OK. IQ tests are misleading, even in subtle ways you wouldn't make up. I still believe that

"Absolute idiocy admits of no cure."

George Man Burrows (1771-1846) ( )

I found it a little hard to read in spots. Sometimes he makes a real effort to explain things to laypeople, other times it seems like his audience are experts. Also the organization is kind of jumbled and he tends to meander. I wish he had coauthored the book with a great science writer. There’s definitely a lot of interesting stuff here but it’s not presented well. ( )

The original text, minus the new chapters for this version, are generally excellent and insightful, nicely critiquing prior analyses of the Flynn effect, suggesting that the growth between generations can be partially explained by systems that increase abstraction and classification of the surrounding world. The new chapters, although somewhat insightful, generally seemed muddled, both intellectually and editorially. ( )

Flynn finds that the "Flynn Effect" derives specifically from the kind of intelligence measured by the Raven's Matrices IQ tests and the Similarities subtest of the WAIS and WISC tests. He might say that IQ tests are not "culture fair" in a different sense than the usual: the "culture" in question is that of the post-Industrial Age. He hypothesizes that the "scientific spectacles" donned by modern societies account for these gains. Why did we and do we collectively don them? To develop the kind of cognitive skills increasingly needed by businesses and institutions and demanded in everyday modern life.

Would Americans of 1900 really have scored an average of 70 on a current-day IQ test? Yes, yet they were not mentally challenged or unable to meet the challenges of their day.

Of great interest are answers by pre-scientific people to questions like "How are a fox and a rabbit alike?" Our "obvious" answer, classifying them as mammals, did not occur to these people, being irrelevant to their life and needs.

A great way to get a broader perspective on the whole IQ/g/intelligence area. ( )

I take this marvelous book to be an optimistic look at the progress of human mind based on careful analysis of evidence. With sharp wit and just enough humor (which made me laugh out loud on some pages), Flynn does what he promises at the beginning of the book: Give a lecture to the well-educated reader who is not necessarily an expert in psychology or IQ testing. I'm surprised to learn that there is a substantial rise in the IQ scores throughout the years and my first reaction was that there should be something fundamentally wrong IQ tests. Fortunately Flynn proposes arguments to solve the paradox and those arguments are really well-thought and well explained with very helpful analogies. His emphasis on how quickly our minds evolved to cope with the sudden rise in the complexity of society is in a sense optimistic for me because even though we know that the evolution of our brains proceed very slowly, we can rely on our thinking styles to progress much faster (not that I think evolution is a kind of progress towards an ultimate goal, it is just that I find it nice to see that our 'software' uses the underlying 'hardware' more and more efficiently and this is visible by looking at a mere 60-70 years of IQ testing).

To mention a few points I found Flynn's analysis of twin studies to dissect the paradox of IQ tests and the problem of environment versus genes very enlightening. His criticism of Gardner's multiple intelligences and short speculation of whether it is right to rank people according to some quantifiable metrics is also worthy of further discussion. On the other hand I'm a little bit reluctant about his explanation that the population owes the general rise of IQ to the widespread scientific thinking but at least he does not forget to mention that this kind of thinking and reasoning does not prevent people's quest for very problematic areas.

This book deserves to be an important reference for anybody who considers questions about measuring intelligence, evolution of mind and the subtle but long-standing effects of society and environment on the thought processes of individuals. The book should also be read to witness the complexity of the history human cognition if for nothing else. ( )