Maybe It's Not You!

    So, you're at a party and after about an hour or so you look around; all of a sudden you think to yourself..."Is it just me, or is every one around me getting dumber?" Well, my friends, it's not you. According to the latest analysis in the journal Intelligence; of 394,378 scores on intelligence tests taken between 2006 and 2018, the data shows that IQs have fallen in every category except spatial reasoning. Logic...Vocabulary (as if that's a surprise: if I hear one more so-called educated person use the word "like" three times in a simple sentence, I just might shoot myself. Don't say that publicly Peter, because now every one of your so-called friends will bombard you with the word "like.")...Computation and Mathematics...Visual Problem-Solving and Analogies; scores plummeted. That's not good, boss. No, it's not, Sancho.

     The above reverses what is known as, The Flynn Effect. The Flynn Effect describes a steady, if not by leaps and bounds, rise in IQ since 1932. Now we are finding that there has been a significant slide in IQ, especially among 18-to 22-year-olds, since 2006. While I have full faith in the study done by this very reputable journal, I am comforted by the fact that all of my faithful readers have not succumbed to this...slide...as it were! You are such a suck up! But what is particularly alarming is that the slide is taking place in the youngsters among us. You see, people who are frighteningly smarter than me, and who study things like this for a living, tell us that we expect the younger generations to have better IQ scores than the oldsters...like me! Therein lies the problem. Because if We Believe the Children Are Our  Future, and if We Are the World, and We Are the The Children...then We Are in Big Trouble!

    The people who invade your living rooms and bedrooms at night; the late-night hosts; the keepers of the popular culture, as it were...will tell you about the obtuseness of America, and how brute democratic capitalism was the inevitable end of this obtuseness. This is how we got faux documentaries like Idiocracy. But despite appearances, America was one of just a long line of developed nations to feel the reverse Flynn Effect. It seems that Western Europe is also becoming less brainy. I mean, we're still smart enough to know that a certain IQ level is essential for economic success and productivity, so this overall and significant drop is a cause for concern...except, of course...for my faithful readers! So, what's going on?

    Well, we've got lots of theories. Let's start with the simplest, and for me, the easiest to understand. It's called Dysgenic Fertility. Evolution tells us that IQ is hereditary and if people with lower IQs are having more kids than the smart people, then this brings down the IQ average. Think of it this way: I'm playing basketball with great players like Jack Pepper and Rick Block in high school, or Chow Magee and Bryan Schwanke in college. These guys are way, way better than I am. It stands to reason that I’m gonna bring down the collective talent level. It's the same with IQ. Now you know why I took up golf!

    But, and there's always a but: To get me off the hook, a Norwegian study found that IQ level is falling WITHIN families...which means that the kids have a lower IQ than their immigrant grandparents and great-grandparents, and are dragging scores back to a national mean. This shouldn't be happening...at least according to the smart people. Which leads to theories blaming low-skilled jobs that erode cognitive abilities; lousy education and, of course, climate change...I'm not kidding. These are all legitimate theories, except the climate change one. Nobody takes that seriously!

    Try this on. Mankind, since the dawn of, well, mankind, has repeatedly overcome one challenge after another. This is how human cognition flourishes! We battle the mastodons and overcome varying climates and catastrophes. We've dealt with those systemic issues which could have wiped us out: we've secured food, clothes, shelter, and work for most of us. We've minimized adversity, but also, for many of us, we've minimized inconvenience. Did you know that 93.3 percent of the population uses the Internet. No waiting, shop from home, information of any kind at our fingertips, AND millions of people get to read From The Golf Room. That's huge! We challenged ourselves and built sustainable, developed societies and before we knew it we ran out of challenges. Of course, that doesn't mean everything is perfect. But if you want to be simple about it, all we're left with are the eternal problems of pre-history: natural catastrophe, ineradicable illness, unequal distribution of human talent, and human fallibility in its endless variations (see the previous basketball paragraph). We're not gonna solve those problems any time soon. We just have to keep working on them and limit the damage as best we can. Maybe, just maybe, we have run out of serious, solvable issues that keep the brain active and moving in a forward direction in order to keep our collective minds from atrophying. It's why we go to the gym...or should go to the gym!

    So where does all this leave us. Well, we need to accept the fact that there have always been people on various points of the IQ Bell Curve, because not everyone is slipping down the IQ ladder, as it were, which leaves us with a gap in cognitive abilities. But it has always been thus. You've got your Beethoven's at the piano at one end, and then you've got...ME at the other. You've got your William Shakespeare and your Miguel de Cervantes writing great, hall-of-fame literature at one end of the Bell Curve, and then you've got, well, me writing this stuff, at the other end! And of course, you've got...well, you get the picture. 

    This may seem scary, but it doesn't have to be. A cognitive elite has always been there. It's just a matter of perspective and figuring out how to work it all out. I mean, no one is ever gonna accuse me of being pollyannaish. I'm too cynical for that. But like I said, it has always been thus. Look at it this way; if all these new technologies like ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence/Star Trek innovations create a new class of serious problems, we'll see the Flynn Effect reassert itself. I'll bet on that! In the meantime...read a great novel. There is nothing better for the mind than deep reading. I've got tons of suggestions. What do you know...another blog! Hit 'em straight, my friends. Say goodnight, Sancho. Goodnight, Sancho!

write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com