Virgin: IQ scores are going down! Chad: No, more dumb people are taking the tests and that's a good thing
World's gone crazy. Researchers from Chicago's Northwestern University and the University of Oregon have discovered that IQ scores are going down[1][2]. The young seem most effected, the scores of 18-22 year olds are dropping twice as fast as all other age groups. It's Not much. Couple points. But IQ[3] is supposed to go up, the so-called "Flynn Effect" - from 1953 to 2006 adult scores on the Wechsler IQ test rose 17.3 points or about 3 points every ten years[4]...
"If you want to ascribe blame, look no further than this screen. Cognitive researchers hypothesize that smartphones and smart speakers, autocomplete and artificial intelligence, Wi-Fi and runaway social media have conspired to supplant the higher functions of the human brain." - The Hill
"She offers up the potential explanation that an increase in focus on STEM education may have allowed other areas, like abstract reasoning, to fall by the wayside. 'If you’re thinking about what society cares about and what it’s emphasizing and reinforcing every day,' she says, 'there’s a possibility of that being reflected in performance on an ability test.'" - Popular Mechanics
"Millennials–the main age group completing their K-12 and college education during the study–have experienced vast changes in the education system. These include students learning to read from an influential but defective curriculum and students receiving inflated grades from their professors." - CampusReform
"The study comes as school districts across the country eliminate honors curricula from high schools in the name of racial equity." - Washington Free Beacon
"'It could just be that they’re getting worse at taking tests or specifically worse at taking these kinds of tests.'" - Yahoo News[5]
See, I told you. They don't go outside, even to smoke cigarettes and marijuana. They cling to vapes with their soft, zoomer hands because they are weak.
Social science is a ten-acre tire fire under the best of circumstances. Anything that receives popular coverage is not the best of circumstances, it confirms a narrative. Anything that receives widespread coverage confirms multiple narratives - even worse. Facts rarely fit snuggly into pre-existing, pop sociological theories( which are fun and possibly beneficial ways of explaining our lives), although they may influence the theories that come after them.
This study was conducted from 2006-2018 and shows a slight decrease in IQ which is magnified by the previous tendency for IQ scores to go up. It makes up for its weak methodology( online test) with the massive size of its sample( 400k participants). More people participated later in the timeframe. From 2006-12 136,797 people took the test, while 257,581 participated from 2013-18.
The test can be found here. Trigger warning: long, boring. Although this could be to dissuade repeat test takers. It's also hidden within a personality test.
But the interpretation of the results is based on an unfounded assumption.
Computing devices and the internet have become omni-present in the 3rd decade of the 21st century. Not using these things is a choice made on principle. But that wasn't quite the case in 2006, failing to own a computer did not make you elderly or Amish or a weirdo. And you need a computer and internet to take an online IQ test.
According to Pew, 71% of adults used the internet in 2006 compared with 84% in 2015. 86% of young people used the internet in 2006, 96% used it in 2015. In 2006, 91% of college graduates used the internet, only 37% of non-high school graduates got online - 96% and 66% by 2015.[6]
So new technologies are not adopted randomly. But the study controls for this stuff - age, income, education, etc. What it doesn't control for is whether the adoption rate of computers and the internet is, in and of itself, correlated to IQ.
So it's 2006. Bob and Phil live next door to each other, they're the same age. They both have a high school diploma and make 40k a year. But Bob owns a computer and Phil does not. Does this, on average, suggest that the Bobs of the world have a higher IQ than the Phils?
1. A study published in 2004 of 122 preschoolers in rural West Virginia found that computer access predicted large differences in performance on an IQ test when controlling for income, frequency of computer use made little difference.
2. In 2006, a British study found a significant relationship between performance on high school standardized tests and PC ownership. A 2008 US study found that students with a PC were 6-8% more likely to graduate from high school. Both studies control for income.[7]
3. Using data from The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children( ages 4-7), a study published in 2010 found that computer use predicted a significant increase in scores on a matrix reasoning test. A variety of socioeconomic factors were controlled for.
I did not find any evidence to contradict the hypothesis that computer ownership, in a culture where not owning a computer is a live option, predicts higher performance on IQ tests. Granted, I stopped looking after I felt like I had enough.
SAT scores show a similar pattern. A small decrease in scores with a large increase in the population participating in the test. ( The SAT math and verbal were significantly reformatted in 1994 and 2016.)
[8]
"These are the people who feel bitter about their work, often because they are closely supervised and regulated and generally treated like wayward children. ‘It’s just like the Army,’ says an auto—assembly-plant worker. ‘No, it’s worse... You just about need a pass to piss.’...The degree of supervision, indeed, is often a more eloquent class indicator than mere income, which suggests that the whole class system is more a recognition of the value of freedom than a proclamation of the value of sheer cash." Paul Fussell, Class( 1976)
IQ test and the like are products of the disciplinary society which peaked in the United States from the Progressive Era through the New Deal period. The tests were intended to provide information to technocratic managers not the test taker. The manager motivates the taker based on the scores( offering scholarships, training, remedial classes, etc.). This, among other things, results in the displacement of the traditional American upper-class and the rise of meritocracy. Even the American crusty accent disappears[8]. It also sows the seeds for the disciplinary society to be displaced. Too many big chiefs, not enough little indians, no frontier for run-off.
In the achievement society, that resulted from the 60s romantic and 80s libertarian revolts against the disciplinary society, citizens are supposed to self motivate. To self actualize, the top of Maslow's pyramid can only be reached alone. So online self-assessment tests. The concept of "working class" starts to become less useful. There are large numbers of skilled tradesmen who command high salaries and white-collar workers who make a modest living doing remote or low-level office work. “Working class” shrinks to "supervised class."
And increased supervised class participation in assessment tests is a good thing even if it's dragging down our oh-so precious averages. What will the French think! The Filipinos! Scores can point to training that could lessen supervision or put oneself in a more competitive job market - more income, can quit on assholes, take time off. The tests can also help identify oneself as part of a group. In a meritocracy, the dumb have class interests.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289623000156#f0005
sweet baby jesus I hate auto-format. why? If auto-format were here in the room, i would kick it to death right in front of you.
The paradox of IQ tests is that they are scientifically sound but philosophically bankrupt. They're scientifically sound because they can be used to make accurate, on average predictions - how well people do on similar tests, future educational attainment, future income, etc. They're philosophically bankrupt because no one can agree on the definition of intelligence. "Bob is intelligent" is not a valid proposition because we can't agree how to define the word "intelligent." IQ tests resort to defining intelligence recursively. "General intelligence" is determined by how well one does on IQ tests, how well one does on IQ tests is what determines "general intelligence." This is circular reasoning. So the best that can be done is something like "If Bob does better than average on IQ tests, then he will have a better than average chance of earning an above average income."
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/are-you-smarter-than-your-grandfather-probably-not-150402883/
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3922608-american-iqs-rose-30-points-in-the-last-century-now-they-may-be-falling/
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/
https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=21483
https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/americans-iq-declining-for-first-time-in-a-century-study-finds/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/american-iq-scores-rapidly-dropped-160000302.html
To be fair, Michael Nietzl at Forbes.com had a pretty good write up - https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2023/03/23/american-iq-test-scores-show-recent-declines-according-to-new-study/
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/06/26/americans-internet-access-2000-2015/
WV pre-school - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15173496/
British teen - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222410457_Is_There_an_Impact_of_Household_Computer_Ownership_on_Children's_Educational_Attainment_in_Britain
American teen - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1311893
Australian kid - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775709000697
https://www.erikthered.com/tutor/historical-average-SAT-scores.pdf
President McKinely’s upper-class accent recorded in 1901.