@Tamtam @hosford42 I have a very high #IQ. Research on IQ shows that almost all the predictive power of IQ for positive outcomes is the lower 2/3 of the distribution. Very high IQ is _not_ correlated with positive outcomes. At all.

Are we living in a #goldenage of #stupidity?
Across the economically developed countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (#OECD), Pisa scores, which measure 15-year-olds’ #reading, #maths and #science, tended to peak around 2012. While over the 20th century #IQ scores increased globally, perhaps due to improved access to education and better nutrition, in many #developedcountries they appear to have been declining.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/18/are-we-living-in-a-golden-age-of-stupidity-technology

Predatory Data

Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future

There's a nearly straight line from 20th century eugenics to 21st century big data and data science. Google, the bastion of big data, was founded by two Stanford graduate students; Stanford was founded by a eugenicist and instituted eugenics principles. Francis Galton--inventor of the regression analysis that forms the backbone of data science--was "hot or notting" London with a counter hidden in his pocket long before Harvard-age Zuckerberg recuperated the same with the favorite quantification technology of our day, computers.

"The measured life" is a eugenics concept. All these doohickeys that collect data with the promise of making your body a bit more "fit"? Eugenicist in origin. Eugenics is about "optimizing" the physical "fitness" of people. Apps that help you learn, make you more mentally "fit"? Also have origins in eugenics. Eugenics is also about "optimizing" the mental "fitness" of people. Hence the obsession with IQ.

This isn't to say you shouldn't take care of your body and mind in whichever ways you want. I do think it's important, though, to periodically reflect on, and ask yourself hard questions about, what's driving those efforts and what the goals really are. Part of understanding why eugenics thinking is resurging so hard and fast in the US is understanding its roots, where that type of thinking comes from. It's also important to reflect on where the apps and devices you use to achieve these goals come from. How many come directly or indirectly from Stanford, which was built by eugenicists to achieve eugenic goals, and its offshoots?

Trump and Musk are literally repeating themes from Francis Galton's eugenics out in the open now. They're confident they can get away with it without pushback because the ground was laid long ago. But eugenics didn't suddenly become bad again because coarse people started saying the quiet part out loud. It's always been bad thinking, bad science, and bad morality.

#DataScience #eugenics #BigData #fitness #US #IQ #Trump #Musk