I’d fashion something to stop the bleeding. Then I’d make a fire to keep the bears away while I went and got help from my fellow empathy gene bearing society.
I know fire is good for keeping animals unused to it away because I’m smarter then average bear.
Yes, but how are you at locating pic-a-nic baskets?
Looking at this thread and it’s in-progress train wreck, I stand by my first answer. It’s not possible, or even desirable, to “de-stupify” the U.S., but a President already has sufficient influence to greatly help those Americans who already are smart and determined to improve themselves, and subsequently the country.
Heck, bring home the troops in Iraq, get as many of them as possible into subsidized college educations under the terms of existing “G.I. Bill” legislation, and that alone will have a significant effect five to ten years from now.
Maybe they’ll make special glasses you can wear so you don’t have to see the threads that don’t agree with your sensibilities.
Well, whether or not you like my answer has no bearing on it being a good or valid answer. A president has a much better chance of encouraging Americans that are already intelligent (but could use some help developing to ther full potential) than some cockeyed notion of eliminating stupid people, when it’s not clear at all that any particular definition of “stupid” can be settled on, and in fact is being used to make dumb jokes about subcultures that the poster looks down on.
Fifty percent or whatever of Americans can’t find Iraq on a map. So? Even among the fifty percent that can, only a tiny percentage will ever have to apply that knowledge, be it flying a bombing mission or arranging for an oil shipment or whatever.
Physical disabilities are irrelevant to the issue of stupidity. Stephen Hawking has contributed plenty to the world.
Most people who are severely mentally retarded don’t reproduce anyway, either because their genetic disorder makes them infertile (as in males with Downs Syndrome) or because the opportunity to reproduce is impractical for most profoundly mentally retarded people (usually due to a combination of the fact that they seldom meet other individuals at their level of functioning who would be interested in a relationship with a mentally retarded person or because they have caretakers who have put them on birth control and so forth).
No, I think the real problem is with the people who fall more in the IQ range of say 80-100…not retarded, but not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
The very fact that they are “slow” but yet still able to function well enough to interact with general society (and thus meet other slow individuals which they can produce babies with) makes them more likely to drag society’s IQ bell curve leftward than more severely mentally disadvantaged people who generally keep to themselves and don’t bother anyone.
My understanding is that a behavioral trait can be net positive for a species, but still have situations where it fails and becomes detrimental for an individual. There are many such examples. Evolution doesn’t “care” about individuals.
To avoid the totalitarian angle that some pointed out, wouldn’t the best solution be to just pour the resources into improving public education, with a part of it going to campaigns to encourage and increase people’s willingness to pursue further studies (maybe in some way already described), and get some prestige (“coolness”) back into it. It wouldn’t be a quick change though, it never is.
I can’t tell whether you’re aware that this is another fictional fact… Is this idea that evolution has at some point been suspended for homo sapiens tied into your understanding of “darwinism”? Because you seem to be confusing Darwinism with social darwinism, a concept for which there is no scientific basis.
The fact that you know the terms “darwinism” and “evolution” but may not be well versed in the actual concepts, is perhaps a good example of the modern emphasis on information over examination.
Are you sure you -or any of us- would escape unscathed from the destupification program our cabal would produce?
On the assumption that just throwing money at public education is a bit too generalized to be efficient, I’d suggest being a bit more selective about what gets funded, i.e. college educations for those who’ve already gone through a hitch in the service. Perhaps some kind of federal accreditation or subsidy for trade schools because however one defines stupid, it certainly can’t hurt to have more plumbers and electricians and welders and machinists around.
Out of curiosity, how many science and technology universities have been founded in the U.S. over the last decade? How many A&M schools? Is it possible to create a federal program specifically to encourage more of these? It is possible to make sure such funding doesn’t go to less-productive institutions with, say, a religious bias?
Is there a good non-biased evaluation of how effective or ineffective No Child Left Behind has been? It never sounded like a good idea to me, because I always figured it represented a waste of money on children who were going to get left behind no matter what. As far as I can tell, countries have never benefited because all their citizens met some arbitrary minimal standard; rather, they benefit because when a smart person has an idea, they’re free to explore and pursue it and describe it to others. Sure, most ideas suck. Some, however, don’t. We don’t really know which is which unless we have a bunch of them being explored at the same time.
2 trillion dollars is about $6,000 a person. (although population has prolly gone up, lowering that).
Here’s what we we do. We announce on tv, the internet, show ads during episodes of “Ow My Balls!”, etc. that “we’ve decided you’re all bloody stupid. So here’s here’s a list of things to study and in 2 years we’re gonna test you on these things. We have $2 trillion for this. Get a C and you get $3,000, get a B and you get $6,000, get an A and you get $6,000 plus an equal share of whatever is left of the $2 trillion.”.
No shadowy government conspiracy needed.
I would consider this the picking of nits. I didn’t say that it was a fact, I said it could be considered. Like how it could be considered that blueberries are pink.
Some people seem to have some metaphysical resistance to the very concept of this discussion. If I said “What would you do if Santa Claus shot your mother?” would you say “Nothing, because Santa Claus isn’t real”? Is it so difficult to accept the premise of a simple hypothetical? If you don’t want to play our little game, don’t come into this playground.
All that’s left is arguing for the sake of arguing. I used the word “darwinism,” a word about which you presume to know more than me, and try to exert some kind of conversational dominance by stating as much, with no type of constructive of participatory input. If you got some detail about a subject I’m keenly familiar with incorrect, could I then point out that you are too stupid to be allowed into an imaginary group of arch global puppeteers?
I was just about to suggest government educational summaries to study the interaction of acid glue and Hitler.
I wouldn’t. Having a certain percentage of “stupid” people is a byproduct of a free society.
Do you habitually get this defensive when presented with questions? I find your specific statements regarding evolution to be unsupportive of your general argument. You may find my objections picayune, but you’ve no grounds to claim I’m avoiding your ‘little game’. I posted my understanding of the problem in post # 37, along with two possible strategies for your hypothetical conspiracists to pursue.
Since I posted rather farcically before (keeping, I thought, with the tone of the OP), I’ll state my contribution plainly right now: Outside of imposing a totalitarian society, the only long term method of improving the mean level of intelligence in a democracy must itself be democratically produced and implemented. That means high levels of participation from those with the ability to drive public opinion and effect public action, which implies a highly visible, and honest, effort. IOW, a cabal won’t do it.
If you don’t like your ideas tested, please stick to BBQ Pit rants. You do those well. You can probably do debates equally well if you remove the chip from your shoulder. (That would go a long way to get folks like me to pull the sticks out of our asses.)
This isn’t a one or the other thing. Other free societies have lower levels of stupid people.
What is the evidence of that?
Frankly, I’m curious about that, myself. What is the least stupid country on Earth? I’ll wager it has a healthy supply of stupid people in it, who believe AIDS is man-made or tiger-parts are an aphrodisiac or some such rot.
Yes.
Understandable. I was just trying to get people talking again, and when that happened I got paradoxically upset.
I did not realize this. I assumed you were one of the naysayers, because my first assumption when someone does anything but agree with me is that they are some kind of demonic force that needs quelling with my unfocused (perhaps a little smug) outrage.
Point taken. See above.
Thanks.
Probably.
I really don’t know what’s wrong with me sometimes. Maybe it’s because I’m a youngest child and I’ve become too sensitive to feeling powerless, or maybe it’s because I’ve been on a low calorie diet for far too long and I’m not getting enough nutrients in my brain*, but sometimes I simply refuse to concede anything in a debate and treat every word spoken against me as some villain in need of a tactical slaying. This may come from spending too much time having debates with myself, in which I’m usually never wrong.
It’s been a while since I’ve participated in a two-way conversation with my writing. For the past few years, all I’ve done is blog or write opinion pieces for sites. Doing so, I sort of have to adapt an attitude that everything I say is right, because I said it. Since it’s a one-way street, nobody can really challenge my half-baked assertions.
Joining this forum, my first forum in a long while, has helped teach me a few things, such as that two people can have differing opinions about the same subject and both be right, or that just because someone disagrees with me it doesn’t mean they’re satan. The last forum I frequented, I’d been there much longer than everybody else, so my words had an air of authority earned over time. Maybe I’m too used to that, or am trying to insinuate it here without anything to establish it. At any rate, I’ll try to work on being less of a reactive dick.
*This post comes immediately after allowing myself a rationed “cheat” chocolate bar, which may have singularly improved my mood by something like ninety million percent.
I’ve got a better idea. Let’s round up the intelligentsia - those people who think they are somehow ordained to sneer at and lead the great unwashed, and who believe that, come the revolution, they’ll be the ones holding the clipboards and ordering everyone else around - and make them put in some time on a farm. Then they can work a road crew, maybe spend time trying to repair cars, maybe apprentice as an electrician for a while.
See, the biggest difference between the ‘elites’ and the rest of the country is that the elites have no frickin’ clue just how ignorant they are about many things. It makes them dangerous, and it makes them think they are qualified to tell everyone else how to run their lives.
The whole premise of this thread is rather disgusting.
There is a reason I put “stupid” in quotes. And while there may be other free societies with lower levels of “stupid” people, they aren’t necessarily comparable to the US in geographic, ethnic and cultural diversity as well as population size. There are things that can be done in a country like The Netherlands that can’t be done in the US.