The end of the Flynn Effect

Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 19 December 2006 01:38.

We never knew for sure whether it was real, what caused it or whether it was limited only to the left side of the curve.  But the Flynn Effect appears to be at the end of its days in Europe, at least.

This from the Times:-

WE ARE ABOUT AS SMART AS WE’RE GOING TO GET, SAYS IQ PIONEER
* Test Results are starting to level out
* Morality skills are the next step

It is a common refrain, repeated in response to every new television reality show and every bumper crop of school exam results: society is dumbing down. Scientists have long argued the opposite, pointing to the now widely accepted “Flynn effect”, which shows that over the past century average IQ scores have improved across the developed world, irrespective of class or creed.

Now the man who first observed this effect, the psychologist James Flynn, has made another observation: intelligence test scores have stopped rising.

Far from indicating that now we really are getting dumber, this may suggest that certain of our cognitive functions have reached — or nearly reached — the upper limits of what they will ever achieve, Professor Flynn believes. In other words, we can’t get much better at the mental tasks we are good at, no matter how hard we try.

If we are to make any further progress, we will have to start exercising different parts of our brain, particularly the parts controlling language acquisition and empathy, according to Professor Flynn, an emeritus professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand.

So a couple of observations about this.

First, the Flynn Effect has been tossed into more IQ arguments than Arthur Jensen has hairs on his eminent head - most always, of course, by the environmentalist left.  It has been interesting, if not altogether surprising, to contrast the reaction on the race-realist right to this activity.  Has it launched a campaign of outright denial, blatently ignoring all evidence in favour of Flynn?  Has it launched attacks on the professional reputation of Flynn proponents?

The difference between the realists’ response and that of the scientific left to, say, EO Wilson in the 1970s, eventually driving sociobiology underground, or to Rushton in the 90s, almost leading to prosecution, is instructive and should be a source of pride among the men of the right.  Confident intellectual foundations are a wonderful thing, and the execrable behaviour of the leftists can only be explained by a lack of them.

It has ever been so.

The other fascinating tidbit from the Times story is James Flynn’s notion that :-

The challenge for humanity now is to enhance our ability to debate moral and social questions intelligently. One way to do this might be to concentrate on reading great works of literature which expand our vocabulary, critical acumen and emotional maturity.

Well, no James, sorry.  A weakness in debating such issues maturely is likely present in our benighted age.  But there are very good, rather Durkheimian reasons for that.  I am pretty certain that sympathetic markers such as the beauty and elegance of the spoken and written word, so evident in the long history of the English language, will show that our shortcomings today are wholly environmental.  For example, can our boys in Iraq flay intellectual skin with the same burning endeavour as the men of Cromwell’s New Model Army in their famous constitutional debates with the Levellers?

But to rid ourselves of our “emotional lumpenness” we must dispose of such sink issues as egalitarianism, multiculturalism and Third World immigration, economism (particularly in respect to working mothers), the war on the family, etc ... in short, all the elements of advanced liberalism that lie on our chests like the weight of a dozen dead men.  Let the natural bonds prosper again and stability reign.  The real talents of our people will reveal themselves soon enough, and psychologists can measure it then for all they are worth.

On that basis I would confidently predict a rosy future for an “emotional” corrolate of the Flynn Effect.  But on none other.

Tags: Psychology



Comments:


1

Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 19 Dec 2006 16:57 | #

Interesting that Flynn is abandoning a quantitative approach, IQ, now that it no longer conveys a fashionable message.  Perhaps he can search around for some other metric that conveys a fashionable message and get back to his career building.  This morality approach doesn’t seem likely to lead anywhere but an over-crowded humanities milieu where guys like Flynn have nothing in particular to offer the seekers of speciousness.  Maybe he can squeeze a book or two out of it.


2

Posted by Orion Blue on Tue, 19 Dec 2006 19:17 | #

Am I right in thinking that the ‘touchy-feelie’ approach to measuring cognitive function, such as so-called ‘Emotional Quotient’, is merely a response to intractable differences between groups that have persisted these last 100 years or so, irrespective of environmental factors?

This might be ‘jumping the gun’ slightly, but I cannot help but think that this ‘subjectivisation’ and ‘feminisation’ of the realm of psychology owes something to political objectives rather than to those of science.


3

Posted by Guessedworker on Tue, 19 Dec 2006 19:47 | #

Detail-wise, it’s too early to say much with any certainty about EI except that it’s all rather uncertain.

But to my mind, intelligence-related qualities of emotional life, whatever they may actually be, and their outcome in our personal skills are two different things.  In not separating them clearly one is stuck immediately not only with issues of what is innate and acquired, for example, but also with what is genuine and what is false.  It is a recipe for bad data.

If one is going to venture anywhere near it one has to have very clear guiding principles, and I really don’t see much likelihood of such emerging soon.  The issue of EI was taken up because ‘g’ gave too robust a platform to the right.  Trying now to develop it backwards from political utility into a subject for empirical study looks, frankly, mendacious.

Respectable cognitive psychologists who acknowledge the robustness of ‘g’ and, suffer no political nervous ticks because of it, will doubtless leave EI for the birds.


4

Posted by Jensen on I.Q. testing on Tue, 14 Apr 2015 08:36 | #

Arthur Jensen on i.q. testing

http://cdn.counter-currents.com/radio/JensenPart4.mp3

http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/04/interview-with-arthur-jensen-part-3/



Post a comment:


Name: (required)

Email: (required but not displayed)

URL: (optional)

Note: You should copy your comment to the clipboard or paste it somewhere before submitting it, so that it will not be lost if the session times out.

Remember me


Next entry: The Bear’s Lair: International Perspective
Previous entry: Castro Makes Donation to Midwestern Public School’s Cafeteria Salad Dressing

image of the day

Existential Issues

DNA Nations

Categories

Contributors

Each author's name links to a list of all articles posted by the writer.

Links

Endorsement not implied.

Immigration

Islamist Threat

Anti-white Media Networks

Audio/Video

Crime

Economics

Education

General

Historical Re-Evaluation

Controlled Opposition

Nationalist Political Parties

Science

Europeans in Africa

Of Note

Comments

Thorn commented in entry 'Dutch farmers go where only Canadian truckers did not fear to tread' on Sat, 02 Nov 2024 12:19. (View)

Al Ross commented in entry 'Dutch farmers go where only Canadian truckers did not fear to tread' on Sat, 02 Nov 2024 04:15. (View)

Al Ross commented in entry 'Dutch farmers go where only Canadian truckers did not fear to tread' on Sat, 02 Nov 2024 03:57. (View)

Al Ross commented in entry 'Dutch farmers go where only Canadian truckers did not fear to tread' on Sat, 02 Nov 2024 03:40. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'Dutch farmers go where only Canadian truckers did not fear to tread' on Fri, 01 Nov 2024 23:03. (View)

Manc commented in entry 'The legacy of Southport' on Tue, 29 Oct 2024 17:21. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'Dutch farmers go where only Canadian truckers did not fear to tread' on Mon, 28 Oct 2024 23:14. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'Dutch farmers go where only Canadian truckers did not fear to tread' on Fri, 25 Oct 2024 22:28. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'Dutch farmers go where only Canadian truckers did not fear to tread' on Fri, 25 Oct 2024 22:27. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'Dutch farmers go where only Canadian truckers did not fear to tread' on Thu, 24 Oct 2024 23:32. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'Dutch farmers go where only Canadian truckers did not fear to tread' on Wed, 23 Oct 2024 16:37. (View)

James Bowery commented in entry 'Dutch farmers go where only Canadian truckers did not fear to tread' on Wed, 23 Oct 2024 14:54. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'Dutch farmers go where only Canadian truckers did not fear to tread' on Sun, 20 Oct 2024 23:23. (View)

Manc commented in entry 'Dutch farmers go where only Canadian truckers did not fear to tread' on Fri, 18 Oct 2024 17:12. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'What can the Ukrainian ammo storage hits achieve?' on Wed, 16 Oct 2024 00:51. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'What can the Ukrainian ammo storage hits achieve?' on Wed, 16 Oct 2024 00:44. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'What can the Ukrainian ammo storage hits achieve?' on Mon, 14 Oct 2024 11:19. (View)

Al Ross commented in entry 'What can the Ukrainian ammo storage hits achieve?' on Mon, 14 Oct 2024 05:59. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'What can the Ukrainian ammo storage hits achieve?' on Mon, 14 Oct 2024 00:28. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'What can the Ukrainian ammo storage hits achieve?' on Sat, 12 Oct 2024 23:44. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'What can the Ukrainian ammo storage hits achieve?' on Sat, 12 Oct 2024 10:44. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'What can the Ukrainian ammo storage hits achieve?' on Fri, 11 Oct 2024 09:41. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'Doing the Basic Math For Net Asset Tax As Proposed by Bowery In 1992' on Fri, 11 Oct 2024 00:50. (View)

James Bowery commented in entry 'Doing the Basic Math For Net Asset Tax As Proposed by Bowery In 1992' on Thu, 10 Oct 2024 18:52. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'Doing the Basic Math For Net Asset Tax As Proposed by Bowery In 1992' on Mon, 07 Oct 2024 22:28. (View)

James Bowery commented in entry 'Doing the Basic Math For Net Asset Tax As Proposed by Bowery In 1992' on Sun, 29 Sep 2024 23:57. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'Reich and Rangel reveal the new anti-white, anti-middle-class agenda' on Sun, 29 Sep 2024 11:46. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'What can the Ukrainian ammo storage hits achieve?' on Sun, 29 Sep 2024 11:11. (View)

Al Ross commented in entry 'What can the Ukrainian ammo storage hits achieve?' on Sun, 29 Sep 2024 05:39. (View)

Al Ross commented in entry 'Reich and Rangel reveal the new anti-white, anti-middle-class agenda' on Sun, 29 Sep 2024 05:28. (View)

Al Ross commented in entry 'The legacy of Southport' on Sun, 29 Sep 2024 05:24. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'What can the Ukrainian ammo storage hits achieve?' on Sat, 28 Sep 2024 11:07. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'Reich and Rangel reveal the new anti-white, anti-middle-class agenda' on Sat, 28 Sep 2024 10:26. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'Reich and Rangel reveal the new anti-white, anti-middle-class agenda' on Wed, 25 Sep 2024 14:49. (View)

Thorn commented in entry 'What can the Ukrainian ammo storage hits achieve?' on Tue, 24 Sep 2024 23:09. (View)

affection-tone