Aibu to think we're entering a new "dark age"?

[Sorrelle]

Over-reliance on social media, living in our little bubbles; economic nationalism rather than globalisation; growing inequality; growth of illiberal democracies... Anyone agree?

Life is very, very good for some and always has been. Unless you fit into a very narrow criteria though (eg a 'pure' version of your particular community), it can sometimes be a bit scary and insecure for a lot of others. A lot of us haven't had access to great educations, secure employment etc.

Man of us have become overly reliant on others to do basic tasks like cooking. Many people rely on ready meals or neatly packaged food. We have lost skills like growing food for preparing meat. If a major disaster cut of electricity indefinitely we would find it hard to fend for ourselves.

I don't believe we are more or less intelligent than our recent ancestors. We have just developed different brains. Evolution has not had time to improve our intelligence so quickly.

Intelligence has increased because of environmental factors - not as many cases of stunting, famine, scurvy, rickets. Better diet, less serious disease in childhood, greatly reduced parasite load.

Another explanation for the increase in IQ scores is that schools teach a curriculum now that is more aligned with the kind of thing asked on a IQ test. There's so much free information around now that there's no longer much call for people that can recall lots of facts of the top of their heads but far more for people who know how to apply data critically. This leads to increased exposure to lateral and critical thinking, puzzles and mind games in schools They get much more practice and correspondingly score higher. We're not cleverer, we're just using our brains differently.

Better obstretrics has help intelligence and survival if all babies.

Howver more people with learning difficulties reach adulthood. In the past people with learning difficulties who could not work starved. We are now in a situation where more able women put off motherhood and have less children than those with lower IQ. The benefits system helps less able people to survive and have more descendants.

There is a difference between education and intelligence. Lack of education does not make someone stupid.

But some sources of learning difficulties are environmental and have been eradicated, by making iodine present in food staples for example, and by removing lead from the environment.

There isn't a clear distinction between being educated and being intelligent.

The extent and nature of the education someone receives will contribute to their intelligence, particularly if you are defining intelligence as 'IQ test score.'

But even if you're not defining it that way, and meaning, for example, adaptive intelligence, that is still in part a consequence of how educated a person is.

50% of the population are below median intelligence. There is no logical reason to assume that 50% of the population are below (or above) mean intelligence (where 'mean' is the usual statistical calculation for 'average'). It only takes one outlier to shift the mean disproprtionately. You could have an extreme outlier that shifted the mean so significantly that everybody else except the outlier was below the mean.

Maid, as far as I understand it, IQ scores are worked out based on standard deviation.

Can you explain in what sense you think 50% of the population score below the median?

Or link to it. I'd be interested to know.

I'm missing the point by a country mile, but the idea of the 'dark ages' (and the 'medieval' as barbaric/primitive) is pretty ignorant in itself.

It's a very long historical period during which a lot of people were doing highly intelligent things. The idea of the 'dark ages' was put about by later ages who fetishised the idea of the Classical past and didn't much care for Catholicism because nasty French and Spanish foreigners were Catholic. It's not a mode of thinking to aspire to.

almond, IQ isn't the only measure of intelligence.

IQ is calculated such that most people fall within the 'norm', but equally many people fall above it as below.

I cannot imagine how we could ever figure out whether or not humanity is getting brighter or less bright, over such small periods as a generation (or even a century or millennium).

Ego, that isn't the case.

Take shoe size (as it is the usual stats example).

If there are ten of us, and one person has size eight feet, one has size six feet and eight have size seven feet, then only ten percent of us are below the median.

That is the same for how poverty and income are calculated by the government. 50% of people are not below median income.

Jeanne, yes, I agree.

It is worked out by standard deviation.

50% are classed as average.

25% are classed as below average and 25% above.

IQ tests measure how good you are at taking IQ tests. Whether they say anything about intelligence is another matter.

Forgive me, I'm not a mathematician.

But surely, most people score 100 on an IQ test? Won't it be the number that has the greatest number of people (as it were) sitting on it? And then lots fall on 99, and lots on 101, and so on, in decreasing amounts as we get further away from 100?

So surely there will not be enough people for 50% of the population to score below 100?

• sorry, 'the most', not most. The score achieved by the largest number of people is 100, no?

Given that nobody scores above around 180, millions of people will have scored exactly the same as the Middle person.

It would be like saying 50% of the population have a below average temperature. Clearly a very large number of people have exactly the same temperature - the median temperature, with a few above or below.

No Ego, it is not standard deviation.

IQ is worked out by standard deviation (used to be by ratio), and then 50% is categorised as average, with a further number being categorised as normal but not average, and then a few being categorised as neither normal nor average.

Certainly agree as far as equality goes. Glimmer of hope in the 60s and 70s then bam!

I stood in a queue for Suffragette behind two teenage girls:
"What's it about?"
"I don't care."

More patriarchy every day, everywhere. We are colluding because we've no stomach to fight any more.

Dark ages here we come.