“degradation in educational standards”
And yet people are successfully learning calculus and the like at younger and younger ages, and getting higher and higher absolute scores on international math and logic tests/IQ subtests. I’d like to see you square this with Flynn.
But the relative value of knowledge is falling. If I knew calculus a thousand years ago, I’d have been the most brilliant mathematician alive. A hundred years ago, it’d have been more than I’d need to know for almost any profession. Today, calculus is the beginning of serious math. I need significantly more specialized math education to really be functioning at the top (even in fields that aren’t pure math).
I’m not sure our education system is getting worse in absolute terms, though it may be (math and science seem to have lost a lot of gravitas). But, in that it’s not getting better, it’s getting worse, because demand for highly educated workers is much higher. As compared with a “better” education system, the demand for grad school (especially in math and science) is much lower than it otherwise would be, lowering student quality and student volume in some combination, and probably increasing the average cost of training, as it fails to take advantage of returns to scale that might otherwise be present.
Not to mention public policy is generally constrained by the ignorance of the masses. If your average voter had a college (or postgrad!) level of understanding of economics, do you think policy would look like it does?
Surely the relevant educational standards of those of grad school, not high school. Scientists can use calculus, but maybe they’re spending too much time mastering the same tools (“conformity”).
Flynn is a good retort to environmental toxicity and dysgenics. (maybe there’s increased environmental toxicity 1910-1960, and Flynn is measuring that going away)
The Flynn effect isn’t caused by the fact that IQ tests are getting easier. There’s an upwards drift (linear in time) in average score for a given fixed test. In order for the average score to be 100 (as it is supposed to be by definition), the IQ testers have to adjust the scoring normalization periodically. The Flynn effect changes are most apparent in the lower part of the distribution -- the lowest scoring people in the current generation score much higher than those of past generations; the highest scoring people are comparable across generations.
IQ tests are getting harder and other tests (SAT, maybe GCSE) are getting easier. Flynn is stronger in fluid intelligence than crystalline. But there is supposed to be a small crystalline Flynn effect. SAT sounds like pure crystalline intelligence, yet it has the reverse effect.
This is really weird. But the Flynn effect is pretty weird on its own.
Vassar makes the argument that science funding is increasing exponentially, so mean intelligence scores should be increasing exponentially as well. Personally I’m not sure that science funding is increasing exponentially.
The very short version of my thesis on sci/tech change is that we have exponential increases in resources devoted to science and technology as a civilization, linear returns on many scales such as life expectancy, mean IQ, log GDP (which is still of mildly diminishing utility), etc.
In other words, one way Michael Vassar measures the success of science is by observing the ratio of change in average intelligence per year to the number of dollars spent on science per year. Even if intelligence is going up, that ratio could be going down. And if it is, our science spending is getting less efficient (according to one measure).
Got that? It’s not too hard.
Edit: Why am I being downmodded? Is it because my interpretation of Michael Vassar’s argument is incorrect, or because I am being overly hard on people who can’t understand it, or something else? You guys are pissing me off.
“degradation in educational standards” And yet people are successfully learning calculus and the like at younger and younger ages, and getting higher and higher absolute scores on international math and logic tests/IQ subtests. I’d like to see you square this with Flynn.
But the relative value of knowledge is falling. If I knew calculus a thousand years ago, I’d have been the most brilliant mathematician alive. A hundred years ago, it’d have been more than I’d need to know for almost any profession. Today, calculus is the beginning of serious math. I need significantly more specialized math education to really be functioning at the top (even in fields that aren’t pure math).
I’m not sure our education system is getting worse in absolute terms, though it may be (math and science seem to have lost a lot of gravitas). But, in that it’s not getting better, it’s getting worse, because demand for highly educated workers is much higher. As compared with a “better” education system, the demand for grad school (especially in math and science) is much lower than it otherwise would be, lowering student quality and student volume in some combination, and probably increasing the average cost of training, as it fails to take advantage of returns to scale that might otherwise be present.
Not to mention public policy is generally constrained by the ignorance of the masses. If your average voter had a college (or postgrad!) level of understanding of economics, do you think policy would look like it does?
Surely the relevant educational standards of those of grad school, not high school. Scientists can use calculus, but maybe they’re spending too much time mastering the same tools (“conformity”).
Flynn is a good retort to environmental toxicity and dysgenics. (maybe there’s increased environmental toxicity 1910-1960, and Flynn is measuring that going away)
The Flynn effect (higher IQs across time) is entirely compatible with the observation that educational standards are falling, which does appear to be the case, at least in some countries for some subjects. For example http://cabalamat.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/do-you-see-with-you-eyes-ears-nose-or-mouth/ or http://cabalamat.wordpress.com/2007/08/31/gcses-are-dumbed-down-and-getting-worse/
The Flynn effect isn’t caused by the fact that IQ tests are getting easier. There’s an upwards drift (linear in time) in average score for a given fixed test. In order for the average score to be 100 (as it is supposed to be by definition), the IQ testers have to adjust the scoring normalization periodically. The Flynn effect changes are most apparent in the lower part of the distribution -- the lowest scoring people in the current generation score much higher than those of past generations; the highest scoring people are comparable across generations.
IQ tests are getting harder and other tests (SAT, maybe GCSE) are getting easier. Flynn is stronger in fluid intelligence than crystalline. But there is supposed to be a small crystalline Flynn effect. SAT sounds like pure crystalline intelligence, yet it has the reverse effect.
This is really weird. But the Flynn effect is pretty weird on its own.
Vassar makes the argument that science funding is increasing exponentially, so mean intelligence scores should be increasing exponentially as well. Personally I’m not sure that science funding is increasing exponentially.
How does it follow that science funding and intelligence scores should be so strongly correlated?
Oh geez. Here is exactly what he wrote.
In other words, one way Michael Vassar measures the success of science is by observing the ratio of change in average intelligence per year to the number of dollars spent on science per year. Even if intelligence is going up, that ratio could be going down. And if it is, our science spending is getting less efficient (according to one measure).
Got that? It’s not too hard.
Edit: Why am I being downmodded? Is it because my interpretation of Michael Vassar’s argument is incorrect, or because I am being overly hard on people who can’t understand it, or something else? You guys are pissing me off.