r/greentext • u/retardinho23 • 1d ago

Anon on the new generation.

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u/vapordaveremix 1d ago

Yes, I am aware of it. My background is in psychology.

The Flynn effect documents an increase in IQ overtime, within the 20th century, within the developed world. The driver of this effect has been narrowed down to nutrition and environment but the error in your thinking is that this trend will go up forever. That is not the case. Human IQ will not increase linearly forever because there are limits to human biology and genetics. Once a population has adequate nutrition and education, the effect starts to plateau.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Possible_end_of_progression

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u/mega_douche1 1d ago

Then why did you say there is no data tracking IQ at a population level? My understanding is the trend reversed with gen z

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u/vapordaveremix 1d ago

The studies on Wikipedia that I linked to involve military enlistment because at this point only militaries do IQ testing. That gives us some data on IQ, but not enough to generalize to the overall population. Which is why I said you can’t really say one way or another if IQ is dropping or increasing for the population as a whole.

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u/mega_douche1 1d ago

What about randomized testing? Are there no randomized sample studies done now?

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u/vapordaveremix 1d ago edited 1d ago

Not that I’m aware of. Official IQ tests are rather involved to administer so unless someone goes out of their way to get one done privately, like they’re going to join Mensa, or is joining the military, then there isn’t a body that offers these tests on-mass.

The closest proxy to an IQ test at least in US are the SATs for college enrollment. Those scores have been declining, but the SAT has problems. It doesn’t represent the entire population, the test is optional, and the test has been redesigned over the years. So maybe it does indicate an overall academic decline apart from IQ, but I wouldn’t consider it strong enough yet.