patrick.net

cmdrdataleak says

some environmental factor is afoot.

As someone who teaches, I firmly believe this to be responsible:

cmdrdataleak says

information-age devices sapping our ability to focus

Shitty parenting is to blame. Dude, some our neighbors don’t parent children, they think it’ll stomp their creativity. Those kids are shitty students, horrible rude kids who don’t know difference between right and wrong. Too fucking many very shitty liberal minded parents fucking up their own kids.

There has been at least 60 years of television that would argue your average person doesn't have a hight IQ to begin with. What a load of crock.

I do believe Ivy League graduates IQs are dropping though. There are Walmart shoppers more intelligent than those Liberal douche bags.

That I’ve seen.

They aren’t teaching them, it’s now some dumb liberal brainwashing. Those who can’t do, teach. Literally dumb people do the teaching.

Tenpoundbass says

There has been at least 60 years of television that would argue your average person doesn't have a hight IQ to begin with. What a load of crock.

I do believe Ivy League graduates IQs are dropping though. There are Walmart shoppers more intelligent than those Liberal douche bags.

It's definitely related to the overuse of phones, social media and other 'instant short-lived gratification' tools. And leftoids dumbing down test scores to the lowest common denominator which has been dropping with the import of low IQ. Because everything else is rays cyst. We need to solve differentials on paper again and make clear that math isn't rays cyst, it just is.

If you could elevate IQ through mental calculations and short term memory routines, we wouldn't have so many inadequate simpletons around.
Bad parenting, maybe in very early childhood, but beyond 4, it's unlikely to affect IQ. Good teachers would mostly elevate social skills and moral qualities like grit.

If this is independent of genetics, environmental factors like food have to be considered.
Pesticides like organophosphates may have effects on brain development, and other neurotoxins may have cumulative effect.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180906082105.htm
"Organophosphorous pesticides contaminate surface waters throughout the U.S. exposing both animals and humans to these chemicals, often at very low, presumably innocuous levels. However, this study demonstrates that exposure to these contaminants, even at these low concentrations, impacts vertebrate neurodevelopment," said lead author Sara McClelland, of Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh.

Also note IQ have been rising worldwide due to Flynn effect. We don't know how it works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
Americans had gained 14 IQ points on the standard IQ tests (Stanford-Binet, Wechsler) between 1932 and 1976;

Recently faltered:
"The IQ gains of the 20th century have faltered. Losses in Nordic nations after 1995 average at 6.85 IQ points when projected over thirty years. On Piagetian tests, Britain shows decimation among high scorers on three tests and overall losses on one. The US sustained its historic gain (0.3 points per year) through 2014. The Netherlands shows no change in preschoolers, mild losses at high school, and possible gains by adults. Australia and France offer weak evidence of losses at school and by adults respectively. German speakers show verbal gains and spatial losses among adults. ..."

"The results show that large positive and negative trends in cohort IQ operate within as well as across families. This implies that the trends are not due to a changing composition of families, and that there is at most a minor role for explanations involving genes (e.g., immigration and dysgenic fertility) and environmental factors largely fixed within families (e.g., parental education, socialization effects of low-ability parents, and family size). While such factors may be present, their influence is negligible
compared with other environmental factors"
https://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-flynn-effect-rising-iq-scores-over.html

Heraclitusstudent says

If you could elevate IQ through mental calculations and short term memory routines, we wouldn't have so many inadequate simpletons around.

It's proven that you can enhance your brain function with mental calculations and single-threaded - i.e. no multi-tasking - focus. Play an intense 2 hour game of chess, do some math on paper, solve crosswords, sudokus whatever. Multi-tasking and loss of attention-span is negative for the IQ. Of course there are many other factors as you mentioned.

All mental exercises aside, there is a couple of environmental factors that have changed from previous centuries.
1)GMO food bred for looks but not nutrition.
2)low-fat diets have been promoted as healthful for several decades now, and they include less of essential fatty acids for brain development. Specifically Omega 3 fats have been replaced with Omega 6 fats because they’re less hydrogenated which is supposed to be better for you, but really these fats (canola oil, etc) just increase inflammation and contribute to heart disease.
3)most critically: women aren’t building up their supply of essential fatty acids which they carry on their hips to make them curvy and pleasing to men’s eyes. Instead they are putting on far too much weight (in pursuit of adequate fatty acids), which cause less fertility and more health problems.
4)Then, the women aren’t breastfeeding, or aren’t breastfeeding enough. Breastfed infants are scientifically proven to be smarter than formula fed babies by about 5 points.

So yah there are environmental factors making our kids stupider.
But you can choose behaviors to avoid this trap.

mell says

It's proven that you can enhance your brain function with mental calculations and single-threaded - i.e. no multi-tasking - focus. Play an intense 2 hour game of chess, do some math on paper, solve crosswords, sudokus whatever. Multi-tasking and loss of attention-span is negative for the IQ. Of course there are many other factors as you mentioned.

Show me a paper that shows a correlation between mental exercise and IQ gains.
You may gain in the ability to focus short term. Or gain skill at a particular task. But that's not IQ.

Tacking onto that post, our meat supply is also a problem. Corn fed beef is very low in Omega 3 compared to grass fed beef. Same thing with chicken and eggs compared to free range. Oh and we don’t eat enough fish, and then when we do it is factory farm raised and doesn’t contain normal fish levels of Omega 3.

The reason we need Omega 3 so much is that it’s a building block for central nervous systems. A pregnant woman needs a LOT of this to build a human brain, or at least build a good one. Women store up these fats on their hips and butts and men find this look irresistible. We are evolved to do so. A woman with a certain hourglass shape is a woman who can make smart babies.

Heraclitusstudent says

mell says

It's proven that you can enhance your brain function with mental calculations and single-threaded - i.e. no multi-tasking - focus. Play an intense 2 hour game of chess, do some math on paper, solve crosswords, sudokus whatever. Multi-tasking and loss of attention-span is negative for the IQ. Of course there are many other factors as you mentioned.

Show me a paper that shows a correlation between mental exercise and IQ gains.
You may gain in the ability to focus short term. Or gain skill at a particular task. But that's not IQ.

https://bebrainfit.com/increase-iq/

It's a layman's article but they did their DD with 50 supporting citations, there's even a commenter challenging that notion. I do a lot of medical research - mostly for trading these days - and if you look at the overall evidence the conclusion seems clear the mental as well as physical exercise is beneficial for long-term IQ, and that get's passed on to future generations. Of course genetics are - as with diseases - the most important factor for setting boundaries how high or low one individual can go by training or slacking, but like with diet there are changes that prevail and can be passed on. The notion that genetics are static has been discarded a while ago though they still determine the majority of your abilities and the range of improvement/worsening possible through lifestyle choices.

Quigley says

All mental exercises aside, there is a couple of environmental factors that have changed from previous centuries.
1)GMO food bred for looks but not nutrition.
2)low-fat diets have been promoted as healthful for several decades now, and they include less of essential fatty acids for brain development. Specifically Omega 3 fats have been replaced with Omega 6 fats because they’re less hydrogenated which is supposed to be better for you, but really these fats (canola oil, etc) just increase inflammation and contribute to heart disease.
3)most critically: women aren’t building up their supply of essential fatty acids which they carry on their hips to make them curvy and pleasing to men’s eyes. Instead they are putting on far too much weight (in pursuit of adequate fatty acids), which cause less fertility and more health problems.
4)Then, the women aren’t breastfeeding, or aren’t breastfeeding enough. Breastfed infants are scientifically proven to be smarter than formula ...

Agreed on all. Interestingly many women are either fat in the non-hour-glass shape way, and many even though skinny look like boys/men these days. Back then I've dated some hot very in shape ones but was never interested in a marriage w/ kids situation with those not sporting a nice hip to waist ratio, i.e. larger child-bearing hips (as opposed to larger waist) and a decent-sized (non-cellulite-walrus) butt. Diet and feminism has certainly taken its toll on many and the genders have been converging, manjaw-high-T-women converging with low-T-soyboy-men.

Even though there is more mental stimulation available than ever before, kids are tuning it all out. School "learning" entails blindly regurgitating socialist talking points. After-school activities are more structured than ever (it's sports practice verses "go play in the yard with the other neighborhood kids"). There is no creating thinking involved.

TV verses computer: hard to believe, but computers (phones) require even less thinking than TVs! A computer could be, as Steve Jobs said: "A bicycle for the mind." But most kids are not learning to program. Most kids aren't using it as the world's largest library. Instead, kids are in their own fake virtual worlds pushing buttons as quickly as possible to achieve fake virtual goals. At least with a TV you can't waste quite as much time (until recently you couldn't watch while riding the school bus, for example). Also, TV programming often contains actual human beings, so you are at least observing some semi-real human interaction. Even if computer games aren't quite as wasteful of time than TVs, the sheer amount of time spent has skyrocketed.

SunnyvaleCA says

After-school activities are more structured than ever (it's sports practice verses "go play in the yard with the other neighborhood kids").

I thought about that as well. In earlier times, parents let kids out and they roamed the neighborhood; now, activities are as structured as in prison.

www.youtube.com/embed/WT-PInPgams

Single Mothers?

Heraclitusstudent says

"The results show that large positive and negative trends in cohort IQ operate within as well as across families. This implies that the trends are not due to a changing composition of families, and that there is at most a minor role for explanations involving genes (e.g., immigration and dysgenic fertility) and environmental factors largely fixed within families (e.g., parental education, socialization effects of low-ability parents, and family size). While such factors may be present, their influence is negligible
compared with other environmental factors"
https://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-flynn-effect-rising-iq-scores-over.html

The methodology of that study is entirely wrong. Most genes relating to IQ are located on the X-chromosome, and fathers don't pass X-chromosome to sons (even if the alleged fathers are the actual biological fathers). Sons only get X-chromosomes from mothers. Think about that for a moment.

The decline of IQ average in the West since the 1970's is entirely the result of public policies and post-modern culture:

1. The Tax-and-Welfare-State transfers resources from the rich and the middle class (i.e. numerically mostly the middle class due to the rich being numerically rare) to the poor, with no stipulation attached as far as limiting the reproduction of later. IQ is very much correlated to income (and general level of success in society). So the result of the Tax-and-Welfare state is removing resources from the higher IQ and giving that to the lower-IQ population, so the former (mostly middle class in numbers) feel unable to afford children of their own, whereas the latter (the poor) reproduce more. The policy is literally dysgenic: encouraging poverty to reproduce itself, resulting in more and more misery.

2. The policy of encouraging young women to pursue longer higher education and professional careers before they have children means raising the opportunity cost of higher IQ women to become mothers. Mothers account for 3/4 of X-chromosomes passed to the next generation, whereas Fathers only account for 1/4 (they don't pass to sons). When the young women of reproductive age who have higher IQ potential X-chromosomes reproduce later in their lives, of course the overall population would have lower IQ: because the lower IQ X-chromosomes reproduce faster than X-chromosomes carrying higher IQ potentials in that case.

Food/nutrition, (useful) education and mental exercise all have some effect on a given' person's intelligence (i.e. bringing that person up to his/her potential) but let's not adopt Lemarkian Evolution: Giraffe didn't get a long neck due to each generation stretching their necks then passing that stretching effect to offspring. Giraffe evolved long necks due to the advantage of getting at food supply at tree tops when ground level food is exhausted (i.e. starvation or unable to reproduce for those with short necks) and female giraffes sexually selecting males with longer necks.

The Flynn Effect in the West from 1932 to the first half 1970's can be explained by the harshness of war selecting the smarter for survival/reproduction, and the post-WWII market economy once again selecting the smarter men to have more mating opportunities while women mostly had equal opportunities to become mothers among themselves (i.e. societies encouraged young women to become mothers first, so didn't disadvantage smart women as far as reproduction was concerned). The west mostly solved the food problem by the beginning of the 20th century; however, the policy-driven starvation during the Great Depression may also have affected the strict numerical 1932-1972 case study due to some nutritional problems in 1932 that didn't exist in 1928.

Ok so smart women have less offsprings. i.e. dysgenic fertility.
I didn't get how this explains a loss of IQ within the same family from parents (mother) to kids.

Heraclitusstudent says

Ok so smart women have less offsprings. i.e. dysgenic fertility.
I didn't get how this explains a loss of IQ within the same family from parents (mother) to kids.

Check out the link in your post above. The "same family" was based on father to son comparison (that's why I said the methodology was entirely wrong, as most genes relating to IQ/intelligence are located on the X-chromosome). Fathers don't pass X-chromosome to Sons. Sons only get X-chromosome from mothers. Y-chromosome has less than 80 genes, contrasting with about 1200 genes on the X-chromosome, so Y-chromosome is mostly just a stub exposing the single X-chromosome to protein synthesis in boys for corresponding phenotype selection by females. X-chromosome is the most highly selected chromosome among all sexually reproducing species. The post-modern culture of encouraging women to put in their best biological years for the boss and the taxman is making less smart women available for choosing by fathers, and the sons only get X-chromosomes from mothers.

Extremely smart parents, e.g. both parents with IQ > 140 (both in the top 1%) would indeed statistically have kids average slightly lower than themselves due to random mutations more likely fall in the 99% than in the 1% making the kids even smarter. However, those kids are still statistically far more likely to be smarter than kids of two parents averaging IQ 80 or IQ 100 or even IQ 120.

Reality says

Check out the link in your post above. The "same family" was based on father to son comparison (that's why I said the methodology was entirely wrong, as most genes relating to IQ/intelligence are located on the X-chromosome). Fathers don't pass X-chromosome to Sons. Sons only get X-chromosome from mothers. The post-modern culture of encouraging women to put in their best biological years for the boss and the taxman is making less smart women available for choosing by fathers, and the sons only get X-chromosomes from mothers.

Interesting!

Single Mothers, the #1 Social and now Genetic Disease effecting the nation.

HonkpilledMaster says

Interesting!

Single Mothers, the #1 Social and now Genetic Disease effecting the nation.

Single mother by thugs in the hood and living on welfare, yes. That's why welfare has to come with mandatory contraception; there are now implanted types (one shot in the arm, very little pain) that can last 3-5 years; everyone is allowed to make mistake once, but not a repeat at taxpayer expense (and the children's misery). Perhaps this should also apply to women having abortion.

OTOH, single mother in co-parenting arrangement/sponsorship with successful men may well be a solution to the problem of post-modern dysgenics. For example, if paying child support for a biological child can deduct tax burden by 20% (then 20% of the remaining 80% for a 2nd child, and so on), someone like Rin having a tax bill over $120k per year may well consider sponsoring a child of his own genetic stock without taking on the risk of marriage. We need more children born to smart people in order to have a functional society. The current laws regarding marriage constitute a massive progressive tax burden penalizing successful men, discouraging successful and smart men like Rin from reproducing.

FortWayneIndiana says

Shitty parenting is to blame. Dude, some our neighbors don’t parent children, they think it’ll stomp their creativity. Too fucking many very shitty liberal minded parents fucking up their own kids.

Funny the post finishes blaming the situation (as poster habitually does) on liberals, when I just finished watching a clip of Bill Maher saying the exact same thing practically verbatim.

My last roommate from college sort of has that situation with his baby mama and kid. They are friends and help raise the lad. I suspect that the fact that he’s gay helps keep her from losing her shit in a jealous fit on the regular. No idea how he had a kid while gay, but he was in the closet when I knew him in college. Very popular with the ladies but never seemed to have a girlfriend. I should have known...