A new report shows that IQ scores are falling across the board around the world.
Evan Horowitz of FCLT Global wrote for NBC News that the data does not look good for humans' future.
"While we might be able to compensate with skills besides intelligence, like determination or passion, in a world where IQ scores continue to fall — and where the drop expands to places like the United States — there's also a bleaker scenario: a global intelligence crisis that undermines humanity's problem-solving capacity and leaves us ill-equipped to tackle the complex challenges posed by AI, global warming and developments we have yet to imagine," Horowitz wrote.
Horowitz was citing data from a 2018 study that indicated IQ scores, which were steadily climbing during the 20th century, have stopped their ascent and are now falling. The study showed that IQ scores hit their peak among people born in the 1970s.
"Some environmental factor — or collection of factors — is causing a drop in the IQ scores of parents and their own children, and older kids and their younger siblings," Horowitz wrote. "One leading explanation is that the rise of lower-skill service jobs has made work less intellectually demanding, leaving IQs to atrophy as people flex their brains less.
"There are also other possibilities, largely untested, such as global warming making food less nutritious or information-age devices sapping our ability to focus."
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