[extropy-chat] FWD (Skeptic) Re: Flynn Effect

[Terry W. Colvin]

Whatta load of bollocks.

>Yet Flynn discovered the astonishing and still little-known fact
>that intelligence scores have steadily increased for at least the
>past 100 years.  And it's a substantial gain; people who would have
>been considered geniuses 100 years ago would be merely average today.

Which explains the preponderance of da Vincis and Newtons clogging every 
street corner.

This is particularly stunning work since the notion of IQ wasn't even 
established until the early 20th century, so any "data" about the 
intelligence of people before that is just a wild-ass guess. Not to mention 
that the whole notion of IQ is shaky at best.

And you can't even legitimately compare the IQ scores of people from 
decades ago to today's scores, since they keep changing the tests. The 
famous battery of IQ tests administered to inductees in the Army at the 
start of WWI was ludicrously flawed, they required people to have knowledge 
of baseball, or asked the subject to draw something, but neglected to 
consider that some of the people taking the test had never even held a pencil.

Dave Palmer

----------------------------

On Fri, May 06, 2005 at 09:19:29AM -0400, Greg Singer wrote:

>> On 5/5/05, Dave Palmer <dwpalmer at earthlink.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>> > And you can't even legitimately compare the IQ scores of people from
>>> > decades ago to today's scores, since they keep changing the tests.
>>    
>>
>> 
>> I seem to recall that the scores on IQ tests are scaled so that if the
>> test were administered to the entire population, the median score
>> should be 100. Therefore, I don't even see how it's possible for
>> average IQs to increase over time, since the IQ score is supposed to
>> measure your intelligence relative to other people at this moment in
>> time.
>> 
>>  - Greg
>  
>
See http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/flynneffect.shtml, "Why must IQ tests 
be routinely restandardized?" Or http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/FLYNNEFF.html 
Flynn started his research because he noticed that the tests kept having 
to be restandardized to prevent scores from continually climbing upward.
-- Jim Lippard


-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
     Alternate: < fortean1 at msn.com >
Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html >
Sites: * Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB *
      U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program
------------
Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List
   TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org > [Southeast Asia
veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.]

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20050506/fa57047c/attachment.html>