1) Contemporary immigrants generally come from countries with lower IQs and 2) they reproduce more. The web is full of citations of what I said should you require them.
I'm not here to do the research for you, to foster the discussion I'd like to have some sources, dumping the work on me for finding your sources is extremely tiresome.
Provide something to foster the discussion, I'm not here to do your job.
I'm not here to do any job, I'm not getting paid and I am not going to make any effort to convince you of the truth. If you want to be wrong about it that's your prerogative.
You are making an extraordinary claim, you need extraordinary evidence to support it.
Given that you're entrenched into that position and not able to provide me anything to support why you believe it's "the truth" I'm entitled to say: you are full of bullshit.
In a discussion forum it's your job to provide basis to your arguments, it's unpaid but it's work and you should do it if you really want to have a discussion. If you just want to state bullshit, then please do not participate :)
You're asking people to engage with your confirmation bias.
Also, given how search engines personalise results, what people are most likely to find is what corresponds to their confirmation biases, unless they go to extra trouble to pop their search bubbles, in which case google's AI will decide they now want stuff that agrees with whatever they end up finding next.
Same reason why when I search for "mouse" I don't get the animal, and "bluetooth" doesn't get me a Viking.
It's doubtful whether offsprings of immigrants will have the same IQ as their parents when they're raised in a different environment that, in theory, is more conducive to a person's intellectual growth. Assuming that the immigrated from a country with poor infrastructure and opportunities.
How many "ethnical" groups that immigrated to the US were once regarded as "inferior" and now are fully integrated?
Early child development depends on parents a lot. For better or worse. Especially if parents are against the new environment and double-down on their values. E.g. pro-education parents moving to not-so-pro-education locations. Their kids probably won't be less smart since parents will do their best to make sure kids get best education, including after-hours at home.
That's the first I've heard of #1 (this particular article about the USA and thus your claim is about Mexicans), and if it's so easy to find reliable citations why haven't you given them?
It might be. If immigration were curbed earlier, the current decline might have been normal rather than "historic". What's your suggestion on how to test that theory?
Could it have other causes such as pollution, PFAS, microplastics, hormones in the water supply, less physical exercise (which is linked to brain growth) …?
Heck, even plain old mean reversion - the site mentions the Flynn Effect, an unexplained gradual increase in IQ scores; there's no guarantee that such an effect should continue forever.
Remember this paper is only one data point. It even points out that:
> These results are directly at odds with the differences of 0.20 to 0.33 SD per decade observed by Flynn, 1984, Flynn, 1987, Flynn, 2007 and the 0.15 to 0.195 SD per decade observed by Trahan et al. (2014), where more recent norming samples had higher IQ scores
It may well be that the variability in this sort of analysis is too high to say anything.
Not only is there the well-known problem that "intelligence" isn't easy to measure (and different tests give different numbers), but also people don't always make the same effort at doing the tests. If there's a secular trend to not caring about these tests then the numbers would likely go down. (Call it "Facebook quiz burnout. :)
The paper then goes on to say:
> these findings are consistent with studies that have found a reversal of the Flynn effect (Dutton and Lynn, 2013, Dutton and Lynn, 2015; Rönnlund et al., 2013; Sundet et al., 2004; Teasdale and Owen, 2008; Woodley and Meisenberg, 2013).
Those studies are from Finland, Sweden, France, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands, so if it's something like pollution then it needs to explain how that trend appeared in northern Europe even back in the late 1900s.
> Finally, evidence that the FE has ceased during the last decades has been provided in a recent set of studies. First, a study based on Norwegian conscripts revealed gains up to the mid 1990s after which a tendency of decline was actually observed until 2002 (Sundet, Barlaug, & Torjussen, 2004; cf. also Teasdale & Owen, 2005). ...
> Finally, performance on Piagetian measures showed a decline corresponding to 4.3 IQ points per decade, over the years 1975–2003 in British samples (Shayer, Ginsburg, & Coe, 2007), suggestive of a reversed FE.
Since pollution levels decreased by the end of the 1900s (more emissions control, no leaded gasoline, etc.), that broad category seems unlikely.
Similarly, my knee-jerk thought was a cause might be the negative consequences of focusing on high-stakes testing in the US. But that can't explain any negative trends in Europe which started before "No Child Left Behind."
But again, this might just be the sort of result you get from trying to analyze noisy data. Sometimes it's high, sometimes it's low, and your measurement tools are bear skins and stone knives.
I'd bet on the underlying factor being nutrition. Processed foods, sugar substitutes, and forever chemicals in everything to an extent earlier generations never saw.
> Finally, comparisons of trends in cognitive performance and in standing height show that the gains in cognitive performance over the years from 1980 to 1993 occurred in the absence of overall gains in height, which speaks against nutrition as the cause of the Flynn effects.
Thing is, you can point to all sorts of changes. Perhaps it's more screen time, or any other pet peeve.
From my cursory reading of those papers, there's no clear reason for the Flynn effect, nor its (putative) reversal despite lots of correlation studies.
I'm sure an explicitly conservative site called "campus reform" will take an entirely scientific and unbiased approach to education theory rather than using it as a pretext for some weird anti-woke project.
If they start advocating for less pollution, better food, more exercise, better teachers etc ... its going to cross the lines into being a socialist woke project.
But isn't IQ supposed to be relatively knowledge-independent? I.E. the test should not rely on advanced language knowledge or knowledge of mathematics.
How can poor (or good) education then affect IQ scores?
The key there is that it is indeed supposed to be, but it isn't. People have tried to make a way to get at some kind of inherent ability but no one has succeeded.
Relatively knowledge-independent is not the same as absolutely knowledge independent. Familiarity with basic mental arithmetic, a decent vocabulary and certain types of pattern all going to improve your ability to answer different forms of IQ test, especially if you're somewhere in the middle of the distribution, and we're talking average differences of a couple of percentage points here.
The test that goes down in history as "the first IQ test" was never intended to measure intelligence. It was intended to measure school readiness for French children in an era where:
1. Not everyone had a birth certificate, so you could not base it on age.
2. City kids tended to be ready for school earlier than rural kids because they were more familiar with processes like queuing up.
The entire concept and history of intelligence testing is rife with problems and remains controversial.
“The entire concept and history of intelligence testing is rife with problems and remains controversial.”
Jesus. No it’s not, and no it isn’t.
This doesn’t mean that people love that variation in intelligence is a thing, but to say it’s rife with problems is just patently false. For sure some people don’t like that intelligence is “a thing” and don’t want to accept the reality of the construct, but that’s a different matter from claiming the construct itself is somehow still up for debate or otherwise questionable as as you seem to be doing.
Psychology and assessment more generally are a long way from the first ability measures.
Terman, Lewis & Merrill, Maude (1937). Measuring Intelligence: A Guide to the Administration of the New Revised Stanford-Binet Tests of Intelligence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. p. 25. That is why the later authors Kenneth Hopkins and Julian Stanley (founder of the Study of Exceptional Talent) suggested that is better to regard IQ tests as tests of "scholastic aptitude" rather than of intelligence. They wrote
"Most authorities feel that current intelligence tests are more aptly described as 'scholastic aptitude' tests because they are so highly related to academic performance, although current use suggests that the term intelligence test is going to be with us for some time. This reservation is based not on the opinion that intelligence tests do not reflect intelligence but on the belief that there are other kinds of intelligence that are not reflected in current tests; the term intelligence is too inclusive."
The Role of General Cognitive Ability and Job Performance: Why There Cannot Be a Debate
Given the overwhelming research evidence showing the strong link between general cognitive ability (GCA) and job performance, it is not logically possible for industrial -organizational (I/O) psychologists to have a serious debate over whether GCA is important for job performance. However, even if none of this evidence existed in I/O psychology, research findings in differential psychology on the nature and correlates of GCA provide a sufficient basis for the conclusion that GCA is strongly related to job performance. In I/O psychology, the theoretical basis for the empirical evidence linking GCA and job performance is rarely presented, but is critical to understanding and acceptance of these findings. The theory explains the why behind the empirical findings. From the viewpoint of the kind of world we would like to live in-and would like to believe we live in-the research findings on GCA are not what most people would hope for and are not welcome. However, if we want to remain a science-based field, we cannot reject what we know to be true in favor of what we would like to be true.
It's an abstract. The actual article is paywalled.
The pull quote says nothing about IQ testing. Testing is what's under discussion here, not whether or not some people are actually smarter than others.
Knowledge isn't the only thing you acquire during your education. You also learn how to analyze a problem, how to process the information given, or in general: how to think.
It's still a skill that could be trained. IQ tests are basically solving a bunch of problems, they might be knowledge-independent but practice still helps, even if it is indirect one (solving problems at school)
Is there a way to interpret the result and pin point a year, as in "kids born after year 2000 started to show lower IQ than their predecessors when they grew up?"
IQ, an inaccurate and culturally biased measure of “intelligence”, is in decline, claims crypto-fascist right-wing newspaper. How does this make it to the front page of HN?
Like it or not, IQ exists and it's impactful. In my experience, highly educated, high IQ people are more likely to hold an opinion such as yours. My guess is that they don't like thinking about how much of their success is due to a variable that is not under their control.
Likewise, someone with some sense who has interacted with very high IQ people in a "competitive" settings know how it is. Not too different to how it would be to play basketball against a 6'6 person, or how it is to be extremely physically attractive.
Other interesting articles on the site, all from the homepage:
* ANALYSIS: Wokeness has peaked, but it's not going anywhere, experts argue. Academics and research scientists are asking whether American culture has moved beyond 'peak woke' amidst a greater tolerance of heterodox ideas and as cancel culture is on the decline. One expert, however, argues that so-called 'Awokenings' are cyclical and leave lasting changes in higher education and other institutions even after wokeness has peaked.
* 'How we eat our chicken' is a racial issue according to this professor.
* Public university's 'Sex Week' features 'Chicanx sexuality’, BDSM gear maintenance.
As a non-american, I'm not sure if this is genuine propaganda or another one of Nick Mullen's fugue states.
Probably best to read the paper, but a couple of takeaways that were interesting to me.
Flynn effect might never have been real.
IQ tests over longer time periods are much less concrete than I had understood. Questions exist around whether they can actually be compared.
Mental rotation ability continues to improve (computer games for the win).
g-ness is what IQ tests are trying to measure, but they are just proxies for this. Tests might be losing there g-ness or people are/were getting better at tests (leet code grinding?)
Declines in a bunch of other areas since probably 1999. Education/media influence or changing society expectations probably the cause or else you wouldn’t see the increased rotational ability scores.
I’m not sure what to make of all this myself. Personally, I’m unconvinced that the g-factor is real. My own experience with several autistic family members makes me think that intelligence is much more complex than a simple “horse power” metric (g). This study, showing unequal enhancement and decline in testing of different cognitive domains, would support that conclusion.
Really? That wasn’t my understanding at all. I had thought this was highly reproducible, life time stable, as strong a result as exists in psychology.
I can imagine it being unpopular. As so much of my own personal success and “identity” is wrapped up in iq, I have been reluctant to accept the concept of a fixed general intelligence factor as being behind it. It’s a bit like being attractive. “Oh you got all that because you are pretty”. Well, I’m pretty and I worked hard. However, I can’t argue that I had any influence over being born with a higher than average iq.
Still, IQ, like most things, is far more complex and multi-faceted as you dig in to the detail.
52 comments
[ 0.15 ms ] story [ 138 ms ] threadProvide something to foster the discussion, I'm not here to do your job.
Given that you're entrenched into that position and not able to provide me anything to support why you believe it's "the truth" I'm entitled to say: you are full of bullshit.
In a discussion forum it's your job to provide basis to your arguments, it's unpaid but it's work and you should do it if you really want to have a discussion. If you just want to state bullshit, then please do not participate :)
Also, given how search engines personalise results, what people are most likely to find is what corresponds to their confirmation biases, unless they go to extra trouble to pop their search bubbles, in which case google's AI will decide they now want stuff that agrees with whatever they end up finding next.
Same reason why when I search for "mouse" I don't get the animal, and "bluetooth" doesn't get me a Viking.
How many "ethnical" groups that immigrated to the US were once regarded as "inferior" and now are fully integrated?
Second, this effect also happens to the kids of higher IQ parents. Here's a story from 2019 saying, essentially "The USA hasn't seen this yet but needs to watch out!": https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping-...
My personal bet is the cause is CO2, as higher concentrations have been shown to impair cognition.
Heck, even plain old mean reversion - the site mentions the Flynn Effect, an unexplained gradual increase in IQ scores; there's no guarantee that such an effect should continue forever.
I’ll wager it wasn’t the pandemic.
> These results are directly at odds with the differences of 0.20 to 0.33 SD per decade observed by Flynn, 1984, Flynn, 1987, Flynn, 2007 and the 0.15 to 0.195 SD per decade observed by Trahan et al. (2014), where more recent norming samples had higher IQ scores
It may well be that the variability in this sort of analysis is too high to say anything.
Not only is there the well-known problem that "intelligence" isn't easy to measure (and different tests give different numbers), but also people don't always make the same effort at doing the tests. If there's a secular trend to not caring about these tests then the numbers would likely go down. (Call it "Facebook quiz burnout. :)
The paper then goes on to say:
> these findings are consistent with studies that have found a reversal of the Flynn effect (Dutton and Lynn, 2013, Dutton and Lynn, 2015; Rönnlund et al., 2013; Sundet et al., 2004; Teasdale and Owen, 2008; Woodley and Meisenberg, 2013).
Those studies are from Finland, Sweden, France, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands, so if it's something like pollution then it needs to explain how that trend appeared in northern Europe even back in the late 1900s.
I say "late 1900s" because I skimmed through the Sweden study ("Secular trends in cognitive test performance: Swedish conscript data 1970–1993" at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... ). It says:
> Finally, evidence that the FE has ceased during the last decades has been provided in a recent set of studies. First, a study based on Norwegian conscripts revealed gains up to the mid 1990s after which a tendency of decline was actually observed until 2002 (Sundet, Barlaug, & Torjussen, 2004; cf. also Teasdale & Owen, 2005). ...
> Finally, performance on Piagetian measures showed a decline corresponding to 4.3 IQ points per decade, over the years 1975–2003 in British samples (Shayer, Ginsburg, & Coe, 2007), suggestive of a reversed FE.
Since pollution levels decreased by the end of the 1900s (more emissions control, no leaded gasoline, etc.), that broad category seems unlikely.
Similarly, my knee-jerk thought was a cause might be the negative consequences of focusing on high-stakes testing in the US. But that can't explain any negative trends in Europe which started before "No Child Left Behind."
But again, this might just be the sort of result you get from trying to analyze noisy data. Sometimes it's high, sometimes it's low, and your measurement tools are bear skins and stone knives.
But that's a wild guess.
> Finally, comparisons of trends in cognitive performance and in standing height show that the gains in cognitive performance over the years from 1980 to 1993 occurred in the absence of overall gains in height, which speaks against nutrition as the cause of the Flynn effects.
Thing is, you can point to all sorts of changes. Perhaps it's more screen time, or any other pet peeve.
From my cursory reading of those papers, there's no clear reason for the Flynn effect, nor its (putative) reversal despite lots of correlation studies.
YouTube recently offered up some throwbacks, and I remembered a great kids TV programme on the BBC from 1980.
https://youtu.be/rOuAzHjsiOg?t=9m56s
Between the Adventure Game and the Great Egg Race, there was mainstream (3 TV stations) fodder for developing minds with an interest.
There's a lot of modern stimulating educational material on YouTube, but it's in an ocean of filler.
1. Not everyone had a birth certificate, so you could not base it on age.
2. City kids tended to be ready for school earlier than rural kids because they were more familiar with processes like queuing up.
The entire concept and history of intelligence testing is rife with problems and remains controversial.
Jesus. No it’s not, and no it isn’t.
This doesn’t mean that people love that variation in intelligence is a thing, but to say it’s rife with problems is just patently false. For sure some people don’t like that intelligence is “a thing” and don’t want to accept the reality of the construct, but that’s a different matter from claiming the construct itself is somehow still up for debate or otherwise questionable as as you seem to be doing.
Psychology and assessment more generally are a long way from the first ability measures.
"Most authorities feel that current intelligence tests are more aptly described as 'scholastic aptitude' tests because they are so highly related to academic performance, although current use suggests that the term intelligence test is going to be with us for some time. This reservation is based not on the opinion that intelligence tests do not reflect intelligence but on the belief that there are other kinds of intelligence that are not reflected in current tests; the term intelligence is too inclusive."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4740784
Edit: And that's without getting into the long history of classism, racism, etc impacting such tests.
The Role of General Cognitive Ability and Job Performance: Why There Cannot Be a Debate
Given the overwhelming research evidence showing the strong link between general cognitive ability (GCA) and job performance, it is not logically possible for industrial -organizational (I/O) psychologists to have a serious debate over whether GCA is important for job performance. However, even if none of this evidence existed in I/O psychology, research findings in differential psychology on the nature and correlates of GCA provide a sufficient basis for the conclusion that GCA is strongly related to job performance. In I/O psychology, the theoretical basis for the empirical evidence linking GCA and job performance is rarely presented, but is critical to understanding and acceptance of these findings. The theory explains the why behind the empirical findings. From the viewpoint of the kind of world we would like to live in-and would like to believe we live in-the research findings on GCA are not what most people would hope for and are not welcome. However, if we want to remain a science-based field, we cannot reject what we know to be true in favor of what we would like to be true.
The pull quote says nothing about IQ testing. Testing is what's under discussion here, not whether or not some people are actually smarter than others.
Likewise, someone with some sense who has interacted with very high IQ people in a "competitive" settings know how it is. Not too different to how it would be to play basketball against a 6'6 person, or how it is to be extremely physically attractive.
* ANALYSIS: Wokeness has peaked, but it's not going anywhere, experts argue. Academics and research scientists are asking whether American culture has moved beyond 'peak woke' amidst a greater tolerance of heterodox ideas and as cancel culture is on the decline. One expert, however, argues that so-called 'Awokenings' are cyclical and leave lasting changes in higher education and other institutions even after wokeness has peaked.
* 'How we eat our chicken' is a racial issue according to this professor.
* Public university's 'Sex Week' features 'Chicanx sexuality’, BDSM gear maintenance.
As a non-american, I'm not sure if this is genuine propaganda or another one of Nick Mullen's fugue states.
Probably best to read the paper, but a couple of takeaways that were interesting to me.
Flynn effect might never have been real.
IQ tests over longer time periods are much less concrete than I had understood. Questions exist around whether they can actually be compared.
Mental rotation ability continues to improve (computer games for the win).
g-ness is what IQ tests are trying to measure, but they are just proxies for this. Tests might be losing there g-ness or people are/were getting better at tests (leet code grinding?)
Declines in a bunch of other areas since probably 1999. Education/media influence or changing society expectations probably the cause or else you wouldn’t see the increased rotational ability scores.
I’m not sure what to make of all this myself. Personally, I’m unconvinced that the g-factor is real. My own experience with several autistic family members makes me think that intelligence is much more complex than a simple “horse power” metric (g). This study, showing unequal enhancement and decline in testing of different cognitive domains, would support that conclusion.
I can imagine it being unpopular. As so much of my own personal success and “identity” is wrapped up in iq, I have been reluctant to accept the concept of a fixed general intelligence factor as being behind it. It’s a bit like being attractive. “Oh you got all that because you are pretty”. Well, I’m pretty and I worked hard. However, I can’t argue that I had any influence over being born with a higher than average iq.
Still, IQ, like most things, is far more complex and multi-faceted as you dig in to the detail.
The Internet of Idiots...