Human Intelligence Sharply Declining

This is what catastrophically losing a class war with the rich and weirdly refusing to talk about it looks like.

Your intelligence is fine, you are beaten down is the problem.

Yeah I'm not giving that much credence to an article that uses the pop term "brain rot" while trying to make a scientific statement.

There isn't any reason to suggest that human intellect has been harmed, the publication counters — but in "both potential and execution," our intelligence is definitely on the downturn.

Sounds like they're trying to glean something from an article that doesn't support their premise.

If we're looking for a cause for people falling into propaganda and supporting self destructive policies, it's has nothing to do with intellect. It has to do with a perceived sense of vulnerability. People do insane shit when they feel vulnerable. It's why cults exist.

Every generation is more intelligent and connected than the last.

No corporate media article is going to change that.

This is laterally just an attempt to make older people think the young are stupid and lame.

Micro-plastics has been my theory.

A bit sensationalized, but there is a solid evidence that students are doing worse in the US than a few years back. From what I've read, it's probably the year gap from COVID because data suggested the decline was steeply after that year and mostly impacted low income, rural, and communities of color who were most impacted by the shift to remote school.

This is an averages thing, though, as it's tied to other data that suggests absenteeism skyrocketed and never quite came back to pre-pandemic levels. A large group of people just not doing education is going to sink the scores.

Now, people citing biological reasons like long COVID and microplastics aren't necessarily wrong, but I haven't seen as much evidence of cognitive impacts. The reason I still give it some credit, though, is historically IQ goes up every generation (and then recalibrated since it's centered on 100) and a big part of that is physiological (e g. deleading gas, reducing air pollution), though access to information (radio, TV, internet) also contributes.

Interestingly enough, you'd think reliance on social media makes you dumb but we don't have evidence of that, it's mostly just really bad for teens mental health. We've always had stupid forms of entertainment.

My pin is on mold. So many young people I know today in the UK live around mold or likely have mold hiding somewhere due to living in old buildings, likely because it's the only choice they have.

I moved to a new building built in 2019 and my brain fog has lifted. Also having an actual apartment with separate rooms to myself and some space at least without selling my soul has massively improved my mental health in general. 50-40% max humidity is where it's at. Back where I last lived it was 70-90% regularly.

Mold and most other "nature-y" horrors are often underestimated by people due to green washing propaganda, but even bleach fumes are far safer to inhale even.