Comment on Do we dream smaller now than we did decades ago?
cute_noker@feddit.dk 23 hours agoWell I mostly agree, here is my take.
Something interesting is that living in a radically different country, it becomes painfully obvious to most people, i reckon. Because values change as the respective IQ average and culture differs across countries and especially continents.
Just a personal observation.
So a person who have a slightly higher than average IQ in a developed country will quickly feel their social circles shrink significantly across continent borders. Because culture is shaped by the people live there. And values change. E.g. It is more socially acceptable to be manual labourer/violent/chauvinistic some places than others. Many other factors play in, and many highly intelligent people are manual-labourer/violent/chauvinistic. I am just talking about a trend. It is also noticeable across generations which you will see that the younger generations usually being more developed than the older generations.
A handyman used to be valued higher in developed societies than today. Because values have shifted
I reckon it is mainly the quality of education and nutritional food that makes the difference.
But my point is that most people completely underestimate the importance of those things because they have compounding effects across generations. A single mother of 5 can’t produce useful citizens without a social support system.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
An important part of understanding IQ tests is they account for Western education.
Like, there’s an assumption that someone knows certain things, one of the trivial pursuit questions is “who wrote How to Kill a Mockingbird”.
To measure a substantially different culture’s IQ, they’d need their own bespoke test.
The other stuff about nutrition plays into differences inside of western culture, but resource scarcity changes our brains and how they work. Poverty doesn’t make us stupid, it just makes us prioritize day to day, second to second. Planning ahead is a luxury.
cute_noker@feddit.dk 21 hours ago
I was under the impression that trivial pursuit questions would not measure IQ.
Which means that it is linked to e.g. corruption, education, crime?
And why one foundation of a well functioning society is a social support system for the weakest, lowering inequality, crime, intergenerational stress, no?
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
IQ being one number is like SATs…
It’s an average of a bunch of different subjects, one of which is “crystalized intelligence” which is basically trivia pursuit. You have to miss 3 questions in a row, when I was tested I ran out of questions because I never missed three in a row. It took forever.
The root cause is resource scarcity. All those other problems can lead to that.
If you want to look more into that specifically, look into the "marshmallow test’ and how being able to wait for a largest reward is the largest signal of success as an adult. Resource scarcity makes us take the guaranteed small payoff instead of waiting.
Those changes as a child follow us our whole lives. It’s one of a handful of things that’s set for life by the time we’re toddlers along with in group/out group.