Did you know that you're dumber than your parents, who are stupider than the imbeciles who bore them? Yeah, I am, too!
A new study confirms what our grandparents have probably been muttering to themselves for decades: human intelligence is taking a plunge — at least, it is in the Western world. Researchers have found that since the Victorian era (that’s circa 1884, blockhead), our collective IQ has fallen more than 14 points, and is steadily sinking by an average of 1.23 points per decade.
Since they didn’t have IQ tests back then, researchers had to analyze those clever Victorians’ smarts by their reaction time. Apparently, how quickly you respond to visual stimuli is a strong indicator of how innately brilliant you are… or aren’t. Funny, because I thought one’s reaction time (don’t they also call this reflex?) was something you could improve upon. But what do I know? I’m just not that smart.
If I had to guess what’s to blame for our doltishness, I would say the usual: crap reality TV and processed food rotting our brains; anything on the Internet that dumbs everything down (hey, big words are scary); and our general distaste for books. Books… You remember those? You pretended to read them in college? Block-looking things made of paper?
Course, I’m not a scientist, which is a good thing. Because my hypothesis is completely and totally wrong (well, for the most part, anyway). According to the guys and lady who wrote the paper, it has more to do with the less intelligent among us having propensity to procreate. It seems that smarter people tend to get knocked up no more than once or twice in a lifetime (if at all). Perhaps it’s just that they’re too busy being creative geniuses to make time for life-draining (but so cute!) babies. Or maybe the Einsteins of the world just don’t know how to talk to members of the opposite sex and fail to meet a reproductive mate.