We all have our moments. But professor and Reddit user Brian-Latimer has just heard what they believe was the dumbest comment to ever reach their ears. So they turned to the internet to share their bewilderment.
Granted, in their post r/mildlyinfuriating, the professor does mention that it was a course on communications and the remark was about the object in the sky — the moon — so the student who made it clearly isn’t an astronomy expert.
But it’s still quite something.
This professor thought they had seen it all
Image credits: edufigueres (not the actual image)
But they were absolutely dumbfounded by a comment their new student made
Image credits: BOOM (not the actual image)
Image credits: drazenphoto (not the actual image)
Image credits: Brian-Latimer
Some say that recent generations of Americans are, indeed, getting less intelligent, but more research is needed
The question of whether Americans are becoming less smart is an incredibly nuanced one and very difficult to answer.
However, some research in parts of Europe and the United States has started to see a plateau in intelligence scores.
For example, a recent study in the U.S. found that the country’s college graduates in the 2010s had lower vocabulary scores than their counterparts in the 1970s.
Furthermore, a new study has found evidence of a reverse Flynn effect (the consistent upward drift in IQ test scores across generations) in a large U.S. sample between 2006 and 2018 in every category except one. For the reverse Flynn effect, there were consistent negative slopes for three out of the four cognitive domains.
Ability scores of verbal reasoning (logic, vocabulary), matrix reasoning (visual problem solving, analogies), and letter and number series (computational/mathematical) dropped during the study period, but scores of 3D rotation (spatial reasoning) increased, the study from Northwestern University discovered.
Composite ability scores (single scores derived from multiple pieces of information) were also lower for newer samples.
Despite the results, corresponding study author Elizabeth Dworak doesn’t want people to read these findings and think that Americans are getting dumber.
“It doesn’t mean their mental ability is lower or higher; it’s just a difference in scores that are favoring older or newer samples,” said Dworak, a research assistant professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “It could just be that they’re getting worse at taking tests or specifically worse at taking these kinds of tests.”
While the study didn’t examine the reason for the decline in IQ scores, Dworak is aware of the fact that there is no shortage of theories in the scientific community, including poor nutrition, worsening health, media exposures and changes to education.
“There’s debate about what’s causing it, but not every domain is going down; one of them is going up,” Dworak added. “If all the scores were going in the same direction, you could make a nice little narrative about it, but that’s not the case. We need to do more to dig into it.”
So will the next generation be the death of Brian-Latimer? Maybe. Or maybe not!
People have had a lot of strong reactions to the story
Some also shared the silliest things they’ve heard
