax and/or idioms of their native language, rather than English), which would be an awful thing to essentially 'punish' a kid for.

I wonder about these kinds of realities when it comes to things like this topic, and your observation concerning Bible translations. Is being able to read the KJV somehow more reverent or what have you than reading the RSV or another more modern translation? It may interest you or the thread in general to know that the Coptic Orthodox Church, as infamously conservative as we are, uses the Protestant-authored SVD translation of the scriptures into Arabic (connected to the Syrian Protestant College of Beirut -- today the "American University of Beirut" -- in the 19th century) in the USA, and the NKJV when reading in English. I think the SVD is in Fusha (standardized literary Arabic) or something close to it, as it is not uncommon to witness people stumbling over it a bit here or there, given how different it is than Egyptian dialect. Perhaps that's a bit more akin to the average American's experience with the KJV these days.