<p>An interesting TED talk-</p>
<p>James</a> Flynn: Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents' | Video on TED.com</p>
<p>I actually do not believe that this generation has higher average IQs than the past. I know this guy states that as a fact and then goes on to explain it, but I would dispute the fact to begin with.</p>
<p>How do you feel about it?</p>
<p>I suspect there may be truth to it, but I don’t think it has to do with evolution or anything like that. If there is an increase in IQ, I suspect it is because for the most part people are in general have a diet higher in protein than our grandparents did and for the most part we are better nourished (before someone makes the point about obesity, processed foods, chemicals in the diet, etc, and how our grandparents ate 'non processed foods, I will conceded that, but I am talking protein intake and calories available). In our grandparents day, a lot of people were not living a middle class lifestyle, many of them often had a struggle to put food on the table, to consistently have enough to eat, and that was true whether you were a farmer or a laborer or working in a factory, it was simply a lot more of a struggle to live. One thing I am certain of, our diet in our generation has a lot more protein in it, and that makes a difference with brain development and such, plus we also probably have had better intake of vitamins and such (when was the last time you heard of a kid in the US with Ricketts? ). All of that I suspect has led to the brains being better developed on average, so there could be truth to that. </p>
<p>Likewise, modern medicine also has a role, a lot of the diseases and such that are treatable today could have impact on the brain, so that is another factor.</p>
<p>I don’t think the brain’s potential has changed, I think it could be we achieve more of potential of our brains on average because of better diet and medical care. </p>
<p>The factor that works the other way is the nature of IQ tests, despite all the hemming and hawing about how bad education is today, in our grandparents day a lot of people never even finished high school, and a lot of people were poorly educated. When my dad was in WWII (he would be 90 if he was with us today), he was shocked how many guys he saw in the army who were either illiterate or barely literate, and there were people, especially from rural areas, who really shocked him at how little education they had had, compared to him, a kid from the Bronx who never thought he was particularly well educated. Despite claims to the contrary, most iq tests have biases that favor more educated people, so it may be hard to compare because of that.</p>
<p>Lamarckism?</p>
<p>Sounds like a Malcom Gladwell or Skip Gates statement. :)</p>
<p>I did read that when a mass grave of plague victims was found in London a few years ago, the skulls were measured and the brain capacity was less than the average person today. So we may be smarter than those who lived 700 years ago. Not sure if three generations is enough for a measurable difference.</p>
<p>I don’t think our IQ is higher–but we have better testing for it. As Socrates once said…(or Gutenberg, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, or my dad…)</p>
<p>Go any store and see the cashier scramble to give your change back … without the computer help her! </p>
<p>Take the calculator away from teenagers practicing the SAT. </p>
<p>or ask our current crop of students who do “well” on the SAT or ACT to take a stab at this kind of test. This would be especially funny if given to the masses of foreigners who ace the SAT but can’t speak much English without crutches. </p>
<p><a href=“http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvardexam.pdf[/url]”>http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvardexam.pdf</a></p>
<p>The Flynn effect is well documented.</p>
<p>I have not watched the video (can’t here), but here is an interesting fact - we are taller than we used to be about a hundred years ago:</p>
<p>[Average</a> height of European males has grown by 11 centimeters in just over a century](<a href=“http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130902101714.htm]Average”>Average height of European males has grown by 11 centimeters in just over a century -- ScienceDaily)</p>
<p>People how read and write far more than in the past, thanks to internet and mobile devices, and are constantly bombarded with information.</p>
<p>Those exam papers from the past are amusing examples of mostly memorized for the test facts, but the masses in those would have had no capacity to attempt them.</p>
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<p>May have to do with nutrition. We had a student who once did a science project on the height of FOB parents from India and how this compared with the heights of their US born kids (adjusted for gender). She hadn’t done a baseline comparison with heights where both generations were local, but in her sample of several hundred, the height went up by over 3" in just one generation. </p>
<p>Another topic that I’m generally not invited to for discussions, and not complaining, - age of menarche - also seems to point to almost all US born daughters having the onset at an age earlier than their FOB moms. Don’t know about IQ, though - I’m prejudiced that street smarts is really what matters, and I’m not sure there’s a reliable way to quantify that.</p>
<p>Pretty cool work!</p>
<p>“… the height went up by over 3” in just one generation."</p>
<p>Did she compare their heights at the same age? Because as we mature, we lose an inch or two of height or even more if the early years nutrition was poor [Aging</a> changes in body shape: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia](<a href=“http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003998.htm]Aging”>Aging changes in body shape: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia)</p>
<p>Somehow I’ve gotten a little taller. I was consistently measured as 5’-8 1/2" until a couple of years ago. Since then, I’m always 5’-9". Maybe my posture is just better now!</p>
<p>As a woman, I’m surprised that when I’m in a group of girls in their late teens or 20s, I don’t feel tall! When I’m with women my age or older, I tend to be the tallest.</p>
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Nope - not that formal or scientific; this was for HS. It was more like getting the current heights of the parents and their late-teen kids. But you have a good point - I’m definitely shorter than what I was at college, but I have compensated way more for that in the other dimensions.</p>
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I know! I mean, my neighbor’s kids have NO idea how to properly knap an arrow point, and don’t even get me started on their candle-dipping!</p>
<p>Seriously, don’t make the mistake of conflating a reliance on tools with a lack of intelligence. As an engineer, I am fully aware that my predecessors had, on average, better mathematical skills than I do, but this is because the tools that I use allow me to be vastly more productive… which makes the mathematical skills less important than learning the tools.</p>
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I would like to see a little more context on this test (such as the conditions under which it was given!), but I do not see any reason to think that Harvard’s admission expectations in the civil war era should be reasonable expectations of high schoolers today.</p>
<p>“Find the cube root of .0093 to 5 decimal places”</p>
<p>Thank you, no.</p>
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<p>When I worked for McDonald’s in high school, the math-inclined got to work the registers, the rest did the cooking: You were tested to see if you could remember the order and the prices and add up the total plus add sales tax while you filled the order and then returned to the register to collect payment. Much faster during rush hour!</p>
<p>Today the bosses are able to put anyone on the register. So, yeah, when I hand a cashier a $20 and a $1 for an $10.95 payment, I have to say, “I need a ten back” or they get confused, try to return the single and then hand me 4 more singles and a five.</p>
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<p>A calculator isn’t necessary on either the SAT or ACT – it’s actually more of a crutch to allow the stressed-out student to attempt brute force solutions instead of reflecting on looking for the hidden shortcut.</p>
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<p>.21029 That took me about 20 seconds.</p>
<p>Step 1. Google “Cube root calculator”
Step 2. Plug in .0093
Step 3. Cut and paste.</p>
<p>;0)</p>
<p>Seriously, what James Flynn focused on in his talk was the changes our culture has confronted and kinds of skill we exercise these days.</p>
<p>“We’ve gone from people who confronted a concrete world…to people who confront a very complex world…in which we’ve had to develop new habit of mind, and those include clothing that world with classification, introducing abstractions that we try to make logically consistent and also taking the hypothetical seriously.”</p>
<p>There’s a lot more to his talk but I can’t synopsize it well enough to try it here.</p>
<p>It put me in mind of a commencement address (paraphrased here from memory) given by Neil deGrasse Tyson in which he talks about two employment candidates at on-campus interviews. Each is asked the height of the building outside the window. The first says, “I’ve memorized the height of each building so I can tell you precisely. 178 feet.” The second says, “Hold on a second,” runs outside, measures the building’s shadow, measures his own shadow, extrapolates from his height , comes back and says, “Around 180 feet.” NdT said although the second answer was less precise he’d rather hire the second because s/he was able to think flexibly and arrive at the solution.</p>
<p>The Harvard exam contained very few questions that required higher-order problem solving. The history and geography were almost purely regurgitation of memorized material.</p>