the BS you see is in your head - a book by some PhD has not passed peer review & that book has been roundly debunked

OTOH, people with low IQ like to believe things that aren't actually true

Well, Mr Big, prove it's been debunked. Show some facts here. I haven't read of any "debunking". Prove you have a "high IQ'. That's going to be difficult at best.

Yep, you're right. Webb just proved every point you made. No surprise there.

That's where we disagree. I equate developmental education with exercise - a lot of people with native intelligence seem stupid because we're educating the population poorly.

In the same way that we've got lots of out-of-shape people not because more people are sick or predisposed toward obesity, but because their bodies haven't been trained/developed.

The nature of humanity in America hasn't changed appreciably - the culture has.

So you are saying education is training the brain to work more efficiently in a similar fasion to the effect that practicing your triple jump would lead to you go farther, interesting idea, very likely has some merit.

I wonder how you could test it. Almost any test you could perform would have some degree of cultural bias, and would queer your results. In any event, assuming you are correct, I can't imagine it is a problem with a solution. American "culture" has been moving in an inexorable way for my lifetime, and I don't see it changing direction any time soon.

In this country we have multi generational dumb families.

The parents sit around watching TV and breeding all day while receiving a benifit. They complain that there are no jobs for them but why should someone hire them if they are that dumb and lazy. The kids run around like monkeys with zero discipline, no concentration span, can't shut up and listen, and no pre-school education. When they get to school they can't or won't listen and learn, or aspire to be as stupid as their parents. As soon as they get to high school age they spend the evening wandering the streets with other dumb kids committing petty crime, until they get lucky one night and get a leg over some dumb girl and breed another generation of dummy.

We also have special Maori schools where they certainly don't learn to read write maths English geography and science, so when they graduate who the f' is going to hire these people. We don't have factories anymore and they seem incapable of even stacking shelves in a supermarket.

Yep - just like the USA - lower standards and expectations for the group under the guise of "inclusiveness" or " promoting diversity". If you drag down the median such that a " C" grade (average by definition) is what a "D" or "F" used to be its a perfect excuse for politicians to grandstand and spin it as "we created more 'A' students - what a great job we're doing - and let's reward the teachers union for the fine job they're doing to pander for their votes... er... I mean, fairly acknowledge their good work"

Such rubbish this political correctness and "diversity" and "affirmative action" is... Don't even get me started. I deal with it daily.

We have a winner! :D

Just the fact that "Judge Judy" is still on the air should be proof enough...


KT

TV is often cited as a cause, but who really knows? Same with the internet, texting, etc.

tobra's point re the cultural biases in the tests is a good one

re Judge Judy, I will bet a lot of similar things went on around campfires 50,000 years ago.

- this thread motivated me to do a little searchin' on ye old HDD for the notes I used to lecture in an upper-div. corse at least 20 years ago -- heritability is often assessed by using twin studies


here are some correlation coeff.s for IQ

unrelated reared together 0.19

siblings reared together 0.42
siblings reared apart 0.22

1-egg twins reared together 0.82
1-egg twins reared apart 0.72

Family Size

IQ scores drop significantly for children in large families; some or most of that appears to be related to birth order — youngest children score lower than older children in the same family.

No effect for families of 2 or 3 (in fact, 2d child may have slightly higher IQ than 1st), but significant for families of more than 4.

Usual Interpretation: lack of parental attention causes less mental development and lower IQ. Contention also supported by the fact that twins average 5 IQ points lower than their non-twin siblings, regardless of social class.

First born children also have significantly higher IQ's than later born children. Can't be genetics; must be an environmental effect of some sort — perhaps, greater parental attention again.

Effect of Culture

American whites score higher on IQ tests than do blacks.

Northerners score higher than Southerners.

Jewish and Oriental Americans score higher than anglo whites.

Some believe that IQ tests are strongly biased towards certain cultures; few believe that these facts represent genetic differences among these groups.

Clearly very strong effects of culture. In one study Puerto Rican offspring raised in relatively affluent and modern environments had IQ scores equal to their adult parents raised in rural poverty by the ages of 7 or 8.

Also, poor social and physical conditions in institutionalized children often result in consistent and gradual decreases in IQ scores. If these conditions are reversed in early life, IQ scores go back up — in some cases as much as 50 points.

Educational expectations also differ among parents and teachers in different cultural groups and may affect childrens' scores.

early maternal env. is thought to be imp.

Dietary Effects

Malnutrition definitely causes lower IQ scores.

In rats, protein deficient diets reduce the number of brain cells, and cause kidney diseases and other diseases. These affected females then have brain deficient offspring themselves.

Lead poisoning has also been implicated in lower IQ's of people from poverty stricken families.

most common causes of lower IQ scores are maternal smoking and alcohol use

Norm of Reaction

[1] Different genotypes can differ phenotypically in the same environment.

[2] Identical genotypes can differ phenotypically in different environments.

Norm of Reaction — degree to which similar genotypes lead to different phenotypes due to environmental effects

Norm of reaction for IQ is very high; for blood type is very low.

"One of the penalties of not participating in politics is that you will be governed by your inferiors." Plato

TV is definitely not a cause of more stupid people. It just gives them something to watch at their level if they seek it out. When I was a kid, long before cable tv, I watched Nova and The World at War and all kinds of educational tv, usually sitting by my dad, that got me interested in history, foreign languages and some science later on. So much of that stuff I sought out on my own and never heard about any of it in school. Had it not been for tv, I might have spent more time doing other stuff. But we already played outside all day in those days, didn't even know what bicycle helmets were and had no video games to play indoors at night. So we watched good tv after dinner.

There are actually some scientific studies that prove a destructive effect on early childhood brain development from sitting in front of a TV screen. It almost doesn't matter what's on the screen, from what I remember. I'm too lazy to look it up but I trust the person who told me about the study completely and know that he read it. It was a while ago.

There are parents now who will completely avoid having their young children watch television for this reason. :cool:

Here is the result of a quick google:

The Impact Of Television On Early Childhood Brain Development | LIVESTRONG.COM

Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children

An interesting thread to come upon after taking an internet free brake(just kidding loosers) for a few days, I'd bee reading "Who will rock the cradle" in my spare time.

It has a lot of pieces from a lot of authors, which means a lot of view points, not all of which I agree with it. However, there are multitude of fears and uncertainty around increasing institutionalized infant/childcare and its effect on the participant's schooling and adult life. A few even gave figures for future years, which although not correct, correlate the trend. I still haven't finished the book, and I have yet to look up current data. (The pieces of this book are from the 70's up towards the mid 80's.)

Basically, an infant is better off without extended separation from parents. Same for a toddler. Those that are raised by parents, tended to better able to seek independence later in life, where as those raised in day care appeared to be at a higher risk of not doing as well later in life.(Some still did well anyway.) The debate didn't have a huge amount of data to draw on, mass child care wasn't a common thing in the US up until FDR. That was a time of very strong clamp down on media, the judicial system, and scholastics by the government. Free Speech was rather suppressed until post WWII, so collecting data on such a thing would of been taboo.(supposition on my part).

Pretty much every author in the book, complains of a lack of data, but feels that the most recent studies of the day, denote a disturbing trend that would result in less independence, less skills, and also poorer results from the education system.

I think my experience with inner city high schoolers, backs up the claims from many of authors. Broken homes, and no love from or for parents results in very poor literacy, and a high dependence level.

There was a time when being stupid or lazy made life very tough.
Nowadays certain sectors of our society have made it easier and in some cases profitable to be dumb, lazy, or otherwise non-productive.
On the other hand, if you punish success you discourage it. Kind of like how "some" people regard wealthy people as somehow evil.

You get more of what you reward and less of what you punish.
I don't give a ratzass if it's well intentioned or not, it is still wrong and detrimental to our society.

absolutely correct -- just look at all the Texans who made money during oil booms

Wow for a second I thought the planet was going to spin off into the sun.

Rwebb agreed with Sammy. Then I saw the rest of the sentence.

" Are we being over-populated by stupid people? "


Yes and they have drivers licences ............

I ALWAYS agree with sammy when he's right.

He's SoCal, not Texas, BTW.