Comment by paulpauper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulpauper | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

A group of psychologists, two from Northwestern University and the third from the University of Oregon, has found via online testing that IQ scores in the U.S. may be dropping for the first time in nearly a century. In their paper published in the journal Intelligence, Elizabeth Dworak, William Revelle and David Condon describe analyzing the results of online IQ tests taken by volunteers over the years 2006 to 2018.

This is not that surprising. The people who took online tests in 2006 may have been earlier adopters, and and thus slightly smarter than later test takers. Second, it's impossible to make an extrapolation about online tests ad being applicable to IQs a century ago.

As it's said in the paper:

As the annual sample sizes have increased in more recent years and the SAPA Project has discussed in more public outlets such social media (mistressredditor, 2013; Murray, 2017; SAPAPsych, 2014a, SAPAPsych, 2014b) or online articles (Guarino, 2018), it's plausible that newer annual samples are more “average” or normal representation than those recruited during the SAPA Project's former years.

I don't think it's supposable to conclude that flynn effect is reversing

That's fair. So the internet has really been getting dumber.

> I don't think it's supposable to conclude that flynn effect is reversing

Lol, it's reversing all across western Europe and has been since birth cohorts starting around 1970. The Norwegian studies are the most cited AFAIK.

Here's an article about it, for those interested: https://www.sciencealert.com/iq-scores-falling-in-worrying-r...

They try to end the article with some feel-good hand-waiving, but so many things have changed since the mid 1970s, that it feels ridiculous to use lack of formal reasoning as an excuse. Since there's no data on it, nor on "fluid intelligence", there's no reason to assume later generations have more or less of either. If they do lack "crystallized intelligence", they did indeed become dumber.

The researchers behind one of the Norwegian studies have made some very weird arguments in public statements that aren't part of their research.

They said that the drops in IQ are not explainable by immigration, but this is something that is only the case in their own study in Norway where the IQ drop was something like 1-1.2 points per decade, while the countries with big drops-- France and the UK have drops that are about 3.2-4.3 times higher.

You will do well to remember the racist history of IW tests. Maybe we should be celebrating that scores are going down on what is essentially a racist test.

Can you expand on this a bit? How exactly are they racist?

There's a lot of analysis on this that is really easy to Google, so this is just the gist. Essentially, intelligence is an abstract and subjective quality. IQ correlates with what the big names in academia agreed were "smart people", back when such institutions were largely racially segregated. In particular a numeric/"empirical" standard was pushed for to give more credibility to eugenics.

IQ also correlates with many other other things such as reaction time and other real, measurable phenomena, so to say 'yeah but that's just like, your opinion' is nonsense.

All things being equal IQ could have some value however, bearing in mind I'm simplifying here, not all things are equal. IQ is designed to quantify intelligence, not reaction time. Don't just go by the comments here, even mine. Look into the history of IQ tests, for what purpose they were designed, and what they really test for.

One of the most oft-cited examples is of an intelligence test asking questions like "Dish is to place mat as teacup is to _____" where the correct answer is saucer - making the test biased in favour of people who use place mats and saucers at home.

This is a bit of a strawman because IQ tests today rarely rely on language comprehension.

I suspect that a familiarity level with western-style IQ tests may be part of the story as well.

I was issued such tests several times as a young child. The first time, I cried and did miserably. It was all so strange and unfamiliar. Had never seen logic puzzles before and didn't understand what they were asking of me.

My mom took me back a few weeks later and paid for me to re-take another IQ test. I did so well they placed me in "gifted" classes where I remained throughout my primary education. I didn't magically get smarter; I just became more comfortable with the test format.

I had a similar experience as an adult in my late 20s. Bought a Mensa book containing two practice exams. Took one and fell about 15 points (a full standard deviation!!!) shy of my childhood score. A week later I took the second test and equaled my childhood score almost exactly. Again, I am assuming I didn't sprout a bunch of new synaptic connections.

I suspect that second chances like these and familiarity with IQ tests in general correspond tightly with socioeconomic background. The more privilege you have, the more likely you are to get the chance to become comfortable with these sorts of tests and score closer to your maximum personal potential.

If I, an American, take an IQ test right now... I'm probably going to score better than somebody from another part of the world with equal intelligence who's never seen one of those tests before.

You start with the dogma that race isn't a real thing, and only a social construct and we know this to be true with 100% certainty. Then anything that shows a difference between races must be false, and also racist, or else the dogma isn't true.

They even cite "The Bell Curve" a famously racist text in this article.

Bell curve a classic for a reason and even though I heard some complaints before, I don't recall complaints that disproved its core points.

Would you care to elaborate on the famously racist parts ( and ideally what is racist about them ? )

Reply on news.ycombinator.com