Wherein I give props to xkcd
Jun. 29th, 2009 12:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Thank you xkcd for talking about an idea which I was willing to suspend disbelief for in order to have a laugh but have heard people actually spout as if it reflected reality. You see, in order to believe that premise you have to sincerely believe that smart people never ever do stupid things when it comes to sex. If you have such a belief, you clearly don't know any smart people (at least, you don't know them well enough ;P).
no subject
Date: 2009-06-29 09:10 pm (UTC)The single most famous and well-established unexplained phenomenon in the field of IQ testing is the Flynn Effect: that the bell-curve has been shifting upward by about 3 points per decade, continuously, linearly over time, since IQ testing began, everywhere.
For the record, that amounts to a standard deviation in 50 years. The definitions of the lower edge of "gifted" and the upper edge of "mentally retarded" are 2 standard deviations.
So this entire discussion has been utterly bizarre to me. The single most famous trend in IQ is that it's going up. Why would anyone base even a bogus argument on the idea it's going down??
no subject
Date: 2009-06-29 09:38 pm (UTC)Re: From the article you pointed out...
Date: 2009-06-30 04:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-30 01:34 am (UTC)