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Monday, October 22, 2007 at 11:56 am
The thing is? The kid who had the big, triple-digit IQ was never the smartest one in the class. He was very often boring. And sure, he was usually smart enough, okay, but no smarter than half the kids I knew. As far as I was concerned, he looked the same as anybody else when he was picking his nose. At that time, in fact, a lot of us were told we were “as smart as Einstein” because we had been tested in school and done fairly well on whatever it was they were doing to us. My mother wouldn’t tell me mine, because the information would supposedly rot my brain and make me an egotistical jerk. So I never learned my IQ. It didn’t work anyhow, as anyone who knows me will tell you only too quickly. But whatever my IQ may be, it didn’t stop me from having all kinds of trouble in math and particularly physics, with its men walking backward in trains and people running counter-clockwise on Merry-Go-Rounds. I also do lousy on those Mensa tests you can take in your in-flight magazines. Craps has been explained to me so many times I’m ashamed to ask about it again. And I stink at chess. But my IQ? Fabu. All this is a roundabout way of saying that from a very early age I have believed that IQ was BS. I believe it’s basically a test to find out how good you are at being tested. Possibly it may also test how much time your parents may have spent trying to make you a genius. Now the nail, as far as I’m concerned, has been driven in the smarty-farty establishment by one of its very own experts, James R. Flynn. The article is in the current issue of Scientific American Mind, which I buy while I’m in airports and losing mine. Mr. Flynn is the discoverer of the “Flynn Effect,” which documents massive gains in IQ from one generation to another. This jump in tested intelligence has been demonstrated in research from some 30 nations — everywhere, actually, where IQ results over time have been studied. The editor of the magazine observes, “To express it another way, if we put the score of today’s average American at 100, then the Americans of 1900 had a mean IQ of 50 to 70, signaling an obviously implausible plague of mental retardation among our progenitors.” These, you may recall, are the folks to built our cities, split the Atom, invented the car and the airplane. Now Mr. Flynn tells us why. Conversely, the data reveal that young people of today are, like, 30 IQ points higher than their grandparents, and that the trend is continuing. People are getting smarter and smarter and smarter, at least according to the IQ industry. Now, that would be really encouraging news, if it didn’t seem like the exact opposite is the case. I believe any empirical study of our society would reveal that people are actually getting stupider all the time. I know I am. This situation is ameliorated by the fact that everybody around me is dumber than they used to be as well. It’s not like all the old guys are losing it and the younger X’s, Y’s and Zeros are coming up the ramp, either. For every Chad Hurley or Sergei Brin there’s a couple of K-Fed’s and two or three Miss South Carolinas. Beyond that, the general level of discourse, particularly among the young, while no stupider than, say, your average conversation on a street in rural France in 1680, is by no means any more elevated. Back then, they said “Zut!” when they bumped into each other. Now they say “Dude!” There’s a massive amount of complex scientific bushwah attending Flynn’s rationale for the ongoing bump in measured brainpower. You can read it. The question is important to him, because the data seem to contradict a) common sense and b) the value of IQ testing, which would be a disaster for a whole group of lab-coated people who make their livings on it. After reading as much as I could of the stuff, I think it basically boils down to one thing: kids trained to take tests do well on tests; people prepared for certain kinds of challenges do better than those who are not. For the most part, better babies notwithstanding, we’re all pretty average. It’s the guys with the high Killer Quotient who do best where I work. Isn’t it true that in today’s world, common sense and charisma will take you to far greater heights than simply being extremely intelligent? I’m in my mid-twenties and have already seen people waste years in law school to become glorified paralegals with no real prospects except the security of an okay job, and others accept that they are bad at physics or chemistry, and become EXTREMELY comfortable as plumbers and sales-people. Posted By Paul V, Brooklyn, NY : October 22, 2007 1:12 pm
This reminds me how useless the SAT is. When I graduated high school I went off to community college for two years, then I easily transfer into a university. Saved a crap load of money too and I never took the SAT. More useless tests that try to place people in cataglories. Posted By Michael, Baltimore MD : October 22, 2007 4:25 pm
I like having a high IQ. It makes me feel, well, smart. I like the fact that my kids have high IQs, it makes me feel like I did something right. Is that wrong? Posted By pal, Ontario, Canada : October 22, 2007 6:58 pm
Bing, that is one of the best blogs you have written lately. Everything you say is absolutely true. I simply refuse to believe that each generation is getting smarter. No offense people, but I have seen so many 20 and 30 year olds lacking in the most basic knowledge about important things like how to interview for a job, how to manage a checking account, how to conduct yourself in a public situation. Nope, I would like to submit that each generation is getting DUMBER. I could give you a million more examples but I will settle for just one more. Why are young people leaving college mired in debt. I was dirt poor, went thru 5 years of college, got my degree and graduated with almost no debt. How? I worked, I researched grants and other ways to pay for college. Got said grants, finished college. Believe it or not that actually took some brainpower to find this money to get through college. Just some observations on the matter. Posted By Jules, St. George Utah : October 23, 2007 11:41 am
Jules, Just some observations on the matter. Posted By Anonymous : October 23, 2007 1:23 pm
Bing, There is, however, some convincing evidence that the less educated reproduce more often (see Gary Becker). And to the extent that genetics and environment at a young age contribute greatly to one’s productivity, it’s certainly possible that the world is slowly getting dumber. But boomer’s disdain for Gen Yers (who they raised, by the way) is getting very old. (For what it’s worth, I a stuck-in-the-middle Gen Xer). Posted By Chris, NY NY : October 23, 2007 2:44 pm
i want to be a six figure asskisser Posted By don,florence,or. : October 23, 2007 4:32 pm
Hmm, Killer Quotient, I like that. Would some one do a study on it? Posted By sukardi, terengganu, malaysia : October 23, 2007 10:06 pm
Bing, I did like the blog though and many of the comments. I think peoples willingness to continue to learn is one of the most important measures of intelligence. No matter what your IQ (biased or not) you are no smarter than the sum of what you learn (in books and in life) and your ability to apply that knowledge to any different situation. Posted By Steve from Baltimore : October 24, 2007 2:41 pm
Hey Jules, wake up call, college costs a hell of a lot more than it used to when you were going. Grants and aid have also been reduced. Boomers criticize Yers for lacking “common sense” by this they mean balance a checkbook, know what to wear to a job interview, or whatever. First of all, who balances checkbooks anymore? I don’t even use checks, unless I absolutely have to. My debit/ATM card immediately updates my bank account online which I check multiple times a day. So who’s lacking common sense now? And the generalizations against Yers is really disgusting me. Get over yourselves. Now if we want to state that people my generation have poorer skills in math and english, you might be on to something. But less common sense? Ha! I know executives who can’t even check their own email! Learn to adapt, not criticize. Posted By Miles, San Diego CA : October 24, 2007 3:36 pm
Well, that degraded into a flame war between the boomers and the Gen Yers. Seriously, the amount of information that we seem to think is important is growing for each discipline but the amount of time we have to learn isn’t. What we’re seeing is a lot of highly specialized people who know their respective fields but are unable to function otherwise or are very limited in what they can do. Add to that all the nonsence studies that schools think are important and you have a recipe for disaster. It’s no wonder why we have the housing bust and monumental credit card debt and no retirement planning and high divorce rates. The problem is so out of control that our government is trying everything it can agree to try to make it easy to fix. But, to blame higher IQs is a cop out. The real problem isn’t not knowing but not wanting to know and not wanting to do better. Look at all the people who go to Starbucks for super over priced coffee. I’m sure it does taste good. For its price, it better be the best damned coffee in the world. But, do you really need it? Nah! No one does. We’ve become a society of instant gratification, a self serving greed on wheels, and what matters is the right now. No one seems to think that maybe they’d like to not have to work when they’re 80 years old. What gets me even more is all those that seem to think I shouldn’t think about such things either. And, this problem exists for boomers as well as Gen Ys. Killer IQ indeed. Perhaps we should call it Killer Self Centeredness. Posted By Ken, Elko, NV : October 25, 2007 7:44 pm
Genius does not equal success. It’s the killer quotient that creates the Masters of the Universe, not smarts. My own mother is a card-carrying member of Mensa. She tells me that many of her fellow Mensa members have ordinary – even blue collar – jobs. Half of them can’t balance their checkbook. Most are “socially-challenged.” They hang around each other because nobody else gets their jokes. My beloved mother herself has degrees and honors out the wahzoo, but is probably the most over-educated under-employed person I know. So much for brains! Obviously, Flynn needs to figure out how to bump up our killer quotient. Posted By Pat, Atlanta, GA : October 26, 2007 11:32 am
You disdain those with high IQs while claiming to have one, you laud the geniuses who split the atom but claim ignorance of physics… What gives? Posted By Martin, Brooklyn, NY : June 11, 2008 9:50 pm
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Stanley Bing
Stanley Bing is a Fortune columnist and best-selling author of business books noted for their wisdom as well as their sharp, slightly acrid sense of humor. He is also the only writer on business and the workplace who still puts on a suit and tie and goes to do battle with the dragons that breathe fire at corporate America every day. This blog captures what remains of his brain after it has exploded in all other directions.
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“Kids trained to take tests do well on tests.”
I completely agree.