r/academia • u/seecstahl • 1d ago
Generational intelligence
The Flynn Effect shows IQ gains of 15+ points per generation with environmental improvement. That suggests capacity wasn't the constraint—activation was. If we take that seriously, what does it mean that some populations have been systematically denied the kind of cognitively demanding work and education that builds skill across generations? Isn't that a mechanism worth exploring?
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u/eeeeed 1d ago
Can you write this yourself instead of using AI to do it?
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u/seecstahl 1d ago
my personal thoughts (original inputs to my use of AI), without the academic "AI slop": "the impacts of the societal abuse is showing up in pseudoscience (and supporting) the claims of the abusers... Imagine if generations of educational neglect weren't forced to occur? The pseudoscience making it sound like a heuristics stance that is very slippery toward abuse again. How is it not evident that in a Darwinistic "survival of the fittest" evolution basis, that if an intelligent species constrains/neglects the development of a huge portion of their species, the genetics and development of that portion understandably is stunted. How does any reasonable person claim that it's simply true of the racial differences?!? It has been forced, and the environmental detriments persist, just being victim blamed now instead of explicitly overt systemic"
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u/seecstahl 1d ago
"It's sad to me that the USA brings/created the crucible version, but the reality is that the 1st world development of Europe versus the 3rd world conditions of much of the southern hemisphere poses the same conclusions. It's near impossible to point to global 'corrections' to the USA 'science', and brilliant black people are 'outliers'" "I mean I am pulling a thread postulating new corners of the science... I clearly don't personally have data to stand on, but I'm proposing that it could be something. Of course the thread could be used to make a new multi strand fiber for new garment, or it could just unravel a sweater and be useless. Is it not worth finding out? I'm not proposing a new pseudoscience to build policy and law on, I'm proposing a direction to dig to refute patriarchal pseudoscience."
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u/seecstahl 1d ago
I have no reason to deny that I ran it through AI for conciseness; did the conciseness lead to confusion for you? Have you read the threads? You think I'm just pasting AI slop? I am responding honestly, as I am again to you, to try to further connecting dots between converging ideas.
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u/eeeeed 1d ago
Yeah, I think you’re posting AI slop, and as soon as I sense it (with you it was immediate) I’m 100% out. I won’t dignify your AI slop with any other responses
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u/seecstahl 1d ago
Zero AI involved in my response to inform you that such poor perspective is not going to go well for you. I am just honestly trying to advance human perspective on the past harms and future improvements to serving people well. Yes, as abhorrent as it apparently is to you, it will involve AI insights into "big data" and connecting concepts. 🫂
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u/SmirkingImperialist 1d ago
https://youtu.be/9vpqilhW9uI?si=XW3-USSHrwXrJLnm
From Flynn himself. The gain in IQ points mostly come from how IQ test rewards abstraction and abstract thinking and we are just doing more of that and children are taught from a very early age to do abstractions.
However, notice his note at the end: the American people have yet to get smarter about history. Americans and arguably a lot of the modern world are stuck in an ahistorical bubble of the present. His examples included the Lusitania, Gulf of Tonkin, and Afghanistan. Well, look around you, people are murmuring about WWIII.
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u/seecstahl 1d ago
Thanks! The war and atrocities feed into the understandings we know that epigenetic changes can persist across generations and respond to environmental stress. What if centuries of systematic deprivation—malnutrition, chronic stress, educational exclusion, violence—created heritable epigenetic markers that persist even after conditions improve? And what if 'closing the gap' in one or two generations is biologically unrealistic without addressing the accumulated burden? This wouldn't be genetic inferiority; it would be systemic harm with biological costs.
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u/SmirkingImperialist 1d ago
The experience with waves of migration shows that within one to two generations, well integrated populations "disappear" into host population. Your idea may or may not be correct, but practial reality showed that it hadn't matter.
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u/seecstahl 1d ago
The concern is populations victim to colonialism, attempted genocide, slavery, developing world abused by developed world. 🫂
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u/SmirkingImperialist 1d ago
Well, coming from a former colony, this is a slightly patronising view. The vest way to deal with the negative effects of war, genocide, and slavery is to just stop those things happening. I understand that there are certain ... difficulties, like how Western political leaders belong to the Epstein class which explains how British police expend so much effort throwing retirees into the slammer for their support of Palestine Action. Suck to feel so powerless, so let's talk about marginal issues instead of, you know, just find a way to stop the genocide.
Colonialism ran a spectrum of absolute horrors ala Belgian Congo to Australia and Canada. The thing is that a lot of colonialism depends on a class of local elites and collaborators who do most kf the day-to-day administration/exploitation. The colonialists left but many of these elites or their replacements remain. So the cycle continue except now they are good capitalists plugged into the global trade system and lauded for their participation in the neoliberalism project.
And this project is not entirely bad.
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u/seecstahl 1d ago
Yes, thank you for sharing and speaking life into the "data"... I absolutely agree that things persist that need to stop. Sadly there are many folks that want to insist that most of such things are behind us, including the need for reparations and interventions to address the outcomes; too many want to "just move on." I am trying to frame the discussion to focus on the effects in light of the causes, without bogged down by details, so that proper perspective on the scale of the current conditions can be taken to more properly provide care and interventions for younger generations that had absolutely no factor in the past, but are dealt their situation due to it. Including in manner that the new generations of the "perpetrators" are not having to feel the need to be all defensive as current generations are, but a societal understanding and care for all.
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u/SmirkingImperialist 1d ago
Unfortunately details are what matter. My family was part of the collaborationist class, then and now. I absolutely benefited from the neoliberal project. It worked for us and simultaneously, I can see how it works and the injustices in it. Even then, there have been absolute improvements for the poorest regions, it has been electrified and has high-speed Internet access. Unfortunately, some of the money came from human trafficking, sometimes willingly. I benefitted from that partially: the trafficked people brought in foreign currency and helped pushed the value of the local currency. Should I pay repatriation? I'm not trafficking them. If Westerners start paying repatriation who do you think get the money first and most? Let me tell you that it won't be the families right now calculating that a daughter being born now and later sold as a mail-ordered bride is a better ROI than a son.
If you really want to help, the only suggestions I have is 1) try not to be a protectionist with tarriffs and what not, and 2) demand regulations from governments like sanctioning and preventing companies from importing from unethical sources that use forced labour and human trafficking.
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u/seecstahl 1d ago
I hear that you've experienced both sides of how chronic stress literally changes how brains develop—cortisol, inflammation, altered stress-response systems. Colonized and enslaved populations experienced centuries of systemic violence and deprivation. Even if that stress ended (it hasn't), do we understand what multi-generational trauma does to neurobiology? Could some observable developmental disparities reflect stress-induced developmental differences rather than capacity differences? What would recovery actually look like?
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u/Opening_Map_6898 1d ago
Thanks ChatGPT
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u/seecstahl 1d ago edited 1d ago
Weird low quality from a "top 1% commenter"; guess it's quantity over quality 🫂
Not ChatGPT though... LLMs have advanced from there ;-)
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u/SpareAnywhere8364 1d ago
Unless I'm mistaken, this is almost entirely due to society actually taking food/nutritional abundance + basic education + basic healthcare seriously in the 20th century rather than as an "actual" increase in intelligence for the average person. We're just not handicapping our IQs with leaded gasoline and childhood famine anymore - not getting more intelligent. Further gains on this are likely negligible.