A defining trend in human intelligence tests that saw people steadily obtaining higher IQ scores through the 20th century has abruptly ended, a new study shows.
An analysis of some 730,000 IQ test results by researchers from the Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research in Norway reveals the Flynn effect hit its peak for people born during the mid-1970s, and has significantly declined ever since.
"it suggests changes in lifestyle could be what's behind these lower IQs, perhaps due to the way children are educated, the way they're brought up, and the things they spend time doing more and less (the types of play they engage in, whether they read books, and so on)"
Not surprisingly, I have some ideas for why this is happening. Not a scientific analysis mind you, more based upon decades of personal observation. I have come to believe that the scientific method is as much an hindrance to human progress as an advancement. To the extent that it has become a very useful cudgel by denialists to claim that "more proof is needed". This is how the tobacco industry prospered for decades. Way back in the 1920s, cigarettes were known as "coffin nails". It took until the 1990s to finally offset well-funded industry propaganda to actually "prove" that fact. Likewise, the recent opioid epidemic claimed a cool 100,000 lives before regulators stepped in to slow the attrition rate:
"America’s largest drug companies saturated the country with 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pain pills from 2006 through 2012 as the nation’s deadliest drug epidemic spun out of control, according to previously undisclosed company data released as part of the largest civil action in U.S. history."
The data provides an unprecedented look at the surge of legal pain pills that fueled the prescription opioid epidemic, which has resulted in nearly 100,000 deaths from 2006 through 2012."
To apologists for greed, it's all just business as usual. Supply and demand. The invisible hand of carbon sequestration.
Once again - commonsense was leaps ahead of scientific method. Conscience over industry pseudo-science.
We find ourselves at this crucial juncture, now led by the dumbest of dumbfucks and their Anti-Christ. Sent for obvious reason - to sequester record carbon.
Some of my thoughts:
Popular culture and mass media are dumbing people down from birth.
Four of the top ten all time highest grossing movies are minor storyline alterations of the exact same comic book fantasy:
Corporate assimilation is destroying intellectual curiosity - Corporations don't need or want intelligent people. Story-telling is far more persuasive than facts and data. Hence, marketing culture is predominant.
Artificial intelligence is ascendant both in machines and humans. Poverty capital has accelerated automation. Superficial Google knowledge has supplanted deep subject matter expertise. The internet is a cesspool of disinformation overload.
The 24 hour news cycle is overwhelmingly opinion and worthless pontification.
Attention deficit is rampant. Abuse of memory drugs is commonplace. Reading books is considered "obsolete". Most young people today NEVER read in their spare time.
Education today is not educating. The curriculum is outmoded and irrelevant. We are teaching people things they don't need to know at the expense of teaching them life skills. We are graduating functional illiterates.
College has been collapsed down to a four year self-bankrupting frat party interrupted by ritalin-assisted rote memorization. Degrees are for credentialization, not education.
Over-specialization of job functions has led to a society bereft of craftmanship and useful knowledge.
Denial is rampant and socially obligatory.
"In the stillness of remembering, what you had
and what you lost
You know what you lost"
