<story><title>IQ decline and Piaget: Does the rot start at the top? [pdf]</title><url>https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2017-flynn.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rory</author><text>Fairly startling stuff, in my opinion.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Over several generations, there is no doubt that dysgenic selection lowered the quality of genes for intelligence and increased migration had an adverse effect.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Looming over all is their message that the pool of those who reach the top level of cognitive performance is being decimated: fewer and fewer people attain the formal level at which they can think in terms of abstractions and develop their capacity for deductive logic and systematic planning.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;So, as often as we hear the joke, is Idiocracy actually happening?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fluidcruft</author><text>My mother-in-law recently retired as a public school teacher. She recently stated that it&amp;#x27;s her opinion that the quality of teaching has gone to the toilet over the decades. Her explanation is simple: smart women don&amp;#x27;t go into teaching anymore because they have vastly better options than having to chose between nursing vs teaching. Something to consider since labor can only be as good as the pool of candidates allows.</text></comment>
<story><title>IQ decline and Piaget: Does the rot start at the top? [pdf]</title><url>https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2017-flynn.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rory</author><text>Fairly startling stuff, in my opinion.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Over several generations, there is no doubt that dysgenic selection lowered the quality of genes for intelligence and increased migration had an adverse effect.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Looming over all is their message that the pool of those who reach the top level of cognitive performance is being decimated: fewer and fewer people attain the formal level at which they can think in terms of abstractions and develop their capacity for deductive logic and systematic planning.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;So, as often as we hear the joke, is Idiocracy actually happening?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Retric</author><text>Idiocracy ignores what happens at the other end of the intelligence scale.  Being 4 standard deviations above the norm may be detrimental, but being 4 standard deviations below the norm is a much larger hindrance.&lt;p&gt;On top of this the ratios change as the environment changes.  Studies after WWII found a positive correlation between reproduction and intelligence though that seems to have swapped more recently.</text></comment>