[A] new study from Norway, which examines IQ scores from 730,000 men (standardized tests are part of military service there) disproves all these ideas, because it shows IQ dropping within the same families. Men born in 1991 score, on average, five points lower than men born in 1975. There must, in other words, be an environmental explanation, and the chronology throws up a clear suspect: the rise in screen-time.
Kids brought up with Facebook and Instagram are more politically bigoted, not because they don’t hear alternative opinions, but because they don’t learn the concentration necessary to listen to opponents — a difficult and unnatural skill.
Not blogs though. Blogs are good for you.
I wonder if they’re also taking into consideration the, how shall I put it, the changing ethnic and racial aspect happening in the country, vis a vis dirt worlders
…ssshhhh!
good one
Did you miss the part where it said they found the trend within families? I.e. younger siblings scored lower, so there wouldn’t be much ethnic or racial change within a family.
(But there would be a consistent pattern within any family of younger siblings being born when their mother was older. And the report states that the children of older mothers tend to develop lower intelligence than the children of younger mothers but doesn’t explain why that isn’t the cause of the trend in the stats it is reporting. I wonder if the reporter was born of an older mother, and/or got more screen time while growing up.)
Maybe it’s not screen time itself, just a correlation of increased screen time with standards of education getting worse.
As I have repeatedly told my 2 younger sisters, mom had only so much IQ and I got most of it.
*
not like canadians are immune…
“Last night we watched the local Toronto CTV news.”
“Nine minutes in, after about 5 minutes of the triple murder suicide,
about three of the economic situation, and one on the ‘blizzard’,
the next story was about ‘a SHOCKING result’ on some dumb
dance show.”
*
While social media plays a role I think part of the problem is over protective parenting. Wrapping your kid in styrofoam with a bubble wrap overlay does not give the kid much of a chance to learn.
Correlation is not causation … the screentime explanation doesn’t cut it. Could it be a contributing factor? Maybe. But I for one am not quick to dismiss the theory about dumb people breeding farrrrr more than intelligent people.
At risk of being labeled a eugenicist… I believe our modern welfare society has facilitated the breeding and importation of a vast underclass that is threatening both our economic underpinning and IQ scores. Do I have proof? Nope. But is it a “logical” hypothesis? Uh, yeah! More so than the “screentime” nonsense. And when you extrapolate to include both ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ … the conclusion becomes overwhelming. For example, look at the ever-DEcreasing high school graduation rates. How can anyone look at the FAILure of our education system to TEACH the underclass and not see a corresponding drop in IQ rates?
This is just another example of political-correctness intervening in science. Because of political-correctness, we cannot possibly blame: 1) a baby-mama supporting welfare system, or 2) pubic education FAILure, or 3) an invasion of third worlders lacking an 8th grade education, or 4) increasing drug use, or 5) radical changes in ethnic demographics. Nope. All those LOGICAL causes cannot even be considered … therefore we blame an inanimate object … video screens.
This … is what will DOOM our society. The utter lack of unbiased science and analysis employed to solve problems. “One bad Apple spoils the whole bunch”. This is a truism that cannot be denied by leftist FOOLS, who believe the opposite. They believe that the good apples will ‘fix’ the bad ones. Simply dump the 3rd world into America, and all the ‘inferior’ people will become ‘superior’. It’s just like affirmative-action programs … give a person a job just because of skin color and not because of competency … and watch as the inferior hire becomes a superior worker! Uh … no, the opposite happens … the dead weight employee drags down the entire operation. Sheesh. This isn’t rocket science …
You have used your quota of clichés, ellipses, and inverted commas for both 2018 and 2019. You must read a book now.
Good to know. I shall remember that when writing my first novel … meanwhile, here on the Internets, I shall conscientiously ignore your rebuke.
Another excellent post Kenji and thanks for the past year of your comments and analysis. All the best in the New Year.
I’m with Dave on that….Always enjoy hearing from one of the last Sane voices left in Kalifornia….
cheers Kenji and all the best in 2019…
here here!! or is it hear hear !!
Gentlemen; you’re too kind. I have learned much from YOUR posts. Kate has curated a great group of posters who are very well educated and insightful. Looking forward to a Happy 2019 with all my e-friends here.
way too much truth there Kenji.
Haha Venezuela is last.
Average IQ by Country
Country/Region IQ (2003) IQ (2010)
Hong Kong 107 109
Singapore 105 109
North Korea 105 106
South Korea 106 106
Japan 105 106
People’ Republic of China 101 106
Taiwan 104 106
Italy 102 103
Mongolia 99 102
Iceland 98 102
Switzerland 101 102
Austria 102 100
Luxembourg 101 100
Netherlands 102 100
Norway 99 100
United Kingdom 100 100
Belgium 100 100
Canada 98 100
Estonia 98 99
Finland 97 99
Poland 99 99
Germany 102 98
New Zealand 100 98
Sweden 101 98
Andorra 97 98
Australia 98 98
Czech Republic 97 98
Denmark 98 98
France 98 98
Latvia 97 98
Spain 97 98
United States 98 98
Russia 97 98
Hungary 99 97
Belarus 96 97
Malta 96 97
Ukraine 96 97
Slovakia 96 96
Uruguay 96 96
Moldova 95 96
Israel 95 96
Armenia 94 95
Portugal 95 95
Georgia 94 95
Kazakhstan 93 95
Romania 94 94
Vietnam 96 94
Bulgaria 93 93
Argentina 95 93
Malaysia 92 92
Greece 92 92
Ireland 93 92
Cambodia 90 92
Brunei 92 91
Cyprus 92 91
Republic of Macedonia 93 91
Thailand 91 91
Lithuania 96 90
Albania 90 90
Bermuda N/A 90
Kyrgyzstan 88 90
Croatia 90 90
Bosnia and Herzegovina N/A 90
Mexico 88 90
Turkey 90 90
Chile 93 90
Laos 89 89
Mauritius 83 89
Costa Rica 90 89
Cook Island N/A 89
Ecuador 83 89
Suriname 89 89
Samoa 88 88
Bolivia 86 88
Guyana 84 88
Myanmar 87 88
Azerbaijan 87 87
Brazil 87 87
East Timor N/A 97
Iraq 87 87
Tajikistan 87 87
Turkmenistan 87 87
Uzbekistan 87 87
Indonesia 88 86
Kuwait 84 86
Philippines 86 86
Seychelles 83 86
Cuba 85 86
Tonga 86 85
Fiji 85 85
New Caledonia N/A 85
Kiribati 85 85
Trinidad and Tobago 82 85
Yemen 83 85
Belize 84 85
Peru 88 84
Iran 84 84
Marshall Islands 84 84
Pakistan 82 84
Panama 84 84
Paraguay 85 84
Colombia 87 84
Puerto Rico 84 84
Afghanistan 83 84
Federated States of Micronesia 84 84
Saudi Arabia 83 84
Solomon Island 84 84
The Bahamas 80
United Arab Emirates 83 84
Vanuatu 84 84
Morocco 84 83
Jordan 85 83
Venezuela 86 83
Where is sub saharan Africa on the list?
Anybody remember Phil Rushton? His work at Western back is the 80’s was considered racist. He was a tenured professor at Western and published his peer reviewed findings on race and intelligence……..need I continue
I remember him, his lectures were casting pearls before swine – and even the swine then were smarter than they are now.
Top 7 are Asian, most of the bottom half are Muslim. So that is a very racist Islamophobic post – illuminating maybe but very Islamophobic and racist.
Thankyou.
Muslims are not a race. Muslims are dull-witted fools who are convinced their ‘god’ is the best of the lot.
They are violent by nature and their social structure is Neanderthal. Muslims come in all races, but mostly Arab and Malaysian. They are big believers in sex after death. That is the only way many of them will every have sex, or so they believe.
Their ID is a combo of insane religion, really stupid politics, and sex with farm animals. … I have seen their women so you can’t fault them for the animal sex.
Further, if Muslims were an actual race, I can think of no race more deserving of ostracism from the rest of the human race. Think that sentiment is bad? Consider that their sentiment towards us is death and destruction and a total take-over. They want us gone.
They hate us passionately, but it’s probably just envy on steroids. We, in the western world make them look as dumb as monkeys … which they are. Must be embarrassing.
It’s the inbreeding
The Bahamas are 80? Here I am living in Ottawa in winter, if I were SMART, I’d be living in the Bahamas.
I would not discount how education has changed to indoctrination, preventing children from learning how to learn and solve problems instead of teaching them what they are supposed to think in order to gain official approval.
mmmmm . . . . nah, it’s been that way at least since I was forced to regurgitate, accused of being a ‘dummy’ instead of being ALLOWED to voice the truth I was *bored out of my mind*
a sampling:
see Spot.
see Spot run.
run Spot.
run.
Me too, but I sat it out and did my own studying and reading. OK So I am a nerd; want to make something of it? I’ll hit you with my pocket protector.
Dep Me:
BINGO !! I don’t think there is a prize, but maybe a participation medal.
Thinking for yourself is dangerous,if you get off side of your virtue posturing comrades you can get destroyed.
So appearing to be smarter than ones woke bullies is suicide.
And our environment has changed.
Consider language,once it was considered the pinnacle of achievement to be able to use language to calmly persuade others to our cause.
We had built on the classics,Shakespeare still got a nod.rational thought was admired.
Thanks to mass (hysteria)edumbacation feelings now trump reason.
Now we use emogies to communicate, next point and grunt.
Or smack with club,cause “feel good”.
From Wiki: “The ruling Party of Oceania created the Newspeak language to meet the ideological requirements of English Socialism (Ingsoc).[1] Newspeak is a controlled language, of restricted grammar and limited vocabulary, meant to limit the freedom of thought—personal identity, self-expression, free will—that ideologically threatens the régime of Big Brother and the Party, who thus criminalized such concepts as thoughtcrime, contradictions of Ingsoc orthodoxy.”
Orwell saw this coming seventy plus years ago.
Yes he did, but Orwell said it would be right-wing capitalists that would be doing it.
In reality, it turns out, it is the far left socialists.
You forgot slogans, linguistic cages of tyrants.
“…the chronology throws up a clear suspect: the rise in screen-time.”
Conveniently letting the schools off easily…
Citing schools as the culprit lets the parents off easily. I refused to use baby talk to my 2 (now grown) children, and I started talking to them in utero. Normal talk with big words. Many years later I had more than one high school teacher admit that both kids would use words they (the teachers) had to go look up. SMH. A full time stay-at-home mom was, I believe, extremely important, as was both kids routinely seeing both parents with their nose in a book. High expectations of their efforts at whatever they tried (“very well done, now go back and do better, I know you can”), and a routine deprogramming (“so, what did they teach you in school today…smh”) were imho factors as well.
dont forget the music.
the complex, wonderful rhythms and moods of classical music.
they will be drawn to it. give them 5 or 6 years of pooping and giggling and getting into things, then sit them in front of a piano and it will all come flooding back.
my niece of Chinese parentage, could recite Shakespeare (Hecat) at 11 yrs old and speaks 4 languages, mandarin, cantonese, english and spanish.
and plays piano like her aunt.
The Twitter thread by Nassim Taleb is well worth reading:
https://mobile.twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1076845397795065856
Short version:
The only objective measure of intelligence is survival.
If the Chinese, God forbid, inherit the earth and enslave or exterminate us, it won’t be because they had a slightly higher average IQ. It will be because we will have forgotten to put our survival before literally everything else and to do everything necessary to guarantee it—or, failing that, ensure that our enemies die with us.
Earlier today, I was reminded of just how dumb the kiddies are now.
Somebody, who I think was in the process of moving out, chucked out a flat-screen monitor….. a perfectly good one. I took it back upstairs to my apartment, cleaned it up, and it appears to work like a charm.
I made some room in one corner or my place by getting rid of a pair of CRT monitors, both of which were perfectly good and both of which I got for free several years ago because someone left them in the lobby. I was told to dump those in the garbage because the management didn’t want that sort of stuff lying around.
So much for one man’s junk being another man’s treasure.
It broke my heart to see perfectly good computer equipment being tossed into the trash which, inevitably, will go into a landfill. When I was unemployed during the 1980s, people grabbed stuff like that because there wasn’t much money around and they were looking for anything to stretch whatever cash they had.
I guess the younger generation today is far too affluent.
Older folks lived without all the tech toys and tsunamis of information, most of which is Bullshit or fake news.
I remember as a kid, having only a radio for entertainment. I didn’t see a TV until I was 14 years old. At that point I wasn’t interested anyway. At 14, girls are starting to get interesting and I was learning to play the saxophone with which I earned a living for 20 years before having to ‘get a real job’. That also got me a lot of girls.
The point is, that I had tons of time to just stare off into space and THINK. Thinking is important if you want to do well in life. You need to spend a lot of time learning who you are and what you are all about. Not from a narcissistic point of view, but rather, from a ‘how do I fit in and what should I do with my life’ point of view.
Who am I? The ancient Greeks had it right. “All things in moderation” and “Know thyself. Those are the two bits of knowledge that are key to a successful life. Period.
Younger people today are being raised by parents who are addicted to the screen, so they are NOT paying enough attention to their kids … so the kids learn from the parents and become screen addicted too. At least the screen talks to them.
There is no doubt we appear to be getting stupider, but a lot of that could also be the simple fact that they are being kept ‘ignorant’ as we all know that the educational system is rotten through and through and does more harm than good. Kids are being ripped-off from what they might achieve to becoming little socialist clowns who need to be taken care of.
“A generation so much dumber than its parents came crashing through the window”
Crazy to think that we’re already like four generations past the baby boomers, who were themselves already considered to be the decadent silk slipper type generation. I think as far as we know humans haven’t really made it this far before, no? I wonder how far we’ll make it this time.
Generally, 3rd world nations have lower average I.Q. scores than the more developed ones. An average includes those with higher and lower than average scores. Charles Murray co-wrote a book about I.Q a couple of decades ago.
The growing challenge in advanced economies is how to employ those with low IQs. 100 plus years ago, those one standard deviation lower, e.i. 85 (about 15 percent of the population) could be employed in simple manual labour jobs, e.i. agriculture, shoveling gravel, pounding railroad spikes.
Now new growing economic sectors and advances in technology require jobs to be filled with more educated and higher I.Q. people. No one is going to put you in charge of a $300,000 machine, unless you can read the instruction/maintenance manual and follow it.
The Canadian point system for immigration was supposed to select for those with skills/education/(I.Q.) needed to benefit the Canadian economy. However, some of that has been evaded by scams and/or suicidal empathetic gov’t. policies.
Immigration of those with lower I.Q./skills/education costs the Canadian economy. As we already have about 15% of the population with a standard deviation lower than average e.i. I.Q. 85 and lower. Finding useful work for them is an increasing challenge. Much of the public subsidy programs keep them afloat. Some supplement that income by crime, which is why public housing projects in Western nations tend to have high crime rates. That can be reduced by moral instruction/shaming but the Cult. Marxists in gov’t./judiciary impedes that, calling it (Western Civilization) colonialism.
Moral instruction would reduce the drain on public services, but again, gainful employment is a growing challenge for the unskilled/semi-skilled. Mass migration from the 3rd world, has and is keeping those wage levels so low, most require gov’t. subsidy to survive. Secondly, by draining the higher I.Q. better educated from 3rd world nations, we reduce the segment of their population needed to raise their standard of living and reduce crime/tribalism in their cultures. We harm those nations.
The higher I.Q. can be trained for useful employment if that is valued in their culture. Allowing large numbers of low I.Q. immigrants will drain the public budget reducing spending on the current poor/homeless/aged/sick and disabled. While, at the same time, reducing the amount of economic growth that raises the standard of living here for everyone.
A serious corollary is that it is the European, higher I.Q./more advanced education that produces the scientific and technical advances that have been shared with the 3rd world, e.i. green revolution, potable water, vaccinations, mass communication, education. This is why their populations have lower death rates and higher levels of economic growth. West. Civilization is the most prosperous, peaceful and moral in world history.
If for any reason, conflict, civil war, low birthrates, economic recession/depression, that generation of problem solving wealth ceases. The needless human suffering will be felt hardest in the 3rd world. It’s the higher I.Q. and freer liberal democracies whose inventions/discoveries drive the world economies and trade, both directly or indirectly.
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
https://brainstats.com/average-iq-by-country.html
People can survive with fewer skills. Human intelligence has a lower payout for many and AI a bigger payout. Do you shake your head at young people not knowing how to count out change? They don’t need to. They don’t need to carry as much information ready-to-go in their head. I used to struggle to answer knowledge questions. Now I say “OK Google”. I don’t need to spell or write with skill because predictive typing does a better job for common tasks. I can get by not knowing most of the times table and cursive. My children know far fewer poems and elements of the classics than I do. I know about half the poems my Dad did and he knew about half of what his parents learned. ( For example, they knew the rhyming Scottish Psalter and chapters of the Bible. My parents’ generation knew catechism and “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” and so on. Talib’s article is referenced above and he notes that “pattern recognition” is a big part of measured intelligence. I often don’t need to know the pattern. “OK Google, give me directions to the nearest Costco” works fine. I don’t need to remember the streets or the counties, or the capitals and provinces or even know what lands, peoples and climes fill the earth.
“I don’t need to know …”
When push comes to shove, the less you know the less you will be needed. All the Left wants you to know is to put your X in their box on the ballot. In return they are willing to pay for your living – as long as they can extract the funds from someone else.
When the economy is sufficiently automated with machines to do the work of producing food, energy, and goods, with machines to maintain the machines, and machines to design and build the machines, they won’t need the stupid to labour or to vote.
there are at least a dozen factors that can/do effect IQ. One that is over looked by most happens to be emotions. In the no dick countries, men are afraid to act like men, so in Norway drop in IQ would need to factor that in. IE; socialy constructed suppression of intelligence. When I went to school, we had classes for those of us who were a little quicker on the uptake, now they orient towards the idiot class. Also social media and “education” do take their toll. As some pointed out, correlation does not equate to causation, and there are many correlating factors. I wish people who do studies would learn how to do studies first.
Agreed NME666. People who do studies should learn how to do them first.
The left will state they are being done properly. Leftists believe that political science is the answer. All scientific studies need to be done with a socialist overprint, for the good of society. In other words we know the answer now conduct a study that proves our narrative. Very sad isn’t it.
I’m certain someone will publish a paper linking declining IQ to climate change.
I blame soy, and the parent (usually female) that thinks it is a legitimate food.
IQ tests are a joke an intelligent person can easily manipulate them.