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  1. #1

    Study: Humans have lost 14.1 points of average IQ in the last century

    http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow...180634194.html

    A new study from researchers in Europe claims that the average IQ in Western nations dropped by a staggering 14.1 points over the past century.
    "We tested the hypothesis that the Victorians were cleverer than modern populations using high-quality instruments, namely measures of simple visual reaction time in a meta-analytic study," the researchers wrote in the study, which was published online in the journal Intelligence on Thursday. "Simple reaction time measures correlate substantially with measures of general intelligence and are considered elementary measures of cognition."

    So why has there been such a steady drop? As UPI notes, previous research studies have found that women of higher intelligence tend to have fewer children on average, meaning that population growth may be driven by those with a lower IQ. And over time, the abundance of less intelligent offspring would affect the overall IQ average.

    On average, the general intelligence of those populations measured dropped by 1.23 points per decade.
    I can see that occurring. Women are attracted to strong men that make them feel safe. They go for dumb, aggressive brutes. Nerdy, brainy guys get selected out. Attitude and confidence take priority over consideration and brains. Over 100 years, the average IQ drops.

  2. #2
    The Insane Underverse's Avatar
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    Yeah but if your hypothesis is true, it wouldn't have suddenly changed. Since the researchers are basing their data on a meta-analysis, and can't really control for fallibility of instruments used 100 years ago, I think there's reason to doubt both the data and the conclusions.

  3. #3
    Blademaster Shaytan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Grummgug View Post
    http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow...180634194.html



    I can see that occurring. Women are attracted to strong men that make them feel safe. They go for dumb, aggressive brutes. Nerdy, brainy guys get selected out. Attitude and confidence take priority over consideration and brains. Over 100 years, the average IQ drops.

    So the known fix for this is, Nerdy brainy guys suck it up and hit the gym long enough to look like a dumb aggressive brute, find a smart attractive female, get her pregnant and then ignore going to the gym and go back to being fat and brainy.


    I graduated High School at 15, joined the USMC at 17. I met my wife while I was still in the USMC at the age of 21. I'm 29, have 2 kids, and am fat and lazy, but I use my brain to make over 135k a year as a computer nerd. - RL example showing the fix works...

  4. #4
    Deleted
    That and the technological advancements really mess things up

  5. #5
    this sounds alot like how the average temperature of the earth has risen 2 degrees or whatever it did in the passed 100 years.

    im not sure if you guys have seen a 100 year old thermometer but they aren't the picture of accuracy.

    but OT; they made a movie about this haha.
    Quote Originally Posted by tkjnz
    If memory serves me right, a fox is a female wolf.

  6. #6
    Fluffy Kitten Zao's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Grummgug View Post
    I can see that occurring. Women are attracted to strong men that make them feel safe. They go for dumb, aggressive brutes. Nerdy, brainy guys get selected out. Attitude and confidence take priority over consideration and brains. Over 100 years, the average IQ drops.
    You've misread the conclusion.
    It says that lower intelligence families have more children than academics. Which is a known fact. It doesn't say that there are more low income families.


    And I don't really trust that study anyway. Measurements will have changed of the course of the last century, ignoring the fact that IQ has always been a murky definition of intelligence.

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  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Zao View Post
    You've misread the conclusion.
    It says that lower intelligence families have more children than academics. Which is a known fact. It doesn't say that there are more low income families.


    And I don't really trust that study anyway. Measurements will have changed of the course of the last century, ignoring the fact that IQ has always been a murky definition of intelligence.
    My own life experience would confirm this study. Women go often dumb aggressive brutes. They find brainy guys a huge turn off. Not all of them. Some like brainy guys, but those are not that common.

    In high school, I never saw the cheerleaders rush down to the science lab to hang out with the guys doing science projects after school. I didn't see them in calculus class.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Grummgug View Post
    My own life experience would confirm this study. Women go often dumb aggressive brutes. They find brainy guys a huge turn off. Not all of them. Some like brainy guys, but those are not that common.

    In high school, I never saw the cheerleaders rush down to the science lab to hang out with the guys doing science projects after school. I didn't see them in calculus class.
    Hah.

    And why do you care about cheerleaders who don't even take calculus? Shouldn't you go for the nerdy girls?

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Grummgug View Post
    My own life experience would confirm this study. Women go often dumb aggressive brutes. They find brainy guys a huge turn off. Not all of them. Some like brainy guys, but those are not that common.
    Maybe in high school or early college years. But out in the real world, dumb brutes don't really succeed outside of a few areas. Look around you. Not every father out there is a big, oafish idiot. I don't think that's what it's getting at. It doesn't have anything to do with whether or not smarter people are able to find people who are attracted to them. The smarter people simply aren't having as many children. To me, that makes sense. I've noticed that smarter people tend to be more focused on financial stability and living a more stable lifestyle in general. They still have kids, they just don't have hordes of them. It's not often that you see two people with high-paying careers that require a lot of work and education having more than one kid, maybe two.

  11. #11
    I find it hilarious how the article says "women of higher intelligence tend to have fewer children" and you've somehow concluded that they actually meant "men of higher intelligence can't get the girl."

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    It's more so that smarter (and wealthier) people don't go pumping out 8+ kids because they aren't dumb. Their kids get more attention, but there are less of them.

    Then the people enabled by welfare are the ones who are pushing out a kid a year that they can't support, asking others to take care of them monetarily. Since they can't take care of their own kids (maybe because they themselves are stupid?) the sad likelihood is that the kids are more likely to grow up dumb. While the kid can take it into his hands and succeed, the odds are definitely against him compared to the children of smarter parents.

    Several things to blame:

    1) Not enough disincentive to stop having kids if you can't take care of them (both in terms of money and parental attention). Blame the welfare carebear left for a stupid welfare system.

    2) Not enough birth control. Blame the religious right for just being stupid.
    Last edited by nightfalls; 2013-05-25 at 06:44 AM.

  13. #13
    Sounds about right.

  14. #14
    The Lightbringer Tzalix's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Arkkitehti View Post
    nerdy girls?
    Wah... Those are real!?

    *mind blown*

    On topic: Idiocracy, here we come:

    "In life, I was raised to hate the undead. Trained to destroy them. When I became Forsaken, I hated myself most of all. But now I see it is the Alliance that fosters this malice. The human kingdoms shun their former brothers and sisters because we remind them what's lurking beneath the facade of flesh. It's time to end their cycle of hatred. The Alliance deserves to fall." - Lilian Voss

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by wynnyelle View Post
    Maybe in high school or early college years. But out in the real world, dumb brutes don't really succeed outside of a few areas. Look around you. Not every father out there is a big, oafish idiot.
    Most kids I knew in high school were divorced and lived with their mom. I hardly ever met their biological fathers.

    I don't think that's what it's getting at. It doesn't have anything to do with whether or not smarter people are able to find people who are attracted to them. The smarter people simply aren't having as many children. To me, that makes sense. I've noticed that smarter people tend to be more focused on financial stability and living a more stable lifestyle in general. They still have kids, they just don't have hordes of them. It's not often that you see two people with high-paying careers that require a lot of work and education having more than one kid, maybe two.
    But apparently its NOT smart for smart people to breed less. If the study is correct, then its an extremely selfish and stupid act that is dumbing down the human race.

  16. #16
    Something is very fishy here ...100 years ago hardly anyone could even read or write let alone even take an IQ test . Very very few people even take them these days unless you show gifted level intelligence .....this has a lot of flawed data ...

    Another thing is people had wayyyy more children back in those days and the smart ones survived ...it's easy to survive these days even if your dumb as a rock .
    Last edited by Starving Artist; 2013-05-25 at 06:49 AM.

  17. #17
    You didn't see the hot girls back in high school who were smart, because they were all with me doing dual enrollment spending the last 3 years of high school on a college campus. Girls want all rounder guys, men who are intelligent and healthy.

    If your allegedly really smart but completely out of shape...how smart are you really? Letting your body decay like that.

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Grummgug View Post
    But apparently its NOT smart for smart people to breed less. If the study is correct, then its an extremely selfish and stupid act that is dumbing down the human race.
    Yeah, it's kind of a Catch-22, I think. On one hand, if a smart couple has a ton of kids, they won't be able to invest a whole lot of time into raising and educating all of them compared to if they just had one or two, so it might not be the most ideal situation. On the other hand, if they only have one or two kids, the dumber people are going to quickly outnumber them while they're out having half a dozen kids to be raised on their food stamps.

    Personally, I think the dumber people need to just cool it and not have so many kids. If only there were a way to actually make that happen. :/

  19. #19
    Sounds about right to me. There are way too many dumb people having way too many kids.

  20. #20
    This study is a pretty bold claim - first of all IQ =/= intelligence and as a rule humans in industrial countries have been getting better and better at IQ tests over the past 100 years (it's called the Flynn Effect).

    Quote Originally Posted by wiki
    The average rate of increase seems to be about three IQ points per decade in the U.S. on tests such as the WISC. [...] The increase has been continuous and roughly linear from the earliest days of testing to the present.
    Quote Originally Posted by wiki
    Ulric Neisser estimates that using the IQ values of today the average IQ of the U.S. in 1932, according to the first Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales standardization sample, was 80. Neisser states that "Hardly any of them would have scored 'very superior,' but nearly one-quarter would have appeared to be 'deficient.'" He also writes that "Test scores are certainly going up all over the world, but whether intelligence itself has risen remains controversial."[9]
    Quote Originally Posted by wiki
    For example, Dutch conscripts gained 21 points during only 30 years, or 7 points per decade, between 1952 and 1982.[9] But this rise in IQ test scores is not wholly explained by an increase in general intelligence.
    Claiming that IQ dropped 14.1 points in the last century seems pretty odd and reaction time correlated with cognitive abilities correlated with general intelligence correlated with IQ scores seems rather shaky. There are lots of other factors that influence general intelligence and IQ scores.

    Being too lazy to look up the actual paper I'm going to assume that the study makes quite a few "other things equal" assumptions (and maybe even actively tries to control for factors such as education, nutrition, ...) and the Yahoo News article is just trying hard to sensationalize the results.
    Last edited by florestan; 2013-05-25 at 06:54 AM.

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