Is everyone getting a bit thicker?

sbsquarepants

Are people getting more stupiderer?

I think that's very inlikely!

PowerToWait

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

With right wing extremism IQs have definitely taken a sharp fall over the last 20 years.
Case in point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjuNuqIev8M

This man is a cabbage. Sadly it seems turning to te extreme right does that to a person.
Just look at Trump, Fox, Brexit, the AfD, the Austrian government and the right wing scene in Eastern Europe.
This has nothing to do with people not being able to take IQ tests.
This is the sharp decline of intelligence in the masses till there's nothing left but thick-browed, knuckle-dragging, drooling skinheads and their leaders who manage to look like a shaved ape stuck in a suit and even manage to utter a few sentences coherently.
I wish Idiocracy was true, the people in it are stupid, but harmless. Sadly people are becoming more hateful and fearful and they are becoming the majority. It was nice when humanity looked like it might turn to a more positive path in the 90's, but instead we are getting fear, hate, ignorance and bile and it looks like it's getting worse.

The guy in the clip is clearly not very articulate. He's probably not very intelligent. He's almost certainly from one of the lowest rungs on the social ladder as has been his family and peers for generations.

They're the guys who did the most menial and demeaning work, such as working 14 hours a day down coal mines, slaving in a knackery, die in mud filled trenches, sweat buckets in a steel factory.

He's almost certainly not innately hate filled / bigoted / sectarian. He is ignorant and being manipulated by the likes of Tommy Robinson.

There is nothing new in this. Has been happening basically forever, everywhere. The bible is full of similar things.

As to the Nineties somehow being some sort of oasis in the hell of man's inhumanity to man, get a grip.

You should look up the Balkan conflict, Srebrenica, Milosovic, First Gulf War, the fcuking Rwandan Genocide, Chechen civil war, Sierra Leone civil war, Somalia, Algeria, I mean the list is extensive and the consequences absolutely appalling.

PowerToWait

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Indisputably. Smartphones have had a very deleterious effect on declarative memory.

valoren

Thick by way of not realizing that using poor grammar when communicating makes you look like an idiot.

u ok hun?

rather than;

is everything ok?

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

jim salter

topper75 wrote: »

Or is it a clever joke that flew over your head?
I'm paranoid as heck inside this thread.

Quoted my own post there

jim salter

Graces7 wrote: »

Your post would suggest the truth of this; if I could fathom it as English /Certainly written English skills have nose-dived.:rolleyes:

Maybe you should read the post 2 posts down from this, where I quoted my own post. :rolleyes:

Sleepy

Peregrinus wrote: »

Yup. In the 1950s and 60s they were all the go, and taken very seriously, and kids got quite a lot of exposure to IQ tests, and other similar tests, and had much practice in taking them. Also exposure to teaching methods derived from them.

But kids born from 1975 onwards are entering formal education from about 1980, and are being tested (in the context of army recruitment) from about 1993. They've had quite a different learning environment, which hasn't fostered the skills required to perform well in IQ tests to the same extent.

Basically, IQ tests are old-fashioned.

Absolutely true. In the school my father attended during the 60's, they did IQ tests at least once a week: they were trained to do them exceptionally well because IQ tests were often a factor of recruitment into the civil service, the banks and other good jobs for life.

Consequently, the last time my father did an IQ test, he had a score in excess of 160 (the same level as a Stephen Hawking or an Albert Einstein). Now, to be fair to him, my Dad is an exceptionally intelligent person, but he'd be the first to admit those guys intellect would tower above his.

valoren

I'd liken IQ tests to a Rubik's Cube.

Give the cube to someone on the street and it's a mystery to solve the cube, you'd need to have a genius level intellect to solve it.

However, the intelligence part is looking to find out how it is solved, learning the algorithms, remembering them and applying it.
Thus something that was a mystery is now solved with relative ease.

It's the same with IQ tests. Once you realize the tricks, what to look for then, you can be a 'genius' and impress others in the same way someone able to solve the Cube impresses other people, the ability to solve it became something of a marker for someone 'intelligent'. The only intelligence displayed being the capacity to see a problem and resolve to solving it.

Roger_007

Whatever about people becoming thicker, they are definitely becoming less skilled at doing the myriad of jobs and tasks which people need to do in life.
I was just thinking about my grandparents who had many skills which subsequent generations have tended to 'leave to the specialists'.
My grandma made all her own clothes and also made curtains and bedclothes. She made all sorts of goodies and toys for us grandchildren. She was a fantastic knitter. She cooked everything from scratch.
My grandpa could turn his hand to carpentry, plumbing, electrical work or fixing anything that needed fixing. He maintained and serviced his car and any other machine that they owned.
My parents had no such skills and I don't either.

riffmongous

valoren wrote: »

I'd liken IQ tests to a Rubik's Cube.

Give the cube to someone on the street and it's a mystery to solve the cube, you'd need to have a genius level intellect to solve it.

However, the intelligence part is looking to find out how it is solved, learning the algorithms, remembering them and applying it.
Thus something that was a mystery is now solved with relative ease.

It's the same with IQ tests. Once you realize the tricks, what to look for then, you can be a 'genius' and impress others in the same way someone able to solve the Cube impresses other people, the ability to solve it became something of a marker for someone 'intelligent'. The only intelligence displayed being the capacity to see a problem and resolve to solving it.

Indeed, the odd time I've done one of those tests I've thought if I had seen the questions before or knew straight away what I was supposed to be doing I would do much better, instead of wasting a bit of time figuring it out for the first time. Which I actually thought was part of the point in doing them so rarely.. but then I found out that no, you can actually practice them.

Stone Deaf 4evr

PowerToWait wrote: »

The guy in the clip is clearly not very articulate. He's probably not very intelligent. He's almost certainly from one of the lowest rungs on the social ladder as has been his family and peers for generations.

They're the guys who did the most menial and demeaning work, such as working 14 hours a day down coal mines, slaving in a knackery, die in mud filled trenches, sweat buckets in a steel factory.

He's almost certainly not innately hate filled / bigoted / sectarian. He is ignorant and being manipulated by the likes of Tommy Robinson.

There is nothing new in this. Has been happening basically forever, everywhere. The bible is full of similar things.

As to the Nineties somehow being some sort of oasis in the hell of man's inhumanity to man, get a grip.

You should look up the Balkan conflict, Srebrenica, Milosovic, First Gulf War, the fcuking Rwandan Genocide, Chechen civil war, Sierra Leone civil war, Somalia, Algeria, I mean the list is extensive and the consequences absolutely appalling.

excellent post.

Irish Guitarist

Look at one of those 'reaction' videos on YouTube of some children being shown a tape or something. They can't even figure out how to put a tape in a tape recorder. It doesn't matter that they're just children or that no one uses tapes anymore, the point is no one over the age of about three should have so much difficulty putting a rectangular object in a rectangular hole.

Apart from that they have no curiosity about old technology. If someone had shown me a gramophone or something when I was that age I would have been fascinated by it.

What pisses me off is that people think this is somehow cute. It's far from cute that these kids own phones with more computing power than NASA had when they sent man to the moon but can't even figure out how an eject button works.

And then there's quizzes in which someone in their mid twenties can't answer a question and says "this was before my time". So they don't know anything about the time period before they were born then? This even happens when they're asked a question about music. "Elvis was before my time". These people seem to be unfamiliar with recorded music.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Lots of IQ test denialism on here.

Btw the online tests are not indicative of your true score. Proper test is one hour long in exam conditions.

joe40

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

Look at one of those 'reaction' videos on YouTube of some children being shown a tape or something. They can't even figure out how to put a tape in a tape recorder. It doesn't matter that they're just children or that no one uses tapes anymore, the point is no one over the age of about three should have so much difficulty putting a rectangular object in a rectangular hole.

Apart from that they have no curiosity about old technology. If someone had shown me a gramophone or something when I was that age I would have been fascinated by it.

What pisses me off is that people think this is somehow cute. It's far from cute that these kids own phones with more computing power than NASA had when they sent man to the moon but can't even figure out how an eject button works.

And then there's quizzes in which someone in their mid twenties can't answer a question and says "this was before my time". So they don't know anything about the time period before they were born then? This even happens when they're asked a question music. "Elvis was before my time". These people seem to be unfamiliar with recorded music.

At the same time a few years ago my wee boy probably aged about 8 at the time was playing minecraft. After a short period of time he intuitely worked out what to do and was explaining the different modes of play and how to get things, This was without any instruction. To me it looked very complicated.
Cultures and societies can change but human ability and genetics is fairly constant over thousands of years.
There is no point looking back to some kind of golden era when everything was better. All things considered, and taking into account all the negative aspects of modern living, I can't think of an era that I would rather be in right now. We're doing ok, compared to the past, when everything is taken into account

Dakota Dan

begbysback wrote: »

Based from the data sample of people I meet on a daily basis, I concur

It takes a fool to know a fool 😀😀😀

tigerboon

CalamariFritti wrote: »

Puts a serious dampener on the idea of democracy and everyone has an equal vote. Half the people don t know what they’re voting about or what’s going on at all.

But as long as it's the "progressive" choice and you're not a nazi (but still hate the Jews), isn't that the important thing

bnt

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Lots of IQ test denialism on here.

Btw the online tests are not indicative of your true score. Proper test is one hour long in exam conditions.

Yep. Some folks talk as if the people who design and run such tests are stupid, that they haven't thought about this kind of problem - that they're off in their own world, running these abstract tests that have no connection to the "real world". In the field of psychology, the idea that intelligence is a thing, and that IQ tests provide a reasonably-accurate relative indicator of it, is not controversial at all. Somehow, the results of IQ tests correlate strongly with other academic tests - the kind you learn for, such as the SAT and American College Tests in the USA. Quick example: here's a paper about the ACT and how it correlates with IQ and other tests. Then there's this in the NY Times about the SAT and IQ. I know some people in the USA disagree that the SAT, ACT, GRE or other academic tests are useful ... but they aren't going away, quite the opposite.

So yes, maybe you can learn for an IQ test, but the ability to learn effectively is part of what we call intelligence in the first place. It can be both learning on the spot - when seeing something for the first time (like a first IQ test) - and also the ability to absorb and use information over a long period.

In school we've all met students who are getting the same education as us, who don't have "socio-economic" disadvantages (being poor etc.) as a factor, yet still differ widely in how well they do. Some students manage to do well even when the education they get could be called "poor"; others never catch up, regardless of the high quality of the education they are getting.

So "denialism" is right - whether it's denial that intelligence can be tested, or that the results mean anything, or that intelligence is a thing at all. It's a controversial subject, one the gets a lot of academic scrutiny. There have been plenty of attempts to formally discredit IQ tests and intelligence in general, and yet the studies keep telling us that intellligence is real and can be tested.

Malayalam

A few years ago I got a notion to do a skite of those online IQ tests over a couple of days, having never done any IQ tests before, ergo no practise...and, since all of them reported that I'm a flipping uncommon genie ass, I'm affirming that they are remarkably and uncannily accurate.

:cool:

On the subject matter the biggest problem I see is the contemporary ignorance regarding history. It's like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind out there.

Sleepy

Roger_007 wrote: »

Whatever about people becoming thicker, they are definitely becoming less skilled at doing the myriad of jobs and tasks which people need to do in life.
I was just thinking about my grandparents who had many skills which subsequent generations have tended to 'leave to the specialists'.
My grandma made all her own clothes and also made curtains and bedclothes. She made all sorts of goodies and toys for us grandchildren. She was a fantastic knitter. She cooked everything from scratch.
My grandpa could turn his hand to carpentry, plumbing, electrical work or fixing anything that needed fixing. He maintained and serviced his car and any other machine that they owned.
My parents had no such skills and I don't either.

I'm seeing more and more people, myself included, starting to row back on this.

Maybe it's the sheer volume of education that's available to us on Youtube, forums and the internet in general or maybe it's just my demographic puts me in the midst of a lot of people who bought their first homes just before, during or just after the recession but I'm certainly not the only one in my group who tackles most DIY jobs myself rather than calling for a tradesman straight-away.
TBH, based on my memory of half the eejits in my year who went into trades, I'd trust my own instincts over their training.

Wibbs

bnt wrote: »

Yep. Some folks talk as if the people who design and run such tests are stupid, that they haven't thought about this kind of problem - that they're off in their own world, running these abstract tests that have no connection to the "real world". In the field of psychology, the idea that intelligence is a thing, and that IQ tests provide a reasonably-accurate relative indicator of it, is not controversial at all.

While I take your point B, actually there has been quite the bit of debate about it. IQ tests can measure reasoning(analytical and spatial) ability and are very good at that, but they don't measure memory, short or long term, they don't measure an ability to plan, or drive and attention, or brain plasticity, they're limited in measuring verbal ability and don't measure social, emotional or physical coordination skills, decision making skills, or creativity at all. They're a good test of certain parameters of reasoning, yes, but as a measure of overall human intelligence they're quite limited in scope.

As for connection to the real world? Yes there is a strong correlation between academic success and IQ as one might expect and some quite strong correlation with professional success, but to claim, even expect that quite a narrow field test alone is up to the task of measuring human intelligence is more than a stretch.

I think we can agree that people like Max Planck, Mozart, Plato, Michelangelo and Shakespeare were colossi of human genius, but I would bet the farm they would score quite differently on an IQ test. There are probably people reading this who would close on or even surpass a couple of the names above, but they will likely never be at that level.

AllForIt

I feel I'm getting dummererer as I get less young.

professore

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

With right wing extremism IQs have definitely taken a sharp fall over the last 20 years.
Case in point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjuNuqIev8M

This man is a cabbage. Sadly it seems turning to te extreme right does that to a person.
Just look at Trump, Fox, Brexit, the AfD, the Austrian government and the right wing scene in Eastern Europe.
This has nothing to do with people not being able to take IQ tests.
This is the sharp decline of intelligence in the masses till there's nothing left but thick-browed, knuckle-dragging, drooling skinheads and their leaders who manage to look like a shaved ape stuck in a suit and even manage to utter a few sentences coherently.
I wish Idiocracy was true, the people in it are stupid, but harmless. Sadly people are becoming more hateful and fearful and they are becoming the majority. It was nice when humanity looked like it might turn to a more positive path in the 90's, but instead we are getting fear, hate, ignorance and bile and it looks like it's getting worse.

Whats really thick is inviting over a million immigrants into your country from a medieval culture and expecting no negative political or social consequences.

Yer Da sells Avon

dunno lol

Sardonicat

"Muslamic Lur"

: )

sbsquarepants

Roger_007 wrote: »

Whatever about people becoming thicker, they are definitely becoming less skilled at doing the myriad of jobs and tasks which people need to do in life.
I was just thinking about my grandparents who had many skills which subsequent generations have tended to 'leave to the specialists'.
My grandma made all her own clothes and also made curtains and bedclothes. She made all sorts of goodies and toys for us grandchildren. She was a fantastic knitter. She cooked everything from scratch.
My grandpa could turn his hand to carpentry, plumbing, electrical work or fixing anything that needed fixing. He maintained and serviced his car and any other machine that they owned.
My parents had no such skills and I don't either.

There's definitely a marked increase in specialisation and an increased dependence on technology we don't understand. Notable by the recent arms race in qualifications (as in last couple of decades). A degree now is basically on par with a leaving cert 20 or 25 years ago.
You see fairly basic jobs being advertised demanding degrees + a few years experience - sometimes they don't even specify what discipline!
If a degree in art history is as applicable as a degree in chemistry for the job you're advertising, the job you're advertising does not require a degree of any description!

Wibbs

sbsquarepants wrote: »

There's definitely a marked increase in specialisation and an increased dependence on technology we don't understand.

True. There's also a rise of complexity and "no user serviceable items beneath" too. Plus I would say people have less time these days and many more distractions. If all you have of an evening is the wireless in the corner you tend to have more hobbies and time to pursue and hone them.

Having more disposable income and credit also tends to mean people will replace rather than repair and stuff becomes less repairable anyway as that doesn't suit the economics of the churn of product required for the consumer society. The products are more heavily marketed too. I was having a convo with an uncle of mine a while back and the subject of labels and logos came up. He was saying that back in the 60's if you went and saw say a James Bond flic and you thought his suit was fab, you'd rock on down to one of the local tailors and say you wanted a suit like that and off they'd make one. You had no clue who made James Bond's actual suit, today you would and wearing anything else would be seen as a knock off, a pale copy(even if it were better made).

It's a different environment and people's minds adapt to that and are smarter within that.

jmayo

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

With right wing extremism IQs have definitely taken a sharp fall over the last 20 years.

...
Just look at Trump, Fox, Brexit, the AfD, the Austrian government and the right wing scene in Eastern Europe.
This has nothing to do with people not being able to take IQ tests.
This is the sharp decline of intelligence in the masses till there's nothing left but thick-browed, knuckle-dragging, drooling skinheads and their leaders who manage to look like a shaved ape stuck in a suit and even manage to utter a few sentences coherently.
I wish Idiocracy was true, the people in it are stupid, but harmless. Sadly people are becoming more hateful and fearful and they are becoming the majority. It was nice when humanity looked like it might turn to a more positive path in the 90's, but instead we are getting fear, hate, ignorance and bile and it looks like it's getting worse.

And as professore quite rightly points out the left and the so called enlightened "clued in" classes threw open the gates and thought they could just take a huge tranche of people from an incompatible cultural background and everything would work out.

There is a huge arrogance by some in Europe that they can somehow take someone who has grown up in a very different and frankly backwards culture and magically turn them into the exact opposite.

Even worse a lot of the so called "intelligent" ones chomping at the bit on facebook, twitter, etc bought into the hogwash that these new arrivals were necessary to pay for the natives pensions in years to come.

Yeah the 90s, the decade that gave us Srebrenica where nationalism was hijacked to slaughter others, all the while the so called more advanced and enlightened in the likes of the EU sat with their thumbs up their asses and wouldn't act.
So much for "it will never be allowed happen again".
Then we had Rwanda where the UN and the world abandoned an ethnic group to genocide.
And I am not even going to bother to list all the other conflicts in Africa.

There are idiots on all sides and blindly listening to and buying into the totally unrealistic and often moronic utterances of some celebrities on twitter is as bad as the morons on the right you rail about.

And if you want to know who are the most mentally deficient and causing the rise of the right, it would be the political classes who are abandoning huge chunks of the electorate and then expecting them to meekly do as they are told come election or referendum.
And a big part of that is telling the workers who once carried out functions in society that the globalisation that took their work away, and indeed their kids work, is good for them and that they should simply upskill to be a scientist, financial analysts or engineer to get a job in future.

What were once the working classes of Europe and America have been abandoned politically and labeling them all as thickos and racist bigots aint going to win them back.

Maybe it is now more obvious and most people were always a bit thick.
I think technology now allows people to do tasks that once required a bit of thought and mental effort.
People now use a calculator to do the most mundane of sums, a satnav to guide them to even the most obvious of places, google to find the answer to even the simplest piece of information.
I do think people are losing mental dexterity.

sbsquarepants

Wibbs wrote: »

True. There's also a rise of complexity and "no user serviceable items beneath" too.

Case in point. I have an engine light on in my car, I have no idea why, it just says in the manual to bring it to a dealer to be checked. I can't notice anything wrong with the car, if the light wasn't on I'd have no reason to suspect there was anything wrong. I'm not a car lover so I tend to ignore things until they need doing, but this light has been on for 2 1/2 years now - it's clearly not important. I do get it serviced (by a backstreet mechanic not a main dealer) I asked him what it was and he just said "cars grand, don't mind that!"
The cynic in me suspects that they may just be programmed to turn on every now and then! How would i know any different? A car these days is like a fecking space ship!

Permabear

This post has been deleted.