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So intelligence isn’t just inherited anymore? According to a CNN story, a new study finds that IQ scores have been falling for the past few decades and environmental factors are to blame. Although which specific environmental factors that affect intelligence remains to be explored, the study mentions nutrition and media environment as possible contributors. However, another research mentions that access to education is currently the most conclusive factor explaining disparities in intelligence. While another professor says that “the IQ test, might be outmoded in today's fast-paced world of constant technological change”
I guess this report shows how much of a hand we have in nurturing the minds of children. It’s not just good nutrition that is needed but also the quality of education and the methods used to adapt to technological changes are important too. This might also be the right time to invest in a college fund.


https://editi[Suspicious link removed]/2018/06/13/health/falling-iq-scores-study-intl/index.html

I would think technology is to blame.... easier access to information makes people lazier.  In my day, I had to walk to the library in the snow in barefeet, 10km uphill both ways, only to find the book I wanted was already "checked out".  (That's right - books used to be hard copy and limited in quantity.)

:/

(P.S.  I am interested in reading your link, but it was censored.  :(   )

Don't forget to drink your treated water and get your flu shots kiddies.

Ridiculous. The average IQ levels around the world are dropping because intelligent people are breeding themselves out of existence and the retards are producing a dozen children per couple. High IQ nations, such as those in East Asia and Europe are witnessing ultra-low birth rates for some time now.

I am concerned more about environmental factors like pollution which can haven an irreversible negative impact on intelligence of current and future generations but it's pretty difficult to find out which chemical products or pollutions are the most damaging  :-\

IQ was invented by racist individuals and proved to be related only to instinctive visual patterns, the chinese have the highest IQ but can't recognize basic human rights(even less animals rights)

It is not easy function well in a society of other apes when your IQ is 3 standard deviations from the average.

You have to constantly dumb it down, for your parents, your teachers, your bosses, your friends.

In school, most teachers will hate you and be constantly afraid that you are going to embarrass them in front of the class or other teachers.
At work, your not so bright bosses will be afraid of you thinking you are after their job.  So what do you do? You play it dumb so they
feel superior.
Hard to find other high IQ friends, unless you go with the flow and play it cool and dumb jock.

High IQ individuals have harder time finding suitable mates, and when they do find them, they have 1-2 children at most.

Opposite is true for people with lower IQs, they are more social, they mate more frequently, have lots of children, before and after they get married.

Try to score with a cheerleader (or any female for that matter) when you are branded a geek.  Most people are afraid of smart people.
They don't know what to say to them, they are afraid that they might say something stupid.

Being smart is not considered a desirable quality in our societies.  Being funny, dumb and cool is.

Information age plays some role too as people stopped memorizing information.  How can you make any inferences if you don't remember anything?

Diet might play some very minimal role, IMHO.

Uh, who knows really...
We are talking about averages here, it is not like actual people whose IQs were higher dropped over a decade.

Many things can influence statistics...Maybe more people that have lower IQs are being tested now compared to few decades ago.
Maybe tests are better now and early IQ tests didn't do a good job in measuring an IQ.
Maybe people just care less about them these days and aren't trying as hard to do them well or who knows even, it might be just a random drop due to a statistical nature of averages.

Since this is an average maybe there are just more people that have very low IQ now compared to before while everyone else have the same.
Maybe before people with very low IQs couldn't survive for long or didn't even get tested for their IQs or something.

It really could be anything. It isn't like we have hundreds of years of sample size with exact same tests and a big portion of the population being tested or something. This isn't exactly a science like measuring average global climate where we precisely determine CO2 levels and temperatures for hundreds or thousands of years with a huge sample and many scientists working on it. Psychology isn't really that deterministic for these large scale things generally, it is hard to scientifically precisely determine abstract mental things like this.

I feel a greatly underated movie "Idiocracy" illustrates the breeding aspect in relation to IQ.

Overall though I think that is a small part of the puzzle. While the environment you are born into and the people raising you will be the main factors of your development early on in life. It really only takes a spark of interest in something to push yourself further and strive for a certain level of understanding and intelligence.

I think the greatest factor dumbing down our society is social media and a lack of real time investment in the sciences and arts.

You may not think both are required but each open up thinking and understanding in a way that pushes intelligent thought. Rather than being concerned with what actor or actress is banging/marrying/or divorcing another celebrity, we could focus on say a medical breakthrough or how a massive rocket launched a roadster into space and then landed it's first stage boosters back on earth to be reused... this is huge by the way.

Unfortunately it's really easy for someone to sit there on their phone and be influenced towards the easy garbage being fed to them, it's harder to try and learn or research something.


Sorry got a little ranty there, in short yes environmental factors are very influential in early development, but later in life it is our laziness that prevents us from being more "intelligent" ( I use this in place of IQ as there are many forms of intelligence in my opinion)


Are you sure it wasn't tablets in your day...

I hear these complaints often. Being smart has no drawbacks whatsoever.
Girls love smart guys, other people do as well. No one feels threatened when you are nice to them and when you show them that you understand them.
They would love to listen to your smart advice if you show them that you are on their side and that you won't judge them.

It isn't rare to see smart people blaming all their social problems on being smart and it is very obvious that it is just an easy excuse that doesn't make you feel bad about your imperfections. Being funny is something smart people are really good at, not dumb people.
It isn't hard to find very popular smart people. Most popular adults are quite smart, this tends to be very important quality to everyone in adulthood.

As for technology allowing people not to memorize a bunch of small unconnected details, that doesn't have anything to do with intelligence.
If you want to use your intelligence and deeply understand a certain subject, quick searches on the Internet will not help you at all.
You need to spend time if you want to understand something. If anything, technology made people who can memorize a lot of useless things obsolete.
Now everyone can tell you what is a capital of some small African country in a second, but very few will be able to explain to you some deep concepts in physics, math, chemistry, etc. This is a good thing. Chimps are a lot better at memorizing things than humans anyway, this is not a sign of intelligence. This is a good tool for intelligent people that allows them not to worry about exact data, but understand the concept instead.

As for the number of children thing, that is very debatable and not really good to generalize.
There are societies that put a lot of importance in education, intelligence and having a lot of children.
Not just individuals, but whole societies.
That stereotype usually comes from the relatively recent increase of population in developing societies (and societies that are now developed but experienced this increase when they rapidly developed in the relatively recent past). As societies develop, medical services in those societies develop as well. And a lot of people forget that child mortality was very very high before antibiotics and vaccines. When these advancements in medicine (and hygiene) arrived instead of 80% of your children not reaching adulthood people started seeing these numbers drop to virtually 0%.
That is why it made sense (and in some very poor places still does) to have a lot of children, since most of them died.
They sometimes weren't even given names until a certain age. This took time of course for people to naturally adapt to and therefor there was a large boom in population that exist in developing countries now.
This made a stereotype that poor people have more children (which was true in the past when most of them died) but now some are in a process of adapting (having a lot of children with low mortality) or are still experiencing these horrible rates (some very poor African countries).

Nowadays it doesn't make sense to have more than 2 children, because competition is higher and it is harder to raise more children with enough education, skill and wisdom to get a job, family and prosper and earn rank in a world where there are many educated people. Poorer people didn't always had a chance to compete on such level and had to insure survival first and competitiveness later by having more children that they couldn't educate, but had to have in order for few to survive.

And where would these concepts reside? Your own memory or google? Enough said.

High IQ is a genetic lottery. Reversion to the mean makes it hard for high IQ individuals to propagate their high IQ genes.

As for all the social issues, I'm not sure you've experienced them or are aware of them, so you don't know what it is like.
Talking to ants is not fun unless you pretend to be one. 

I think your definition of smart is different than mine.

Concepts should reside in memory, since they take a lot of time to learn.
If you need to search on the Internet every time you want to understand something, you can't be efficient.
But some easily searchable things are better to not bother remembering, so you have more space in your brain for more complex ideas.

Same thing happens for spreading low IQ genes, I would assume. This factor wouldn't influence the results of an average IQ of the population, because it would be just as hard to spread lower IQ genes in this sense.

As for not being aware of the social issues you are talking about, I think I have a pretty good idea what you are talking about, but if you want to explain further the exact issues, I would be happy to listen. If you are talking about the same issues that I see many well-educated and/or seemingly intelligent individuals have, than I assume this has more to do with other personal characteristic rather than intelligence, such as discipline, bravery, temperament and moral values.
IQ and knowledge are common excuses for such differences, as it makes those individuals feel superior.

I am not familiar with your definition of smart, but I usually refer to people who are more knowledgeable about various sciences.
Mostly natural sciences, but I admit that social sciences can be useful as well so I consider some of those people smart as well.

Sorry, no, Darwinian evolution doesn't work this way.  Some features, such as melanin levels, can undergo changes in expression 'quickly', but even here it takes multiple generations to produce a noticeable impact.  One can see it in certain cultures like those who've maintained a fairly stable caste system.  More complex features take many more.  The 'Flynn effect' (raising IQs) was supposed to be mostly environmental due to the rates of change.

I see academic articles from the 1950's proposing 'diet and injection' to manipulate the characteristics of the masses and 1970's ones proposing to solve high fertility rate problems by adding sterilants to the water supply.  Now a generation later I see low fertility (both in physiology and in birth rates) and substances in the water supply which have an obvious affect on sexual expression.  And an increased push for mandatory vaccination, and lots more of them.  I cannot help but ask is there a relationship between these observations?  I don't believe that it is an invalid question and 'crimethink' and off limits, but I'm clearly in a minority here.  Oh well.  I like being in a minority as we descend into Idiocracy 10 times faster than Mike Judge imagined.

By way of hypothesis testing (and criminal investigation) I would look for a group who happens to be miraculously spared of some of the mysterious rapidly diminishing IQ and other health impacts such as autism, cancer, and autoimmunity problems.  If such a group emerges, I would consider them prime suspects in a putative program of engineered decline.  Especially if they propose themselves as the natural choice to lead the planet in part due to their 'good fortune' of having been spared some of the maladies which sprung into existence.

Ah, now when I rewatch Idiocracy, I find it hard to laugh. And even worse, people these days are glorifying ignorance and stupidity as if they are virtues!

People nowadays are going outload with their opinions special on social media. They can easily talk about something and let people believe what they are saying without basis. Now other people also thinks that all the information they found on google was the fact one so i will not be surprised anymore if people gets too lazy reading real books than googling things as easy as 123

While this line of submission maybe valid,some researches also postulates that there has been a general decline in the IQ of the world in recent times.The research points out that the general advancement in technology does not necessarily mean a rise in my IQ but that the many and varied innovation and technological and scientific breakthroughs are as a result of computer mediated findings.
So,it is true that technology makes life simpler and easy,which has however lead to the declined in our cognitive development.We give birth to children, with good nutrition,nurturing and education to build their IQ BUT day in day out they are surrounded with Machines requiring less mental and physical effort to doing things
Hence killing creativity.

The consensus is that it's about 50/50.  This aligns fairly well with my observations.

Anyone with IQ 145+ is smart in my book.  Why? because I worked with them and I know how they think and what to expect from them.

Knowing something is not the same thing as deriving new knowledge.  You can know a lot of things but will not be able to solve a simple, new problem.

We are just taking too much unnatural substances into our bodies these days and who knows what long-term side-effects they have. Some of these chemicals mimic some hormones, etc and has been blamed for decrease in some wildlife (for example, some birds eggs have become brittle), etc.

Now as for heredity, that is a touchy topic but IMHO unless a person is totally retarded a good education and guidance could make him/her useful to society.

IQ is reduced not only because of environmental factors. Another problem is that people began to think less. Now it’s much easier to find a ready answer on the Internet than to think by yourself. First of all, this applies to students and schoolchildren.

I think it is incredibly difficult to narrow down the actual cause of any IQ decrease. How can you say with a surety that an IQ decrease is a result of a specific think? You even pointed out that they don't even know why "environmental factors" have been the issue. If IQ is actually decreasing, I like the idea that a couple people have talking about in this thread already. Birthrates in developed countries are declining, while the birthrates in developing countries are staying quite high. This mean that the most educated people are having less children. In a way they are going extinct, while less educated people are multiplying. Of course this plays a huge factor as parents are ones that should be teach their children the most about life.

When I have done standardized IQ tests in the past, I have surprised by how much they often measure knowledge. I mean, you need have learned certain things in the past in order to know how to answer the questions. I have seem trigonometry questions on tests. If you never learned the principles of trigonometry, they you'd have a really hard time answer the questions in the limited amount of time give. The knowledge required always seems pretty arbitrary. Who decides what you should know? I don't think these IQ tests are really an accurate test of human intelligence, but rather of knowledge.

It's a combination of toxins that are dumbing us down.  Mercury is everywhere in the water,and Flouride as well.  Most of us are using plastic which has harmful BPA's.  We need to use more natural things and stay away from toxic products.

I live out here in the rural area drinking from my own well and I make a modicum of effort to avoid some of the most well known packaged food problems.  In the 5 years or so I've been watching this very board I can see the rates of idiocy swell by leaps and bounds.  Of course it could be all or in part a different cohort who sign up and post and their issues may have nothing to do with environmental toxicity.  Who knows?

Perhaps we're just not measuring the right things. If the issue is the environment, then I'm sure technology is playing a big role in this. Modern technology surrounds us almost every moment of our lives, from when we wake up to when we go to sleep. Maybe the old IQ tests are out of date. Sure, maybe somebody may have a hard time figuring out a difficult long division question on paper, but give that person a smartphone and I'm sure he/she will figure it out really quickly. If we can do all these things just as good and sometimes better with a smartphone, then does it really matter if we can't do it without? Are we really going to come to a situation when we will do longer have access to the internet? I think it's so funny that schools typically spend a lot of time making sure that kids don't use the internet to help them, when they will be using the internet to help them all the time as soon as they graduate.

This research is welcome and I hope it will help us save our planet.
Environmental issues are serious.
 People, especially politics keep playing around it.
Actually, we have to deal with it as if everything depends on it.
  Environmental Factors are known to be the cause of many diseases.
 This has been already proven.
A bad environment cannot provide smart people.
Education definitely has its words to say.
 However, how do you get access to education in a poor environment?
 How is the teacher supposed to teach if he cannot breathe? At last, we see that everything is connected. We just have to take care of every piece of our planet, including the environment.

Lemme clue you in to what is going on here:

If you own (usually through a multi-national corporation and via shell companies) a pineapple plantation in SE Asia, and it takes 200 locals to do the labor, it is 'inefficient' to support a population of, say, 2000 to a level where they won't cause problems.  Further, it is 'inefficient' to have the mean IQ be much above what is necessary to swing a machete.  Natural variation will give you enough of the 200 to actually run things, and paying such people and extra $1/day will make them your dedicated servants for life.

If you've traveled around at all, even just using Google Earth, you will see vast areas where there are few or no people.  The planet is NOT in danger of much harm due to humans.  And in places where it is, humans are more and more willing to put up with 'preservation' even when it means some sacrifice.  Lots of places are actually 'going back to nature' for simple economic reasons.  Most of the fear stories are well funded propaganda designed to bring in a 'technocracy' where the very people who control much of the worlds wealth today via monetary systems control even more and to a much finer level of detail.

If you read much of the background documentation from earlier in the formation of these plans, you find novels like 'Brave New World' and texts like Bertrand Russell from his "The Impact of Science on Society' of 1953:


You simply cannot miss that what is happening with IQ, and a lot of other things which people like Russell describe, is a direct match.  Yes, 'environmental factors' are resulting in declining IQ scorse I am sure of it.  The only real question is how carefully engineered these 'environmental factors' happen to be.  The more I research things, the more I conclude that it is a lot.  There are a lot of plans right out there in the open for anyone who chooses to look...which is probably the biggest reason for dumbing down the population so fewer and fewer people will do just that.