Explains a lot
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2026
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United States | News & Politics
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Jesus fuck.
The researchers calculated that at its worst, people born in the mid-to-late 1960s may have lost up to six IQ points
I was born in the mid-1960s and have a PhD. I really could have used those 6 IQ points in grad school. Shit, I could use them now.
I mean, no shit. Look at how they vote
Like Fox News repeatedly told them to be afraid of cities and immigrants?
And that half are all cops.
By some accounts, the effect is not spread out over everything that is counted as “intelligence”, but has a disproportionate effect on faculties such as impulse control. Which could explain a lot (“we voted for X and things still suck? We’re voting for Y next!”)
Damn, I misread that as "Shrank IQ Scores of Americans by Half," and thought, "Hmm, that tracks."
We know, we are literally living through that shit now. Hope we survive it.
Three points per person average, seven points in worst cases. Doesn't sound very significant.
Why a high IQ doesn't mean you're smart
A high IQ is like height in a basketball player," says David Perkins, who studies thinking and reasoning skills at Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "It is very important, all other things being equal. But all other things aren't equal. There's a lot more to being a good basketball player than being tall, and there's a lot more to being a good thinker than having a high IQ.
Also, it's good to keep this in mind, especially considering current events:
Historically, many proponents of IQ testing have been eugenicists who used pseudoscience to push later debunked views of racial hierarchy in order to justify segregation and oppose immigration. Such views have been rejected by a strong consensus of mainstream science, though fringe figures continue to promote them in pseudo-scholarship and popular culture.