They just can’t help themselves
(media.scored.co)
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The IQ scale is restandardized every few decades to keep the mean at 100. This is because for as stupid as it seems people are right now, the average IQ in Western White populations has been jumping every generation and most people today might qualify as geniuses during the original tests.
It seems people are a lot dumber right now, but that's because the sheer level of information being given to us and then forced to be dealt with has our brains consistently burning out (especially people with dopamine chasing addictions). Which makes us far easier to manipulate and much more automated in our thinking. The constant bombardment from every angle in every single day from the moment we can talk and read has us stretched far too thin and taught us that we must constantly rely on our subconscious snap decisions for most thoughts (for example, this is how stereotypes are created and maintained). Industrial Society and its Consequences, and all that.
What makes that interesting, is that most non-white populations have not been growing, and have been either stagnant (meaning they drop when the restandardization happens) or actually dropping. Which is what is causing this effect, the immigrants and certain PoCs are so clinically retarded that they are negating any upward mobility the rest of us might have.
The cutoff for being literally mentally retarded is 75, most of Sub-Saharan Africa and Central America is in the 50s and 60s. Entire nations with profound retardation that are allowed full existences without any restriction. North Africa, South America and the Middle east are in the low 80s, meaning they are just barely above being classified as retarded themselves.
Now imagine massive unchecked immigration from those nations being brought into our country, and then allowed to interbreed (IQ is hugely genetic) or assimilate (meaning standards lowered to accommodate them as the norm). It'll destroy anything.
A separate study instead used reaction time as a proxy for intelligence, and iirc showed that well-off Victorian English were more intelligent than what we have today. I'd have to hunt down the video I watched or article I read, or better yet find the sourced paper again.
I don't know if I agree that reaction time is a proxy for intelligence. One kind, yes, but not the whole picture.
Sports players have incredibly high reaction times, much higher than most of us. But nobody should be saying Kobe is a highly intelligent man.
You're thinking physical reaction times, not mental.
If I asked you and Kobe to solve 87 * 22 / 2, odds are pretty high you will trounce him in reaction time. And if not, well you might have to reevaluate how intelligent Kobe is.
This is normally taken into account in clinical IQ tests, as those who answer the questions quickly will score higher. It doesn't play a roll in standardised online tests.
The difference between an IQ of 160 and 190 is usually going to come down to reaction time, not individual levels of subject knowledge. It's reasonable to think it is a likely sole indicator, but it's pretty hard to measure accurately without the rest of the test.
I wouldn't even consider online tests worth the space to do them, so I didn't even consider it.
That's a fair perspective though I hadn't thought through when I responded.