anyone else find IQ test-score threads funny?

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While I do not doubt there has been a significant deterioration in quality, this does not address 1) what the effect on IQ was 2) How much of what used to be taught was learned by how many people. A lot of the working class people who were forced through my schools couldn't even learn what was taught, let alone any more.


Umm... how is any of that tirade relevant to my point? In fact, that graph was used to specifically address the topic of education deterioration. The IQ data, I have no need to justify any further because the case is closed as far as this thread is concerned: IQ has been going up. EOM

I have a small collection of very old documents writen by both well educated and marginally educated people from several periods in history and you are correct in that even a marginally literate cowboy appears to be well educated, with beautiful penmenshipin the typical letters they wrote back home. I have seen the notes left by members of the Donner party, some who were supposedly illiterate, but still manged to write some beautuful last thoughts. There is no doubt in my mind that general knowledge has been incredibly dumbed down over time as the role of specialist has risen in society.

I'm not sure IQ relates to general intelligence and as to how many learned what was taught, according to the enriollment records and report cards the success rate was far higher in the past than it is today, like a 85% graduation rate compared to around 50% in california.

Raised and educated in the US? Most likely they wrote it themselves. Sometimes, though, illiterates and non english immigrants would talk someone into writing letters for them.

it was a polite custom in the 'old' days for the letter writer to acknowledge the transcriber so we generally have a notation about who wrote for who. Even low class rough working men after around 1880 could read and write, usually better than most college students of today.
You would be amazed at the mathematical notations laborers scribled on the backs of paneling in old houses that are demolished. None of this is surprising to historians but science types find it hard to believe that todays society is not as cutting edge as they imagine it is.

BTW do you REALLY want to know about how stupid people are TODAY vs. 40 years ago?

About 40 years ago, someone created a standard that could go up to 4294967296! HEY, in THOSE days it was EXPENSIVE, and the yield was LOW! They decided that 4294967296 was MORE than what they needed, so they reduced it to about 2147483648! After all, that was STILL more than they needed! After all, HOW long would it be before someone used 549GB for storage, or have a file bigger than 2GB? If the time EVER arose, SOMEONE would increase it! RIGHT? BTW the magical 2147483648 number was used for MANY things! They even used it for DATES!! !! !! 68 years! 35 days 3 hours 14 minutes 8 seconds! DON'T WORRY! There is an epoch of 1970, so that is 2/4/2038 3:14:8. I guess I made a mistake, wikipedia says it is 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038. 8-( Oh well. Anyway, back to the deal.....

A bit more than 10 years later, a little company called Microsoft decided to COPY an OLD system, and use ANOTHER magic number! 65535! That limited them to a disk size of 33,553,920(The famous 32MB limit on FAT)! They were ALREADY behind the times! SURE, most couldn't afford them, but there WERE larger drives. It took them MANY years to use the 2147483648 number(FAT32), and then have clustering, etc....

OK, back to the 4294967296 number. They decided to use it for NETWORKING! I mean WHAT company has that many systems? HOW could the internet get that large? In fact, they reduced it to about 3/4 the amount. The other 1/4 were reserved for testing, services, and VPNs!

So WHAT is the outcome?

Late 60s? An INCREDIBLE 3 BILLION+ systems, 2GB, and it only required 4 processing units(most computers were 8 bit or had 8 bit registers). Over 68 YEARS to improve at a modest cost.

Late 90s? A PALTRY 3 BILLION+ systems, many things STILL limited to 2GB, and it requires only 1 processing unit(most computers were 32 bits, or easily acted like it). Only 38 years to fix it at an INCREDIBLE cost that nobody can even estimate.

If the people in 1990 were SO much smarter, WHY didn't they fix even ONE problem? Even the "Y2K" fix RARELY even ACKNOWLEDGED the 2038 problem! Many systems will likely break that day! I may be dead before then but, if I am not, I may LITERALLY die LAUGHING!

How come you haven't gone up with the tide then?

Because those with the small ones are the people most offended.

ANOTHER good point! Quality furniture used to have fancy joints that would be hard to do TODAY, and many of them didn't have ANY kind of automatic tools. TODAY, you would be hard pressed to find such quality. They also fit moulding that most today use plaster and plastic to merely emulate. And TODAY they take a LOT of shortcuts.

As to talking a person into writing a letter, would the person REALLY sit down with them, flesh out the letter, etc???? I DOUBT it! If they merely WROTE the letter, the lack of education would show in word choice and syntax.

Don't forget the 2' penis I spoke of! ALSO, I prefer breasts smaller than D. There comes a point where it seems like it would be more a burden than anything else. I can't even IMAGINE a person that is C wanting augmentation surgery. It seems silly.

Do you have anything resembling an actual point? IQ may not be the best metric on earth, but that *doesn't* imply it's time for freestyle let's look at whatever we want, because that introduces a little thing called confirmation bias.

Toodles guys, I'm off to greener pastures.

Intelligence can often be independent of educational attainment. My definition of intelligence is


1) The ability to learn at a fast pace
2) The ability to grasp complex subject matter
3) The ability to form conclusions and have foresight into the future
4) The ability to apply your knowledge
5) The ability to effectively problem solve
6) The ability to express oneself coherently
7) Creativity and ingenuity

1930=80
1850=60
1770=40

Columbus sailed the ocean blue, with an IQ of -22.

The Flynn Effect is best shown with three shells and a pea.

Post WWII the study shows children who were 20 points lower than would be predicted by their parents scores.

It was tracked to Tetra Ethel Lead in gas. Millions of tons had been spread through the highest density of population.

In 1972 lead was suddenly pulled from gas, paint, in a great government coverup.

IQ tests were reset to fit, text books dumbed down, but nothing was done about the lead plated world.

Those born between 1955 and 1975 got the worst of it, but it continued.

Stories about children who tested high for lead and low for IQ were refuted by saying they were dumb, and ate paint chips. Then testing was stopped.

Energy companies and government regulators did not know about the effects of lead on children under five? They were University grads with high IQ's.

Mass chelation might have worked, just washing down the cities, removing an inch of dirt from playgrounds, but they chose to re set IQ tests and dumb down education, for there is potential liability in poisoning a nation.

While for most it caused a severe decline in performance, for the autistic it brought an almost human level of intelligence, slowing down what ran too fast, and the only thing produced that worked was computers. Only those with a narrow focus and a special interest managed to produce.

It has also lead to the greatest rise of mindless Religion since the Black Death.

The export of jobs has not been just for economic reasons, but because the post WWII people fell below the performance of their parents. It went from factory workers who could design and build a better machine, to their children who could not run a machine.

Jobs any good worker could do in the past now took a Degree, Those were sold on the idea they should go in debt for $50,000 in Student Loans, Credit Cards at high interest, and buy homes with nothing down. Their parents would have seen it for the scam and debt servitude it is. 1/3 for tax, 1/3 for interest, and live on the last 1/3.

When the banks and insurance companies are shown to be running massive frauds, the answer is not, put them in jail, but put more debt on the people to make the losses good.

General intelligence is declining, education, and general knowledge, for we lost a lot when we lost several generations of the teachers who had been keeping knowledge moving from generation to generation.

I find way too many being told they are at the leading edge of the Bell Curve of intelligence.

In performance in the real world I would say a 30% decline since WWII. It is also the period of the rise of Psychology to explain and drug what are the known symptoms of lead poisoning. ADD ADAD, and a slew of new cases labeled autism who do not fit the classic symptoms.

The effects of lead on developing humans under five, a lack of nural connections. They can still be good at one thing, they just lose out on the broader general views. The big picture. They have sparse neurons.

The autist problem is an excess density of neurons, so the same reduction caused by lead would improve performance.

That's likewise comical if you think you're making an actual point. It's like saying that population couldn't be increasing exponentially because if you extend the trend ad infinitum you get ludicrous results.

I'm frankly not even sure what that means, as a child's IQ score is distributed normally around an IQ which will generally be between the parent's IQ score and the mean IQ, so to a degree of probability any IQ is possible.


Evidence, please?

That is a great thought. There are so many different types of intelligence. IQ tests only test a few types and then label the people who dont get an above average score "dumb".

Also it measures certain types of intelligence, namely talent with all that is linear, procedural, formulaic, and quantitative. That is not all there is to nature, or the world!