Re:Productivity
by toasterlovin on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @05:03PM
(#16805407)
Color me skeptical. Pretty much every intervention ever tried has failed to measurably increase IQ long-term. The only exceptions are fixing nutritional deficiencies. If you could reliably raise IQ by a standard deviation in reasonably nourished children, it would be one of the most profound socio-political developments of all time (on the scale of major economic transitions like agriculture -> manufacturing -> knowledge work).
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Well average IQ of the human population around the world has been increasing in the past decades if not centuries. And it's not because we're evolving within a few generations.
Re:Productivity
by Godel_unicode on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @07:09PM
(#16806478)
There's been really interesting work showing correlations between
this increase in IQ and improvements in diet.
IQ of groups around the world have been improving, but the composition of groups has changed.
Eg Africa went from 1/2 the population of Europe in 1950 to 1.6x the size today.
Minor nitpick. I understand what you're saying but average IQ is by definition 100 (with a deviation of 15). The scale itself moves, e.g. new 100 would usually be more than 100 in previous iteration of the test [1]
Re:Productivity
by newfoundglory on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @06:55PM
(#16806375)
There have been massive improvements in average nutrition over the last few decades though.
Re:Productivity
by toasterlovin on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @07:01PM
(#16806414)
Your parent is right: IQ has been increasing. Even in countries where you wouldn't expect the cause to be improved nutrition. But nobody really knows why, nor has anybody discovered an intervention that can, on its own, reliably increase IQ.
Not only nutrition, but overall childhood experience is getting better worldwide. Even in countries that had no malnutrition, there was a lot of space to improve in children<->parents relationships etc.
Meanwhile some countries that were really good in all areas a while ago are now reporting minor IQ decrease..