The Flynn Effect

[Trantor]

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This is (I think) one of the strangest phenomena that the social sciences have uncovored. I highly suggest everyone read this article Linky and maybe thisother link

Not only does this seriously question the validity of the assertion that IQ tests test "innate intelligence," it also really alters the conception of what intelligence is.

Also, it really drives home the interconnectedness of a people, since, evidently, there is a type of group learning taking place on a very large scale.

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Accepting the point that people have higher IQ's, arguenda, why does that lead you to a conclusion that there is some "group learning" going on?

[peritonlogon]

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Accepting the point that people have higher IQ's, arguenda, why does that lead you to a conclusion that there is some "group learning" going on?

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Because one very plausible idea to explain this involves invoking the old "mass consciousness" idea. I think this and "group learning" are pretty similar. Another involves the role of media.... media in the sense of "extensions of man." The odd thing is that most things that one would think would have caused this, time in school, proporiton of educated people, educational attainment, nutrition and etc. have been eliminated because they're fairly negligible.

Uhh, I think that's one very implausible idea. The links you put in talk about several reasonable hypotheses. None of them can explain the whole effect by themselves, but changes in nutrition and education would certainly contribute to IQ changes.

Flynn talks about IQ tests being a measure of abstract problem solving and symbolic thinking. Well, over the last 100 years, people have learned to deal with increasingly complicated machines in their daily lives, and we've better and better at interacting with them. Ever see comedians in the 80's joke about not being able to program their VCRs? When I see that now, I just think they're idiots, because that's a trivial task for most people who grew up with the technology. Similarly, my kids will probably think I'm stupid for needing to read the manual to set up a firewall on my computer.

[peritonlogon]

the main reason you're objecting to my statement is because the terms are very murky...'abstract problem sloving and symbolic thinking' are not all that different from 'group learning' and 'mass consciousness' when considered in context. Usually ways of explaining things and understanding things simplify and make intuitive certain ideas or phenomena. This is an example of 'symbolic thinking and abstract problem solving' changing en mass, but could just as easily because called group learing or mass consciousness. The difference is mostly semantic.

And, people dealing with VCRs and the Internet and using both, as well as some other new ones, as tools to expedite the learning process, is an example of media as an 'extention of man.'

The difference is more than semantic. You're hypothesizing that there is a huge, fuzzy, ethereal connection between all people that causes them to learn at the same time. I'm saying that there is a common external, physical cause that explains the observed phenomenon without resort to supernatural processes.