Statistically, the average American is becoming more stupid. Perhaps that’s why there have been so many books on the virulent virus of dimwittery, such as How to Deal with Idiots (And Stop Being One Yourself), Surrounded by Idiots: The Four Types of Human Behavior and How to Communicate Effectively with Each in Business (and in Life), and, most helpful of all, Why Your Cat Thinks You’re an Idiot.
The decline was first detected by the researcher James Flynn in 2017. For many years, he had noted the opposite: in every decade of the 20th century, average I.Q. scores rose by three to five percent in the U.S. (and in many other developed countries). This upward trend came to be known as the positive Flynn effect.
