Dear indefinite article,
The Wikipedia entry for "Flynn Effect" suggests -- in agreement with your
comment in the below post -- that older people (at least those in the
pre-dementia years) don't get dumber with age relative to their younger
selves, but rather relative to the increasing intelligence of people
younger than themselves (and, thus, relative to re-normed IQ tests).
Perhaps that is correct, but I can tell you that based on my own
experience, my ability to recall things is much worse than it was twenty
years ago. Furthermore, my ability to spend most of three or four nights
in a row lying bed in most of the night with my head buzzing with concepts
about an intellectual problem of interest without feeling like a total
zombiod in the following days has substantially declined.
Since most organs of the body diminish in function with age, it would be
surprising if the brain didn't also.
We live in the age of political correctness where it can be dangerous to
ones careers to say anything unfavorable about any large group of people,
particularly one as powerful as the over 45, who, to a large extent, rule
the world. (Or even to those in the AARP, which is an extremely powerful
lobby.) So I don't know how seriously I would take the statements that
age doesn't affect IQ.
My mother, who had the second highest IQ in her college class, was a great
one for relaying choice tidbits. She once said that Christiaan Barnard,
the first doctor to successfully perform a heart transplant, once said
something to the effect of
If you think old people look bad from the outside, you
should see how bad they look from the inside.
That would presumably also apply to our brains.
Edward W. Porter
Porter & Associates
24 String Bridge S12
Exeter, NH 03833
(617) 494-1722
Fax (617) 494-1822
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
From: a [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2007 10:00 AM
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Subject: Re: [agi] Religion-free technical content & breaking the small
hardware mindset
Edward W. Porter wrote:
> It's also because the average person looses 10 points in IQ between
> mid twenties and mid fourties and another ten points between mid
> fourties and sixty. (Help! I'am 59.)
>
> But this is just the average. Some people hang on to their marbles as
> they age better than others. And knowledge gained with age can, to
> some extent, compensate for less raw computational power.
>
> The book in which I read this said they age norm IQ tests (presumably
> to keep from offending the people older than mid-forties who
> presumably largely control most of society's institutions, including
> the purchase of IQ tests.)
>
>
I disagree with your theory. I primarily see the IQ drop as a result of
the Flynn effect, not the age.
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