Bilbo Baggins: “I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”
most Americans are not tricksy, just splendidly imperfect. Ok less than half of them.
I won’t buy the idea that Americans are stupid. I will however accept that way too many of them are lazy, uninformed and uncritical. That combination tends to make any hope that they will become informed and critical a pipe dream. But, I also think that those things are true of the bulk of people everywhere. It is, in short, human nature to accept ideas and assertions that fit comfortably into your view of yourself and your immediate world without question and to thoughtlessly reject ideas and assertions that call those assumptions into question.
You’re wise An Gadaí. America isn’t just drawing the smartest people to her shores of course, she is also educating and producing some of the most brilliant scholars in the world. Not to mention the world class entertainment industry which is Hollywood. No, the U.S. is far from stupid or ignorant. Far, far from it.
But a lot of American youth take the education they can get for granted. Many squander it after they graduate.
I think about half of America is shockingly ignorant on things such as science, geography and politics. As evidence of this I point to the fact that we are even having a serious discussion on whether or not to teach evolution in science class, and that it is even possible to consider Sarah Palin as a viable candidate for vice president. I think there is an anti-intellectualism running deep in American culture and it has become more pronounced in recent years and this trend coincides with a time when the humanity is about to make some amazing leaps forward and about half of America will be left behind and be an anchor on the other half trying to go forward.
I get the joke but it’s based on a mathematical fallacy
Say you have a population of 4 people. Issac Newton, and three people who suffered brain damage from eating lead paint chips as a kid.
In that population 75% of people have below average intelligence since Mr. Newton really skews the averages. See no reason similar albeit less drastic effects wouldn’t be in play for the real population.
As for the thread.
Stupid:NO. I’ve seen some academically dumb people display impressive street smarts.
Ignorant: yea
willfully ignorant: more then is healthy prolly
Americans are not stupid, but their lizard brains are. And unfortunately for what I consider progress, the lizard brain, that oldest and simplest of our cognitive patchwork, still gets to run things most of the time. Fight or flight, same good different bad; Republicans are good at tapping into it, and it really works. It’s not just limited to Americans, but they’ve been gaming the system for quite a while: worsening civic education leading to shrinking civic understanding and participation, an exhaustive PR network beaming spin directly into our homes until false becomes true, racial and social issues used as wedge to drive people apart, xenophobia stroked to insulate against outside forces, and the basic trivialization of knowledge and intelligence. It’s a testament to our intelligence that Bush got and McCain is polling at about half the vote.
Nope. Not as long as we have Canada and Ireland to be compared with.
AND 
Interestingly, your cite proves the opposite. The most recent data shows more high intelligence people calling themselves Democrats, more low intelligence people calling themselves Independents and only slightly more average intelligence people calling themselves Republicans - one point more than those identifying as Independents, and two points more than identifying as Democrats.
Your example only works for small populations since intelligence falls on a bell curve for any decently sized group of people.
If we’re talking about IQ scores (which have their flaws, but I don’t know a better measure of intelligence for statistical purposes), then it’s more the other way around.
More people have a “perfectly average” IQ of 100 than any other score. Less than 50% of the population has an IQ above (or below) 100, because so many people have an IQ of exactly 100. If you consider anyone with an IQ within 10 points of 100 to be of average intelligence, then about 50% of the population is average. It’s only about 25% of the population that’s of significantly below average intelligence.
I didn’t say anything about smart people. I said that less intelligent people swing Liberal. From 1974 to 2004, there were two stupid liberals for every one stupid conservative. The intelligentisa, if anything, appear to be pretty evenly spread regardless of year.
Most of the people I knew in the US were pretty knowledgeable when it came to politics, so the argument that most Americans are too stupid and/or ignorant to vote doesn’t get much traction with me, as a matter of fact it seems that anybody who knows a lot about politics thinks everybody who disagrees with him is an idiot (just ask what one of our rabid pubs thinks of our rabid dems on this board and vice versa).
Neither do I think Americans are particularly ignorant of the world around them. They are, just not more so than most other countries.
I went and lived abroad when I was in high school, and I was stunned at the general ignorance and apathy I encountered all around me. Those folks–lovely as they were–weren’t any smarter, better informed, more curious, or anything than the people I knew at home. And in my hometown a lot of people are kind of loopy! So: IMO Americans aren’t any dumber than anyone else.
At the same time, America produces some of the best education, industry, etc. as An Gadaí points out. We do seem to at least be able to foster an atmosphere in which intelligence can have free rein to grow–maybe not incredibly well, but to some extent.
I’m not a huge fan of the American educational system. It’s seriously broken. But I’m not sure that other systems are a whole lot less broken. It’s the human condition, I guess; we’re really good at screwing things up, and not quite so good at making them work really well, since that’s a much harder job. But sometimes we do make things work really well, and that’s probably a big victory against the forces of entropy and chaos and paparazzi. So, yay for humans, because sometimes we get things right! And that’s a miracle, every time.
You throw any around so casually. What of a city of 10,000 with a high tech large scale research firm who’s researcher’s make up 25% of the population? Could you see a bell curve with exactly 49.9% below average emerging from that?
That said I never said the perturbations would be large but saying 49.9% of the population is guaranteed to be below average is bad math. And I as an American won’t stand for it! And the thread is back on topic.
IQ has some weird properties that make statistics using it complicated. Like for example the difference between 140 and 150 is alot bigger then the difference between 90 and 100 even though both cases are a difference of 10.
I agree with what you’re saying though.
My thinking is not that Americans are stupid, but rather that they have been infected with the idea that being in a democracy means that when it comes to everything, majority rules. No listening to the advice of snobby highfalutin’ educated “experts”. They’re the snooty elite, not common folks. Really, it all boils down to one thing: a hostility to thinking things through in a disciplined manner. It’s not that they’re stupid. It’s that they’re hostile to educated reason that contradicts their view.
To some degree, I think this is an unfortunate byproduct of the trend toward encouraging people to always pay attention to their feelings. Big mistake. Feelings can be wrong, irrational, and dangerous. That’s why they’re feelings and not, uh… thinkings?
…and it ain’t getting fixed anytime soon. If you don’t value it, you ain’t gonna bother. In spite of all the rhetoric, I don’t think Americans really value education all that much, except as viewing it as a ticket to enough money to buy a huge house and an SUV to waddle out to. Even the parents who do care about the state of the schools only really care about the part that affects their kids. Fuck everyone else’s kids (this didn’t use to be true, as Madeline Levine writes in The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids). And this trend is getting worse.
So, can we conclude that Merkins, as a group, tend to be of average intelligence, while Furriners, as a group, tend to be of average intelligence? Cuz that, from what little I know about Statistics, appears to be true.
I’ve traveled fairly far and wide, taught in schools on two continents and hang out with teachers with experience in every corner of the globe.
In my experience, Americans aren’t the greatest at book learning. We don’t drill and memorize like they do in other countries. We don’t hone our math skills to perfection or spend years memorizing grammar. This is the stuff that shows up on all those tests that “prove” that American students suck.
But we are very good at creativity and critical thinking. And in general we are well rounded. I’ve worked with college-aged students overseas who couldn’t grasp simple critical thinking processes that an American middle schooler can get. Getting a genuine argumentative essay out of most overseas students is near impossible- whereas even a remedial American high school kid can write something that grasps the basic concept of an essay. Furthermore, Americans seem to take more risks intellectually. We are better at going beyond what our teachers taught us and applying that to real life. We are good at making connection, “connecting the dots”, and real world applications of concepts. Whereas many overseas students are more accustomed to “do things they way you were taught and don’t try new things.”
And this is a big part of what makes America so special. We are sometimes willing to hire the guy who is really smart even if he doesn’t have a degree. We are willing to try new things and allow our students and employees to explore novel solutions. We look at authority and establishment critically, and that keeps our society moving. Speaking as an educator, a bit of anti-intellectualism is good for a society. It keeps the elites fluid, and keeps people on their toes with new ideas.
It’s not heaven on Earth or anything, but there is something special about America and American thinking.