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Declining IQ of college grads

Vixen said:
Oh right. Good thinking. Problem with the normal distribution curve is that at each extreme tail end, there are larger numbers of individuals than the Gaussian equation would predict (being theoretical). For example, a large bulge at the far left end (no doubt due to genetic influences or environmental effects), and likewise at the other right hand side of the curve not to mention males seeming to outnumber females at either extreme. So, yeah, 800,000 worldwide at any time minimum but probably more than we'd expect from the mathematical model.
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The absolute number doesn't really matter; the point is that I am reassured to hear that ChatGPT does not have the highest IQ in the world and that there are at least some number of people that have a higher IQ.
 
Darat said:
The proponents of IQ hold that IQ measures an innate human power "g", it is not meant to be a measure of what you know.
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The innate human power it measures is the ability to learn something new or more complex. What else could it be?
 
Brainster said:
The innate human power it measures is the ability to learn something new or more complex. What else could it be?
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g is supposed to refer to cognitive ability. This can be verbal or spatial. In children, it helps educators identity those with the ability to succeed academically (good at passing exams within a time limit). But as we have seen further upthread, whilst this used to be the case (in the UK) now it is more based on whether you have completed the coursework successfully (i.e., exam results are not approximated to a normal distribution but towards attaining a particular pass mark). This means 100% of a class can pass the exam in theory, whereas under the old system, it was set at 50% set up to 'fail'. I think this is what the OP is complaining about re 'falling IQ's', now everybody is passing.
 
Just stopping by to drop in a memorable quote from a prominent NZer (can't remember who), who said: "Every time a person emigrates from New Zealand to Australia, the average IQ of both countries rises a little bit".

(Needs a moment to understand correctly......)
 
Someone should post a list of things that are known to lower IQ:

1. Inadequate nutrition;
2. Air pollution (particularly lead levels);
3. Poor schooling;
4. Air pollution (carbon dioxide levels).

None of those things could be happening anywhere, so clearly nothing to see.
 
Vixen said:
Hans Eysenck et al consider g to be 80% nature and 20% nurture.
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Eysenck has been dead for nearly thirty years. He was a racist crank.

A selection of brief excerpts from his wikipedia entry:

During his life, Eysenck's claims about IQ scores and race, first published in 1971, were a significant source of controversy. Eysenck claimed that IQ scores were influenced by genetic differences between racial groups. Eysenck's beliefs on race have been discredited by subsequent research, and are no longer accepted as part of mainstream science.
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Eysenck believed that empirical evidence supported parapsychology and astrology.
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Psychologist Donald R. Peterson noted in letters written in 1995 and published in 2005 that years earlier he had stopped trusting Eysenck's work after he tried to replicate a study done in Eysenck's lab and concluded that the results of the original study must have been "either concocted or cooked".
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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Eysenck
 
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junkshop said:
Eysenck has been dead for nearly thirty years. He was a racist crank.

A brief excerpt from his wikipedia entry:



Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Eysenck
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He was quite influential nonetheless. Francis Galton is credited as the pioneer of the Nature ~vs~ Nurture issue (although, of course, Plato had gone there before), plus Burt and Jensen. Cyril Burt was discredited as forging some results. However, Galton's method of twin studies does show a strong correlation of hereditary traits (such as in height) but environment has a strong effect, too. Whilst eugenics has caused a lot of controversy especially as Nazi Germany seized on it and twisted it, in falsification of its warped ideology, as far as g is concerned it is generally accepted to be part inherited part environmental - the debate is, how much; hence the twin studies of twins brought up apart from birth and compared with each other. 80-20 is the general finding.
 
Vixen said:
He was quite influential nonetheless. Francis Galton is credited as the pioneer of the Nature ~vs~ Nurture issue (although, of course, Plato had gone there before), plus Burt and Jensen. Cyril Burt was discredited as forging some results. However, Galton's method of twin studies does show a strong correlation of hereditary traits (such as in height) but environment has a strong effect, too. Whilst eugenics has caused a lot of controversy especially as Nazi Germany seized on it and twisted it, in falsification of its warped ideology, as far as g is concerned it is generally accepted to be part inherited part environmental - the debate is, how much; hence the twin studies of twins brought up apart from birth and compared with each other. 80-20 is the general finding.
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There is a weird ballsiness in atempting to defend eugenics. I don't think it is a good idea, though. Are you going to do phrenology next?
 
junkshop said:
There is a weird ballsiness in atempting to defend eugenics. I don't think it is a good idea, though. Are you going to do phrenology next?
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I certainly do not advocate eugenics, I am merely providing the academic establishment's stance. When I did Psychology as a degree we had the topic of intelligence testing and its history as a key part of personality theory. In that scientific field, the nature/nurture issue is a salient one and is nothing at all to do with 'woke' versus traditional science. Let's face it, even today, if you want a scholarship to a top public school, you will be expected to pass an entrance exam and that entrance exam is geared to select the top 20% or so of so-called 'academic ability'. This is factual, not my personal opinion.
 
Vixen said:
I certainly do not advocate eugenics, I am merely providing the academic establishment's stance. When I did Psychology as a degree we had the topic of intelligence testing and its history as a key part of personality theory. In that scientific field, the nature/nurture issue is a salient one and is nothing at all to do with 'woke' versus traditional science. Let's face it, even today, if you want a scholarship to a top public school, you will be expected to pass an entrance exam and that entrance exam is geared to select the top 20% or so of so-called 'academic ability'. This is factual, not my personal opinion.
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When did you study psychology? I only ask because it would appear that your view of what constitutes 'the academic establishment's stance' is a little outdated. From the same wikipedia page I previously cited:
...In 2019 the psychiatrist Anthony Pelosi, writing for the Journal of Health Psychology, described Eysenck's work as unsafe. Pelosi described some of Eysenck's work as leading to "one of the worst scientific scandals of all time" with "what must be the most astonishing series of findings ever published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature" and "effect sizes that have never otherwise been encountered in biomedical research." Pelosi cited 23 "serious criticisms" of Eysenck's work that had been published independently by multiple authors between 1991 and 1997, noting that these had never been investigated "by any appropriate authority" at that time. The reportedly fraudulent papers covered the links between personality and cancer. Grossarth and Eysenck claimed the existence of a "cancer prone personality" were supposed to have a risk of dying of cancer 121 times greater than controls, when exposed to the carcinogen physical factor tobacco smoking. Bosely (2019): The "heart disease-prone personality" exposed to physical risk factors is asserted to have 27 times the risk of dying of heart disease as controls. Pelosi concluded "I honestly believe, having read it so carefully and tried to find alternative interpretations, that this is fraudulent work." ...
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...Pelosi's writing prompted additional analysis from other academics and journalists. Citing Pelosi, psychologist David F. Marks wrote an open letter (also published in the Journal of Health Psychology) calling for the retraction or correction of 61 additional papers by Eysenck. In 2019, 26 of Eysenck's papers (all coauthored with Ronald Grossarth-Maticek) were "considered unsafe" by an enquiry on behalf of King's College London. It concluded that these publications describing experimental or observational studies were unsafe. It decided that the editors of the 11 journals in which these studies appeared should be informed of their decision...
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Now I'm no expert in this area (hence using wikipedia for my research), but I get the impression that the academic establishment has largely thrown his work in the bin.

ETA: It happens to all of us - when I was studying my minor in sound recording it was all DAT this, MiniDisc that & ZipDisc the other. ProTools was the future, man... nah, they're all dead. Time moves inexorably on, relentlessly grinding our dreams of the future beneath it's unbearably banal and inevitable wheels. What was fact becomes folly. What was hope becomes the dream of an idiot. What was established becomes horrendous. Especially when it's eugencs, because that is very horrendous.

You may not think that you are advocating eugenics, but you are defending the ideas and theories of a eugenicist.

This is functionally the same thing. It may not be deliberate. I hope and assume it isn't.

ETA 2: I noticed your little straw dollies. They have been added to the list. One day I may do something with them, if I can be arsed.
 
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junkshop said:
There is a weird ballsiness in atempting to defend eugenics. I don't think it is a good idea, though. Are you going to do phrenology next?
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If you chose the mother of your children you engaged in eugenics.
 
Trausti said:
We'll, lots of folks do. And people tend to be highly selective of who will be the father/mother of their children.

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And the relevancy of this is what?

Seriously, dude I've seen your troll game on other threads, and kudos to you: you can disrupt and annoy. Well done.

But this, here? This is some weak ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ sauce.

.
 
Brainster said:
The innate human power it measures is the ability to learn something new or more complex. What else could it be?
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According to the advocates of IQ testing and g is an innate ability, one that education should not be able to alter. Of course this is nonsense.
 
Darat said:
That would depend on what criteria you used.
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I read somewhere*, some years ago, that an introvert marries the first woman who'll sleep with him and an extravert marries the first woman who won't. Does that count as criteria?

* one of John Winton's Bodger books, iirc.
 
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