It’s not that Americans are stupider than other nations, it’s just that stupid Americans get a lot more media exposure than stupid people in other countries.
The last time I took the dogs to the veterinarian’s office, an argument was going on at the desk. A woman was insisting that her state-issued medical benefit card was good for her dog also. She kept saying that the woman at the welfare office had explained that “everyone in her home” was covered.
Sitting there and overhearing this wasn’t the shocker. The shocker was that the majority of other people in the waiting room followed crazy woman’s logic and agreed with her.
Is the average American stupid? Duh.
As evidence that stupidity is endemic in many countries, including Western nations other than America, I offer the following:
“Some homeopathic treatment is covered by the public health service of several European countries, including France, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Luxembourg.”
It doesn’t get much dumber than that.
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Personal insults are not allowed in this forum. Don’t do this again.
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Bingo.
What percentage of Brits could tell you the number of members of the House of Commons or House of Lords?
I had to look it up.
No we’re the one’s that had to create a coalition of 50 states to survive economically and got defeated by a bunch of guys wearing pajamas.
Why is this turning into Europe vs the USA. The fact that the rest of the world may be stupid as well doesn’t make it any better.
We just had an election where a guy who had absolutely no grasp of the tax system, including such gems as thinking you paid taxes on the entire receipts of your small business, and not understanding that moving you into a higher tax racket does not mean you pay that rate on all of your income. He became a folk hero, was interviewed on TV, and paid money to speak at events.
I can understand people not knowing the number of US Representatives. I don’t know the exact number. but there are two Senators from each state and we have 50 states.
My wife worked at a bookstore for many years. The owner and other employees were surely more literate, knowledgeable and intelligent than the average person.
Or so one would think…she came home from work one day and related a discussion that had taken place amongst the above-named. I don’t recall the details, but the gist of it was that they were talking about birds…and they came to the conclusion that a bird is not an animal.
My wife objected mildly, but she was shouted down. “No, it’s not an animal…it’s a bird!” She was very careful to ascertain that no one was confusing “animal” with “mammal.” But no, that wasn’t it. A bird is not an animal, according to her learned colleagues.
You can’t make this stuff up!
Homeopathy is almost in a breed apart of stupidity. Let’s see, if we dilute something until there is the equivalent of one drop in lake Huron it makes it stronger, but none of the other impurities in the water we started with get stronger. And then we are going to sell you a fucking 4oz bottle of water for $30.
First off, this thread calls for the George Carlin line:
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize that half of them are stupider than that!”
As for stupidity, it comes in all shades, in all countries.
Half of young people do not recognize Winston Churchill.
My personal favorite of the week: a 42-year-old co-worker of mine with two college degrees asked out loud, “Is Greece in the Mediterranean?”
I wanted to stab myself after that.
As I am fond of pointing out, I have met many Canadians who don’t know how many provinces we have.
We have ten. 10. It’s a small number. It’s a really, really ROUND, even number, like maybe the easiest number you could possibly remember, the number our entire numbering system is based on. Ten. And educated Canadians, people who’ve graduated from high school and college, quite often don’t know the answer. Oh, and it hasn’t changed recently, either; the tenth province was added in 1949. I can forgive Americans not knowing how many Senators there are when we can’t even keep ten provinces straight.
Claiming the average American is stupid by saying you can find dumb people on Jaywalking is like saying the average American is a genius because Americans win more Nobel Prizes than anyone else.
You mean thisone:
If that were the reason I thought that, it would be stupid.
I don’t think so, at least how the article portrays it. The focus was on comparing international knowledge of basic questions (including but not limited to basic geography IIRC) and it showed plenty of European countries where less than half the population could answer very basic questions.
People are stupid all over. We export our cultural stupidity (baywatch was the most popular tv show in the world for a while there) and they all gobble it up, whereas we only take the better stuff from your culture to integrate into our own. It skews the perception immensely.
Very fresh in their minds, as it turns out. The kids on “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader” aren’t just answering the questions out of a general fund of knowledge they learned in elementary school. If you watch the disclaimers at the end of the show, the kids are given workbooks to study “which could contain the questions asked in the game.” Cute idea, but the kids are more of a game show lifeline gimmick than they are a commentary on contemporary society.
Another bit of :smack: anecdotal evidence:
Mrs. J., when working as a university reference librarian in the upper Midwest in the '80s, was approached by a student wanting to know, “What war was it that was going on in 1943?”.
The student was a Communications major.
As my huband is so fond of reminding me, “Half of us are below average.”
I think it’s important to recognize that the ability to answer questions correctly is not necessarily an indicator of intelligence. Knowledge doesn’t equate intelligence unless it can be properly applied to life.
There’s no way we finished second to last. I ***know ***that in that poll, America at least scored higher than New Mexico, Rhode Island, and Chicago.
Maher is right. Americans ARE morons. Would you believe MANY of them think vaccinating kids against disease is dangerous?
And that Brazil hasn’t used petroleum in decades?
God, people that stupid should kill themselves.
Right, Bill?
Ah…see, I think this is a good example of non-stupidness. Okay, so you don’t know the trivia (# of x), but you can reason your way to a decent answer nonetheless, based on the facts you do know.
I don’t think “stupid” people are stupid because they lack knowledge of trivia, I think people are stupid when they lack critical thinking and reasoning skills. Ignorance isn’t stupidity, but not being able to take what you know and apply it to something outside your memorization zone, that’s stupid.
And that’s the kind of stupidity I was referring to when talking about my nursing school classmates. They can memorize the text, but they can’t seem to apply it to a new situation. “A rapid heartbeat and low blood pressure indicate the possibility of shock”, they get, and they know that the normal heartbeat is 60-100 beats per minute and blood pressure is low if the top number is under 90. And yet when you give them a situation like, “The patient’s blood pressure is 85/40 and the heart rate is 135,” they can’t apply their book learning and say, “Oh, I wonder if he’s in shock?”
Great at trivia but stupid is entirely possible.
(I have the exact opposite problem, actually. I get great scores at critical thinking, but I can’t remember normal lab values for shit. Maybe I’m the stupid one.)