Are we getting stupider? - Page 3 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

Anything from household gadgets to the Large Hadron Collider (note: political science topics belong in the Environment & Science forum).

Moderator: PoFo The Lounge Mods

#14778064
That's not dumb, Hindsite. It's simply misinformed, uninformed, or ignorant. These people could be quite smart if they knew something about the topic they were asked about. Clearly, they weren't. Much of what they did say, however, was true, but the video was clearly made to ridicule, not inform.
#14778077
Much of what they said was true, Godstud? You got to be kidding me.
Well, I will agree with you that they are ignorant, if not stupid.
Jessie watters interviewed some people the other day about the upcoming President's Day Holiday.
Jessie showed pictures of various Presidents and asked questions about them that few answered correctly.
Many of them could not even identify the Presidents. One woman was shown a picture of President Harry Truman
and when Jessie tried to give her a hint by saying, Harry...? She replied, "Potter."
#14778092
AFAIK wrote:
I don't know what Deng Xiaoping, Tesla or Hirohito look like therefore I is dumb.


Remember, you said it, not me.
#14778103
Hindsite wrote:Jessie watters interviewed some people the other day about the upcoming President's Day Holiday.
Jessie showed pictures of various Presidents and asked questions about them that few answered correctly.
Many of them could not even identify the Presidents. One woman was shown a picture of President Harry Truman
and when Jessie tried to give her a hint by saying, Harry...? She replied, "Potter."
That's American education, for you.

Here's a part of a popular show in Canada, where they make fun of this very thing.


#14779055
American teachers are lazy.

I remember how the teachers loved snack time or recess. They were probably using that time to eat and gossip. I know one retired teacher who will talk on and on about other people. It is disgusting.
#14779060
Godstud

The nice thing about knowledge is we never stop learning. It's harder to gin up IQ though.

Those kids in the 1st video couldn't identify the particular countries, but they certainly understood prejudice is wrong, ergo, I think you're quite right. They aren't well educated, but they aren't dumb bunnies.
#14779063
Godstud wrote:That's American education, for you.

Here's a part of a popular show in Canada, where they make fun of this very thing.


I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of the people being asked.

I wonder if, even if it was something dumb, I would just roll with it. Like saying that Canada doesn't have shoreline. Obviously it does. But if a Canadian came up to me and insisted that it doesn't, I'd just politely let it roll because it's not worth an argument, and maybe there's some kind of maritime measurement or something that they regard as important that I don't.

And it occurs to me that I've had a few chats on this board about this, or something similar. JJJ once said that Chicago was full of crime because Trump said so, and that Detroit was full of crime on Robocop and it's near Chicago.

I corrected the fuck out of him on that, or tried to do so. But even though I've spent, what, a third of my adult life in Ireland or something; if he had said that all Irish people are extremely religious and never have sex outside of marriage—even though I've personally proved that wrong more than once—I'd probably just shut up and let him say that and not try to correct it.

I wonder if that's just a typical Americanism...I don't know.
#14779064
Regardless, it's harmless fun. I know it's not the norm, either, but it might be if Trump has his way.
#14779115
TiGs
Some examples were so silly you had to know that between the silly questions and the cameras, it was just a joke. Some were sooooo silly they made Canadians look like rubes. And all were cherry picked compilations. So who knows how many called Mercer on the questions.
#14779122
There is absolutely no doubt people are more knowledgeable today than ever before. Intelligence does not change in my opinion. 2000 years ago, people were just as intelligent as today, just less knowledgeable. It was not long ago that many people in the US actively resented the idea of their children needing to attend school. Many of my aunts and uncles were functional illiterates and saw no reason for that to change. People learn more today by accident of exposure to media if nothing else.
#14779308
I think that overall people are getting stupider indeed.

That is I think that if you take people like for like, for example the average intelligence of mathematicians from the past and compare them to mathematicians today, I think that the ones in the past would beat the modern ones and the same would happen if you took past farmers vs modern farmers, I think the ones from the past would be more intelligent than their modern counterparts. The cause for this in my opinion is the simplification of modern learning methods as well as the breakup of the sciences putting an emphasis to the particular rather than the encyclopaedic.

However it should be noted that more people are educated today than they were in the past and so the general average has certainly risen. That would mean that the uneducated of the past were a larger percent than the uneducated of the modern world but is irrelevant when one compares only like for like. I maintain that the people who hold equivalent amounts of education were more intelligent in the past than in the modern times.

...Which Hamas refuses and wasn't ordered by the […]

@skinster so you confess that Hamas committed ma[…]

^ Wouldn't happen though, since the Israelis are n[…]

I was actually unaware :lol: Before he was […]