#1
We had much to celebrate in the 1980s, when a New Zealand intelligence researcher revealed that humanity was getting smarter. James R. Flynn’s research found that there had been a consistent rise in IQ test scores across the world throughout the 20th century.
The phenomenon became known as the Flynn Effect. Some credited better nutrition, education, and healthcare for the boost in our collective brainpower. Whatever it was, it was working and we were clearly doing something right.
#2
Sometimes she makes the 9 hour drive back home, and she plays a game to keep herself alert.
She adds up the numbers that she sees on license plates of passing cars and then add all of the cars' totals' together. She tries to go as long as she can.
I think she's brilliant and insane.
EDIT: she hopes to work as a research intern for NASA this summer. She loves space.
#3
Well, she tossed it one day and it got stuck in someone's shoe. She dug her nose in to try getting it out, but it didn't work. She dragged the shoe over to another shoe and tugged at it until it was on top, then pushed it over. We all stopped what we were doing to look. She put the shoe back on top of the other again and gave it another shove with a little more force.
The ball came tumbling out and she ran off like nothing happened. It was awesome.
Sadly, the celebration would be short-lived... Just ten years later, it emerged that IQ scores were declining in developed countries around the world. Flynn himself noted that teenagers in the U.K. tested lower in the 2000s than their 1980s counterparts.
But years earlier, Norwegian experts had already sounded the alarm. "Because of its compulsory military service, the country had amassed a massive database of cognitive testing—covering more than 730,000 young men from 1962 to today," explains Cezary Pietrasik, co-owner of Synerise, an AI company that specializes in human behavior prediction. "What researchers found was stunning: IQ scores peaked among those born around 1975 and have been declining since. The average drop is about 7 points per generation."
#4
#5
#6
"The world is dumber, and we all know it," wrote Lane Brown for New York magazine in 2025. "Lately, it feels like that culture-wide upgrade to our mental operating systems has been rolled back to an older and buggier version."
So what is going on that's causing this continued dip in intelligence? Some say it's because we're depending on AI to do the jobs our brains once handled. Others blame social media and say we're glued to our screens instead of stuck in good books. Then there are those who believe that COVID-19 played a part.
#7
And any song he could hear just once and play it back.. just bonkers.
#8
The legend says he went back to his planet after blowing his cover with this move.
#9
EDIT: A bit more context. We live in Prague, and in here is not uncommon to be in a group of people where everybody has a different nationality and a different language, so in that context imagine if you are in this group of people and there's a guy speaking fluently in every persons language, it's actually quite impressive.
But not everyone believes that the world is getting dumber and dumber. Some experts argue that we shouldn't use traditional IQ scores to measure collective intelligence. One of them is Dr Philip Njemanze, a neurologist and Chairman of the International Institutes of Advanced Research and Training Centre at Chidicon Medical Centre in Nigeria.
Njemanze says that older IQ tests were not designed to measure things like digital navigation, rapid visual processing, multitasking across screens, and filtering large amounts of online information.
"General intelligence, in simple terms, is the brain’s overall ability to reason, solve problems, and adapt to new situations," he explains, adding that, “We may not be witnessing a loss of intelligence, but rather a shift in the type of cognitive skills being developed in a digital environment."
#10
This guy was a genius. He had already done the entire syllabus (A-Levels) and spent all of his time in classes working on university level problems. In class, he would sit there, working on some unsolvable theorem, while we morons were being taught matrices, calculus, normal dist, and other basic stuff he probably learnt when he was 5 years old. He would only interact when the entire class was stumped on a particular question, he glances up and tells us the answer. Pretty sure he won all the science and general academic achievement awards too. Later he went to Cambridge, and I joked with him if he was top 5 in his year in maths. 'Top 5,' he said, 'Hmm, maybe top 10'.
I know some seriously clever people, people who've gone to Oxbridge, Harvard, people studying PhDs in economics, etc, but this guy was miles ahead of them. I wouldn't be surprised if he won a Nobel Prize at some point. That reminds me, got to keep in contact with him...
#11
#12
Software engineer, interned at several large tech companies and currently works at one. Fantastic programmer and engineer. She's even designed her own PCBs for electronics projects she's done.
Knows several languages including French, Arabic, Japanese, Mandarin, Hindi, Tamil, and some Spanish and German.
Has an immense amount of general knowledge, not sure how she knows so much. I guess she has a good brain for storing information because she reads a lot of comics and plays a lot of games and it always seems like she knows 100% of the lore for those things.
She plays a bunch of instruments as well, including piano, electric guitar, bass, and violin.
And she is a really good artist. Not talking about "oh, that's nice" kind of art. Like she could be a full blown game or movie concept artist, her art is just that fantastic.
Finally, she's also just really good at reading people, which is a hugely underrated talent.
Not sure how some people can be like that. Makes me feel so inadequate.
Forgot to add: she's also a jewelry designer and an author. Lol.
Pietrasik, however, isn't convinced. He says even if we don't consider the IQ decline, we're still facing a situation where there is an increase in functional illiteracy. He defines this as the "inability to perform basic reading and math tasks necessary for everyday life."
The expert backs up his warning with some sobering stats from the U.K. "1 in 10 people couldn’t identify the better deal between a 10% discount and a £30 discount on a £250 television (the latter saves more money, but sounds less appealing to the innumerate)," Pietrasik writes. "In the EU, up to 40% of adults in countries like Romania and Portugal are considered functionally illiterate. Even in high-performing Sweden, that number is still 8%."
#13
#14
There was no free ice cream given on that day.
#15
He also spoke four lauguages, and won the shot-put gold in the Senior Olympics. Why the Hell he was teaching high school Spanish and drivers ed puzzles me every time I think about it.
Things aren't much better across the pond in the United States, he says.
"Roughly 45 million Americans read below a fifth-grade level," reveals the expert. "And in 2018, a Pew Research study found that only 26% of Americans could reliably distinguish fact from opinion in written text. Among 15-year-olds globally, that number drops to just 14%."
#16
#17
The other cousin stands there staring at the horizon for about 15 minutes, comes over to our table and says "6:36."
When we figured out what he was telling us; he stood there and figured out the variables and calculated when the sun would set. In his head!
We tracked the sun. At 6:36, it hits the horizon. The dude is just a quiet guy. We know he's smart, but forget how smart because he's never loud about it.
#18
He could recite entire pages, down to the number of the page, of any book he read. (And he was very, very well read.)
I guess he brute forced his way through school on nothing but an impressive memory. Maintained pretty standard A's and B's throughout his course work, which was surprising given his lowish IQ.
It was actually pretty eerie.
Actually a really cool guy. Used to debate philosophy and psychology based issues with him because we used both subjects as a hobby. He taught me more than my teachers.
In his view, the dumbing down of the global population has less to do with failing education systems or student laziness and more to do with what's deemed 'normal' by society.
"It’s about a culture in which intellectual laziness is not only tolerated but increasingly rewarded," he warns. "When celebrity status trumps expertise, when emotional outrage outweighs rational discourse, and when the loudest voice wins over the most informed—what hope is there for cognitive resilience?"
What do you think? Are we getting dumber by the day or are we right where we're meant to be? Let us know in the comments below...
#19
Anyway, somebody said for me to ask him what day of the week I was born on, by simply telling him my birthdate: month, day and year.
So I did, he quickly said IT WAS A TUESDAY.
Hmm, says me. My mother always said It was a Thursday.
So I googled it. He was right, mom was wrong.
Amazing.
#20
