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

(www.popularmechanics.com)
256 points hirundo | 1 comments | 10 Apr 23 13:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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JoeAltmaier ◴[10 Apr 23 22:29 UTC] No.35518164[source]▶
When IQ tests were invented folks didn't know about tests, at least in the US. They were rural immigrants who could maybe read. So when asked logic questions, they would answer pragmatically and be 'wrong'. That had some impact on perceived early low results.

As folks became better-read and educated they began to understand that IQ test questions were a sort of puzzle, not a real honest question. The answer was expected to solve the puzzle, not be right in any way.

E.g. There are no Elephants in Germany. Munich is in Germany. How many elephants are there in Munich? A) 0 B) 1 C)2

Folks back then might answer B or C, because they figure hey there's probably a zoo in Munich, bet they have an elephant or two there. And be marked wrong.

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mock-possum ◴[10 Apr 23 23:25 UTC] No.35518661[source]▶
But… why would they answer B or C when they were just told the right answer was A? That doesn’t make any sense. They don’t need to ‘figure’ anything when they’ve been told that there are zero. That’s not even a puzzle, that’s just series of statements.

That’d be like if you told me a tree was 10 feet tall, then asked me how tall it was and I said “10 feet 1 inch” because I figured it had grown at least an inch in the interim. Why figure when you should already know?

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1. fauxpause_ ◴[11 Apr 23 04:17 UTC] No.35520765[source]▶
Compare these to reading comprehension tests on the SAT. Many of those questions ask “why did the author write x?” And all answers are valid insights to the whole piece, but only one is derived from X. It has to be learned to read questions literally imo. It’s not intuitive that questions are as dumb as they are. You must explicitly silence intuition, outside knowledge, social norms towards more impressive seeming insights, awareness of the bigger idea, etc.