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Comment by nabla9 | Hacker News Reader

Finland has mandatory military service for males. So every year you most of the young men (mostly age 18 to 20) into a controlled environment and go through standardized testing and observation.

- Physical fitness has gone down, overweight goes up.

- Intelligence peaked among those who were born in 70's and has been in slight decline last 18 years. Similar results can be seen in other developed countries.

- Anxiety disorders and depression have increased.

- Social skills have gone up. Young men are more social and better at working together than any time before.

- At the same time there is small but growing group of young men with almost no social skills. They can't get friends or maintain friendships or work in a group.

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Note that the Finnish military uses the intelligence test (P1 test) mainly to compare the men within the same arrival group. More specifically within the same unit to pick who go to leadership/speciality school etc. (together with the P2 "personality test")

For us it was done the morning after being on a training exercise in the forest whole weekend with most being lucky if they have gotten more then 3h of sleep per night for the last 2 nights. Also a certain portion answer it badly on purpose (don't want to end in leadership/speciality stuff due to longer service time).

But yeah main thing the military is complaining about new recruits is physical fitness being down (a lot) and thus a lot flunking out and maybe again in a couple years (most of these get permanent "not fit for duty during peace time" after a couple rounds with the doctors over a decade or so)

Also the P1 test to some extent tests your test taking skills. Specifically the kind where you know how to quickly scan over the questions and pick the easiest ones and answer them first. It has a time limit and more questions then most in general can answer within of.

How are they measuring declining IQ over time? IQ tests are regularly recalibrated to mean=100 and std=15. That opens quite the can of worms for comparabilty in all sorts of ways.

The Flynn effect denotes the increase of IQ over time and is well established and documented (not necessarily well understood, though, albeit there are many theories).

And the last decade or so has indeed seen a reversal of the Flynn effect.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18956085

Intelligence researchers don't use IQ, they use raw data from testing.

As you pointed out, IQ is not usable for research across time or across countries or cultures. You can only compare individuals in the same time and same population.

Its further biased by how many iq tests the testee has done before.

Honestly, iq tests are pointless unless you're selecting for people that are willing to invest time into worthless knowledge in order to win in a contest.

Which is a valid criteria, considering that these are the most motivated people... Its just not "intelligence", though that itself is just as pointless to measure.

IQ tests are not pointless, the scores have strong correlation with lifetime achievement and are useful for population statistics about things like educational outcomes and the harms of childhood malnutrition. The meaningfulness of the test score breaks down if someone carries out a campaign of preparation, but that doesn’t make the tests useless. IQ testing gets a lot of flak from people who seem to have an axe to grind, in much the same way that BMI measurements get a lot of flak from people who fall well within the range where it’s useful. Sure, MENSA is stupid and BMI isn’t a useful measurement for professional athletes, but so what?

IQ testing gets a lot of flak because its usefulness is misunderstood and overstated, and because historically it has been used by adherents of scientific racism.

I get the sense from the comment about BMI and "axe grinding" that you're really trying to make a dig at what conservative leaning people might call "SJWs". If that's the case, you're doing yourself a disservice by letting ideology obscure the very real scientific problems with IQ testing.

I don't broadly have beef with "SJWs", though I wouldn't use that term. BMI happens to be an easily recalled second metric that is useful for population statistics even if it's not necessarily always useful for an individual. Without some measurement like IQ we would miss things at the population level like the Flynn effect, or the massive improvements in intelligence brought about by the introduction of iodized salt.

Seems you're misinterpreting my comment. Though I'm not sure how, considering I literally wrote at the end that selecting for it can make sense

As I said before, the iq test mainly measures how much the participant is motivated... Or so many other reasons which are loosely correlated with professional success such as enjoying puzzles and figuring things out etc.

It just doesn't say anything about "intelligence", and measuring that is pointless, because it's not even possible to clearly define it... like so many terms, there are as many definitions for it as there are people in the room.

But even if you use the official definition of it being the ability to apply knowledge I'd still disagree with the usual iq tests measuring that. They're puzzles at best and measuring how someone can apply knowledge is not that easy to standardize.

> As I said before, the iq test mainly measures how much the participant is motivated... Or so many other reasons which are loosely correlated with professional success such as enjoying puzzles and figuring things out etc.

This is wrong, and somewhat obviously so. Most people taking an IQ test have never taken one before, and have no preparation. Some of the biggest IQ datasets come from military enlistees. If IQ were not correlated with nebulously defined "intelligence" and were instead some measure of "motivation" and "enjoying puzzles" we wouldn't expect to see it improve generationally with access to better nutrition and early-childhood education. We also probably wouldn't expect to see significant improvements from the introduction of iodized salt, which alleviated shortage of iodine, critical for early brain development, on a population scale.

"Iodine deficiency during development impairs motivation and enjoyment of puzzles later in life" is a much less plausible claim than "IQ correlates with what we commonly understand to be 'intelligence'".

>Its further biased by how many iq tests the testee has done before.

For a population studies this does not matter at all.

For individuals, practicing for IQ test might help a little but there seems to be a clear limit IQ limit that individuals can't overcome with practice.

One hypothesis to consider is the drastic decline in teen smoking rates. Nicotine is a powerful anti-psychotic. Smoking rates among the schizotypal are nearly double the rest of the population, even when controlling for common explanatory factors.

Social isolation, anxiety, depression, mild cognitive impairment and avoidant behavior are all signs of untreated schizophrenia. It's possible in the past that those with sub-clinical schizotypal personalities self-medicated with tobacco. Removing that would result in a sub-segment of the population becoming significantly less functional in a pronounced way.

I wonder how the decline of teen smoking follows the rise of other forms of stimulants, like caffeine, or other forms of nicotine consumption.

For IQ, the average (mean) is heavily influenced by the number of low performers. It’s not a good indicator of what is going on with the ‘normal’ kids. Some of the observations here might indicate that there is a growing population of kids with social and mental problems. This is probably a much bigger problem than a mild decline of the median.

That's pretty interesting, do you have any link to read a bit more about all this ? I'm having a hard time finding relevant links on google

This is fascinating. Do you have a link for where we can read more about the data?

>> - Intelligence peaked among those who were born in 70's and has been in slight decline last 18 years. Similar results can be seen in other developed countries.

I always wonder when people post these numbers about IQ going up and down over time, what scales are we talking about here? like is it a difference of like 2 IQ points or is it like a difference of 20? Cause if it's 5 or less I can't imagine it would make any real functional difference to the country.

> Finland has mandatory military service for males.

How is that kind of institutionalized sexism still legal?

Finland has a history of needing to fight off a much larger expansionist neighbor. One who has recently (a few years ago) annexed more territory while the rest of the world sat around and did nothing.

Or are you asking why they don't extend the mandatory service to women? The reasons for that are somewhat historic and very _biotruth_. A country that fights a devastating war that wipes out 90% of the men but keeps the women can recover. A country that has 90% of the women wiped out but leaves the men is completely screwed.

If there was ever a situation where there was a genuine risk of a significant portion of the military being killed, it would not be difficult to withdraw all women from the military at that point. And I do not think there has been a single country in modern history that was at a genuine risk of being wiped out due to combat deaths, even if all of those combat deaths had been men instead of women.

To me this incredibly small risk does not seem to be worth holding one gender back over another, increasing the gender gap for no reason. Forcing someone to work just because of their gender seems very wrong to me.

But those aren't the two options. If loss of life were equal due to equal participation, you'd get 45% loss of each sex (using your 90% of men figure as the potential loss), which (while still devastating) isn't the same argument for losing the breeding capacity of the country.

The reality is that those sorts of rules are very much based on culture tradition ('historic'). It takes a long time for parts of our culture to change. Only a few countries have mandatory service for women (Finland's neighbors Norway and Sweden among them). Israel does as well, but has a large exception on religious grounds.

Also, mandatory service doesn't necessarily mean mandatory combat service, although I don't know how those countries just mentioned manage that.

Scenario A: 100 women, 100 men. 100 men go off to war, 10 men return. But with polygamy, 100 women have 100 children for the next generation.

Scenario B: 100 women, 100 men. 50 women and 50 men go off to war, 5 men and 5 women return. You have 55 women left in the population and 55 children for the next generation.

The limiting factor in human population growth is the number of women that can have children. The cold calculus might be distasteful, but it is there.

by adding polygamy into the mix, you're moving the goalposts of what is really just an intellectual exercise here. The reality is that these sorts of laws are put in place based on what the lawmakers feel is culturally acceptable (tradition). Pretty confident the people arguing for male-only conscription aren't putting much weight on polygamy in their thinking. What they're really thinking is that they need male soldiers to win their war or defend their country...

It's not even official polygamy, it's just people being people and life finding a way. Lots of single mother households raising a bunch of kids. The balance is mostly restored in the next generation.

The cold calculus is also hopelessly outdated in so many ways given the timescales of modern wars and modern transportation speed and connection. Even in an extended war the reproductive capacity is frankly irrelevant as even 1 million moms can't pop out a fully trained soldier. And it isn't a matter of cannonfodder anyway. Gender ratios and population growth may be resolved better by immigration than enforced by isolation polygamy.

You do have another 45 men who aren't dead. They appreciate that a lot. You left that out...like it's always left out.

It's a good thing then we don't have any country with just 200 people in them.

It's same excuse used when someone asks why safety of women comes before men, conveniently ignoring that the scenario itself is so far out, it's not going to happen.

Do you not understand what an example is?

multiple 200 by whatever number you feel will represent a true population.

Israel has mandatory service for women and men, and has presently one of the most advanced armed forces.

AFAIK, in Israel women serve less time and in less dangerous roles. The only culture that I know of, which seems to have somewhat equal burden of war fighting are the Peshmerga/Kurds.

They can thank the US for footing the bill for all those war toys.

What kind of situation wipes out the army, then leaves the country alone to recover?

The kind where you are conquered but the population survives as a vassal state.

So, the strategic planning was done by Dr. Strangelove?

Switzerland is in the same position. You cannot get a majority for abolishing the draft, so it is here to stay (for now). You also cannot get a majority for extending it to women, for those who support the military tend to also be those who hold more conservative values, and those who seek egalitarianism tend to be those who would want to abolish the draft.

Because there is a law for mandatory service, and nobody wants to extend it to women.

Women can volunteer and some of them do.

This is the norm almost everywhere that has conscription. There's a map of countries with conscription on Wikipedia (blue, red, and yellow): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription

Jehovas witnesses in Finland were exempt from the military service until last year. Someone took it to court and the ruling was that you can't discrimate certain groups based on their religion. I think it's only a question of time before it is brought up as gender discrimination and the exemption will be removed.

There are some political interest in changing in mostly from the youth branches of the political parties but the "real" politicians mostly stick their fingers in their ears. I suppose it is more or less political suicide to try to change the statsu quo as would affect a huge amount of voters negatively.

Turns out feminists don't want the 'right' to be considered as expendable resources, so they conveniently pretend it doesn't exist.

Would love to read more, you have a source(s)?

I think the parent is referring to the Flynn Effect.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect?wprov=sfla1

Mandatory military service otherwise known as government mandated slavery

It depends if you think of your country as an accessory burden or as the ensemble of your fellows.

Incidentally, this seems to be an argument towards smaller, culturally homogeneous countries, where it is much easier to feel connected to the whole set of your countrymen.

> Mandatory military service otherwise known as government mandated slavery

>> It depends if you think of your country as an accessory burden or as the ensemble of your fellows.

This "depends" clause doesn't logically follow, since the "slavery" label applies in either circumstance. If one's country is an "ensemble of your fellows", then volunteering for military service may logically follow from that; forcing others to do so, does not. In either case, whether one feels connected to one's country or not, being compelled by force to participate in the military can legitimately be seen as a form of slavery -- since the victim is unable to withdraw unilaterally from their compelled service.

If one cares deeply about their own countrymen, why would one want to enslave them, and remove their choice and freedom in the matter?

I think mandatory military service is the only way to get sufficient people interested in participating and educating themselves about current issues to have a functional democracy.

Mandatory military service is nothing more than nationalistic brainwashing.

I think all this praise for people that go into the military as having “served” and whatnot is nationalistic brainwashing. I really don’t see any other option for Americans to start caring about what their politicians do than to make them personally feel it.

That has failed miserably for getting people to care - at least as they should because of attributation. It is their bread and butter to claim successes they had nothing to do with pin their failures on their foes or a scapegoat who is now their foe.

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