The average IQ is rising... And games may be helping it go up.

games make people kill eachother... now they give you more IQ :>
 
Fat Tony! said:
may be games :p i.e probable not
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Oh I don't know:
When you take the Ravens test, you're confronted with a series of visual grids, each containing a mix of shapes that seem vaguely related to one another. Each grid contains a missing shape; to answer the implicit question posed by the test, you need to pick the correct missing shape from a selection of eight possibilities. To "solve" these puzzles, in other words, you have to scrutinize a changing set of icons, looking for unusual patterns and correlations among them.

This is not the kind of thinking that happens when you read a book or have a conversation with someone or take a history exam. But it is precisely the kind of mental work you do when you, say, struggle to program a VCR or master the interface on your new cell phone.

Over the last 50 years, we've had to cope with an explosion of media, technologies, and interfaces, from the TV clicker to the World Wide Web. And every new form of visual media - interactive visual media in particular - poses an implicit challenge to our brains: We have to work through the logic of the new interface, follow clues, sense relationships. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these are the very skills that the Ravens tests measure - you survey a field of visual icons and look for unusual patterns.

The best example of brain-boosting media may be videogames. Mastering visual puzzles is the whole point of the exercise - whether it's the spatial geometry of Tetris, the engineering riddles of Myst, or the urban mapping of Grand Theft Auto.
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Or it could just be the fact that our educational system is getting a lot better due to the advancements and applications of things like computers. It's actually pretty impressive what a lot of these kids are learning how to do on computers at a young age these days. My elementary and middle school computer experience consisted entirely of Oregon Trail and Sim Life/City, and that was it :(.
 
quiet you! I should be able to randomly critise without a good counter arguement being thrown at me ;). Yes games are great, AOE 1 and 2 taught me a lot about history and increased my strategy, half life taught me that if aliens turn up, shoot them in teh head :p, nah seriously FPS show logic (if it's moderately difficult) you can't just run in shooting and hope to win you have to be stealthy and use tactics etc....

I could mention more, but I don't see any point :D in fact the whole post is pointless but meh ;) the point is, I love teh computer games!
 
ACLeroK212 said:
Or it could just be the fact that our educational system is getting a lot better due to the advancements and applications of things like computers. It's actually pretty impressive what a lot of these kids are learning how to do on computers at a young age these days. My grade school computer experience consisted entirely of Oregon Trail and Sim Life/City, and that was it :(.
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Doesn't sound like it:
Dickens and Flynn showed that the environment could affect heritable traits like IQ, but one mystery remained: What part of our allegedly dumbed-down environment is making us smarter? It's not schools, since the tests that measure education-driven skills haven't shown the same steady gains. It's not nutrition - general improvement in diet leveled off in most industrialized countries shortly after World War II, just as the Flynn effect was accelerating.
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Well not exactly the educational system, but the everyday use of educational tools such as computers.
 
That does make sence, almost all video games involve some sort of strategy thinking, either "what way to get to point X the fastest?", "How should I take this corner to get an even faster lap time?", "Which way would provide the most cover?" etc..
 
These critics attack IQ itself - or, more precisely, what intelligence scholar Arthur Jensen called g, a measure of underlying "general" intelligence. Psychometricians measure g by performing a factor analysis of multiple intelligence tests and extracting a pattern of correlation between the measurements.
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This is the only scale for which a rise makes sense. The average IQ cannot RISE! (unless you are making observations of a race, gender or age relative to the normal)
The average IQ will ALWAYS be 100. "general intelligence" may be rising, but IQ is a relative standard.

I'm just glad it says games make you smarter.
 
So games can make you smarter, but they can do no harm? Bias is a wonderful thing.
 
Not to mention it leaves out better diet, IQ tests changing in format, changes in educational methods, improvements in education, broader improvements in technology, prettier women(seriously have you seen women from the 80s).......etc

I suppose at least games are getting positive feedback for once - at least until the next murder
 
Of course it helps in some section of our brain. But in what practical situation would we need it?
"Bliss! I've learned how to game, I shall now become a doctor!"

"... sir, what are you doing? Sir -- put down that scalpel, he's just got a tummyache!"

Edit: Damn, forgot I was checking through older posts. Well, it needed to be said for future reference anyway.
 
Sharrd said:
Of course it helps in some section of our brain. But in what practical situation would we need it?
"Bliss! I've learned how to game, I shall now become a doctor!"
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It's not about the direct comparison of real-life events to game events, rather, it's the abstract train of thought, puzzle-solving, strategising, and other mental concepts that would help you in your day-to-day life.

It's highly unlikely that you'll have to, at some point in your life, pick up an M4 and headshot a team of terrorists before they bomb some nondescript wooden boxes in a desert town. But the ability to "read" a possible conflict, weigh options, and base your decisions on tactics and the pros/cons of different approaches to a situation will help you many a time.

[edit] for the hilarity of your post :thumbs:
 
A few geeky scientists once noted that complex mapping geometry introduced to kids at an early age can help develop highly coordinated thinking, including better concentration under pressure.

Although hell, I've learned almost all my neat vocab words from Diablo II and other assorted RPG games.
 
Pesmerga said:
A few geeky scientists once noted that complex mapping geometry introduced to kids at an early age can help develop highly coordinated thinking, including better concentration under pressure.

Although hell, I've learned almost all my neat vocab words from Diablo II and other assorted RPG games.
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I did too, and learned to speak/read English from movies, but that doesn't mean you'd learn it better if you didn't spend the time with things that are made for the sake of education. It's just a matter of keeping a person's interest. We've thrown away a lot of time that past people used for other things that also were educative somehow in exchange for our digital amusement.
 
I waste horrendous amounts of time here, but I know that constantly writing has helped me keep in practice. Even if most of what I post here isn't particularly high level, its still useful. I feel more comfortable writing than I used to, and I actually write more on paper than here...but its made a difference.

I write '...' a lot more than I used to though, heh.
 
Courses in "How to appear more intelligent" are useful.

Like Latin.
 
Fat Tony! said:
quiet you! I should be able to randomly critise without a good counter arguement being thrown at me ;). Yes games are great, AOE 1 and 2 taught me a lot about history and increased my strategy, half life taught me that if aliens turn up, shoot them in teh head :p, nah seriously FPS show logic (if it's moderately difficult) you can't just run in shooting and hope to win you have to be stealthy and use tactics etc....

I could mention more, but I don't see any point :D in fact the whole post is pointless but meh ;) the point is, I love teh computer games!
Click to expand...
The only thing i learned from AOE II was that Joan of Arc was a big motherf*cker who couldn't stay alive for ten minutes. I had to hide her in a castle to keep her alive.
 
Sadly, I have learned better English skills from video games and the internet then school itself.
 
JellyWorld said:
The only thing i learned from AOE II was that Joan of Arc was a big motherf*cker who couldn't stay alive for ten minutes. I had to hide her in a castle to keep her alive.
Click to expand...

I wrote a history report on Saladin.

Haha yes.

If it wasn't for AoE II, I probably wouldn't even know about him.
 
Danimal said:
Sadly, I have learned better English skills from video games and the internet than school itself.
Click to expand...

You just got OWNED!
 
I thought by definition the average IQ was 100. How can it incease if 100 is defined to be the average?
 
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