Comment by mcantelon
12 years ago
>Are you sure it's IQ, or as another user suggested, some kind of mass hysteria?
What's sort of mass hysteria has been suggested?
>The mainstream news exploded with the whole NSA thing, and then HN did too. Is that a function of IQ?
My IQ reference was about the general decline in HN/Reddit comment quality, not about concern with the NSA on HN/Redditm which I think is a healthy thing. Being interested in the fact that someone is collecting one's private communication is a rational security concern.
I wouldn't use the term IQ, it can be a bit misleading. High IQ individuals can squander their time arguing about frivolous nonsense (I went to school with a couple of guys like that). Average IQ folk can be thoughtful and engaging.
What's happening is a kind of evaporative-cooling effect- specifically, the very natural rise of cheap wit and sensationalism. These things trigger upvotes more easily. Pithy answers and responses get rewarded quicker by larger crowds, and this discourages the carefully-evaluated-and-reasoned answer.
We don't have to bring IQ into the picture when making sense of this phenomenon, so let's not do that.
True, IQ wasn't the word to use.