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American IQ scores have rapidly dropped, proving the 'Reverse Flynn effect'

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256 points hirundo | 6 comments | 10 Apr 23 13:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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iq_throw_123 ◴[10 Apr 23 23:13 UTC] No.35518554[source]▶
Imagine that, 150 years ago or whenever, some clever soul had decided to make a written test to measure niceness, and called the test score Niceness Quotient. And the first version sucked, but some other folks iterated on it and over time the test was improved until it correlated pretty well to the sorts of things you would think that niceness would correlate to. 150 years of progress later, we'd have a whole field of Niceometry and researchers trying to isolate sub-areas like charity, friendliness, etc, and trying to suss out an underlying factor of general amiability, and the whole thing would be so well embedded in to the culture that almost no one remembers that "nice" is just a regular word with no objective or scientific definition, and that we measure it with a written test not because that's a good way to measure niceness but because we can't find a better way.
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QuiDortDine ◴[11 Apr 23 01:14 UTC] No.35519437[source]▶
This is a terrible analogy, IQ tests measure something real and objective called the g factor : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)

Also, intelligence tests are but a tiny part of psychology, I would hardly call it a "whole field".

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iq_throw_123 ◴[11 Apr 23 01:45 UTC] No.35519683[source]▶
> IQ tests measure something real and objective called the g factor

Sure, and NQ tests do too, because look how well graciousness correlates with cheerfulness! That can't be an accident, can it?

Less snarkily, a better analogy would be athletic ability. Suppose you take a bunch of people and measure how fast they can run, how well they can shoot free throws, and how far they can throw a football. Will the results be correlated? Of course, some people are more athletic than others. Does that mean there's a quantity called 'athleticism' that we can objectively measure with a number? No; and not because all people are equally athletic, but because you're trying to take a squishy subjective English language word and pretend it's a scalar value.

> I would hardly call it a "whole field".

The problem isn't the size of the field, it's that academics work within their field, they don't refute it. There's a very uncomfortable result about IQ tests that a generation of psychologists have tried to explain away, and I maintain that the reason they haven't succeeded is because they are institutionally incapable of saying, "Hey, maybe this is pseudoscience."

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zaptheimpaler ◴[11 Apr 23 02:01 UTC] No.35519789[source]▶
The g factor is predictive of performance in jobs and income though. Even in your own example, yes we could make a test that involves running and throwing, and yes it would be predictive of performance in various sports. One of the tests for aerobic capacity is called VO2max. It is a number with units mL/g/min. Like IQ, this is not the only factor but it does have predictive power.
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1. iq_throw_123 ◴[11 Apr 23 02:41 UTC] No.35520101[source]▶
How would that test do at predicting achievement in archery? How about curling? Are those not "real" sports, or is athleticism a squishy human concept rather than an objectively measurable value?
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2. legostormtroopr ◴[11 Apr 23 03:14 UTC] No.35520315[source]▶
The amount of strength to draw an archery bow, and steady ones body, would be closely related to strength and VO2Max - with O2 being required for both muscle activity and holding ones breath. And curling is a highly phsyical sport, and for sweepers () its very similar to a full body sprint for each hurl.

There are plenty of metrics you can use to quantify someones atheletic capability, not least of which is your bodies ability to hold and transport oxygen.

() I don't know the technical term, but the point stands.

3. briHass ◴[11 Apr 23 03:23 UTC] No.35520381[source]▶
This study found a correlation between VO2max and archery performance of 0.68 https://aassjournal.com/browse.php?a_id=897&slc_lang=en&sid=...

As noted in the study, the largest influence they tested for archery performance was height. I'd bet a large sum of money that height is also a strong positive influence on many sports (eg basketball), similar to how G is an influence on many cognitive 'sports' like occupations. We can easily measure height and most would have no trouble believing that (largely genetic) factor greatly influences athletic performance. Why is IQ so different?

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4. noughtme ◴[11 Apr 23 03:35 UTC] No.35520468[source]▶
Didn't take much googling:

https://aassjournal.com/browse.php?a_id=897&slc_lang=en&sid=...

I didn't see any specific research related to curling, but it is definitely a fairly high peak intensity activity that demands a high level of fitness:

https://curlnoca.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Curling-Heart...

5. Apocryphon ◴[11 Apr 23 03:41 UTC] No.35520512[source]▶
Wonder if it's likewise applicable to snooker.
6. zaptheimpaler ◴[11 Apr 23 03:44 UTC] No.35520536[source]▶
Well i listed 2 activities, you could certainly add more to the test. Just as we add many questions to an IQ test.

Even if the test doesn't predict performance in every single sport, that doesn't mean it has zero predictive power in all sports.

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Similarly, I'm not saying IQ is destiny or even the largest factor in any given endeavour, its not. But its equally wrong to say its not a factor at all. It is somewhere in the middle.

Like most metrics, it doesn't capture the entirety of the squishy concept as you say, but it does capture something about it.

I think we understand this in many other areas. Look at PE ratio or revenue growth for a stock, look at goals on target for a football striker, VO2max or running economy for a runner, mileage for a car. IQ is understandably more controversial but the concept is the same.