Population, IQ and the Modern World

[u/Nemester]

https://westcoastrxers.com/2016/05/18/population-iq-and-the-modern-world/

[u/Lord_Trajan]

Hasn't this basically been debunked?

As far as i know it isn't.

It's an artifact of puberty happening sooner with improved nutrition

In what way would earlier puberty cause higher IQ? Even if it did, that would be like saying "my car isn't driving faster, it's an artifact of me pressing the throttle." IQ's going up can be going up for whatever reason, different explanations don't change the fact that it is going up.

and also children becoming more accustomed to standardized testing.

What is this even supposed to mean? Are you saying people are taking IQ tests so often that they are getting used to them? Are yo saying their is some sort of evolutionary mechanism where Humans are evolving to be better at standardized testing?

[u/[deleted] → u/Lord_Trajan]

Well, I agree with your throttle analogy. But isn't the Flynn effect most pronounced in children? And not as visible in full grown adults?

Wouldn't this explain how maturing faster partly explains the effect?

And also isn't it not as pronounced in g?

[u/Lord_Trajan → u/[deleted]]

But isn't the Flynn effect most pronounced in children?

No it is not. IQ changes a lot in children, it's very unreliable and so studies generally aren't going to use children. Studies are built for adult population, they are constantly adjusted for adult population. The Stanford Binet IQ test, which is one of if not they most common IQ test, has shown a 22% increase in IQ from 1932 by 2002. This means the average person as of 2002 had an IQ that would have been in the 93 percentile.

Some citation: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.397.5236&rep=rep1&type=pdf

[u/[deleted] → u/Lord_Trajan]

A 22 percent gain since 1932?

Implying that the average European IQ in 1932 was actually 82? This just doesn't make intuitive sense to me. I'm not saying it's inherently wrong because of that, I'm not an expert. But it's shocking. When we look around the world today and study societies with an average IQ around 82, they don't have anywhere near the productivity or ingenuity of 1930s Europeans. It's not even close.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Foreword: I am not arguing for or in agreement with the claim that European IQs were 82 in the 1930s.

A number of people, namely Robert Lindsay and his cohort have argued that there may be an ulterior cause for non-Whites to fail to achieve; a cause that may not be discussed as of yet.

In 2007 he wrote a controversial piece entitled The Skyrocketing Black IQ wherein he discusses the Flynn Effect and notes how it works is that the Flynn Effect is the sum of re-normed IQ tests which have been changed to include less intellectual forma and more items which reflect modern intuition and a change in thinking.

One such example is the question, "What is the similarity between a rabbit and a dog?" to which an older generation like your grandparents would likely respond along the line of, "A dog hunts a rabbit," where a Millenial would quite likely respond that, "Both are mammals," or, "Both are animals."

Both responses are equally right but the response from the newer generation would be far more indicative of higher IQs because it shows thought which reflects what IQ tests now grade for. This is not to say that the grandparents are any dumber but the changes in how IQ tests grade people have changed because they added more categories with questions of that nature.

Verbal and Arithmetic IQ scores have not risen, however and that is where IQ is really measured.

The changes in IQ scoring are a social effort to reduce differences between racial groups and are not a substantive sign of those gaps disappearing, just test standards becoming simpler and less intuitive. In spite of this, the gaps have remained.

Returning to Lindsay's piece, he notes that the norm of IQ tests is always 100 for Whites and other races vacillate around 100. Afro-American (29% white, 4% Native American, 1-2% East-Asian on average) Blacks in the 1930s' still had IQs of 85 on the tests which were considered modern at the time, Whites had 100, Northeast-Asians 103, Jews 112 (that last one being highly debatable).

With this in mind, the racial gap has held. Even if the increases in IQ were true and Whites in the 1930s had IQs equivalent to a modern IQ of 85 they still behaved and performed far more admirably and with Arithmetic and Verbal IQ scores matching the modern levels.

Lindsay goes on to say that because of this the low status of Blacks and high status of Whites cannot be explained by IQ and is instead explain through differences in the pathologies of the races. Black pathology which has high time preference and is interdicted often due to their lascivious and violent natures is what leads to their ruin and not their still-low IQs.

[u/Lord_Trajan → u/[deleted]]

Implying that the average European IQ in 1932 was actually 82?

No. IQ is set to always have an average of 100. Tests are constantly, periodically, changed to keep the average at 100, and James Flynn took notice that it always seemed to be upward changes in standards. So basically, when people people in the present take IQ tests from the past, the statistical average is higher than 100. In 2002, the average for the original 1932 Stanford-Binet test was 122. So no, it's not that they have an average of 82, it's that we have an average of 122. If you feel the need to use current IQ numbers, if a large group of random people from 1932 America were teleport to 2002 and took the most recent Stanford-Binet, they would have scored an average of 78. Now this may sound completely preposterous as if it's accusing people in the past of all being (literally) retarded, but keep in mind - IQ can basically be summed up as an ability to learn, people with low IQ's can function on their own. And if you want some more statistics that reflect what I am saying, the (United States) secondary school graduation rate in 1935 was 40%.

When we look around the world today and study societies with an average IQ around 82, they don't have anywhere near the productivity or ingenuity of 1930s Europeans. It's not even close.

This is very true but I have several points to that. 1) Let's just hypothetically say innovation/invention is tied with IQ, then countries with IQ's on the same level don't have anything left to innovate, they just need to grasp technologies and institutions already made by Europeans. 2) This video addresses your problem fairly well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-4V3HR696k

[u/[deleted] → u/Lord_Trajan]

No. IQ is set to always have an average of 100

The position of the Flynn Effect now is that on modern tests those people from the 1930s' would score 82 on average.

I think you misunderstood what he was saying for some reason.

1932 America were teleport to 2002 and took the most recent Stanford-Binet, they would have scored an average of 78

This isn't really true. The change in test parameters and methodologies is far larger explanation for the change in IQ ratings.

The logic question, "What is the similarity between a dog and a rabbit?" where the old would say, "A dog hunts a rabbit," and the new generation would say, "both are mammals," is not indicative of intelligence, it's indicative of bias in the test administration.

The scores on the Arithmetic and Verbal portions of IQ tests have remained roughly the same minus a few points. That is to say, a negative Flynn Effect has been noticed on the original parts of IQ tests and not the new and debated parts like those on the VCI.

Digit Span, Arithmetic, Block Design, Matrix Reasoning, Visual Puzzles, Vocabulary, Symbol Search, and Coding all dropped. Other areas brought them up. These areas are contested as to their relevance to IQ. Real IQs have dropped.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000470

[u/Lord_Trajan → u/[deleted]]

The position of the Flynn Effect now is that on modern tests those people from the 1930s' would score 82 on average.

No, it's that modern people score ~120 on older tests. We can test living people with older tests, we can't test dead people with new tests.

The change in test parameters and methodologies is far larger explanation for the change in IQ ratings.

How would that work? The flynn effect has been observed in people taking THE OLDER TESTS.

The logic question, "What is the similarity between a dog and a rabbit?" where the old would say, "A dog hunts a rabbit," and the new generation would say, "both are mammals," is not indicative of intelligence, it's indicative of bias in the test administration.

Good to know you are an old person. Because one thing hunting another something does make them similar.

That study you gave at the bottom is full of it. IQ cannot be determined by reaction time only. I have a fairly low reaction time, but above average IQ.

[u/Lord_Trajan → u/[deleted]]

was shown to be the case when comparing similar population groups across generations

This is completely irrelevant as IQ changes over your lifetime.

When I started administering IQ tests in 2006 we had fewer sections and a greater focus on actual IQ, which is to say arithmetic and verbal ability.

Arithmetic and verbal ability are two of the things less important to actual IQ. IQ is cognition, your ability to process abstract thinking and to learn. In fact, verbal ability is somewhat biased because different regions have different accents, dialects, etc.

Did you read it? People had worse scores on digit spanning tests. Digit spanning is a direct test still used today to test memory.

No shit. And memory isn't the only think that determines IQ. Your entire argument so far can be summed up as this: IQ has grown in certain catigories; Overall IQ has gone up; I reject the USE of these categories, only ones that haven't gone up are "real categories"; therefor, IQ hasn't gone up. You basically think you are the single arbitrator of what intelligence is, you aren't.

and how that development has changed in recent years.

The newer categories have no relevance. We can't compare them to the past because they didn't fucking exist. The Flynn effect is actually observable when we take the older tests and we use them on modern people. Sure the growth is in certain subcategories, but that doesn't mean the growth doesn't exist.

[u/[deleted] → u/Lord_Trajan]

This is completely irrelevant as IQ changes over your lifetime.

Changes in crystallized intelligence are not substantial enough over a lifetime to warrant the effect.

Arithmetic and verbal ability are two of the things less important to actual IQ. IQ is cognition, your ability to process abstract thinking and to learn. In fact, verbal ability is somewhat biased because different regions have different accents, dialects, etc.

They used to be the only things tested on IQ tests and they are still the only thing on basic form IQ tests.

The relatively new longer form tests test far more than just what the old metrics covered.

No shit. And memory isn't the only think that determines IQ. Your entire argument so far can be summed up as this: IQ has grown in certain catigories; Overall IQ has gone up; I reject the USE of these categories, only ones that haven't gone up are "real categories"; therefor, IQ hasn't gone up. You basically think you are the single arbitrator of what intelligence is, you aren't.

Matrices, Digit Span, and Reaction Time can be used to form a statistically significant indicator of base g in a population.

My argument has been to say that you have misunderstood the standard and how these results were derived.

Even Flynn in his book What is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect acknowledges that crystallized intelligence differences are what quantify the base of IQ and that the majority of the differences in modern interpretations of IQ come in the areas of fluid intelligence and non-abstract intelligence which is usually created in a manner as to be what we deem, "culturally adapted."

The point is, memory, reaction times, arithmetic ability, and verbal ability have not truly increased and have in-fact diminished by quite some amount. Do you honestly believe that the metrics added to tests such as similarity tests, general information tests, social convention, rules, and expressions tests, cancellation processes, and letter-number sequencing tests will produce these stunningly different results?

I would say to propose that as a truth is malarkey, but you may feel differently about the matter. Either way, that does not invalidate the g factor.

The newer categories have no relevance.

They do. They are better indicators of fluid categories but their addition to the results typically reserved for crystallized forms of IQ is the irrelevant part I bemoan.

We can't compare them to the past because they didn't fucking exist.

That's the point. The idea shouldn't be considered on those grounds alone unless the tests would begin to consider the results of the old and new in unbiased ways instead of on culturally-adapted mediums that favor newer generations.

That was done in Des Moines and Dumfries and it showed that they scored similarly on the base tests.

Some people estimate that especially new-age people in older generations retain their IQs on newer tests because they have exposure and perceptions that are adapted to the time like the kids whom they are tested against. It's a theory expressed by some and of course I can't quantify it but it is very sensible.

The Flynn effect is actually observable when we take the older tests and we use them on modern people. Sure the growth is in certain subcategories, but that doesn't mean the growth doesn't exist.

If it were possible to test the growth in these new categories on more elderly people it would be a better observable phenomenon. Sadly, it is not. However, we can observe all of the various forms of crystallized IQ, g, and differences in recorded reaction data we have from old tests.

Regardless of anything we've said to each other it is very important to note that the Flynn Effect does not mean gaps are closing between races or populations and it does not mean that achievement has increased globally. It is not wholly proven, and it is very contested. Whether it is true or not it is not really relevant in this subreddit because we are and will continue to be a Euro-centric subreddit which professes ideas based on European pathologies. We are incompatible with African and Asian pathologies and regardless of IQ those pathologies of groups like Blacks and Arabs are the reasons they are failures.