Has humanity reached ‘peak intelligence’?

Pedro_P

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Are our IQs set to increase forever, or are we on the cusp of decline? David Robson explores the past, present and future of intelligence.


▼ You may not have noticed, but we are living in an intellectual golden age.
Since the intelligence test was invented more than 100 years ago, our IQ scores have been steadily increasing. Even the average person today would have been considered a genius compared to someone born in 1919 – a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect.
We may have to enjoy it while we can. The most recent evidence suggests that this trend may now be slowing. It may even be reversing, meaning that we have already passed the summit of human intellectual potential.
Can we have really reached peak intelligence? And if that is the case, what can the subsequent decline mean for the future of humanity?
Let’s begin by exploring the ancient origins of human intelligence, from the moment our ancestors began to walk upright more than three million years ago. Scans of fossil skulls suggest that the brains of the first bipedal apes,Australopithecus, were about 400 cubic centimetres – just a third the size of modern humans’.
That comes at a serious cost. The brains of modern humans consume around 20% of the body’s energy, so our bigger brains must have offered some serious benefits to make up for those excess calories.
There are many potential reasons for this brain boost, but according to one leading theory, it was a response to the increasing  cognitive demands of group living.
FromAustralopithecusonwards, human ancestors began to congregate in bigger and bigger groups – perhaps, initially, as a protection against predators, which would have been a serious risk once they began sleeping on the ground rather than the trees. It would also allow individuals to pool resources – helping to spread out some of the risks of living in a changeable environment – and provide shared childcare.
For humans today, a lack of social understanding causes embarrassment; for our ancestors, it was a matter of life or death
But as many of us know from our own social circles, living with other people can be hard work: you need to keep track of each person’s personalities, their likes and dislikes, and whether or not they can be trusted with gossip. And if you are working on a group activity, like hunting, you need to be able to follow what each member is doing as you coordinate your activities. For humans today, a lack of social understanding causes embarrassment; for our ancestors, it was a matter of life or death.
Besides presenting those immediate challenges, the larger social groups would have allowed members to share ideas and build on each other’s inventions, resulting in new technological and cultural innovations, such as tools that could improve the efficiency of hunting. And for that to work, you need to have the intelligence to observe and learn from others – providing another push for greater brainpower.
By around 400,000 years ago, the brain ofHomo heidelbergensishad reached around 1,200 cubic centimetres – just a shade smaller than the brains of modern humans, which are around 1,300 cubic centimetres. When our ancestors left Africa around 70,000 years ago, they were smart enough to adapt to life in almost every corner of the planet. The astonishing cave art suggests they were fully capable of thinking about huge cosmological questions – including, perhaps, their own origins.
Few experts would argue that the more recent changes to IQ are the product of this kind of genetic evolution – the timescales are simply too short.
It was only 100 years ago, after all, that scientists first invented the “intelligence quotient” to measure someone’s intellectual potential. Their success relies on the fact that many cognitive abilities are correlated. So your ability to perform spatial reasoning or pattern recognition is linked to your maths ability and your verbal prowess, and so on. For this reason, IQ is thought to reflect a “general intelligence” – a kind of underlying brainpower.
IQ is thought to reflect a “general intelligence” – a kind of underlying brainpower
Although IQ tests are often criticised, a vast body of research shows that their scores can be useful indicators of your performance on many tasks. They are especially good at predicting academic success (which is not surprising, considering that they were initially designed to be used in schools) but also predict how quickly you pick up new skills in the workplace. They are not a perfect measure, by any means – and many other factors will also shape your success – but in general they do show a meaningful difference in people’s capacity to learn and process complex information.
The rise in IQs seems to have started in the early 20th Century, but it’s only relatively recently that psychologists have started taking much notice of the phenomenon. That’s because IQ scores are “standardised” – meaning that after people take the test, their raw scores are transformed to ensure that the median of the population always remains 100. This allows you to compare people who took different forms of the IQ test, but unless you look at sources of the data, it means you would not notice differences between generations.
When the researcher James Flynn looked at scores over the past century, he discovered a steady increase – the equivalent of around three points a decade. Today, that has amounted to 30 points in some countries.
Although the cause of the Flynn  effect is still a matter of debate, it must be due to multiple  environmental factorsrather than a genetic shift.
Perhaps the best comparison is our change in height: we are 11cm (around 5 inches) taller today than in the 19th Century, for instance – but that doesn’t mean our genes have changed; it just means our overall health has changed.
Indeed, some of the same factors may underlie both shifts. Improved medicine, reducing the prevalence of childhood infections, and more nutritious diets, should have helped our bodies to grow taller and our brains to grow smarter, for instance. Some have posited that the increase in IQ might also be due to a reduction of the lead in  petrol, which may have stunted cognitive development in the past. The cleaner our fuels, the smarter we became.
Whatever the cause of the Flynn effect, we may have already reached the end of this era – with the rise in IQs stalling
This is unlikely to be the complete picture, however, since our societies have also seen enormous shifts in our intellectual environment, which may now train abstract thinking and reasoning from a young age. In education, for instance, most children are taught to think in terms of abstract categories (whether animals are mammals or reptiles, for instance). We also lean on increasingly abstract thinking to cope with modern technology. Just think about a computer and all the symbols you have to recognise and manipulate to do even the simplest task. Growing up immersed in this kind of thinking should allow everyone to cultivate the skills needed to perform well in an IQ test.
Whatever the cause of the Flynn effect, there is evidence that we may have already reached the end of this era – with the rise in IQs stalling and even reversing. If you look at Finland, Norway and Denmark, for instance, the turning point appears to have occurred in the mid-90s, after which average IQs dropped by  around 0.2 points a year. That would amount to a seven-point difference between generations.
Partly because they have  emerged so recently, these trends are even harder to explainthan the original Flynn effect. One possibility is that education has become slightly less stimulating than it once was – or at least, has not targeted the same skills. Some of the IQ tests used have assessed people’s mental arithmetic, for instance – but as Ole Rogeberg at the University of Oslo points out to me, students are probably more used to using calculators.
For now, it seems clear that our culture can shape our minds in mysterious ways.
While scientists continue to untangle the causes of those trends, it’s worth questioning what these changes in IQ actually mean for society at large. Has the IQ boost of the Flynn effect brought us the dividends we might have hoped? And if not, why not? (▪ ▪ ▪)

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themaskeditor

We have still not reached the end but we are still progressing gradually in a new phase. See the advances we have made and study of space and space travel. Very shortly we could be becoming the inter solar system travelers in a matter of 50 to 100 years maybe.

If we compare the different times from the start of the human race then we have advanced quite well.

Consider the accuracy of the pyramids made by the Egyptians, the Mayans too were a great civilization, going by our old scriptures even Indians were quite advanced.  

chanakyakripa

There can never be an end to positive improvement. However, one must relate IQ with EQ (emotional quotient) to actually find out the success chances. That is because, as our old ancestors did while living in groups, i.e adjust with other people, we are still doing the same. The better we do that (eq measure), more is the chance of success.