A thought on the big moose post.

[Blarg]

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You are evaluating the entirety of human intelligence based on your experience checking out of the grocery store? IIRC, you are close to being a senior citizen. I guarantee you no one in my much younger age group would be dumb enough to make prognostications on human intelligence based on what they see in the Enquirer.

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Um, no, that's not what I'm trying to say.

I'm saying the theory seems to make sense, at least on its surface; and that I've also encountered many more retards ringing cash registers than I used to encounter. When I was in my teens and twenties it seemed people ringing registers at corner drugstores, gas stations, and later convenience stores, weren't half-wits. They were just average people, give or take a bit. I didn't run into ones who could hardly do their job. Now however I seem to run into a lot of them. Granted it's personal anecdotal evidence which may be of little or no significance, and may actually illustrate another principal at work in some way, but it does seem to fit in with the theory I came up with. Basically I seem to run into more nitwits everyehere than I did two or three decades ago. And it isn't even close. But that's not the main reason I suspect this sort of devolution may be happening; rather it just seems like it would quite possibly happen if on average the dumber people were to start outbreeding the smarter people. And actually they have been doing so for quite a few decades now.

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I agree that it isn't close.

And I think the reason is that young kids are very vulnerable to insufficient brain development from inadequate nutrition and inadequate stimulation. I think both have gone up in my time on the planet.

Worse Nutrition:

-- more fast foods
-- more prepared foods
-- tremendous societal acceptance of feeding same to children, even infants; this did not used to be socially acceptable
-- school lunches for children have been cut even to orphanages
-- early childhood programs which get kids out of the house, like HeadStart, have been cut back a lot
-- drug epidemics have left lots of people having kids who don't feed them (or stimulate their mental growth properly)
-- the explosion of welfare encouraged poor, lazy, drug-addicted, or just unambitious women to have as many children as possible, turning childbearing into an acceptable career path

Worse Mental Stimulation

-- a number of the above items
-- television has become a perfectly acceptable babysitter
-- sports heroes have become virtually our only important societal role models, and sports don't demand a great deal of intelligence and are even as often as not part of an anti-intellectual culture
-- reading has fallen out of favor with both adults and children; many kids grow up with no adult role models who read or care if they read either

And finally, societally, wealth has concentrated tremendously in the hands of the wealthy and upper middle classes in the past 25 years. This of course will make people of other classes both more prone to things like alcholism and drug abuse, with their terrible effects on the development of their children, and simply leave them with less ability to properly care for their kids and feed them right even if they're not in some way crippling themselves.

All those things have happened in less than half a century, and each is a powerful shaper of which kids come into the world, and whether kids come into this world in full development of their mental and physical powers, and full genetic potential.

The huge religious upsurge in America in the last 30-odd years has also had a lot to do with it. This is partly from enormous immigration from lands in which both birth control and abortion are traditionally shunned, and partly from our indigenous populations persistently trying to keep sex education out of schools, trying to criminalize and make socially unacceptable and sometimes unavailable abortion and other forms of birth control.

One way or the other, native population or immigrants, we're spewing out the babies pretty heedlessly now, on a very large scale, consequences be damned, including the health and futures of the children. Or should I say, that is being damned especially.

[Blarg]

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Well, I think your idea actually has some merit. The big problem with it is that you're assuming that wealth = intelligence. While there is probably some correlation, there's a LOT more that goes into who is wealthy and who isn't than just natural intelligence. The people having the most kids these days, people in third world countries, have almost no chance at success no matter what their natural intelligence might be. It has a lot more to do with the history of race and lingering economic inequality than it does actual intelligence.

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Shhh, this is America. You're supposed to sweep that part under the rug.

[Blarg]

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According to her, she would love to get rid of all the house cats. Apparently they destroy more habitats than anything else. Super stealthy hunters.

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They tried it, sort of by accident, in Vietnam, where Little Tiger restaurants that served cat became so enormously popular that the country was virtually stripped clean of cats a few years back. Their crop harvests were decimated because nothing was killing the rats and mice, at least not fast enough. The restaurants were forcibly closed, and cat became a forbidden food item by government decree.

[Blarg]

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So I'm wondering if, from a genetic standpoint, humans on average are in the process of getting somewhat dumber as generations go by. My guess would be "yes", but that's only a guess. And I admit to basing this guess not only on the above theory, but partially on personal anecdotal experience (such as my experiences buying things at checkout registers in stores, now versus 25 years ago), even though I know that anecdotal experience may be of limited or no value.

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You are evaluating the entirety of human intelligence based on your experience checking out of the grocery store? IIRC, you are close to being a senior citizen. I guarantee you no one in my much younger age group would be dumb enough to make prognostications on human intelligence based on what they see in the Enquirer.

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Bullsh*t.

People of every age make stupid statements and have stupid ideas as a matter of course, and the idea that every generation is somehow smarter or better than the last is a narcissistic fantasy only the most naive among the young could possibly have.

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Google Flynn effect and get back to me. That goes for you too MMMMMM.

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Learn to get by without being so silly and making such self flattering statements, and get back to me.

You don't need to use Google.

You can do better than this. Much better.

[vulturesrow]

Basically you and MMMMMM are saying people are getting dumber and there is empirical evidence that shows that, by the only objective standard we have, average intelligence increases from year to year. What is silly about that?

[Blarg]

I'm not talking about empirical evidence at all one way or the other.

I'm talking about my observations about changes in society specifically affecting the mental development of children, which is very fragile, especially through declines in nutrition and early mental stimulation. Poor nutrition and lack of mental stimulation have been shown to be critically important factors in childhood development and lifelong intelligence.

It sounds like you are saying that I.Q test scores rising must in some way be evidence that either the things I mentioned don't exist or are to some degree not important, as they don't seem to be reflected in those I.Q. test scores.

I think a single test is inadequate to handle the questions involved.

In the case of the IQ test, I think it's extremely likely that more kids from good backgrounds get tested than bad, and that that slants the tests a lot. If this is the case, I'm not sure that any test would be any good, or much better than the ones we use now.

The test itself has changed a lot, too, as have ideas of intelligence themselves. I used to put more faith in things like I.Q. tests giving us reliable knowledge, but now I'm one of the crowd that has serious doubts about them.

[MMMMMM]

Hi Vulturesrow,

I have before read of how IQ scores have increased, and have also read that it is thought in part to be due to the fact that people have simply gotten better at taking IQ-type tests. Maybe too, it has something to do with learning or teaching being more geared towards such things. People get better at SAT-type tests too if they practice in that direction or if what they are taught is more geared in that direction.

I agree, though, that the Flyn effect looks to be contradictory towards what I am suggesting. Maybe the two aren't really contradictory, though, because it is possible that the average has increased even while the lower end has been dropping. That could be the case if the middle and upper end were both rising. Also, Blarg mentioned things like increased drug usage and poorer nutrition which may seriously and especially impact the lower end.