I wonder if you could analyze internet discussions for an effect.

  • A_A@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Causes :
    long covid ?
    micro plastics ?
    screen time ?
    sedentarism ?
    fast food ?
    lack of sleep ?
    other ?

    • Capt. Wolf@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Heavy metal exposure

      Sugar

      The proliferation of food additives being used that are known to dramatically lower IQ

      The gelding of our education system by morons who favor religious dogma over scientific fact

      Criminally underfunded schools thanks to political leaders who see investing in future generations as budget waste

      Failure to teach children critical thinking skills before exposing them to technology that makes it simpler for them

      Being constantly bombarded and overstimulated every waking moment by media

      Being chronically overworked and underrested

      Climate change

      Take your pick. The answer is “probably, yes.”

    • collapse_already@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      All of these and more. Did you know our carbon emissions are changing the ratio of oxygen in the atmosphere as a whole? Guess which species is known to get dumber when oxygen deprived. Don’t worry about the warming ocean’s increasing acidity, it just makes the ocean a more difficult habitat for the phytoplankton that make 65%of the oxygen in the atmosphere.

      I’m sure our normalcy bias will protect us or maybe the invisible space monkey will save his favorite primates if we can commit a few more hate crimes in his name.

      • A_A@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Lead was a much bigger problem in the 1970 when it was in road vehicles fuels. But now its only use in some small plane fuels. There is also much less use of lead paint and lead in water pipe systems.
        N.B. : Study in that article is about decline from 2010 until today in 15-year-olds.

    • Llewellyn@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      In my personal observations less intelligent people tend to have more children.
      Therefore population IQ drifts towards bottom.

      I suspect that’s because they do not fully understand all their future struggles and fates of their children in the world, fucked up by climate crisis and resource scarcity.

      • Ecco the dolphin@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        This is the plot to a fictional movie. Intelligence is a factor of many things, and most of those factors are not genetic.

        Your observation seems close to the opinions of old school eugenicists. “The wrong people are having children”.

        • iarigby@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          it is not genetic, it is environmental. Children of parents with less intelligence will not be raised to be intelligent. They might be lucky/resilience and try to get the most support outside the house, but it is much harder to accomplish, and often is even met with harassment at home, due to the rest of the family being insecure about their own lack of intelligence. And that is only if they rebel, which is not necessarily true as they will not only lack easy access to basic knowledge about the world/science, but will also not be introduced to the importance of learning about it from their closest figures of authority. Escaping that cycle it is even harder if the family is facing economic hardship, which is true for most modern families in general. It really isn’t that hard to figure that out, the kneejerk reaction that the statement always gets is annoying.

          • Ecco the dolphin@lemmy.ml
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            2 months ago

            the kneejerk reaction that the statement always gets is annoying.

            I agree with everything you said, but I’m going to point out something. If there is a common kneejerk reaction to some particular topic, there’s probably a reason for that. You yourself said its annoying? I suppose its predictable then. If you can predict that people are going to react in some way, you can write with more explanation to clarify that you aren’t actually supporting something like eugenics. The poster I’m responding to did not do this.

            I took this lack of explanation as support (which, on reflection, might be leaping to conclusions). The overall tone of the comment is rather judgemental.

            The commenter is also wrong; IQ hasn’t been “drifting towards the bottom”, the average IQ increases every year. Its why they have to constantly adjust the tests, because 100 is meant to be an average score by design. This is primarily why I chose to respond to him. He’s not saying " which is why we should invest in family planning" or “we should invest in children’s education”, he’s making an untrue statement, and then pretending that this will cause some sort of feedback loop. Dumb people making more dumb people.

            IQ is not some absolute quantitative metric of intelligence. The people who treat it like it is… I find that a lot of them are pushing some sort of angle or simply don’t understand it.

            • shani66@ani.social
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              19 days ago

              A kneejerk reaction from an unreasonable populace doesn’t mean shit. If i point out the Christian religion is cartoonishly evil most people will have a kneejerk reaction to defend the evil religion, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          The problem with eugenics is proposed solutions, or criteria based of prejudice.

          I claim it’s both fine and correct to state that the wrong people have too many children. You’re the wrong people if you have more children than you can adequately care for, to raise sufficiently for them to have a successful life. You’re the wrong people if you have children you’re not prepared for or otherwise can’t commit to raising or don’t have the ability to raise.

          It’s wrong, eugenics, when

          • it’s prejudicial such as based on race, culture, religion
          • you’re judging another person’s worth, their rights on that worth, or their opportunities on their worth
          • you take it to an extreme, such as only the wealthy should have children.
          • you prescribe a solution that imposes your will on other people, or worse, legal or medical intervention


          Better answers include

          • better education helps people make better choices
          • better medical care helps people know their choice will succeed
          • better safety nets help each child succeed even when their parents made a poor choice or had unexpected life events
          • better childcare options help give the parents a chance to succeed with trying to earn a living while raising a child
    • TheFogan@programming.dev
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      2 months ago

      idiocracy intro?

      (IE the theory it pushed was in short, smart people do family planning, try to wait for everything to be perfect… and forget to get around to having kids).

      Meanwhile on the less intelligent spectrum. Shit I’m pregnant again!!!.. Oh and I got the girl in the trailer next door pregnant.

      Or for a real world example… look at Lauren Boebert, the 35 year old grandmother in congress.

      • A_A@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Yes absolutely (and i was afraid to say it out loud).
        But now, we have also to explain why it did not so much apply in the past millennias … or tens of past millenias. (again, i am afraid to say it … don’t want a shitstorm)

        • TheFogan@programming.dev
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          2 months ago

          The massive lowering of the bar of “good enough to stay alive”. Life expectancy was consistantly in the 30s up until the 1870s. Simply having kids was life threatening… doing so while malnourished even more so.

          Natural selection favors traits that increase the odds of having offspring, as well as those that avoid death before having offspring. Avoiding death is a lot easier than it used to be.