[noemon]

No they are not.

Point to an example provided that is not standing. Do not just assert something.

No it is not sufficient. Even today, with people that are alive today, comparing the cognitive abilities of two individuals is a difficult if not impossible task. Who is the cognitively superior person? Lang Lang or Carlsen? Bill Gates or Buffet? Steven Dawkins or Steven Weinberg?

The knowledge we have about the lives of Galen, Aristotle, Newton, Feymman, Weinberg, Dawkins, Gates is very sufficient to draw conclusions about their lives, character, conduct and achievements. Yourself being unaware of it or finding it daunting does not mean that we lack this knowledge.

I never said it was enough. You can be born with brain damage and in the present (and for that matter in the past) and be objectively cognitively inferior, that is not the point I made, nor a logical conclusion of what I have said. This is a strawman.

Indeed, your reply is once again an absurd strawman, because a brain-dead person is not a like-for-like example. You are still insisting that unless a person is born brain-dead then they do embody the wisdom of all the ages without even trying and simply by virtue of being born today.

This is abjectly false.

Today, just to get into most medical schools you need prerequisites on calculus, biology, chemistry (organic and inorganic), statistics. None of these fields truly existed on his time (certainly not calculus or chemistry) but you would assert without any shadow of a doubt that not only he would meet the requirement but excel on them. This is doubtful at best, we know that a human excelling in a field does not mean will excel in another field. Galen was not a doctor, he was an ancient doctor. The only thing you know for sure he can succeed is at being an ancient doctor. The discipline that today we call medicine, does not resemble much of what he knew.

Your rationalisation of Galen's education is ignorant at best. And your presumptions are evidence of that ignorance.

1) Galen's education uncannily resembles that of a modern education at elementary & secondary level and then one would proceed to a tertiary academy level for more in-depth investigation of a particular subject.

2) To compare cognition one would have to abide by the like-for-like which sets the potential scenarios at fair level for comparison of cognition itself. A modern doctor can compare with Galen in the fields where that is possible. Galen understands modern diagnosis(he created it) and further:

3) Galen changed the "ancient doctors/shamans/witchdoctors" to modern doctors, he had the cognition to move past the established humors and into surgery, diagnosis, examination, he threw the table over for "ancient doctors" and almost got killed for it several times. This current Galenic medicine's table will be thrown over again by a guy or gal who will not just simply add something onto the existing system(Galen did not add something to the shaman's book he discredited it entirely) but someone who will move past this existing cave and into immortality and undo the entire profession as we know it just as Galen undid eventually the profession of the ancient doctor and wiped it off the map for those following his tradition like modern doctors do, but not for those who don't(.ie Amazonian tribes, or the hobo on the street). Galen moved outside his cave and changed the entire paradigm. He knew that the existing system of his time was based on traditional assumptions instead of science and he spent his life applying real science to the field to the extent that it was humanely possible. He was fully aware of the limitations of his profession without serious anatomy, he was switched on about the limitations of his profession and that is evidence of his cognition. Are you aware of your own cognitive limitations or of the limitations of fellow humans around you? Have you turned the tables over? The same applies to Aristotle who made extremely amazing assumptions about biology and the microcosm while being fully aware that his are estimated assumptions. The things that you accuse them that they did not know as evidence of their "ignorance" which you then erroneously transpose as "lack of cognition" turns the joke on you because they were both fully aware of their own limitations, we do not laud them for their assumptions(right or wrong) we laud them for their cognitive process to make these assumptions(which were unavailable before them and which enabled us to be where we are) and for the systemic processes they left behind which enabled us to become modern and find better ways to move past their assumptions and into evidence by using tools to achieve that evidence, but "us" is just a generalisation, it does not include the hobo on street, or Amazonian tribes, or people who choose(as a matter of lifestyle) to remain ignorant. And that is what Potemkin tried to explain to you earlier about Aristotle.

4) Your claim that humans today are born upgraded does not stand up to logic and I do not see how this argument of yours would demonstrate otherwise even if we assume it as entirely true. How can the hobo on the street make cognitively better arguments than Galen, Plato or Newton without delving deep into a relative subject?

As I said the potential is there for the hobo on the street to surpass them, but unless one actually does so, it does not magically happen simply because one is born in the present.

Perhaps more importantly, there is nothing to say we cannot do it better.

Of course, as I have told you repeatedly. The potentiality is there for us to do it better, but that does not mean that all of us actually do it better. Just like Cuba is not doing it better as we speak but much worse than before and it is not just Cuba but several other individuals and groups just as well.

Do you know of other people that turned the tables over? Newton, Einstein, they did not just add a little bit onto their respective field, they transformed it for them and all future generations.

Craft skills have been lost because of changing technology and changing priorities, but it’s a big step to go from that to asserting that there has been a cognitive decline, especially over as short a time period as just a generation or two. Evolution simply doesn’t work that quickly.

When a craft or skill is lost, it's lost forever, without undergoing a process of slow devolution, it is rather immediately gone. The next generation of humans has zero cognitive skill on that lost craft.

The 6 cognitive skills are these ones.

When one compares the lifestyles of today with the lifestyles of the past, one can clearly see that today domestication is severely reducing the input values for these skills.

Do you believe that the hobo on the street is cognitively superior to Newton or Plato for being born today?

[ingliz]

@noemon

Forget your Galens and Einsteins. Do you think that the average Joe circa 300 BCE, an illiterate peasant, is cognitively superior to his barely literate 21st-century counterparts?

[noemon]

I am 100% certain that an ancient peasant is far more cognitively superior to a modern chav.

In all ways possible, from understanding the weather, to keeping time using wits, to communicating with other humans, to being there when called upon, to having honour and grace in his conduct.

Hesiod is a prehistoric shepherd with zero education, who left us a corpus of poetry that is still being studied at university level.

Show me the equivalent chav of today doing the same with zero education.

[ingliz]

@noemon



I know. I am supposed to come back with some historical examples of ancient stupidity, but I am too busy laughing.

[noemon]

What the fox can't reach turns sour. Ridicule is evidence of your inability to come up with a like-for-like example that would serve your case.

Do you know why? Cause it is impossible. The only way you can keep up the nonsense is by making false and generalized equivocations which are technical strawmen by failing to abide by like-for-like.

Et in Arcadia Ego

[noemon]

While few of you observed it or realised it.

Ingliz, this titan of thought, ninja edited his argument after my reply to remove the word "peasant" in order to change the goalpost of his own argument because he is clearly unable to come up with something equivalent to a peasant which would serve his arrogant religious belief. This titan of thought is evidently cognitively superior to his ancient counterparts. NOT!

If any one see him doing this to you, report it and he will lose his editing abilities permanently.

If you claim that the modern equivalent to an ancient peasant is a middle-class person("average joe") then you should realise that it is not. The equivalent to a modern middle-class craftsman, trader is an ancient craftsman or tradesman not a peasant. Or do you want to beat the dead-horse of social mobility that I talked about in my first post, as evidence of higher cognition mano-a-mano. It isn't.

You want to compare a modern sculptor with Phedias, or Michelangelo, sure be my guest. Or do you want to compare an ancient trade industrialist moving goods from China to Spain and Germany with Jeff Bezos on a one-on-one cognitive test of wits? Go ahead.

[ingliz]

Et in Arcadia Ego

Even in Arcadia, I am to be found.

The Golden Age of Athens was base enough to make even the most chavish feel at ease.

[Odiseizam]

Happy New Year To All (keep it real ) @noemon regarding ancient peasants - normally quality hardly pops up mids quantity - too much tension to keep the shared burden, but think the current idiocracy wave is elitist skim i.e. those in power are trying hard to keep the masses as dumb as possible, nowadays mostly through consumerism and trivial fun, in the end its the famous skim for bread&games so the plebs would becalm while elites are experimenting and tweaking the system for superhumanity, capitalism in this respect is extra useful for them coz they can play all easily, its almost word for intentionally pushed arrested development so if not else the ecological footprint will not explode what about having greater population growth if the life expectancy is broadened, just imagine world population living 100+ and in same time having not more than 2 children even like that the system will collapse due to ineffective pension funds what about food abundance etc. etc. i.e. the ecological footprint will consume the earth resources in few decades, so in a way its word for manipulated reality coz sake of particular power elites and their fear from loosing ground so they've rushed all kind of ways and means for keeping us dumb usually hedonism materialism and egoism, also knowing that those power elites are neopagan in big extent normally that they are obligated through causality to push for this kind of tempting of Christians, but lets say all dead ends of the current societies are just accidental reflex of wrong empirical approach, still that dont removes from the equation the power elites (whoever whatever they are) and as result our intellect is stalled if not lowered as much as possible on broiler animal level so they would keep their inherited rule in place, after all Nikola Tesla was silenced otherwise with his momentum as power elites mids free energy they would be cornered quickly, after all their planned obsolesce is skim that even before him was employed on various levels what about later when world population exploded due to greater quality of life as result of overproduction and exploitation that needed as slaves so as consumers, and in the end that skim now is dysfunctional when the third world getting close to their western abundancy level what is threat by their math from every perspective, the way the game work its insurance through reset by wars - or recently they suppose by pandemics - or probably later if that dont bring reset (if not shift) I expect to be released manufactured "natural" cataclysm, I am mentioning the shift coz the same is agenda now meme too for them as power elites for heaven on earth occupied by gmo if not cyborg superhumanity, maybe both tho think borgs will be slaves while the master race is seen as supper hero alike population reached through genetic revolution, this projection suggest harnessing cosmic forces in one hand, they believe, yet as Christians we are warned dont chase the spirit of this world, and still many in their disbelief are rushing to embrace the m'rnavaccines as first wide step towards dna medicine with it all military eugenic and totalitarian lust of the neopagan western elites!

[noemon]

Even in Arcadia, I am to be found.
The Golden Age of Athens was base enough to make even the most chavish feel at ease.

The sheperds/peasants/chavs of the antiquity were producing poetry -that is still being studied at university level today- even in Arcadia(shepherd's land) and hence the Rennaisance paintings idolizing those shepherds for precisely this reason- with no education whatsoever, while the modern chav has a fit of rage for being unable to find the remote.

You are base enough to make even the most chavish feel at ease today and your pathetic actions of changing your own words after the argument has been made is clear evidence of your subpar and extremely chavvy cognition and conduct.

[Rugoz]

I am 100% certain that an ancient peasant is far more cognitively superior to a modern chav.

In all ways possible, from understanding the weather, to keeping time using wits, to communicating with other humans, to being there when called upon, to having honour and grace in his conduct.

Hesiod is a prehistoric shepherd with zero education, who left us a corpus of poetry that is still being studied at university level.

Show me the equivalent chav of today doing the same with zero education.

Except a modern chav will have had tons of education, comparatively speaking, and a good diet (i.e. enough to eat, in quantity and variety).

That will make him cognitively superior by far, unless you have some weird definition thereof.

[Rugoz]

Happy New Year To All (keep it real ) @noemon regarding ancient peasants - normally quality hardly pops up mids quantity - too much tension to keep the shared burden, but think the current idiocracy wave is elitist skim i.e. those in power are trying hard to keep the masses as dumb as possible, nowadays mostly through consumerism and trivial fun, in the end its the famous skim for bread&games so the plebs would becalm while elites are experimenting and tweaking the system for superhumanity, capitalism in this respect is extra useful for them coz they can play all easily, its almost word for intentionally pushed arrested development so if not else the ecological footprint will not explode what about having greater population growth if the life expectancy is broadened, just imagine world population living 100+ and in same time having not more than 2 children even like that the system will collapse due to ineffective pension funds what about food abundance etc. etc. i.e. the ecological footprint will consume the earth resources in few decades, so in a way its word for manipulated reality coz sake of particular power elites and their fear from loosing ground so they've rushed all kind of ways and means for keeping us dumb usually hedonism materialism and egoism, also knowing that those power elites are neopagan in big extent normally that they are obligated through causality to push for this kind of tempting of Christians, but lets say all dead ends of the current societies are just accidental reflex of wrong empirical approach, still that dont removes from the equation the power elites (whoever whatever they are) and as result our intellect is stalled if not lowered as much as possible on broiler animal level so they would keep their inherited rule in place, after all Nikola Tesla was silenced otherwise with his momentum as power elites mids free energy they would be cornered quickly, after all their planned obsolesce is skim that even before him was employed on various levels what about later when world population exploded due to greater quality of life as result of overproduction and exploitation that needed as slaves so as consumers, and in the end that skim now is dysfunctional when the third world getting close to their western abundancy level what is threat by their math from every perspective, the way the game work its insurance through reset by wars - or recently they suppose by pandemics - or probably later if that dont bring reset (if not shift) I expect to be released manufactured "natural" cataclysm, I am mentioning the shift coz the same is agenda now meme too for them as power elites for heaven on earth occupied by gmo if not cyborg superhumanity, maybe both tho think borgs will be slaves while the master race is seen as supper hero alike population reached through genetic revolution, this projection suggest harnessing cosmic forces in one hand, they believe, yet as Christians we are warned dont chase the spirit of this world, and still many in their disbelief are rushing to embrace the m'rnavaccines as first wide step towards dna medicine with it all military eugenic and totalitarian lust of the neopagan western elites!

Jesus Christ, you expect anyone to read that?

[noemon]

Except a modern chav will have had tons of education, comparatively speaking, and a good diet (i.e. enough to eat, in quantity and variety).

Except that this is not true, a modern chav has the availability & potentiality of both of these things but that does not mean that a chav eating crisps, macdonalds and jellyfish all day has a better diet than an ancient peasant on a like-for-like basis or that he understands arithmetic, geometry, logic, music, grammar or astronomy better than an ancient Greek peasant or a medieval Florentine peasant. Or that he conducts himself and his life better than an ancient peasant. A modern chav factually fails to do all of these things better than his ancient counter-part. Most of the ancient Greeks that we know of -who survived the wars- lived beyond the age of 70 without basic medicine or hospitals and today heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US despite having the ability of bypasses, transplants and all that jazz. How is the average modern human conducting himself in a superior cognitive manner? Did the people of the past not have fat on their meat? Did they not drink wine and do hallucinogenics? Of course they did. Today the average Joe is provided with life extension systems that prolong their time on this earth to salvage them from their own stupidity. How is this average-joe cognitively superior when they cannot even change a deadly-lifestyle under consecutive and often repetitive life-threatening situations?

A modern chav has the potentiality to be cognitively better than his ancient counterpart but that does not mean that he is actually born or that he is cognitively superior to his ancient counter-part.

[QatzelOk]

Devil's advocate response, for people getting smarter, then dumber:

1. Printing press invented - mass access to books and newspapers etc.
2. Scientific method discovered and spreads during enlightenment period, leading to the subservience of religion, liberal democracy/secularism, and medical/technological innovations.
3. Industrialization means people move into cities and the masses are no longer illiterate subsistence farmers.
...
4. Late industrialization decadence - Society becomes wealthy and life becomes easy, so people become spoiled, entitled and lazy. Education standards drop, parents and teachers let kids get away with everything. Everyone is offended by everything. Everybody is coddled. Laziness and ease of life means people become obese, and purposeless life causes mass anxiety and depression. Adults are too lazy to have children so replace kids with pets, birth-rates plummet, necessitating mass immigration.

5. Internet causes information access explosion...
The youth are poisoned by their dumb-fuck ideological teachers/profs and garbage media.

The "new normals" that you have lived through or that have happened recently (numbers 4 and 5) are the ones you ACKNOWLEDGE have made humanity stupider.

You should have the capacity to project this *Increasing Stupidity* theory onto other ages. But in your post, you have glorified these past eras and new normals, just like HollywoodTM does. Hollywood has changed your (our) thinking process about history.

***

Except a modern chav will have had tons of education, comparatively speaking, and a good diet (i.e. enough to eat, in quantity and variety).

That will make him cognitively superior by far, unless you have some weird definition thereof.

When you say that chavs have "tons of education," what you mean is that they receive "tons of pre-packaged information." Not the same thing at all.

Adults don't spend nearly as much time today on child-rearing as nomadic pre-Paleos did. This is what is traditionally known as "education" - adults spending time with children.

Today, TV, internet, video games, paid teachers... etc. have taken a huge bloc of that "education" time that used to be spent relating to adults who were around you ALL THE TIME.

Yes, we have modern education (training), but we have this because traditional education was eliminated for economic growth in industrial countries. We lost a huge block of childhood education when we sent males into sulphur mines and closed down their farms. This was partially "brought back" with institutionalized instruction (education) during the ind rev.

The ultimate "education" for children is role-modeling. If you offshore this to commercial media and government institutions, your children will never really grow up. This is where we are now. *Not growing up* is a part of the mosaic of modern stupidity.

I am 100% certain that an ancient peasant is far more cognitively superior to a modern chav.

So am I. And while I have not met many ancients, I HAVE gotten to know people from many countries of the Earth. And the cultures that produce the best general thinking are NOT the most developed ones. It is in countries were people are still forced to think to survive, and where adults still have lots of contact with one another... where one finds a few smart hold-outs.

Hyper-developed countries like the one I live in, produce a huge number of mentally-mediocre non-entities. Because all you have to be is a loyal dog to *do well* in a rich country. And that's all that millions of people do here. And it shows.

***

You assert your supremacy over every single individual born before you because you can go as far as: "New iPad Best iPad ever".

Moderns often confuse the power of their gadgets with their own intelligence and wisdom. This blurring of human-versus-toy is in great part created by advertising. And also caused by the relief that these toys bring to the mentally enslaved.



What makes mankind Stupid

1. Technologies replace human thinking (laziness, mind atrophy)

2. Overly structured time (clocks, deadlines) remove the potential for philosophical creativity or long-term idea development (permanent fight or flight)

3. Religions destroy most people's spiritual development (spiritual voids, lack of real morality)

4. Hierarchy destroyes self-esteem (low-class) and self-efficacy (high class). This causes lack of confidence, and leads to lack of social participation, lack of ideation. (mental illness, anti-social attitudes)

5.Slave-like daily routines destroy natural relations between people (social knowledge)

6. Commercial mass media destroy$ the natural $haring of idea$ - human a$$ociation (common sense)(white noise in brain)

7. Suburbia destroys daily contact, the omnipresence of humans in shared public spaces (community)

8. Commercial Supermacy leads to a devaluation of originality, and a huge increase in conformity (advertising, regulations, etc. are all driven by commercial needs, rather than social needs)

[AFAIK]

The discussion of GPS earlier reminded me of Nicholas Carr's book The Glass Cage: Automation and Us in which he discusses the adaptation of GPS devices by the Inuit;

The Igloolik hunters, who had already swapped their dogsleds for snowmobiles, began to rely on computer-generated maps and directions to get around. Younger Inuit were particularly eager to use the new technology. In the past, a young hunter had to endure a long and arduous apprenticeship with his elders, developing his wayfinding talents over many years. By purchasing a cheap GPS receiver, he could skip the training and offload responsibility for navigation to the device. And he could travel out in some conditions, such as dense fog, that used to make hunting trips impossible. The ease, convenience, and precision of automated navigation made the Inuit’s traditional techniques seem antiquated and cumbersome by comparison.

But as GPS devices proliferated on Igloolik, reports began to spread of serious accidents during hunts, some resulting in injuries and even deaths. The cause was often traced to an overreliance on satellites. When a receiver breaks or its batteries freeze, a hunter who hasn’t developed strong wayfinding skills can easily become lost in the featureless waste and fall victim to exposure. Even when the devices operate properly, they present hazards. The routes so meticulously plotted on satellite maps can give hunters a form of tunnel vision. Trusting the GPS instructions, they’ll speed onto dangerously thin ice, over cliffs, or into other environmental perils that a skilled navigator would have had the sense and foresight to avoid. Some of these problems may eventually be mitigated by improvements in navigational devices or by better instruction in their use. What won’t be mitigated is the loss of what one tribal elder describes as “the wisdom and knowledge of the Inuit. (P220)

I highly recommend the book along with Carr's more popular release about the internet's effect on our brains- The Shallows.

I'd argue that the increasing availability of the written word led to us becoming deeper thinkers even as we modified books to make them easier to read;

It’s hard for us to imagine today, but no spaces separated the words in early writing. In the books inked by scribes, words ran together without any break across every line on every page, in what’s now referred to as scriptura continua. The lack of word separation reflected language’s origins in speech. When we talk, we don’t insert pauses between each word—long stretches of syllables flow unbroken from our lips. It would never have crossed the minds of the first writers to put blank spaces between words. They were simply transcribing speech, writing what their ears told them to write. (Today, when young children begin to write, they also run their words together. Like the early scribes, they write what they hear.) The scribes didn’t pay much attention to the order of the words in a sentence either. In spoken language, meaning had always been conveyed mainly through inflection, the pattern of stresses a speaker places on syllables, and that oral tradition continued to govern writing. In interpreting the writing in books through the early Middle Ages, readers would not have been able to use word order as a signal of meaning. The rules hadn’t been invented yet.

The lack of word separation, combined with the absence of word order conventions, placed an “extra cognitive burden” on ancient readers, explains John Saenger in Space between Words, his history of the scribal book. Readers’ eyes had to move slowly and haltingly across the lines of text, pausing frequently and often backing up to the start of a sentence, as their minds struggled to figure out where one word ended and a new one began and what role each word was playing in the meaning of the sentence. Reading was like working out a puzzle. The brain’s entire cortex, including the forward areas associated with problem solving and decision making, would have been buzzing with neural activity.

The slow, cognitively intensive parsing of text made the reading of books laborious. It was also the reason no one, other than the odd case like Ambrose, read silently. Sounding out the syllables was crucial to deciphering the writing.

He also discusses the addition of pages, chapters, tables of contents and indexes to facilitate the private study of technical topics.

[QatzelOk]

I'd argue that the increasing availability of the written word led to us becoming deeper thinkers even as we modified books to make them easier to read;

It could have, but it coincided with the decreasing availability of "different people to talk to."

And those "different people" hadn't been pre-screened by the publishing industry - those gatekeepers from Plato's cave.

Cave means "dumb."

[QatzelOk]

But the US is an amoral culture with an unregulated market economy that teaches and elevates its worst scammers.

It cannot be reformed because the tools of democracy, all federal branches and mass media, are fully corrupted.

It cannot be reformed by internal revolt because the technology of surveillance now precludes rebellion.
It is not a model for any ideal, not a trustworthy ally, not an economic powerhouse: it is a troublemaker.
It is doomed to descend into a one-party totalitarian state with ever less pretense of its long-gone democracy.

Once again, AFAIK's comment that: "...increasing availability of the written word led to us becoming deeper thinkers" is contradicted by the above Sam F quote, where he notes that the publishing and media industries open the door to a monopoly of liesTM

So the "deep thinking" can easily be replaced with "deep state propaganda." And this is what powerful entities will ALWAYS do if they are allowed to concentrate power into their own hands by state law.

[QatzelOk]

Some Environmental and Technological advances
that are making humanity dumber and dumber



1. Noise pollution (city and suburb have soundtracks of noise, all noise interrupts the thinking process)

2. Chemical food (we eat and digest lots of foreign chemicals)

3. Work routines (the 40-hour workweek and commute remove all free time for reflection, remove any natural dispostion towards exploration and learning from community)

4. Suburbia and cars (isolate people so they don't develop common sense from interactions with community)

5. Distraction (TV, radio, internet, video games, etc. displace time that would have been spent in reflection. Also, the format of games leads to a shortened attention span, and loss of disposition to have long-term, complex thoughts)

[jimjam]

Some Environmental and Technological advances
that are making humanity dumber and dumber



1. Noise pollution (city and suburb have soundtracks of noise, all noise interrupts the thinking process)

I spend winter in Florida. We have GIANT lawn mowers that sound like airplanes. After the mower is done the weed whackers come out and to finish the serenade leaf blowers are enlisted to move pieces of grass from here to there. Then a motorcycle driven by a dumb person speeds by that makes so much noise that you can feel the vibrations. I have taken to wearing ear plugs.

I have noticed that dumb people LOVE loud noise.

[XogGyux]

Some Environmental and Technological advances
that are making humanity dumber and dumber



1. Noise pollution (city and suburb have soundtracks of noise, all noise interrupts the thinking process)

2. Chemical food (we eat and digest lots of foreign chemicals)

3. Work routines (the 40-hour workweek and commute remove all free time for reflection, remove any natural dispostion towards exploration and learning from community)

4. Suburbia and cars (isolate people so they don't develop common sense from interactions with community)

5. Distraction (TV, radio, internet, video games, etc. displace time that would have been spent in reflection. Also, the format of games leads to a shortened attention span, and loss of disposition to have long-term, complex thoughts)

LOL you keep trying to bang your head against the wall.

For (1) That is the only semi-reasonable point that you made. But then again, nobody is forced to live on nouse polluted areas. Go move to the countryside if you don't like the sound of the horn or the police sirens.

For (2) All matter is chemical. All food that has existed from the beginning of time is chemicals.

For (3) Whats wrong with work routines? Every organism that has ever existed does some sort of work to survive. Even the fungus in your nail has to perform work to survive.

For (4) The solution is obvious. Sell your car, move to the countryside.

For (5) Distraction is bad? Let me get this straight, you don't like work, you don't like commuting, you don't like distractions. How do you imagine your perfect existence? In the void not doing anything?
This is scary nihilism shit brah, borderline depressive.

[XogGyux]

I have noticed that dumb people LOVE loud noise.

I think this is another correlation =/= causation. I think dumb people just like to be the center of attention and loud noises, shiny sparkling clothes, over the top makeup, stinky perfumes etc all play a role into giving these people the experience of being the center of attention without having a particularly impressive skill in communication or any other skill of interest. But thats just my opinion