(February 22, 2017 at 8:14 pm)Aroura Wrote: Yes, the Flynn effect.
However, haven't we reached some sort of plateau with that? I could swear I read that in the last year or so.
It is tempting to think we are getting dumber, but there isn't really evidence for that. Perhaps our brains are smaller as we've lost parts we weren't using. Old lizard brain stuff, something like that.
Whales have much larger emotional centers, for instance. If that shrunk, they wouldn't necessarily lose overall intelligence, just their heightened emotional intelligence.
Also, are there actually more autistic people? Or is it a combination of more people living who wouldn't have even 150 years ago, combined with broader diagnosis and heightened public awareness?
Much of the "more autism" scare that the anti-vaxxers put down to vaccinations is simply that a large number of mental illnesses have been reclassified as autism over the past 20 years or so. This, plus a combination of the factors you've mentioned.
Also, compare the infant mortality rates now to what they were even 20-30 years ago.
What a lot of people forget is that mental health studies, like practically every other branch of science, is constantly changing and being updated as new discoveries are made.
Playing Cluedo with my mum while I was at Uni:
"You did WHAT? With WHO? WHERE???"
