In the latter part of Steyn’s commentary he writes:
“””~My old friend Daniel Hannan writes today about why we all hate each other, and concludes it’s because the western world’s IQ gains of the twentieth century are being dramatically reversed:
The fall in IQ scores in the West is perhaps the most under-reported story of our era. For most of the twentieth century, IQ rose by around three points per decade globally, probably because of better nutrition. But that trend has recently gone into reverse in developed countries.
You hadn’t heard? I’m not surprised. Journalists and politicians won’t go near the subject and you can see why.
Consider the theories offered by neuroscientists for the decline. Some argued it had to do with the rising age of motherhood, because the children of older mothers tend to have lower IQs, other things being equal. No one likes to say this, because it can come across as “older moms have dumb kids,” which is not true. (My wife and I were 44 when our youngest child was born, and my own parents were also elderly, but that didn’t make me too thick to grasp the concept of statistical distributions.)
Other theories were even more explosive. For example, that unintelligent people were having more kids, or that the fall in average scores reflected immigration from places with lower IQs.
But a new study from Norway, which examines IQ scores from 730,000 men (standardized tests are part of military service there) disproves all these ideas, because it shows IQ dropping within the same families. Men born in 1991 score, on average, five points lower than men born in 1975.
There must, in other words, be an environmental explanation, and the chronology throws up a clear suspect: the rise in screen-time.
Kids brought up with Facebook and Instagram are more politically bigoted, not because they don’t hear alternative opinions, but because they don’t learn the concentration necessary to listen to opponents — a difficult and unnatural skill.
Dan’s column is well worth a read.
I would add a couple of points: First, the viciousness is beyond mere politics. It took me a long while, for example, to get used to the ugliness of YouTube comments on whether Tweedledee’s version of “Winter Wonderland” is as good as Tweedledum’s. It’s still all “What the f**k, douchebag?” “Eat a d**k, you closet case” - as if there’s no need for Trump or Hillary, Bush or Bernie: this is now the only form of discourse left, for everything.
But, secondly, as you can tell from the decapitations of those flesh-and-blood Scandinavians and the representational Christ Child, a strange bland soporific equanimity sets in when it comes to one particular subject.
It’s almost as if, as busy as we are de-evolving to a moronized state of paradoxically knuckle-dragging snowflakes, we dimly discern in ways that we cannot quite articulate - or at any rate not articulate with the usual WTFs - that this particular subject, veiled as it is in the discreet code of “lone wolves”, is somehow different. The Internet makes fecal-chocolate soldiers.”
Equanimity,
Yes, I’m looking It Up.
I read Daniel Hannan’s column & I don’t think he’s got it right. I wouldn’t say screen time was as much an issue as poor education. Our ‘educators’ are merely propagandists now. They are not teaching critical thinking skills. That is why young adults are not interested in hearing a different opinion. What they hear has to mesh with their indoctrinated views or it’s not true. In which case there’s nothing to argue about, other than to call your opponent a nasty name.
Chinese vitamins go into baby food - the same type additives that killed off a bunch of American dogs? These IQ drop have been happening within the same time period as 'peanut' allergies.
Of course it might not be the Chinese - but I suspect some of our imports are not as safe as they could be... we bring in stuff from places where people hate us and don't carry our values... it's as good a guess as any...
Maybe it's time to drop the 'environmental protection agency' and replace it with a 'citizens protection agency'...