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64e23275635e | on: Don't be a meat proxy
it's already happening. IQ is already stagnating or even going down
c048 | parent | next
What's even more worrying is that I've heared plenty of people defend it as, "Younger generations are just intelligent in different ways compared to older generations."

I'm halfway through my 30's and this downturn started with my generation, halfway through the 80's. I hope I'm missing something, because I still need to see a benefit for lower attention spans, lower comprehensive reading skills and lower critical thinking capabilities.

Cthulhu_ | root | parent | next
Halfway through 30's means you were born in the 90's though, but other than that you're right, the advent of the internet, google, and rapid fire short form content has messed with our attention spans; the following generation grew up on the internet and saw the advent of high intensity videos and then short-form mobile-only infinite-stream short-form dashed-words videos.
wannabe44 | root | parent | next
To add, less articulate and somewhat overtly anti-intellectual. Why even learn something when you can ask the slot machine?
Cthulhu_ | root | parent
The anti-intellectualism is so weird to me, it feels like people get overly defensive and angry (a secondary emotional response to shame) when confronted with their own lack of knowledge / intelligence or when asked or challenged to use their own brain.
lelanthran | root | parent | next
You should point out then that "border collies are just intelligent in different ways, too"
drekipus | root | parent
The benefits are increased productivity, consumer satisfaction, and shareholder profits
voidUpdate | parent | next
IQ is calibrated so that the average IQ is 100. If the average IQ is going down, something has gone very wrong somewhere
everfrustrated | root | parent | next
IQ is a relative measure not an absolute one. 100 IQ in 2026 can be massively different in absolute terms to 100 IQ in 1956.

If you look at old test papers - the lack of intelligence in modern times is very stark.

voidUpdate | root | parent | next
Yes, but the comment was about IQ, not absolute intelligence. The median intelligence is, by definition, 100 IQ, so the median IQ cannot be decreasing
debugnik | root | parent | next
There's always a lag, you calibrate the test based on previous results, not future ones. If intelligence is decreasing I'd expect every IQ test to keep scoring a median lower than 100 unless taken immediately after calibration. Once it stops decreasing they'd converge again.
darkerside | root | parent
The median IQ of successive generations may absolutely be falling
vidarh | root | parent
Look up the Flynn effect. You're right in the first paragraph, but wrong about the direction.
inigyou | root | parent
The Flynn effect ended several years ago and started reversing.
vidarh | root | parent
Even if that turns out to be true, rather than it starting to hit a ceiling where we can expect it to not consistently go in a single direction it does not alter anything I wrote, which addressed a comparison between 1956 and 2026.

The claim of a "lack of intelligence in modern times" is flat out contradicted by the data. It'd take a lot of regression to get back to 1956 levels.

Cthulhu_ | root | parent | next
IQ is a measure that tests how well people can do IQ tests, I don't think it's an objective measure at all.
Sharlin | root | parent
People love to say this, but the whole point of IQ is that it happens to correlate well with many other, more practical measures of cognitive capability. That’s why it is used.
tptacek | root | parent | next
Other things also correlate well with many practical measures of cognitive ability, but you wouldn't be so quick to say that they're privileged the way IQ is, so there must be more to the explanation.
loading story #49158853
| root | parent
{"deleted":true,"id":49154914,"parent":49154447,"time":1785760440,"type":"comment"}
mrheosuper | root | parent | next
I wonder why is that, what the point of having a score that you can not compare them without external context (the day of taking exam)
energy123 | root | parent | next
IQ gets manually recalibrated downwards when people get stupider so it's mean 100 by construction.
vintermann | root | parent
Hmm, who does the calibration, and how scientific are they about it? Can we check their work?
dinkumthinkum | root | parent
I feel like this post unironically proves the point.
dupontcyborg | parent
i’m not doubting this, but do you know if there are any studies on this already?
exac | root | parent | next
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-online-iq-scores-century.html https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2023.101734
denkmoon | root | parent | next
US centric data, absolutely useless. This is just measuring american decline, not civilisation changes.
vidarh | root | parent
It's also a first time decline afterany decades of steady increases. We have no basis for determining causality - it might just be that we've finally maxed out the possible gains from the causes underlying the Flynn effect.
evil-olive | root | parent | next
that's a study published in 2023, analyzing data that ended in 2018.
dofm | root | parent
Right but the question was:

"Do you guys think we're going to see a de-evolution of human beings due to technology?"

Not LLMs specifically.

Insofar as I believe there is value in IQ tests, this is a technology-driven effect, most likely due to the impact of distraction and search result immediacy on sustained thinking.

IQs used to just rise, year on year, because living in the world required more and more of the thinking that IQ tests measure. And now they don't.

petesergeant | root | parent
Hard not to see what you’ve just done here as an analogue of what the article is arguing against
64e23275635e | root | parent
I am the lazy human today, but this one is listing a few references:

https://www.pressenza.com/2025/07/the-decline-of-the-intelli...