As does the average resident of the UK.
I weep for you. 
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
It’s a conversation that’s irrelevant to the OP.
Maybe it should be called an age of “misinformation” as 90% of what you will be exposed to is exagerated sensationalistic bullshit. People aren’t anti-intellectual. They just don’t have the time to go and research every topic the see or hear about. What happens is when we see stories in the news, we immediately have an emotional reaction to them and place a greater importance and likelyhood of happening on them than is appropriate.
So basically what you get is a society that is constantly outraged and fearfull of everything, but fortunately too fat, lazy and apathetic to actually do anything about it.
Y’know, I find these kinds of questions to be incredibly provincial. “I’m an American, and therefore everything about America must be exceptional”. Yes, we’ve got to be the smartest, the stupidest, the kindest, the cruelest, the most violent, the most caring, the most free, the least free, the most generous, the most stingy, most imperalist, most democracy-loving, whatever. Even when the poster is complaining about America, it’s all about American exceptionalism, how everything in the world revolves around us, everything bad comes from America. Sometimes things happen in the world that have nothing to do with America, you know?
Frankly, only someone who’s never left the country or paid attention to anything around the world would ask if Americans are more stupid than people in other countries.
Or, they’ve been to other countries, and the people there they talked to seemed smarter than the average American…neglecting to consider that they weren’t talking to a random sample of people in other countries. Really stupid people from other countries aren’t likely to speak English. So any foreigner who can hold an English conversation with you is from a restricted sample set. Or they base their impression of how stupid people are by “stupid person of the day” media stories, and gosh, all the dumb people in the stories are American! All the dumb people I know are American, therefore Americans must be dumber than everyone else!
It’s pathetic and it’s ethnocentric in the worst way.
Most Americans? As in over 50%? I don’t know about that. But I have to admit that a disproportionate number of Americans do not strike me as being particularly bright, informed, or interested. That goes not only for politics, but for other areas as well. I’m not an America-basher, I don’t “blame America first,” I don’t think I’m an elitist or a snob, and I don’t have a cultural inferiority complex. Simply put, that’s just been my experience in life, after having lived in a lot of places and known a lot of people. It’s PC to say that every country has an equal share of dunces, and the US has no more than any other, but that’s simply not been what I’ve witnessed.
My point of comparison is, for the most part, Europeans. And yes, I know how cringe-worthy it is to imply that Europeans are smarter than us. But the average European I’ve met has been more intellectually curious and in general seems to be better educated than the average American. I’ve worked menial jobs in both the US and the UK, and the dumbest Brits I worked with were typically brighter than the dumbest Americans. Admittedly, the comparison to continental Europeans is probably flawed since most of my conversations with them were in English, and generally if you’re fluent in a foreign language you’ve got to be at least somewhat educated.
My experience with Australians and Canadians has been that they have about the same percentage of smart and dumb people as the US does.
Presumably the people of all these countries start with the same distribution of native intelligence; it’s how the culture decides to use or ignore that intelligence that seems to make the difference. Maybe the US does have an undercurrent of anti-intellectualism; I don’t know. I will add that most Americans strike me as being more ambitious and adaptable and, in a way, creative than their European counterparts – that might be the decisive factor in our country’s success, moreso than pure smarts.
If the OP were “are americans stupider/smarter than people in other countries,” you’d have a point.
Do you have anything to say about the OP?
i am exhausted of this idiotic question.
you cannot speak for people.
how could you not understand this?
Damn. I answered the thread title, but not really the actual question. Well…smart or not, I’m not about to go making having a college or even high school diploma (not that either necessarily means anything) a requirement for voting. We’ve done alright so far with the current system. Maybe the collective will of the people is smart enough, whether or not any individual one of those people can multiply fractions or name state capitals or argue a political position…
:dubious:
From my experience, people in the U.S. have a very partisan way of voting. The whole process bein’ a compitition to them. If yer a republican, it’s all about the money, the “american dream”, and Guns. And yer ballot will say so. Not cuz yer a greedy, violent, asshole(nesessarily). But yer only gonna vote for republicans across the board, cuz yer a patriot.
Democrats bein’ the heros, ya wanna vote for the dudes who promise to make the world better for poor folks, and animals, cuz yer nice. So you gotta do all ya can ta make sure that the G.O.P. don’t take yer freedoms away, cuz they have a lot more money than you. So ya vote democrat across the board.
I’m rambleing.
I don’t think a lot of Americans can argue their belief system sucessfully, opting for “I read it”, “because god said so”, or “cuz it’s Mr. T!”
Y’know what? I knew this was a bad idea.
Yeah, we’re dumb.
Too much money, not enough brains.
Too much government, not enough booty.
I think Americans are relatively underinformed. For some reason our culture keeps information from the general public. From our public schools that don’t emphasize critical thinking, and give us sparse facts to memorize and then push us at a college, to the media that doesn’t show us anything. I watched a clip from the BBC and it showed people actually at war, vehicles burning etc… and the announcer said “This is an all too familiar scene.” and they never show that on American Television.
Also, our voters generally have no idea what they are voting on. One thing that really opened my eyes was when I went and did research on every candidate on the ballot, which amounted to basically reading their campaign websites and seeing who I liked based upon that, and it was more than most of what my friends who are rather intelligent bothered to do. We are willing to accept ballots where people run unopposed in local elections that affect our daily lives, but we all watch the big game every four years to see who is president. Everyone has an opinion, and most of their opinions are handed to them by their peer group. In the primaries lots of people hated John Kerry, in the General election he was a beacon of light. Both parties just argue for “Anybody but the other party’s guy.” and go on to talk about how he’s the antichrist. Democrats think they are smarter than Republicans, Republicans think that they are more moral than Democrats, and they are both incorrect. We seperate issues on partisan lines that have absolutely no reason to be seperated like that, like the environment. We vote based on one issue and one issue alone. “Oh no that guy will stop/continue abortion! Forget about whether or not he’ll take us to war, abortion is far more important!” I mean, how pointless is the gay marriage issue, but it helped decide our foreign policy.
Americans may not be stupider than other people, but our system is fucking retarded.
Erek
I’ve put quotes on smart and stupid since I find them to be incredibly subjective terms and not as objective as one hopes for. But I’ll go with the OP’s standard for this thread.
You can break this down into four categories:
- People who are ‘smart’ and know it. These are people who are well-informed and can make reasoned political decisions. I would say about 25% of Americans.
- People who are ‘smart’ and do not know it. These are people I classify as being capable of reasoned decisions, but are not well-informed enough. In that sense, they do know it, but were never challenged enough to know their true ‘intelligence’. I see very few of this group that vote though, or only for major elections. Here, I would guess 20%.
- People who are ‘stupid’ and know it. This group knows they are not well-informed enough, and know they don’t have the inclination to become so. At the same time, I venture that a very high percentage of this group does not bother to vote. Not to put down beauticians, but most people I know that went to beauty school fell into this category. They knew they would not succeed in college, so they found something they could succeed in. Another 20%.
- People who are ‘stupid’ and do not know it. Here are the remaining 35%. They think they are well-informed, and making reasonable decisions, but neither one is true. This group is the most dangerous, since a very high percentage do vote. I just finished reading a book - Culture and Prosperity, by John Kay. In one chapter, he talks about those who prescribe DIY economics, succumbing to the fallacies of scalability or causality, i.e. what is true for the firm is not necessarily true for the whole economy. Too many people assume expertise in one area translates to expertise in all areas. Ironically enough, I do not see this in those that are truly experts. They know their field and do not pretend to know others.
Generalizations run rampant in America, as evidenced by your nightly newscasts and this post. 
(And thus one in which I have to watch out for in particular since it is one of my greatest weaknesses.) Yet I’ve lived in the Northwest, the West (California and Utah), and the Midwest. I’ve known people who lived on the East Coast and the Southwest. I’ve met too many Americans fall into categories 3 and 4. I have found a strong anti-intellectualism in both inner-city and rural America. It has democratic element where those going to college and the like are considered ‘putting on airs’ or ‘ya think you are better than us, huh?’. This tends to fall along class lines though. ‘Sons of bankers should become bankers. Sons of butchers should become butchers.’
America has been incredibly dumbed down over the last fifty years. I am currently an A student in college. Comparing textbooks written then*, and those written now, if I turned in the same quality of work that I do now, I would be happy to get a C. I am in awe of those who graduated college from that time - it was not an easy task in the least.
I do not think the average American is taught critical thinking skills. Which is more important then ever thanks to the information overload modern society is experiencing. The sheer numbers of issues to be well-informed of is almost overwhelming for those that are inclined. So I see America becoming even more dumbed down in the future. (Not to exclude other countries, but I do not have much experience there.) Specialization plays a huge part also.
*My father’s College Algebra, circa 1960, was over 350 pages of very small type and a very large vocabulary of Greek and Latin.
Taking the loaded words out of the premise, I would say that most Americans have not been taught to think critically. Having established relativism as the basis for our modern ethics - “everyone has a valid opinion and beliefs within their own context” - we’re reaping some unintended consequences in a population raised to think that producing an idea is the same thing as justifying it. With a heavy emphasis on self-esteem in public education, it’s easy to tie the output of mental work to one’s self worth. As a result, questioning the idea becomes questioning the person. You can no longer attack flawed reasoning without it being an attack on the reasoner. (See the Christian Reconstructionist persecution mania for examples.)
Within a relativist society, it’s pretty tough to have a public discourse on any serious subject. So rather than a rational politics of discussion and analysis, we have this endless medieval morality play on fluff issues like gay marriage where each side gets to demonstrate how righteous they are. We’re not stupid - we just don’t have a good way to talk to each other.
I think the American that people refer to today as “Joe Six-Pack” will probably find themselves toward the bottom rung of the underclass when Globalization is known in full force.
Erek
Thank you! I was about to point out that in North Carolina, Jim Crow had a Native American equivalent, Jim Croatan, ie, Native Americans were considered “coloreds.”* So, it wouldn’t surprise me if similar things happened elsewhere.
*Source: Keeping the Circle, American Indian Identity in Eastern North Carolina 1885-2004 by Christopher Arris Oakley
For a bell curve, the mean and median are the same value.
After travelling to several countries and seeing what goes on around the world, it seems all countries have their fair share of stupid, and the U.S. is no exception.
“Are most Americans stupid”, in order to mean anything, has to mean “Are most Americans stupider than average”. Since the only people to compare Americans to are non-Americans, your question has to mean, “Are Americans stupider than non-Americans?”
Or did you mean to ask: Are most PEOPLE stupid?
Because otherwise your question doesn’t make any sense.
BTW, being uninformed does not make one stupid, it makes one ignorant.
I doubt that Americans are any stupider than anyone else. I’ve lived in Europe, and IME they were about the same as Americans.
If you’re asking whether people are stupid, I have to say that I don’t know. Sometimes I think so. Other times, I don’t.