American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect' | Hacker News Reader

American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'

popularmechanics.com

11 pointsxiaodai7 comments

IQ rates are dropping in many developed countries ( Scandinavia, Britain, Germany, France and Australia). Around the turn of the 21st century, many of the most economically advanced nations began experiencing some kind of decline in IQ.

We can rule out some explanations:

- US only explanations don't work.

- Not genetics. It's not immigrants or low IQ people having more children. Norwegian studies show that children of high-IQ parents are also having lower IQ.Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/115/26/6674.full.pdf

So its environment somehow. Nutrition, exercise, education, activities, pollution, ...

Incredibly, one of the study's authors chooses to single out STEM as a possible cause. STEM -- when there are so many other issues that could be contributing. For example:

- Less physical activity, more obesity. Both have known effects on memory and cognition.

- Childhood screen time, which has been linked to poor sleep, worse communication skills, and developmental delays.

- Easy, anonymous access to infinite novel pornography, which may affect the development of gray matter and the functioning of the prefrontal cortex.

- The decline of community and communal spaces and the detrimental mental effects of isolation.

Getting people suspicious that more science education will decrease IQ is about the last thing we need. (And I wasn't a STEM major, for the record.)

It's always frustrating when a headline says exactly the opposite of what the article itself does:

Headline:

> American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped

Article:

> Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don't necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent. "It doesn't mean their mental ability is lower or higher; it's just a difference in scores that are favoring older or newer samples," she said in a press release. "It could just be that they’re getting worse at taking tests or specifically worse at taking these kinds of tests."

But that's... not the opposite? Ms. Dworak doesn't say Americans are getting dumber, just that recent IQ scores are lower. I.E. there has been a drop in IQ scores.

This feels pretty straightforward, to the point it feels like I'm missing something?

FWIW, i already regret my above comment. In common, everyday English there is an undeniably strong correlation between IQ and intelligence, to the point that the two are often used as synonyms. The article's author certainly knows that and needlessly provokes the reader with the assumption that the average reader (myself included!) will _not_ know that the two terms are _not_ interchangeable.

Humans are naturally curious about the world about them. But I think there is a difference between going and finding out, versus having it spoon fed. The latter increases knowledge but I don't think it exercises the brain.

We have built a world in which you can't "go and finding out".

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