 And all that bad food's going into their whack body and their whack body is contributing to a whack brain. Of course, this is like, it's official IQ scores across America have dropped for the first time in 100 years. Now, are we headed towards idiocracy or is this just a momentary dip? Yeah, this new study came out and basically said that average IQ scores dropped across all groups, all genders, however, Andrew, there is one particular group, 18 to 22, particularly less educated where the IQ drop was huge. Long story short, people are saying some young people who are always on social media are kind of dumb. Damn! Now, the study also said that while a few skills such as spatial reasoning were better than previous generations, so one thing did improve, other skills such as problem-solving numerical series assessments and verbal reasoning have all grown worse. It's because they're playing Minecraft, but they can't even do simple arithmetic on a piece of paper handwritten. Dang, guys, we're gonna talk about it. There's a multitude of reactions. We'll give you our takeaways. Can we turn this ship around so it doesn't fall into idiocracy? Let's talk about it from silly to serious. Hit that like button, check out other episodes of The Hop Hop Boys. The very first comment that I saw pop up most commonly, Andrew, was, you know, this is what happens when we lower the bar to meet lower-level students. We just keep lowering the bar to pass them through the system instead of being strict on them. We should hire the bar and maybe they'll jump to hit the higher bar. Yeah, I mean, what about public school funding, guys? There's even certain school districts in America that are thinking about moving to a four-day school week due to funding. We can't afford the lunch ladies anymore. Well, I'll tell you this, looking at the food, it ain't the lunch. Somebody said IQ was never meant to be a test of intelligence, but rather a test of living conditions, motivation, and willpower. So don't worry guys, IQ is meaningless anyway. Somebody else said, no, I'm pretty sure IQ does mean something. It's just that everybody's so distracted so they can't focus on their formal schooling is related to IQ scores. And somebody said, hey guys, are you serious? When you're distracted, you can't focus. And being able to focus is one of the fundamental building blocks of intelligence. Yeah, yeah, I do think that focus and distractions and all the extra stuff that kids are doing outside of school is really hurting. Somebody said, yeah, it's cause all you guys are pushing all the woke agendas, not teaching a darn thing, no more life skills, no more factoids. You guys just learning woke political narratives all day in school. No wonder why the IQ scores are going bad. Nah man, this guy's trying to politicize it a little bit too much, man. The schools are still teaching stuff. It's that the kids aren't learning and I think what the kids are doing after school is like they're not doing their homework and et cetera, et cetera. Somebody said, you know, public schools in America have never been really that great except a few of them. So really it's actually just the parents fault. Hate to always put it on the parents, but that is a big thing. Somebody said, well, you know, there's a lot more hard working immigrants in America who are really good and contribute a lot, but I've got to say that, you know, they're not too formula educated and they don't know a lot of things that would score too well on an IQ test. Well, I guess there are certain things like maybe if the IQ test is in English and people have a low English proficiency, even if they have an intelligent brain. Or even if they're second generation and their parents, both their parents have very low English proficiency, they might actually have lower than somebody who's both parents are fluent in English. Yeah, I mean, listen, I don't think IQ tests mean everything, but it does mean like if you're motivated to take it and you can focus on it, obviously it says something about you. It means you can probably focus on other tasks. Yeah, I do not think that IQ tests mean everything, but I don't think they mean nothing either. I mean, it just depends obviously, you guys argue amongst yourselves. Somebody said, yeah, nobody thinks logically anymore. They just Google everything, no more reading. Nobody knows how to get anywhere anymore. They just use GPS. Nobody knows how to calculate anything anymore. People just use the iPhone calculator, the TI-83. Do people even know how to write anything by hand anymore? Has anybody checked on these kids handwriting? It looks terrible. I will say that moving into the future, I do think that education is just gonna look different. Now, maybe if the argument is the public school system needs to be updated, but I really think it's a lot of like the desires of children to learn things that are ultimately gonna be productive. Like, I think there is a lot of alternative education out there, but I just think a lot of people are not interested in education, period. Yeah, somebody said, Googling things made me have more knowledge. And somebody else said, you know, knowledge and IQ are different. IQ is reasoning ability. When you have more knowledge without the reasoning ability, this is why everybody believes in conspiracy theories all the time because they think they're smart, but they have no ability to tell what's real and what's right and how puzzle pieces fit together. Somebody said, it's all about welfare, man. There's no more work ethic. People don't wanna work hard and people don't wanna work hard mentally either. And maybe that's one of the factors, but I don't know. Somebody said, low IQ people tend to have more kids even because they don't like to think about whether they can afford a larger family or not. This is the beginning of idiocracy, that opening scene where the upper middle class couple that's extremely educated is overthinking about whether having a kid and then the dumb family is just pumping kids out and then the overeducated family with like two grad school degrees each ends up not even having kids, right? Cause one of them ends up dying before they can even have kids cause they're too old. Listen guys, there's some stats to back this up guys. You guys let me know how much of an impact on the equation this actually has. How do you weight the variables? Somebody said, idiocracy, you guys better watch it. Someone said, wow, watch it. I'm just living it right now. Dang. Other people said, you know, dumb people are easier to control and we're all gonna be ruled by chat, GPT 11 soon enough. So listen guys, they want a dumb down populace. They want us to not think for ourselves. They want us to have bad reasoning skills and bad critical thinking because they will be easier to control. Who's there? Are you talking about the robots? Somebody said, never underestimate the destructive powers of a dumb down populace. Someone said, thank you rap music, rap music, crap music, just put a C in front of rap. It's crap. I was waiting for this comment because I know that people always like to point at all different types of subcultures or cultures, whether it's heavy metal, right? Was the enemy for a while. It's the devil's music. It's dumb rap music, right? Jay Simmons tongues from the underworld. Yeah, and I mean, listen, I definitely think that there was a movement away from lyrical rap and I miss lyrical rap. Just the fact that people be like, oh, J Cole's boring, Nas is boring, right? I mean, listen, this is a small, small, tiny factor. Come on. Somebody said, you know, it's not just rap. It's the Kardashians. It's the influencers. It's the TikTok cultures. The fact that Tide asked the issue a statement and say, please do not eat Tide pods as part of a clout challenge. Idolizing these things are idiotic. So when people see people being dumb and getting money and getting clout and everybody talking about them and getting attention and clout, they just want to follow that. Yeah, I really think a hyper clout driven culture right now is the biggest issue because if you want clout and you want attention, then you're willing to do all these other things for it. Now that includes like being overly sexual or only doing the TikTok dances or celandes or fighting people or messing with people, pranking people. Whatever it is, you are gonna do whatever it takes to get that attention whether it is productive, smart, or destroy society. Right, right, right. It has more to do with value systems and priority because what if kids realized that having a higher IQ didn't make them more lit and the value system placed being lit at the top of the priority list. Exactly, remember when you're a kid, I think a lot of kids, I'm the youngest of three so I do think I liked attention. A lot of kids want attention so you kinda cake and scream or you dance or do something but somewhere along the way someone has to tell you like, hey, listen, just you can't just only do this for attention. You gotta do something else. Right, or do something conventionally productive to get attention. Somebody said, it's really the lack of exercise and bad diet. We got microplastics. Kids don't have enough vitamins. They're eating bad foods and all that bad foods going into their whack body and their whack body is contributing to a whack brain. I think that's another fact. Is it brain first and then body or body first then brain? Guys, we all know healthier food does help cognitive ability and this is true. So if you got a bad diet but they did outlaw sodas in schools so I guess what's the next step, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Standard deviations in cognition. Let me see this. This next one said, look at our presidential choices, man. You have somebody with a quickly, quickly, rapidly aging brain or somebody who is incredibly selfish and cares zero about real leadership. Those are our two options. What more evidence do you need to see that the IQs are dropping across the board? Yeah, tough choices. Somebody said, regardless of leadership we're headed downside as a society. Just one is gonna take us there faster than the other and it'll just look a little different but this is the inevitable guys. Welcome to idiocracy. What stamp do you wanna put on it? Yeah, and then I also saw this comment that of course, blame China and TikTok. Yeah. Thank you, China and TikTok. Like that's the only reason. And somebody said, what a revelation. A five minute walk around the block will show the IQ level of pajama wearing zombies smoking weed with their noses buried in their phones while they walk into you oblivious of their surroundings. I'm not gonna lie. Of course this is like a cherry picked 10 out of 10 example Andrew but we have a neighbor who exactly fits this description. Literally, I'm talking about Elf Bar, pajama pants, broccoli cut 10 out of 10. Guys, none of those singular things are really bad but if you just combine them together I don't know what you're about. If you do all three or four things I don't know what you're doing guys. I get, I don't, it's not a diss to kids with broccoli cuts. You guys look cool but I've just never had anybody say anything smart to me. All right you guys let's get into the takeaways. Does this test have merit Andrew? And do we believe that this solo study can show much more because it certainly fits with a lot of people's narratives that they have in their mind about society degrading or people's intelligence degrading but does it show everything or is it just like a small indicator? I think it confirms a lot of people's fears. Now this one test isn't the only metric you should base your whole belief system on or anything like that. This one study should not get you all of a sudden emotional in a time when you weren't emotional. Like it's another reason, it's another sign. All right so I think take it into consideration but no it doesn't mean everything because there's so much other stuff going on but I think most people agree people are kind of distracted right now. Yeah. Is it too late to swing the pendulum back or is it time to start using different metrics or what is it? I do think that at some point the government or something the policies have to step in. Now I don't have a problem with social media obviously. I don't have a problem with content creation. I like all these things. I don't have a problem with wokeness either. Yeah I don't have a problem with the wokeness either. I just think that people need to, I think the government can step in and be like, hey man we're gonna regulate some social media. Like literally they might have to do that. I'm just saying it's like an option. Like you have to, I don't know. Like I'm just not, I'm not saying sense or everything. I'm just saying, you know, regulate it. I think that for the people trying to politicize this I don't think either party is free from blame. You know what I mean? Especially in a two party paradigm. Like I think you've got like just idiocracy is infecting everybody. Yeah, no, both parties and I don't like it how the right side's trying to blame the left side. Oh, you're liberals and your little liberal views are making everybody stupider. And then it's like, yeah, but actually like the left side is more educated than the right side on the extreme side. You got things like QAnon, which is like ridiculous. So I'm like, guys, both parties are being really stupid right now. Everybody's being an idiot. Yeah, I think that long story short, everybody's just really worried about feelings more than facts. And then even when you are presented with a scientific fact, then all of a sudden people call into question, obviously the scientific validity, the biases of whoever executed that study. And then some people, the discussion immediately goes to the feelings that everybody has surrounding those facts. But literally nobody wants to discuss the facts like an engineer. Yeah, I think ultimately, and this is my last thing, you guys let us know in the comments down below what you think. I think you gotta incentivize kids or students or people to be a little bit more educated. But I do think education looks different now in 2023. And then also just this hyper cloud driven maintain and gain attention by all means necessary culture. Zombie movies, I'm throwing that in there. Yeah, it's tough, man. I think the whole gaining cloud by all means necessary. If you wanna gain cloud for doing something that you truly believe is interesting and productive and helpful and positive, then more power to you. But I know there's people out there just creating bullshit. You know, apparently there's so many people that are so high on Maslow's hierarchy and needs. The only thing that was left to do is watch something burn in an entertaining way. I don't know guys, let us know what you think in the comments section below. Do you agree with this study? Do you disagree with the premise of this study? What are the larger implications guys? Keep it civil. Like we said, I think that there's a lot to go around for everybody. Until next time, we'd hop up boys. We out. Peace.