Is the world getting dumber?

AMERICAN comedian George Carlin once said, “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” I am an old man and that makes my perspective different than 96.5 percent of the world who are younger than 70. But if you think that the world is getting dumber, you may be correct.

IQ, or Intelligence Quotient, is a measure of ability to reason and solve problems. There is controversy that it is an unfair measure of “intelligence” that does not factor in cultural/language differences between people. Yet there are about a dozen different widely accepted IQ tests used globally. And language and culture is not a deciding factor if a person cannot figure out that a square block will not fit into a round hole.

Scientists from the University of Oregon and Northwestern University looked at nearly 400,000 IQ tests done between 2006 and 2018 prior to the pandemic. The Flynn Effect assumed that since the early 20th century, scores on IQ tests have increased in most parts of the world and that trend would continue. However, a study of Norwegian military conscripts found that IQ scores have been falling for the generations born after the year 1975; Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z.

The recent studies show that overall, IQ scores in the US have dropped for the first time in nearly 100 years. A study in Finland found that IQS had dropped by two points between 1997 and 2009. In France, IQ scores decreased by 3.8 points from 1999 to 2009. Other places including the UK, Norway, Denmark, and Australia have discovered similar findings.

Some skills, such as 3D spatial reasoning tests, showed an uptick from 2011 to 2018, which could be related to using computers as spatial reasoning skills included hand-eye coordination. But skills like verbal reasoning, visual problem solving (the round peg in the square hole) and numerical series tests (2, 4, 6, ...which number comes next?) had all gone down.

Jameel Al-khalili, an Iraqi-british theoretical physicist, says that despite our “vastly increased scientific knowledge… the human brain hasn’t got bigger or more efficient or better than it was thousands of years ago.” He said: “Because we are making use of technology these days, one could argue we are getting dumber. Our attention span is shorter, we are not prepared to spend the time to think things through carefully or discuss and debate ideas.”

I can readily accept the fact that I have skills and knowledge that my sons do not simply because I needed those, and they do not. I was writing 20-page term papers by hand and learned to type only in high school. Son #4 Adam writes code for computer programs.

However, Frank Herbert—the author of “Dune”—wrote, “We accept too damned many things on the explanations of people who could have good reasons for lying.” This is because we do not have enough knowledge to know when we are being lied to. Most people don’t care. The best example is economics.

An example. Virtually every public opinion survey both in the Philippines and abroad indicates that the local economy—wherever that may be—is the number one priority. When asked what the national leader/leadership is not doing enough about, it is always “inflation” whenever price increases are larger than historical.

I have shown that Philippine inflation tracks and correlates with the global price of crude oil. Crude oil permeates every facet of an economy. But it goes even farther than that. Most view energy as an input into economic activity. The truth is, energy is not an input into the economy, it is the economy. Humanity organizes its economic activities to ensure a steady growth in exploitation of primary energy because energy is life, standards of living are defined by how much energy is available to be exploited, and all humans everywhere are perpetually seeking a higher standard of living.

A chart tracking “Global Energy Consumption” shows a continuous increase year after year, decade after decade through multiple financial crises, wars, terrorist attacks, economic sanctions and embargos, recessions, catastrophes like tsunamis and Fukushima, and “Arab Springs” with only minor pauses in 2009, and 2020.

Yet we have from the near the lowest on the ladder of intellectual capacity—the “Just Stop Oil” folks —to the President of the US—JOE Biden 2019: “I guarantee you. We’re going to end fossil fuel” calling for stopping eighty-five percent of the globe’s primary energy consumption source. That percentage is the same as it was 50 years ago.

The 19th-century French writer Stendhal wrote: “The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.” The shepherd is successful because the sheep stay dumb.