Posted on 05/23/2013 5:19:17 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A new study may stimulate the old adage of respecting your elders; it says the general level of intelligence in the Western Hemisphere has declined since the Victorian Era. The study claims the IQ numbers are 14 points lower than from the 19th century.
One of the authors of the study, Dr. Jan te Nijenhuis, professor of work and organizational psychology at the University of Amsterdam, says the cause of the movement toward stupidity is that smarter women have fewer children while those of lower intelligence have more children.
But Dr. Gerald Crabtree, professor of pathology and developmental biology at Stanford University, disagreed. He stated:
The reduction in human intelligence (if there is any reduction) would have begun at the time that genetic selection became more relaxed. I projected this occurred as our ancestors began to live in more supportive high density societies (cities) and had access to a steady supply of food. Both of these might have resulted from the invention of agriculture, which occurred about 5,000 to 12,000 years ago.
The study examined results of 14 intelligence studies conducted between 1884 to 2004 that measured participants' so-called visual reaction times....
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
I am pretty well versed in history, and when one examines the educated man of the 18th century, it is hard not to agree completely.
Many of our founders could speak many languages, were well read, extremely practical and very thoughtful. They would put to shame ANYONE making policy ANYWHERE in the world today.
“Go away...’batin.”
Heh, I just HAVE to buy that movie.
President Camacho all the way, babeee!
how many people can farm their own food?
how many could survive a week abandoned in the wilderness?
Look at what the folks who have fundamental units named after them had to do by hand. The did math by hand, as a matter of course, that the average technically educated person simply cannot do.
Even as late as the 1960’s - and I’ve had occasion to review many research papers from that era - folks were much better at math and the organized thinking that is required to successfully accomplish tough math problems makes for a more measurable intellect then as compared with today.
So I’d say, the way we measure IQ can put greater emphasis on the organized brain capable of doing complex mathematics by hand - and that is not as prevalent today as it was 100 years ago. Being able to do math in your head or by hand DOES mean you are smarter by any measurement in my opinion.
I read a lot from the 1600s to the late 1900s.
Yes, they were, after the mid 1700s, more 'eloquent'. For what that is worth.
There is value to be found in the phrase "I don't care who you are, that's funny right there". Not eloquent by some standards, but appropriate for today.
And none of those 15 year olds writing at a university level 150 years ago would stand a chance for long in today's world. There is simply too much going on. It's one thing to carefully think through a sentence structure while musing by candle-light near the fireplace during winter, and the fast-paced lifestyle of today.
You can't compare apples and oranges.
You also have to look at the percentage of seriously literate. I think it was highest around 1880-1920. I also believe it falls off on either side of that cut-off.
/johnny
Well, he is the five time Smackdown Champion and porn superstar.
/johnny
You got an Obama phone?
Yes! Everybody in Cleveland, low minorities, got Obama phone. Keep Obama in president, you know? He gave us a phone!
He gave you a phone?
He gonna do more!
How did he give you a phone?
You sign up. If you… If you on food stamps, you on Social Security, you got low income, you disability…
Okay, what’s wrong with Romney, again?
Romney, he suck!
/johnny
The high school education my mother and father received 100 years ago is equivalent to a PHD today!
What they teach in todays high school wouldn’t be adequate to pass the 6th grade when I went to school!
Screw the political correctness. Western civilization is dumber because it has opened the floodgates to dumber people. Dumber people get in and the dumb ones who are already here are mollycoddled and supported by a welfare state -- and in America are soon to get free universal Odumbocare, to boot.
Want to make us smarter? Close those floodgates to new dumb people and stop giving dumb people a free ride. Instead, open the floodgates to smart people and give no one a free ride with an IQ below 110 (at a later date, perhaps to be moved up to 120).
I don’t think humans are less intelligent. I think it is just that people aren’t taught to think any more. Reason has fallen out of favor and been replaced by groupthink and political correctness. We are taught that we must respect all opinions and not judge because after all, who are we to think. One persons opinion is just as valid as another’s. We can’t really know anything. After all what is true for one is not necessarily true for others. There is no black and white, everything is grey. This is the new western philosophy.
I would dispute that. I was classically trained - all my math examinations were designed so that they could be done without a calculator. All you needed was a pencil.
it wasn’t a challenge, it was a question.
we all know you can. not many people can.
I’m less intelligenter than I wuz in my previous incarnation, that’s fer shore, Shirley!
/johnny
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