Comments on: Are We Really Getting Smarter? https://www.isegoria.net/2012/10/are-we-really-getting-smarter/ From the ancient Greek for equality in freedom of speech; an eclectic mix of thoughts, large and small Mon, 09 Nov 2026 14:48:14 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6.1 By: Bruce Charlton https://www.isegoria.net/2012/10/are-we-really-getting-smarter/comment-page-1/#comment-605006 Bruce Charlton Mon, 15 Oct 2012 14:51:59 +0000 http://www.isegoria.net/?p=30232#comment-605006 On second thought, I can think of some reasons why the distribution of Victorian IQ might have a negative skew! But the point stands that there is no compelling reason to suppose it would be symmetrically distributed around the mean, when calibrated using modern values.

]]> By: Bruce Charlton https://www.isegoria.net/2012/10/are-we-really-getting-smarter/comment-page-1/#comment-604855 Bruce Charlton Mon, 15 Oct 2012 06:09:51 +0000 http://www.isegoria.net/?p=30232#comment-604855 Like JJ said.

Michael A Woodley is currently working on trying to quantify this decline more precisely, but it seems to be of the order of a standard deviation decline in the average.

However, I personally don’t think the variance would be the same. Indeed there is no reason to assume that the distribution of Victorian IQ would be normal; it’s more likely to have a positive skew.

]]> By: James James https://www.isegoria.net/2012/10/are-we-really-getting-smarter/comment-page-1/#comment-604533 James James Sun, 14 Oct 2012 15:24:38 +0000 http://www.isegoria.net/?p=30232#comment-604533 Bruce Charlton thinks we are getting stupider. He notes that reaction speed is a good proxy for IQ, and reaction speeds are getting slower, therefore we may be getting stupider.

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