From: Steve Davies (steve365@btinternet.com)
Date: Sun Apr 22 2001 - 12:41:03 MDT
-----Original Message-----
From: hal@finney.org <hal@finney.org>
To: extropians@extropy.org <extropians@extropy.org>
Date: 22 April 2001 18:28
Subject: Re: Flynn Effect explained?
>Charlie forwards:
>> See http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,476639,00.html
>> ...
>> >But more important is a stimulating environment, which makes people
think
>> >more, prompting them to choose yet more stimulation. The smarter you
are,
>> >the more likely you are to enjoy books, puzzles and challenging jobs.
That
>> >in turn gets your brain working more and you choose even higher levels
>> >of stimulation in a virtuous circle of intelligence. 'Higher IQ leads
>> >one to better environments, causing still higher IQ,' said the report.
>
>
>I think you need to introduce the notion that technology is making the
>world inherently more stimulating. It's not that people are choosing
>more challenges, it's that the world is a more challenging place.
>With modern communications - first widespread literacy and newspapers,
>then the telegraph, telephone, recorded music, movies, television and
>now the internet - each generation is being exposed to more information.
>Given the increased complexity of the world, the explanation above begins
>to make sense (and I should note that it has been widely discussed in
>the past, here on this list at least).
>
>Hal
>
This makes a lot of sense to me. It would also explain a related phenomenon,
that people from a rural background have consistently lower IQ scores than
those from an urban one, also that as a population becomes more urbanised
its IQ score tends to rise.
Steve Davies
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