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Mammoth Springs

Friday, June 15, 2018

The great dumbing down.

There have been a spate of articles in the last several years about a very worrying trend, mankind is getting more stupid. Who knew that was even possible? I.Q. scores are apparently dropping quite rapidly.

A recently published study verifies the decline, even showing intelligence variation within specific families, which rules out a dysgenic cause (i.e. stupid parents having stupid kids.)

This isn't big news to anybody who reads a paper, turns on the television or opens his or her eyes, but it is troubling. Wish I was smart enough to figure it out but I'm not. A curious statistic is that this trend does not appear to exist in people who eat fish at least once a week.

The drop in smarts reverses a long term trend called the Flynn effect that saw an increase in intelligence quotients since the Victorian era of about three points per decade. Things seemed to hit the skids with people born after 1975. Now we are losing about 7 i.q. points a generation.

One only has to read the letters of Abigail to John Adams, try to solve a 19th century elementary math primer or go on TMZ to see how far we have actually fallen. Wonder what the cause is? Is it environmental, laziness, bad parenting, sweetened cereal? Who knows? Get smart, people. Eat more fish.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/20014/mensa-iq-test-question-2/20068

Anonymous said...

The most intelligent people i know have had no children. Conversely, the least intelligent are procreating like rabbits. A dumber gene pool only makes sense. In a democracy where every vote has equal weight. The idiots eventually will rule by virtue of sheer numbers. I lean towards having to meet a certain IQ level to be allowed to vote. But then I'm an elitist progressive out of step with the conspiracy that is evolution.

Blue Heron said...

Congrats! Recognition and acceptance is the first step towards contrition and absolution.

Anonymous said...

Pay no mind to the children, it's not like our future depends on it...

Anonymous said...

You sound like a modern eunich that strains the corn out of a rich man's feces for a living. Get off your high horse you snob.

Ken Seals said...

Rubios Fish Tacos: the road to happiness and the cure for declining IQ.

Kerr A. Lott said...


Have you seen the movie Idiocracy? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ Maybe that's the sort of world we are headed for.

Also, it's pretty funny how the anonymous commenter tells you off for being elitist, pickin' on the dummies, but he misspells eunuch. What a maroon, must be a Trump guy.

Anonymous said...

No not a Trump guy. Just a human with children and grand children. People that speak in generalizations aren't really putting their brain to work the way it was intended to solve problems. Lazy minds.