Tag Archives: IQ

Amerikan Cognitive Collapse

13 Friday Aug 2021

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I forgot this as part of my Census update – a sure sign of advancing age…

A recent study of infant IQs in Rhode Island bodes horribly for the future.

In the decade preceding the pandemic, the mean IQ score on standardised tests for children aged between three months and three years of age hovered around 100, but for children born during the pandemic that number tumbled to 78[!!!], according to the analysis, which is yet to be peer-reviewed.

“It’s not subtle by any stretch,” said Deoni. “You don’t typically see things like that, outside of major cognitive disorders.”

The study included 672 children from the state of Rhode Island. Of these, 188 were born after July 2020 and 308 were born prior to January 2019, while 176 were born between January 2019 and March 2020. The children included in the study were born full-term, had no developmental disabilities and were mostly white.

Those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds fared worse in the tests, the researchers found.

The biggest reason behind the falling scores is likely the lack of stimulation and interaction at home, said Deoni. “Parents are stressed and frazzled … that interaction the child would normally get has decreased substantially.”

Whether these lower cognitive scores will have a long-term impact is unclear.

No, the long-term impact is clear as the Bell Curve. Maybe something else explains this tragedy, but given the current state of affairs, one answer presents itself kicking, screaming, and demanding attention. Kindly disregard all of the BS about the hoax-demic. It is much more likely that this decline is related to demographics.

Per the available 2020 numbers, RI fares a little better than the USSA as a whole in overall percentages. However, one can or could safely assume the mainstream trends are in full effect in the state. So, that means most of the 2020 births could have easily been to non-Whites. RI has a rather low Asian population as well. Thus, the 100 and 100+ mean scores are practically eliminated. I must say that 78 is low even if the data came almost exclusively from Hispanics, Blacks, and “Mixed” populations, the three largest minorities in RI. It is possible that some of the environmental noise the study mentions could have dropped the average to 78. (Honestly, one might expect it to be a half SD higher). But it’s just as likely that this is a “new normal” nightmare in which the majority of the people having children are: 1) dumb natives (lower IQs follow lower socioeconomic standing and slower people tend to have more children, within and without a manufactured hoax-demic), and; 2) dumb invaders (if migration patterns into RI follow the dismal national trend, then they’re getting people from places with averages in the 60s and 70s).

Time will tell, specifically as to these RI kids, and more generally about the USSA. As-was, IQs were collapsing. When the first world stops having children and only imports replacements from the third world, it becomes the third world. 78 is only just below the world’s average and only just above clinical retardation. It may not be sufficient to keep the lights on, the water flowing, or the food growing. Demographics = destiny.

In a not-unrelated story, PhDs are the most reluctant to get “jabbed” with the mRNA poison. The highly educated tend to be more intelligent, if not as intelligent as duller people suspect. Even as the learned class hasn’t had the foresight to reproduce itself to or past replacement levels, at least we’re smart enough not to stupidly kill ourselves or preclude the possibility of reproduction via chemical sterilization.

A side note: much of my limited socialization is among those with PhDs, MD, JDs, and/or multiple MAs. I can only think of a very few who have had the hoax. All of them were, let’s say, a little less than healthy to start with, yet all of them recovered without issue.

 

 

Make Them Invulnerable

14 Wednesday Apr 2021

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Make Them Invulnerable

 

Last week’s column struck a nerve with me, a depressing if predictable nerve. Compared to those at the top, the people at the bottom of a double Hollingworth gap are not just relatively retarded. They are, in a relative sense, profoundly retarded. It’s akin to the mental difference between a person of ordinary intelligence and a house cat. This week, happily, I’m addressing those of us on the far right tail of the curve.

I never liked school – from kindergarten through graduate school. I especially detested my short-lived experience with the “enrichment” program in middle school. I only lasted a few weeks before I absolutely refused to participate. The pitiful government school I attended was bad enough. The special program was worse. At the time, someone should have foreseen the incompatibility. 

Just before I was subjected to that particular draining make-work project, a relevant paper was published: Vulnerabilities of Highly Gifted Children, Wendy Roedell, Roeper Review, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1984)(read it HERE). Roedell briefly outlined the difference between “gifted” and “extraordinarily gifted,” ever cognizant of the semi-subjective assessment and application of both labels. 

Her work is good, great even, and thus, it has been roundly ignored, especially her overly-optimistic conclusion: “As information about the needs of highly gifted children becomes more widespread, and society’s expectations become more closely attuned to the realities of gifted development, the degree of vulnerability of these children will diminish.” If only.

The ensuing period of nearly forty years has seen many things. America has degenerated into a ridiculously stupid third-world cesspool. The schools – almost all publics and most privates – have dropped even the pretense of Western educational standards. And, while the existence of the UHIQ is reluctantly acknowledged, society has adopted an almost universal bias against the cognitive elite. This is the phenomenon Tom Ironsides observed in THE SUBSTITUTE when he occasionally encountered a languishing child of true intelligence in the wild. It is the same treatment he received from a system blindly obsessed with meaningless credentials. Sadly, the experience is not limited to fiction.

No child deserves to be trapped in a failed modern Amerikan school. While some do much better than others, exceptional children are failed in exceptional fashion. Those children above 140 WAIS (or SB) are utterly tortured. In many cases, programs allegedly there to help, in fact, hinder.

As I’ve written previously, the only way to assist a truly intelligent child is for his parents to point him in what they think is the right direction and then step aside and see how far he can go. This isn’t necessarily easy. The parents may not know that correct direction. They may have communication difficulties with their son. And, as is usually the case, they may be plagued with a desire to control that which is not ultimately controllable. If the process is done properly or if it is even attempted, then it is best done within the loose framework of unschooling, self-directed homeschooling, or the Sudbury Valley model.

Back in 1984, Roedell saw the need to remove the bright child from the doldrums of the standard classroom: “Highly gifted children experience increased vulnerability when they spend large portions of their time in inappropriate educational settings. The more a gifted child’s abilities differ from the norm, the more inappropriate becomes the educational program offered in the regular classroom.” She nailed the problems with “enrichment” programs: 

Many programs for gifted children also constitute inappropriate environments for the extraordinarily gifted child … In some school districts, the content of the gifted enrichment class is not linked logically to the identification system. … Even when the child’s abilities and the content of the program are linked, the learning pace of the program may be geared to the level of the moderately gifted child.

The cat comparison is hyperbole, but it is accurate.

It is important to remember that a child with an IQ of 164 is as different intellectually from a child with an IQ of 132 as that child is different from the 100 IQ child. Forcing a child with an IQ of 164 to learn at the pace of the average child, or even the pace of the moderately gifted, is akin to placing an average child in a special education classroom and asking that his/her learning rate be slowed down to keep pace with the rest of the class. The frustration of highly gifted children forced to stifle their love of learning in inhospitable environments can result in withdrawal, behavior problems, or psychosomatic symptoms.

That was my experience in both the special program, specifically, and the schools in general. Then, and worse today, the problem is compounded by a number of factors. First, the schools are geared towards low-achievers; ultra and very high-ability students are seen as nonconforming nuisances. The programs, all of them, are designed to indoctrinate rather than to educate. The people who plan and organize curriculum, general and advanced, have ulterior motives. The “gifted and talented” courses are most appropriate to the all-rounders, and, these days, best suit the needs and proclivities of female students. That is great, though it is of no service to the young minds with the most to offer an ailing country and culture. Additionally, the instructors in charge of even the special programs, in most cases, simply cannot communicate at the appropriate mental level with the most advanced students in their care.

A child forced to endure such low-level foolishness will endure. He may very well continue to perform well, grade-wise, into college or even law school. But, by being denied a real start, he will always be behind his potential. And he will come to resent or even hate the system and those who operate it and those to whom it primarily caters. And, in the end, he will become adrift in a society that denigrates intelligence – more to its detriment than to that of the high-IQ pariahs. 

The sane alternative is relatively simple. Don’t expect smart children to succeed and do not “help” them. Rather, let them succeed. Give them the necessary tools and encouragement and then let them build. What is rightly seen as vulnerability, if properly channeled, can become great strength, beneficial both to the children and to the greater society. A system designed by and for 90 IQ simpletons cannot and will not help. This is up to us. They are our children, after all. Make them invulnerable.

The Demographic Desert: Third-world Cognition in Amerika

07 Wednesday Apr 2021

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The Demographic Desert: Third-world Cognition in Amerika

 

Again, it’s Identity > Culture > Politics. That order. Leading the others, demographics is, as they say, “destiny.” One of the supremely important factors of that destiny, which helps foster culture and politics, is average intelligence. In the USSA and across much of the West, national average IQs are slipping if not collapsing.

Before we enter into the exciting base matter for today’s discussion, I’d once more like to plug the near-definitive At Our Wits’ End by Dutton and Woodley (2018). That book exposed the alarming rate of decline of approximately .4 IQ points per year in places like the UK and the USSA. The primacy of intelligence has been acknowledged more recently: National Intelligence Is More Important for Explaining Country Well-Being than Time Preference and Other Measured Non-Cognitive Traits, Kirkegaard, et al (2020). 

The dystopian trend in the USSA was most recently expounded upon at the BPEA Spring Conference, March 25, 2021, and a paper authored by Caroline Hoxby, Advanced Cognitive Skill Deserts in the U.S.: Their Likely Causes and Implications. Check out the map at that linked summary and see if you’re in a cognitive skill desert. 

In Advanced cognitive skill deserts in the U.S.: Their likely causes and implications, Caroline M. Hoxby of Stanford University maps county-level data from standardized tests to show which regions have higher percentages of adults and children with advanced skills and which areas have lower percentages. She compares data for adults, 12th graders, 8th graders, 5th graders, and 3rd graders and finds that regional patterns, evident among adults, only begin to emerge by 8th grade and are similar to adults by 12th grade.

I’ve noted more than once that children trapped in failed government schools, and that’s ninety percent of USian children, demonstrate, via systemic standardized tests, a decrease in mathematical ability proportionate to their tenure in the so-called schools. Proficiency scores fall from elementary school to middle school to high school. The schools literally dumb the kids down, in terms of cognitive application, to the level of the average USian adult. That is exactly what Hoxby found. That is exactly what the “schools” were designed to accomplish. It’s a feature, not a flaw.

Of course, math, while last in the acronym, is the first and foremost building block of the STEM idol everyone claims to adore these days. Without it, there is no science or engineering, no advanced modern systems or convenient technologies. These are the numerically centered of the advanced skills Hoxby is concerned with. She focused on the middle school years, finding these to be the time of greatest development potential for higher-order reasoning, logical expression, abstract thinking, and critical inspection. Few if any of those subjects are taught, embraced, or even tolerated in today’s failed government schools. No foundation is laid and the “age of opportunity” in middle school is wasted. 

Hoxby found that – surprise, surprise – larger, higher-tech cities which attract more capable adults also generally have better advanced-thinking scores among the children of those adults. There is also the inescapable pattern of more advanced thinking in the northern parts of the USSA compared with the relative dearth of advanced cognition in the south. 

Still, she remains optimistic, reasoning that as with a geographic desert the mental deserts only require watering, the right water being increased spending. That is noble and, to a small degree, plausible, but it misses the larger causative factor – changing demographics. To put this bluntly, as seen on the map, locations with higher intelligence tend to have populations with higher concentrations of Europeans (and Asians). Areas with higher numbers of other peoples tend to exhibit lower intelligence averages. This isn’t a coincidence. It’s science, though a kind of science seemingly unwelcome in places where STEM is promoted.

The schools themselves are only partly to blame. They, after all, are products of policy and politics. Their work, good or bad, is tolerated in accordance with the norms of the resident culture. All of it is determined by identity. And since 1965, formerly White Christian European America has changed markedly, morphing into the United States of Multiculturalism. The effect of this change on average intelligence is akin to adding paint thinner to paint – both become thinner, diluted. 

In a macro social sense, two things have happened and continue to happen that drive down the average IQ of the USSA. First, intelligent Americans do not reproduce. Native-born citizens of lower intelligence do have children. This is encouraged and in many cases subsidized. Those with higher IQs have few – and increasingly no – children. As the mentally challenged are rewarded, so the intelligent are in a way penalized. An entire society, economy, and the government have come to bear on them, driving them into faithless, work-obsessed, pleasure-obsessed, debt-enslaved, taxed, corporate hedonism that all but forbids the introduction to the world of new, young intelligent people. This domestic evisceration of the cognitive elite is bad enough. However, it is coupled with the second phenomenon, the nearly exclusive importation of lower-IQ foreigners. Paint + thinner = thinner paint. Import the third-world, become the third-world, IQs and all.

For fun, let’s see how this works out in reality. I picked Newton County, Georgia for no reason in particular. Per the 2019 Census estimates, Newton has a population of 111,744. The county’s demographic breakdown is as follows: Black, 47.7%; White, 43.9%; Hispanic, 6.1%; Mixed, 2.2%; Asian, 1.2%; Am. Indian, .5%; Pacific, .1%. These percentages add up to 101.7% … which confirms the government source. I am cognizant of the fact that the 2020 estimates, in advance of the full count, are available as per national percentage increases for Blacks and Hispanics. Newton is likely on the leading curve of those advances. However, I will, for now, ignore those changes and make a slight correction so as to accumulate a realistic 100% total population. Let’s call it 48% Black, 43% White, 7% Hispanic, and 2% Asian/Other. 

Now, we play the weighted average IQ game. I’m going to lump Blacks and Hispanics together (55%) at 87 IQ. Because I am not sure of exactly what kind of Asians are prevalent around Covington, I will lump them in with the Whites (45%). The trick is what IQ value to assign the Whites. I suspect they have drifted south of the old Northern European standardized score of 100, most likely assuming the new American White score of 95. I’ll run a simple average with both. I’ll also add in a third, “worst-case” scenario in keeping with the total domestic intelligence decline.

(.55)(87) + (.45)(100) = 92.85 [ouch]

(.55)(87) + (.45)(95) = 90.6 [oh, boy]

(.55)(87) + (.45)(93) = 89.7 [damn]

Ninety is the score no first-world nation wants to dip below as that is the cutoff below which there is no guarantee of continued societal stability. The average of the averages is 91.05. That’s terrible. All of these numbers are terrible. And, in this specific case, as with much of the rest of the country, they are falling steadily. 

Where do the children of Newton fall into this matrix? Let’s walk through the placements, shall we? We’ll specifically look at school-aged children, 5-18. The 2019 estimates alott 19.4% of the total population to that bracket or 21,678 individuals. I consulted the 2019 Georgia Department of Education [SIC] stats to confirm those figures and to assess the attendant identitarian breakdown. The Great Hoax has wreaked havoc on 2020-2021 enrollments in GDOE-tracked public schools as might be expected. Back in 2019, however, the enrollment was a fairly similar match: 19,579 students, or 90% of all children 5-18 years of age (the national average)(the remainder being privately schooled, homeschooled, or otherwise unaccounted for). 

Pursuant to my previous lumping-normalizing rules, I find the student body is 71% “Black” (13,885) and 29% “White” (5,694). These, by the way, are your future total Census demographics, if lumped and normalized. Taking the middle “95, White” average, we have: (.71)(87) + (.29)(95) = 89.32. It may not be the brightest future.

I’ve looked at more Newton government school performance records than I ever cared to. By and large, they are utter failures, falling somewhere above Detroit and below rural Mexico. Pick one and look at the scores and the trends – low and falling. And, as with most public schools, they fall along the lines of progressively decreasing performance as described by Hoxby. 

Newton is part of the vast southeastern intelligence desert. Their collective experience is demonstrative of the larger pattern and picture. More money, even radically more, will not solve this problem (see Detroit). Voting will not solve this problem (see the past 100 years). The problem is not political in nature. Tossing Dr. Seuss, Geo. Washington, and 2+2=4 out the door in favor of more social justice and equity will accomplish nothing. The issue is beyond cultural. It involves an identity changed, a demographic shift.

The new post-American USSA, to the extent and for the time it endures, will not be the end of the world. It will be, is already different. Relatively speaking, it’s parched – like a desert.

The Desert: We Knew This

05 Monday Apr 2021

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Rapidly declining IQs nationwide equate to a distinct lack of advanced skills.

Middle schoolers in U.S. counties where fewer adults have advanced cognitive skills seem less likely to develop advanced skills themselves, according to a paper presented at a Brookings Papers on Economic Activity conference on March 25.

In Advanced cognitive skill deserts in the U.S.: Their likely causes and implications, Caroline M. Hoxby of Stanford University maps county-level data from standardized tests to show which regions have higher percentages of adults and children with advanced skills and which areas have lower percentages.

Voting won’t help. Neither will money. This is demography in relentless action. The time for emergency action was 1985. Welcome to third world Amerika.

Subtle Intelligence

26 Tuesday Jan 2021

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The joys of email! I received one just the other night from The Ladders (of the jobs search sect). It contained a link to 9 subtle ways to show you’re intelligent (without having to say anything) by Jonah Malin – not a bad article as far as things go, especially for those looking to increase performance in the workplace.

While scanning, I caught on to a few words and phrases that stood out:

What makes someone intelligent?

Is it the ability to recall facts? Being an expert test-taker? Reading two hundred books a year?

Honestly, true intelligence requires a holistic approach. The smartest people are experts at navigating life through learned experiences. They have good judgment in different situations. And, most importantly, intelligent people understand actions speak louder than words.

There’s, of course, much more; read the whole thing. And, on this topic, as with many others, it’s a matter of relativity. Again, this being an employment/corporate HR publication, the nine methods of intelligence demonstration are all nicely tailored for boosting actual or perceived performance, ostensibly improving the overall dynamics of the office experience. It’s great for what it is. What it is not is an empirical answer to the leading question, above, as qualified by the included terms “truly intelligent.” The answer in that narrowed light is an IQ at or above 140. (Yes, there are all kinds of standards, but Terman’s [one of them] is sufficient for discussion of minds rating in or above the Mensa range or that commonly assigned to gifted placements in most schools).

Most people, averaging between 85 and 115, will, I think, benefit from the provided tips. More benefits should be derived by or for those in the 115 – 130 range. I suspect there is a marked decrease for those above 130, and a cliff-falling of sorts for those above 140. While patience and attire are important for everyone, at least from time to time, the higher up the ladder one climbs, the more difficult it is to successfully interact with those below (in a general sense). This partially explains why those with very high or extremely high IQs frequently do not fit in with organizations, regardless of how they spend money or what they wear. Thinking differently – that’s what it is – leads to interacting differently. Some handle it better than others, a matter more of personality than intelligence, which is what the article really drives towards.

One great tell that this advice is offered for those above average if below the exceptional threshold is the final tip about social media. True intelligence is rarely found on Facebook, a platform geared more towards the television-watching public than Triple Nine members. Sure, anyone can create a responsible reason to post or Tweet, it just isn’t common.

If you work with or employ someone with a very high IQ, do what you can to steer him into the right position where he can be happy while also using his mental advantages to your advantage.

National Average IQ is Real

29 Tuesday Dec 2020

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And it really matters. Survey says:

Abstract and Figures

Patient people fare better in life than impatient people. Based on this and on economic models, many economists have claimed that more patient countries should fare better than less patient countries. We utilize cross-national data in non-cognitive traits measured in the Global Preference Survey (GPS). This survey measured six non-cognitive traits — risk and time preferences, positive and negative reciprocity, altruism, and trust — across 76 countries in about 80,000 persons. As such, it provides the best current database of economics-focused non-cognitive traits. We combine this database with existing estimates of national intelligence (national IQs) and model country outcomes as a function of these predictors. For outcomes, we used the 51 national well-being indicators from the Social Progress Index (SPI) as well as the composite extracted from this, the general socioeconomic factor. We find that non-cognitive variables, time preference included, are only weakly predictive of national well-being outcomes when national IQs are also in the model. The median β across the indicators was 0.11 for time preference but 0.39 for national IQ. We replicated these results using six economic indicators, again with similar results: median βs of 0.15 and 0.52 for time preference and national IQ, respectively. Across all our results, we found that national IQ has 2-4 times the predictive validity of time preference. These results are fairly robust to inclusion of a spatial autocorrelation control, alternative measures of national IQ and time preference, or no controls. Our results suggest that the importance of national non-cognitive traits, including time preference, is overestimated or that these traits are mismeasured.

As a nation like the US continues to lose national average intelligence, through internal and external actions, it will necessarily decline. The US is maybe 5 to 10 years away from breaking below the barrier whereat any assurance of societal stability vanishes. That’s why one hears so many Demopublicans talking about the issue. (Eye strain from roll…)

By Process of Elimination – an Education Column

21 Wednesday Oct 2020

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By Process of Elimination

As Seen At TPC.

No, this has nothing to do with last Saturday’s Georgia-Alabama game. I gave my advice in that regard, last fall; though perhaps I should have added the word “taller” in the description under point two. It matters little as it appears that my points were not heeded. No, this column is titled as it is because I wrestled with too many subjects, settling on none. In my defense, I’ve been a little busy with some other things lately and the prospects for this particular work were slightly speculative, even depressing. So! I decided to go with something safe and sound: education.

Rather, this is about IQ, which in turn, is extremely determinative of educational achievement. 

Well, shit, this is really a review of a book review, but bear with me.

Coming on October 29, 2020: In the Know: Debunking 35 Myths about Human Intelligence by Dr. Russell T. Warne. 

Read, if you will, James Thompson’s review preview at Unz. 

Warne is, like my old man was, an educational psychologist. His new book focuses on dispelling popular (and popularly deceptive) myths about psychometrics. That field was my father’s focus from around 1971 until 1989, with most of his major work published during the Seventies, before, I imagine, Warne was born. Some of Dad’s papers are still cited, with The Effect of Violating the Assumption of Equal Item Means in Estimating the Livingston Coefficient (1978) referenced this year (ThaiJo, Thailand, January 2020). Here’s hoping that In the Know enjoys similar longevity along with deeper penetration into the psycho-industrial complex and the surrounding culture. God knows we need it. 

As Dutton and Woodley demonstrated in At Our Wits’ End (2018), general intelligence in Western nations is collapsing. IQ being one of the three primary components of a stable, even recognizable society, this is just a wee bit important. Yet, in defiance of measured statistical reality, the usual suspects continue to parrot nonsense such as “g doesn’t exist,” or “it’s environmental, socio-economic,” or “IQ is a social construct.” Enough. It would be more accurate to say that society is an IQ construct. 

Warne’s attempt to correct the falsehoods is admirable. However, and I’m sure he’s aware, those misstatements are largely intentional. In fact, they are part and parcel with the overall scheme to destroy Western Civilization via mass deception, mass coercion, and mass demographic upheaval. One such lie is well addressed by a quick summary in Thompson’s article:

[Myth] 4 Intelligence Is a Western Concept that Does Not Apply to Non-Western Cultures

…

If intelligence really varies in character between different cultures, then it should be very difficult to extract the “Western” general factor, yet in 31 countries, and using a wide variety of tests, 94 of the 97 (96.9%) samples produced g either immediately or after a second factor analysis. Moreover, the g factor is about as strong in the non-Western samples as it is in typical Western samples. Most countries find “Western” intelligence tests very useful, once they have been translated and some language and specific knowledge items altered or removed. To cap it all, dogs, rats, mice, donkey and primates show g factors. It looks like an evolutionary adaptation.

This cultural apologist claptrap is akin to saying that gravity doesn’t apply in Africa because of Newton. As Warne correctly notes, IQ testing and the understanding of the testing process and the precision of the test results rank as the most mathematically-certain facet of psychology and, in fact, all of the social sciences. But, again, at the higher, motivated levels, the truth doesn’t matter. They know, they’re just pushing the devil’s agenda anyway.

They’re throwing out the tests – just like I did. When your father studied IQ statistics for a living and regularly reviewed, normed, or re-normed IQ tests, who do you think was usually the first test subject? This also goes for your father’s faculty colleagues and graduate students. Yeah. Having completed MORE THAN A FEW Wechsler and Stanford-Binet batteries, I know something about them. Having lived decades among the various-leveled denizens of the bell curve, I can attest to the inherent accuracy in the assessments; in the wild, I can sense it and almost see it. 

I had a small collection of various versions of the tests. I had them. During the … great restructuring, they became casualties like so many tools, books, furniture articles, and other weighty items. I feel poorly about it all, but I have an excuse. The globo educrats and warped SJWs, as part of the complete destruction of systemic education in the fading US, threw out (or, are throwing out) the testing process, without excuse or good cause. They know what they’re doing and I know why. We all do. If you’re out to wreck something like a university, but your useful hordes cannot on their own gain admission, then the first step is to replace reliable metrics with those more touchy and feely. Cue Carlin: “Pretty soon all you’ll need to get into college is a pencil.” That’s a battle for another book, or rather, that’s a battle for unschooling, homeschooling, and general autodidacticism.

At any rate, consider buying this book next week and reading it. Then, you can use the presented rebuttals, casually, with those who innocently share the misunderstandings. Every little helps. The ultimate fallback of the defenders of ignorance is always baseless name-calling. Be ready for that – rhetoric with rhetoric, when or where necessary.

And, the necessary when and where for next week, especially for the TPC crowd, will be some fall holiday-themed fiction! Just so you’re in the know: it’ll be spooky fun.

The Uninformed Socials

31 Friday Jul 2020

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This is no surprise.

A new report from Pew Research makes an attempt to better understand U.S. adults who get their news largely from social media platforms, and compare their understanding of current events and political knowledge to those who use other sources, like TV, radio and news publications. The top-level finding, according to Pew, is that social media news consumers tend to follow the news less closely and end up less informed on several key subjects.

That seems to reinforce a belief that many people already hold, of course — that people who get their news primarily from Facebook, for example, aren’t as informed.

SM does not attract the brightest bulbs. That, coupled with the woeful state of the “information” provided on SM (if any), easily explains the lack of knowledge. Across the board, except for independent sources (in all media), the same story is generally put forth by the same usual suspects. Discerning minds are frequently able to spot narratives and falsehoods wherever found. But that leads back to the lower IQs of people on SM, along with those watching TeeVee and reading, on-screen or in print. They get the same mass messages from Langley and Madison Avenue.

Of course, SM users get those delightful cat videos and such.

Stronger Body, Sharper Mind

10 Tuesday Dec 2019

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This study isn’t at all surprising, as one health begets another.

A great deal of focus these days is placed on the possible harm many athletes may be doing to their brains due to the hard hitting nature of contact sports like football or hockey. While the serious and debilitating nature of CTE-related and concussion injuries are indisputable at this point, an interesting new study conducted at Northwestern University is playing devil’s advocate in the debate surrounding sports and brain health.

Researchers say that as long as an athlete avoids head injuries, their brain is likely healthier than a non-athlete’s. This was found to be the case across a variety of sports, including contact sports like football, soccer, and hockey.

“No one would argue against the fact that sports lead to better physically fitness, but we don’t always think of brain fitness and sports,” says senior author Nina Kraus, the Hugh Knowles Professor of Communication Sciences and Neurobiology and director of Northwestern’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, in a release. “We’re saying that playing sports can tune the brain to better understand one’s sensory environment.”

After analyzing close to 1,000 participants, including roughly 500 (both male and female) college Division I athletes, the study found that athletes develop an enhanced ability to quiet electrical noise in their minds. This makes it easier for athletes to quickly and efficiently process external sounds on hectic playing fields, such as their coach yelling instructions from the bench.

Hit the gym. Pass the ball. Read a book. EZ.

TV Kills the Brain

29 Monday Jul 2019

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This has been an accepted fact for decades. Now, some try to put an anti-Nationalist spin on the phenomenon.

To estimate the effect of cable television on I.Q. scores, the Norwegian scholars analyzed data on the introduction of cable network infrastructure by municipality. They calculated years of exposure to cable by considering the age of eventual test takers when cable became available in their municipality. They controlled for any potential geographic bias by comparing siblings with greater or less exposure to cable television based on their age when cable infrastructure was put in.

They estimate that 10 years of exposure to cable television lowered I.Q. scores by 1.8 points. In related research, Mr. Hernaes finds that exposure to cable television reduced voter turnout in local elections.

This is all partly true. But, the truth goes deeper, into hard neuro-science. TeeVee acts literally like a digital narcotic. It turns off certain brain centers, sometimes with lasting effects. If lower rhetoric and trash nonsense account for the 1.8-point drop, then how much else can be attributed to diminished physical capacity in the brain? Better not to find out. Turn off the tube!