Are we all getting more stupid? (Don’t all,shout “yes” at once!)

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For the period of about a century, average IQ scores in wealthy nations kept rising by about three points a decade. This “Flynn effect” is thought to be the result of improvements in social conditions like public health, nutrition and education, and has been seen in many countries, from the Netherlands to Japan.

But by 2004, researchers had begun to notice what seems to be a reversal of this trend, with average IQ scores going into decline. “The drop is around 7 to 10 IQ points per century,” according to Michael Woodley of the Free University of Brussels (VUB) in Belgium. Some researchers believe this can be explained by the controversial fertility hypothesis: that the most educated women in Western countries have been having fewer children than the rest of the population, and this is lowering IQs.

But it’s difficult to investigate hypotheses like this. Part of the problem is that IQ tests have changed over time. Now Robin Morris of King’s College London and his colleagues have found a way to get around this. They have broken down old IQ tests into different categories that are easier to compare. Morris’s team looked through more than 1750 different types of IQ test from 1972 onwards for two sub-groups of tests: those that measure short-term memory, and those that assess working memory – the ability to hold in your head information for processing, reasoning and decision-making.

When they looked at how people performed on these kinds of tests throughout time, the team saw a clear pattern. While short-term memory scores have risen in line with the Flynn effect, working memory ability appears to have declined. Then researchers spotted something no one had noticed before – an increase in the proportion of people sitting tests who were aged 60 or older. Working memory is known to decline with age, while short-term memory is usually preserved. In their study, Morris’s team write that the over-60s may be partly responsible for the decline in working memory scores in more developed nations. Researchers agree that stronger and more specific tests of this idea, looking at elements of intelligence whose decline with age are well established, such as processing time and reaction speed. Until then though we are warned that the whole concept of reversing IQs should be treated with scepticism. (Sally Adee, New Scientist, Sept 16, 2017)

So apparently the answer is that maybe we are not, after all seeing a decline in IQ. Or, at least, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. As a non-scientist I suspect that if you are only looking at the results of intelligence tests you are probably skewing the data, because these tests are predominantly taken by young people to find out what their aptitudes are, for career purposes – and very useful too. But now lifetime employment is disappearing, older people are trying to find out what their aptitudes are in turn, in which direction they should go in middle age. Another point: people are generally living longer anyway, and this must be having an overall effect. Moral: before you waste a lot of time on expensive studies, just use old guys with Arts degrees to employ some common sense.

Democracy is built on national pride?

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“Warnings about resurgent nationalism come thick and fast these days. Frans Timmermans, first vice-president of the European Commission, denounced it in a recent speech, arguing that true patriots are Europeans. The international lawyer Philippe Sands did likewise in an article that linked neo-Nazis, white supremacists, the Daily Mail and Brexit to the “poison of slow-burning nationalisms”.

“What’s striking about such diatribes, beyond their occasionally hysterical tone, is the way they conflate bigotry and extremism with national pride, as if fondness for one’s country of birth is inherently dubious. “Statehood,” wrote Sands, is the “most fake of constructs.” To him, maybe. For most of us it is the basis of popular democracy, the “only framework powerful enough to handle the big issues” – defence, taxation, infrastructure – in a responsive manner. To support or acquiesce in collective projects, people need to feel a sense of shared culture with the others involved. They do feel that at a national level; they don’t, whatever the liberal elite may like to think, at a European one.” (Rupert Cogan, Spiked).

I disagree. It was nationalism that fueled both World Wars. “Land of Hope and Glory” is a great tune from a great composer, but the composer himself, aghast at the words put to the music, was outspoken about the power of words and music to promote nationalist fervour and the devotion to an Empire that arguably had become too big, unwieldy, and prey to nationalist leaders. It is a noxious mix of tribalism, religion and nationalism that fuelled the rise of Hitler nd is now fuelling the horrible treatment of the Burmese moslems – one could go on. All over the world, and for decades, politicians have been using the nationalism card to their own ends. The EU does not prevent the exercise of democracy; it simply tries to regulate the shysters and crooks in aid of a level playing field.

In praise of Colin Kaepernick

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Just a short one today, I’ll be back with my usual-length posts on Sunday. Also note that I know virtually nothing about the NFL. 

For those of you who don’t know, Kaepernick is an American football player, who has recently caused controversy by kneeling when the national anthem is played at football games. Trump has come out strongly against him, arguing that everyone should stand for the anthem out of respect for the country. Kaepernick chose to kneel as a protest against the plight of African Americans, but for his critics, politics is no reason for what they perceive to be an unpatriotic gesture.

As a non-American, I have a few thoughts here. Firstly, I think the act of singing the national anthem before a sporting event is bizarre and unnecessary. I understand it’s a tradition that has continued since WW2, when the government instilled patriotism into public life to shore up support for the war effort. I don’t believe there’s anything immoral with it. But such ostentatious displays of nationalism are a little crass and excessive in my view. So if Kaeperick disapproved of this habit because of its anachronistic nature, I would totally agree with him.

My second point is that patriotism, however at times admirable, should never be mandatory. The idea of coerced allegiance to any political entity is an extremely authoritarian one. Dictators, populists and other strong-men often portray their opponents as unpatriotic in order to delegitimise them. So no one’s patriotism should ever be questioned when they are making a statement about domestic policy, as Kaepernick is in this instance.

Kaepenick’s detractors have failed to properly engage with why he has chosen to protest. Rather than focusing on the act of kneeling, which after all is only symbolic and isn’t hurting anyone, they should enquire as to what his motivations are, not simply dismiss him as unpatriotic. The fact is, Kaepernick has a point. Although a lot of progress has been made in terms of advancing civil rights since the 1960s, that progress has slowed down in recent years. Many Americans assume that the country has already made all the changes necessary to achieve racial equality, and that race relations are now a non-issue. Kaepernick is trying to highlight how African Americans are still poorer, less well educated and more likely to be the victims of violence than the population at large. As well as racist attitudes persisting amongst a notable minority of Americans, many more are indifferent to the needs of black people, subordinating them to the needs of the general public, rather than recognising that blacks have legitimate interests as a group.

Ultimately, Kaepernick’s actions ought to be uncontroversial, regardless of your views on race or patriotism. He hasn’t broken the law, or encouraged any illegal behaviour. He is simply drawing attention to what he believes is an important issue, using a means he knows will draw attention. If others happen to disagree with his views, that’s fine. But in a free society, everyone should be able to express themselves how they choose, however unpatriotic their expressions may seem to be. On a broader note, I think unconditional patriotism is quite a dangerous idea. Loving your country regardless of the actions of its leaders is stupid. Instead, patriotism should be qualified: how well does the country treat vulnerable people? How does it look after its children, the elderly or the sick? Does it defend itself effectively against foreign intrusion? Does it encourage entrepreneurship and innovation? Does it allow for free expression and religious practice? For Kaepernick, America is failing in its basic duties towards its citizens. I’m not American, so I can’t determine whether he is right or not. But objectively speaking, there is a lot of discontent in the country. If peaceful expressions of that discontent are treated with repulsion and disgust by the political elites, then America has a grim future.

I never thought I would agree with Kim Jong Un

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Thus Kim, in translation: “After taking office Trump has rendered the world restless through threats and blackmail against all countries in the world. He is unfit to hold the prerogative of supreme command of a country, and he is surely a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire, rather than a politician. His remarks which described the U.S. option through straightforward expression of his will have convinced me, rather than frightening or stopping me, that the path I chose is correct and that it is the one I have to follow to the last.”

The statement ends with an unspecified threat from Kim Jong Un to make Trump “pay dearly” and “face results beyond his expectation.” He goes on: “I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire,” he says (thus illustrating his superior grasp of the English language – the journalist at NPR, who filed the report, had to look up the meaning of “dotard!”. But thank you NPR News).

Actually, I disagree with Kim on the dotard comment. The US President is not a dotard; he is a self-absorbed, insecure child with an emotional age of eight, or maybe ten, who sits at the back of the classroom and throws paper darts at his fellow pupils, that is, anyone who is deemed to have even the slightest idea what they are supposed to be doing.

Can we trust these new technologies?

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Last century, we trusted machines to do things for us; this century, we’re starting to trust them to decide things for us.  Humans have a notoriously patchy record when it comes to decision-making. But relying on technological systems to make decisions for us – especially when risks are involved and our safety is at stake – could have major consequences.

Soon we will have artificial intelligence in self-driving cars and trucks automatically adding together every mile driven, identifying every hazard and every accident avoided or not, and building up, in huge  orders of magnitude, more experience than any human driver.  Soon there will be clear distinctions between what’s correct and what is not in all sorts of areas, such as medical diagnostics and financial analysis.

There is rarely perfection in everything, and certainly no software is perfect, as Microsoft daily proves. Not even a super-machine can think of every eventuality or interact 100% accurately all the time.  But what is more worrying still is the trusting-ness of human nature and the reluctance of humans to admit making mistakes until it is too late and lives are lost.

We may believe that a machine “knows” more than we do, or can access information we can’t. We’ll need to bring a healthy scepticism into interactions with them.  We will definitely have to figure out how to identify and adapt to situations where our machines are in over their metaphorical heads, and hit the brakes for them.  (based on an article by Jamais Cascio, distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future, in New Scientist. Sept 2017.  Heavily edited for length)