--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "salyavin808" <fintlewoodlewix@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Share Long <sharelong60@> wrote: > > > > salyavin, I was glancing at title of your thread and then Dick > > May's thread and wondered...anyway, yes, average IQ is dropping > > over time, dropped 3 points since 1950, at least according to > > one researcher. Hope the table is accessible. Makes me question > > natural selection. > > > > http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/BRBAKER/
This chap is not too high on the literacy scale himself. And just for the record, this piece is a report on other people's research, not his own, so calling him a "researcher" is a bit of an exaggeration. (It's a short paper for a sociology class; I'd love to know what grade he got.) > It's no surprise to me, I've seen Idiocracy. The less we have to > do, the less that intelligence will be important enough to select > for. Not so fast, you guys. This is a very complex and controversial topic. Here's a good overview: http://www.livescience.com/37095-humans-smarter-or-dumber.html Just for one thing, there's something called the Flynn Effect, a well-known series of findings from 1941 to the present showing a steady *rise* in average IQ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect There was a recent study (not covered in this student's paper but discussed in the Live Science article) showing a decline in IQ, but it used *reaction time* as a measurement rather than IQ scores. Several (actual) researchers have questioned whether reaction time can stand as a proxy for IQ. Finally, salyavin surely knows this, but others may not: Science journalism in the mainstream media is not so hot. When you see a headline about the latest scientific research that makes you go "Wow!", before you assume the findings as reported in the news outlet are facts, check other more scientifically oriented sources. Mainstream media reports are looking for *eyeballs*, not necessarily doing their best to do justice to science. > Remember, things only get selected if they confer an advantage > and all most people have to do is stumble to work and > afterwards, flop in front of the TV eating cheeseburgers > (making the occasional post to FFL along the way). > > As the blurb under the graph says, we tend to breed with people of > similar intellect, so this trend will get cemented as a majority > position. I think this has already happened in the UK (seriously) > but I think we will end up like the Eloi and the Morlocks in The > Time Machine, two human species but very different in the way they > look and act. > > There is no reason why evolution should keep making things better.
