It's all explained by one simple fact: the average IQ is 100. In today's society, how many activities are there for 100 IQ people to engage in?
Are there animals to take care of? Is there land? Is there community to partake in? Are there things that need to be done by 100 IQ people?
When you build society optimizing for young people to work 8 hour days or giant factories and supply chains doing everything else, what is there for somebody at 65 to do but watch tv and wait until they die?
Young people barely even have children anymore and when they do, chances are their parents are still working, so by the time they retire, the children are 5-10 years old and playing on their own.
It's easy to blame the individuals for not joining a knitting club or whatever, but people are not built to do pointless activities, they are built to do activities that have purpose and those are not available in modern society unless you have high IQ or a talent in a specific domain.
Also one last point: moaning about other people is what people have always done, especially when you're older and you're almost certainly experiencing chronic pain of some sort. Younger people moan just as much, they just have youth and belief that things will be looking up on their side - old people have neither.
Nitpick: Average IQ cannot increase by definition. The median IQ value is defined to be 100 IQ points and one standard deviation in either direction is defined to be 15 IQ points. It's normally distributed so median==average as well. People overall can become more intelligent and the average IQ value will still be 100.
I believe the comment you are replying to is referring to the Flynn effect [1] which shows a ~3 point rise in IQ per decade in absolute terms. That is, someone who is 100 IQ in 1950 would only be 97 IQ measured by 1960 standards.
It's all explained by one simple fact: the average IQ is 100. In today's society, how many activities are there for 100 IQ people to engage in?
Are there animals to take care of? Is there land? Is there community to partake in? Are there things that need to be done by 100 IQ people?
When you build society optimizing for young people to work 8 hour days or giant factories and supply chains doing everything else, what is there for somebody at 65 to do but watch tv and wait until they die?
Young people barely even have children anymore and when they do, chances are their parents are still working, so by the time they retire, the children are 5-10 years old and playing on their own.
It's easy to blame the individuals for not joining a knitting club or whatever, but people are not built to do pointless activities, they are built to do activities that have purpose and those are not available in modern society unless you have high IQ or a talent in a specific domain.
Also one last point: moaning about other people is what people have always done, especially when you're older and you're almost certainly experiencing chronic pain of some sort. Younger people moan just as much, they just have youth and belief that things will be looking up on their side - old people have neither.