IQ scores have been in decline for cohorts born since 1975

Then I guess you could also look at the removal of lead from car exhaust gases, (generally considered a good thing).

I couldn’t read the full article due to the paywall and there’s no nice way to put this bit but is the drop in score due to a decline in the number of people with high IQ or because people with low IQ are surviving longer in childhood where previously they might not?

I don't know many people that agree with this. At least in my bubble, the great majority regard IQ tests as bunk and the rest regard IQ as just a very roundabout way of measuring the education level of a child's parents. (There's some disagreement whether the father's level of education is the most important factor [1] or the mother's education level is [2]).) It's only in a select few internet forums dominated by a select few types of people where IQ is taken seriously and even obsessed over.

Putting aside the wholly made-up g factor, what we've been seeing in the West for the last 30 years is rapidly increasing inequality in educational attainment. Severe cuts in education at both the public level and the private level (see, eg, the extraordinary rise of single mothers in both the US and EU and parents with multiple jobs) means that many children are simply getting less education than they did 30 years ago.

Note that this does not apply to the knowledge elite who go to extraordinary measures to educate their children. It's quite likely that the children of today's elite are the most educated children in the history of the planet. I know a few parents who have budgeted a million dollars for the education of each of their children.

The Flynn Effect was likely nothing more than the result of the extraordinary and broad-based increase in wealth we saw from 1900 to 1980. Since 1980 virtually all of the growth is being captured by the elites so it's not surprising at all that we'd see a similar reversal in the Flynn Effect.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/23/fathers-educ...

[2] http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/mothers-education-level-at-time...

For any test, your grade is usually based on: * Your form on that day (good day/bad day whatever) * Your competence * Test taking ability (TTA)

The first one can result in pretty large fluctuations, though on the population level (what the Flynn effect measures) it should not matter. Competence usually means "knows the subject", for an IQ test this would (ideally) be "is smart". TTA is either "is prepared for the test" or "knows how to make educated guesses".

It is believed that the Flynn effect largely results from two factors: * Some parts of the population were severely malnourished 50-100 years ago which hindered their brain development. * Improved TTA

The first one would be a real gain (of intelligence), though with limited capability to expand upon, as these days almost no one (in US/Europe at least) is malnourished enough to allow for further gains at the population level

The second is not a gain of intelligence though it is a gain of competence, just not the kind that we want to measure with an IQ test.

As there are not many reasons to believe, that the current decline is due to nourishment/TTA, it may be that those are constant but actual intelligence is on decline.

The background/upbringing influences one's performance in IQ tests too, so the point is moot.

>If the question is: do we think in different way than we did 50 years ago? I think the answer is a stong yes.

Not in the slightest.

>The technology and the tools we have today enable us to do things that were unconcievable 50 years ago.

Which is neither here not there when it comes to intelligence. Plus we still do things we did 50 and 100 and 100000 years ago and still need to be good at them...

This happens all the time, GDP is another fantastic example.

Let's try to educate people that proxies are not the real thing, not condemn the measures - because it's not their fault :-)

The test used by Mensa (as an example many think about when they hear IQ test) is a simple test that has shown reasonably stable correlation with IQ, but it is not a real IQ test.

So like the kind of situations a person finds themselves all the time throughout their lives?

There probably is a much smaller, perhaps not yet measurable, fall caused by genetics. I tried to submit an Economist article on that. (Can you see it under https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=bloak ?)

I feel this too. I'm in my twenties and the small children scare me with their brilliance sometimes. I am excited to see those little guys grow up. I am convinced they will be the first generation to ask, in full, "what should we do?" rather than, "what can we do?". Very excited.