Can an average person ever break 2000?

You could, probably, argue that humanity is getting dumber with each successive generation since, I don't know, Roman times. 

Since natural selection no longer selects for humans, it's likely that the average Roman of 200 BC was more intelligent than the average American of 2000 AD.

The dumbass shit people can do nowadays and still come out unscathed would have gotten them killed years ago.

Not true, science has proven that intelligence (or at least IQ tests results) has been increasing since the 1930s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

Sure, the other side of the argument has its good sources too:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

IQ test results improving does not in anyway suggest that intelligence is increasing.

Well the plumbing the Romans built still works, and the crap we get here in the states doesn't seem to last but 20 or 30 years. 

Once upon a time Aristotle, easily one of the brightest people in Ancient Greece, thought the sun revolved around the earth.  Today, however, even the dumbest school kid knows that heliocentricism is true. 

Knowledge is not intelligence.

Yes, but Aristotle knew the difference between knowledge and intelligence.

Hey, if stuff doesn't work it will need to be replaced eventually.  That's why there's planned obsolescence, alternative energy sources remain "alternative" (because sunlight isn't as finite as oil), and houses aren't built to last anymore (and uglier and more banal compared to the 19th century, it's as if architecture school requires that you have no sense of beauty or taste to graduate). 

Not sure if this is elsewhere as I haven't read all the pages on this topic. But check out www.roadtograndmaster.com where a bloke attempted something similar and wrote a blog about the journey

It took that person a tremendous amount of courage to make such a public goal and blog about it. He deserves a great deal of credit.

Although he was able to break 2000, he hasn't come anywhere near his goal. I am sure he didn't consider himself average, and he started with a much higher elo than "average".

But his progress can be used as a measuring stick. His highest rating was 2017 despite studying full time and documenting his progress. He had help from a number of sources, but was not able to significantly improve his performance.

So, was he just not smart enough?  Should he have worked differently to achieve his goal?

What did he, and countless other very intelligent people who also failed to attain their chess goals, do wrong? If an "average" person can do it, why do so many exceptional people fail?

Again, anyone who achieves a standard rating of 2000+ USCF or FIDE proves they are not "average" or "ordinary" or "normal".

There's pretty good evidence that reading forced biological adaptations in the brain that made humans smarter. It stands to reason, thus, in the twilight of the books, that humans may be on a path to less intelligence.

With training, easily

Ok you just keep your opinion. The whole planet think that it does.

To get ANY graduate job nowadays you need to pass psychometric tests. I don't mean the "personality" ones, but the ones that test your numerical, linguistic and logical abilities. They are EXACTLY like IQ tests.

If all the top graduate employers select their graduate workers in this way, spending also good money in the process (these tests are administered by external firms), that means without a doubt that IQ testing can predict how you will perform in your non-manual job.

IQ exists. It can be measured. It will predict how well you will perform in any intellectual activity (ceteris paribus). Your positions are fueled either by cherry-picking dubious scholary articles, or animated by a sense of political correctness.

Troll or idiot?

What if people figure out the principles behind the problems and apply them?  On some logic tests for example there are common themes such as lines in common disappearing while different lines stay to make the shape, a line in column one rotating one way whereas a different line rotates in the second one, creating the third, a ball rotating clockwise and it being the same color at the bottom of the circle while being another when the small ball is at the top, combining elements, such as noticing that there are two complete shapes and six halves, and taking the last two halves (not arranged in any order just have to watch for shapes), that don't have a whole to fill in the last spot, noticing everything has a certain combination of shapes... except one combo is missing, maybe concluding that since empty outside empty inside is missing pick the blank choice, etc. 

I agree I build furniture for a living. And I am striving to grow my skills to be able to make baroque and other "beautiful" stuff, instead I get requests to build tables and chairs made to look like junk on purpose.  Ie the whole reclaimed wood look with peeling paint, splits etc. I do it to pay the bills, but there is no sense to fashion.

What's a book?

IQ test results are increasing also because people practice IQ testing.  There are agencies that do nothing more than train kids and people to score higher. Just like the ACT, SAT, and other entrance exams etc. many people start the test training for their kids even prior to pre-k! A better measure would be are people in general making strides in productivity, science, and the arts?  Because if they are, I am not seeing it.  What I see is a smaller ratio of people who invent and innovate, against a larger number of people with degrees and test taking skills.

Of course: to pass psychometric tests you MUST practice. Mostly for the numerical test, where you have to calculate stuff from tabs and graphs incredibly fast. You can be a genious but at some point somebody will have taught you that to calculate how 795 was before a 4% increase you have to punch 795/1.04 in the calculator.

But the point remains: how well you will perform in this test will predict your IQ, how you will do in a graduate job (according to employers), and in learning chess (according to me).

You can raise your IQ, a little bit, why not? Of course some people are more endowed than others from the start, but you can train to improve from what you have. Just like you can go to the gym and increase your strength, even if there are people that are naturally stronger than others.