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Americans are dumb.

Bob001

Penultimate Amazing
Joined
Dec 21, 2006
Messages
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US of A
Americans are too dumb to tell the difference between truth and lies:
The real problem is that the United States is one of the least intelligent nations in the developed world. We aren’t good at processing and analyzing information, and that makes us suckers for bots, trolls and all other sorts of disinformation tactics.

We measure intelligence in lots of ways, but at the top of the list is literacy and numeracy. A study published in September 2017 by the U.S. Department of Education found that U.S. adults performed the lowest of all developed nations in numeracy. They also found that our literacy was on the low end of developed nations. Most interesting was the finding that young adults in their 20s from Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Japan who did not finish high school had the same literacy levels of U.S. high school graduates.
https://www.salon.com/2018/03/03/why-americans-are-such-easy-targets-for-trolls-and-bots/
 
This is in USA politics for what reason now?


From the article:
Suddenly the breaking news story is that bots and trolls and other agents of disinformation are not only trying to influence our elections, they are trying to cause conflict among U.S. citizens.

The author contends that American illiteracy and innumeracy make the U.S. political and electoral processes especially vulnerable to false influence.
 
Yay! Another "we hate USA people" thread. Get new material.

Pointing out a problem is not indicative of hating the people with the problem. You might disagree with the assessment, but the key question is if it is true or not and what one might do about it.

BTW: I am a USA citizen and I neither loath myself nor hate the overwhelming majority of the other people in the USA.
 
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The author contends that American illiteracy and innumeracy make the U.S. political and electoral processes especially vulnerable to false influence.
But what if the stupid and vulnerable American people elect a really great president?

The whole premise is based on the country getting a lemon because we are all stupid. Would bots and trolls only be able to cause a bad candidate to be elected?
 
From the article:


The author contends that American illiteracy and innumeracy make the U.S. political and electoral processes especially vulnerable to false influence.

Tangentially, sure. But the focus seems to be educational, or more of a social issue.
 
Trump may have come up with a solution to the problem: getting more immigrants from "places like (!) Norway."
Most interesting was the finding that young adults in their 20s from Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Japan who did not finish high school had the same literacy levels of U.S. high school graduates.
Too bad that they don't seem to very keen to go.

Of course, proper education and safe and secure living conditions for everybody are the obvious solutions to the problem, and Trump and the Republicans seem to be diametrically opposed to those ...
 
The reason we need a course in critical thinking in public schools as a requirement to graduate. The most valuable class they'll ever take, imo.
 
Maybe Americans could learn more in High School if they didn't have to worry about a maniac bursting in with a gun and shooting them all.
 
Maybe Americans could learn more in High School if they didn't have to worry about a maniac bursting in with a gun and shooting them all.

Worse still, learning that this is becoming more frequent and the perpetrator is a law-abiding gun owner until they turned terrorist and their government is hell-bent on not stopping it.
 
Jay Leno used to get mileage out of interviewing his fellow citizens on the street. Sure, the real doozies would have been selected. But still, the sheer idiocy and ignorance there revealed was breathtaking. And not just concerning the rest of the world outside the US; knowledge of even basic facts about their own country was sorely absent. Those ignorami could prattle on about celebrity culture like nobody's business, but couldn't name, say, their current vice President. And like as not they'd believe in astrology and other woo.

It's that kind of underveloped intelligence which must make one more susceptible to disinformation programs.
 
The reason we need a course in critical thinking in public schools as a requirement to graduate. The most valuable class they'll ever take, imo.

Which is why it will never happen. Those in power now didn't get there by people having critical thinking skills, it's in their best interests to stamp that sort of thing out. Why do you think they defund education, push religion, and denigrate intellectualism? Critical thinking is a threat to the status quo.
 
Jay Leno used to get mileage out of interviewing his fellow citizens on the street. Sure, the real doozies would have been selected. But still, the sheer idiocy and ignorance there revealed was breathtaking. And not just concerning the rest of the world outside the US; knowledge of even basic facts about their own country was sorely absent. Those ignorami could prattle on about celebrity culture like nobody's business, but couldn't name, say, their current vice President. And like as not they'd believe in astrology and other woo.

It's that kind of underveloped intelligence which must make one more susceptible to disinformation programs.
Americans are just stupid people and the ISF is a rare place where it can be talked about. Skeptics are the kind of people who know the score and aren't afraid to say it.
 
Which is why it will never happen. Those in power now didn't get there by people having critical thinking skills, it's in their best interests to stamp that sort of thing out. Why do you think they defund education, push religion, and denigrate intellectualism? Critical thinking is a threat to the status quo.

This all sounds like the mythical "Them" that are in power. That said, I know there are fundamentalist opponents to teaching critical thinking (see for example,Texas Republicans Oppose Teaching Kids Critical Thinking in School Because It ‘Undermines Parental Authority’). I'd appreciate more references to back up your opinion. Or just doom and gloom away, your choice.
 
Bob001 said:
Americans are too dumb to tell the difference between truth and lies:

Like evaluating the quality of the articles they read? :rolleyes:

Bob001 said:
The real problem is that the United States is one of the least intelligent nations in the developed world. We aren’t good at processing and analyzing information, and that makes us suckers for bots, trolls and all other sorts of disinformation tactics.

If the author mixes up education with intelligence, she has no idea what she's talking about

Bob001 said:
We measure intelligence in lots of ways, but at the top of the list is literacy and numeracy.

Which better translates into "I don't have the faintest idea how they measure intelligence, but the totally unrelated values I'm going to use are the best!"

Bob001 said:
A study published in September 2017 by the U.S. Department of Education found that U.S. adults performed the lowest of all developed nations in numeracy. They also found that our literacy was on the low end of developed nations.

Literacy was only worse in the Slovak Republic. But the USA, Canada and France shared similarly poor values.

That, enough to relative comparisons. In absolute terms, the difference in education doesn't support the hypothesis of the author unless the tests are exclusively oriented to critical thinking, what they're not.

Bob001 said:
Most interesting was the finding that young adults in their 20s from Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Japan who did not finish high school had the same literacy levels of U.S. high school graduates.

That is an indirect and some way forced conclusion. Which is true is that the gap between high school graduates and those who aren't (up to age 65) is larger for the USA than any other country. That may mean both the elementary school to be very bad in the States, or the high school in the 70s.

Every country lives a period where they pass from a low number of high school graduates with wonderful quality, to a massive level of high school graduates with awful level. Most of Europe lived that during the 20s to 50s and I think the USA lived it from 50s to 70s: there you have the "rotten apples" who bring the average down.

Anyway, a worthy topic for education and not for politics.

Besides, if you call "Americans" stupid you should either a) point what they did massively, repeatedly and systematically wrong, and when, or b) offer a well explained solution that exceeds the level of a platitude.
 
Which is why it will never happen. Those in power now didn't get there by people having critical thinking skills, it's in their best interests to stamp that sort of thing out. Why do you think they defund education, push religion, and denigrate intellectualism? Critical thinking is a threat to the status quo.

This all sounds like the mythical "Them" that are in power. That said, I know there are fundamentalist opponents to teaching critical thinking (see for example,Texas Republicans Oppose Teaching Kids Critical Thinking in School Because It ‘Undermines Parental Authority’). I'd appreciate more references to back up your opinion. Or just doom and gloom away, your choice.

I do think TragicMonkey's view is too cynical. I follow Jon Stewart's line of reasoning: all sides essentially want society to succeed, they want everyone to go by their rules, the path to get there is what we are fighting over.

Republicans' worldview is impeding what is necessary for greater society, and they largely don't know it.:(

War of ideas, like the Cold War of the late 20th.
 
I do think TragicMonkey's view is too cynical. I follow Jon Stewart's line of reasoning: all sides essentially want society to succeed, they want everyone to go by their rules, the path to get there is what we are fighting over.

Republicans' worldview is impeding what is necessary for greater society, and they largely don't know it.:(

War of ideas, like the Cold War of the late 20th.

And don't care from everything I have observed.
 
... If the author mixes up education with intelligence, she has no idea what she's talking about
To be fair, she was describing the nation's intelligence, not the intelligence of individuals within it. Using intelligent and educated in that context, they would be synonymous.
 
To be fair, she was describing the nation's intelligence, not the intelligence of individuals within it. Using intelligent and educated in that context, they would be synonymous.

Then, why does she use individual test aggregates? The whole thing doesn't make any sense: intelligence is equal to education is equal to ...

The article is more a monument to non sequitur than a serious one. It's just her personal soap box with botched attempts to justify it using hard data. Independently, Usaians might be stupid and prone to be deceived with false promises like a maid servant, but there's no hard evidence of that in the article.
 
The average American is a drooling idiot. However, nearly all of the top universities of the world are in America.
 
Americans are too dumb to tell the difference between truth and lies:

https://www.salon.com/2018/03/03/why-americans-are-such-easy-targets-for-trolls-and-bots/

"A study published in September 2017 by the U.S. Department of Education found that U.S. adults performed the lowest of all developed nations in numeracy. They also found that our literacy was on the low end of developed nations."

A study?
I prefer my evidence from lots of studies, rather than just one.
 
I always wondered about our water. Being downstream from a nuclear fuel processing plant might explain some of the local mutations, at least.
 
the U.S. Department of Education found that U.S. adults performed the lowest of all developed nations in numeracy. They also found that our literacy was on the low end of developed nations
This is good news! To compete against third world countries like China and Mexico we we need a cheap compliant workforce, and that won't happen while it's full of smart-alecs who think they are worth more.

TragicMonkey said:
Those in power now didn't get there by people having critical thinking skills, it's in their best interests to stamp that sort of thing out. Why do you think they defund education, push religion, and denigrate intellectualism? Critical thinking is a threat to the status quo.
There's only one problem with that theory - it doesn't explain why the people in power so often also lack critical thinking skills.

The truth is, critical thinking is overrated. Skeptics try to identify problems and find rational solutions, but this is usually impossible because people are irrational. If everyone was a skeptic we would never get anything done. Better to simply cultivate naked self-interest (the purest of motives) and let the country succeed or fail by blind luck alone.

fuelair said:
And don't care from everything I have observed.
And why should they? Few people are willing to make the sacrifices necessary for a 'greater' society, and those that do obviously have mental issues. In the end it's not what you can do for society that matters, but what society can do for you. Nobody should be expected to act against their own perceived self-interest.
 
As system structure conditions systemic behaviour we may say that, if something is to be stupid in this scenario, it would be the "American" system, not the "Americans", who simply react to their environment.

And as the "Americans" seem to make good decisions regarding economy, it's not the "American" economy the one who is stupid -much probably on the contrary-. It seems it's the subsystem "American politics" what is there to make millions of people more deeply fool than what they'd become by their sole nature and calling.
 
Here's another look at literacy scores throughout Europe, the US and Canada, and Japan and Korea. As you can see, the US slots in a hair below the median, but above Denmark and Germany, and significantly above France, Spain and Italy (among others).

And I suspect that the Salon writer is not really interested in applying the results of the study to group populations within the United States, to determine the susceptibility to bots, trolls and other deceptive tricks among different races/ethnic backgrounds within the country, based on the group illiteracy and innumeracy rates.
 
But the USA apparently does well for scientific literacy
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070218134322.htm

Worringly, despite this:
MSU's Jon Miller said that Americans, while slightly ahead of their European counterparts when it comes to scientific knowledge, still have a long way to go.

"A slightly higher proportion of American adults qualify as scientifically literate than European or Japanese adults, but the truth is that no major industrial nation in the world today has a sufficient number of scientifically literate adults," he said. "We should take no pride in a finding that 70 percent of Americans cannot read and understand the science section of the New York Times."
 
As an American, I don't find this surprising, and it is something I have been railing against a lot... But apparently MAGA means Make America Gignorant Again.
 
Here is a list even older. A list of countries sorted by scientific literacy.
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Education/Scientific-literacy. Americans are below average of the G7. I think they should be number 1.

Canada is number 5 on the list. Though they claim they are number 1 in 2014. Source http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/canadians-science-literacy-ranks-1st-among-35-countries-1.2749413. If you follow the links you can access the full report.

Some good graphs in that report.
Page 57 "Public Reservations Towards Science by Country, 2011–2013" (One of the few where the USA does well)
Page 58 "Public Support for Government Funding of Scientific Research by Country"
Page 60 "Percentage Identifying Climate Change as a Major Threat to Their Country1"
Page 71 "Public Attendance at Science and Technology Museums by Country"
Page 81 "Civic Science Literacy by Country"
Page 87 "Natural Science and Engineering Graduates as Percentage of Total Graduates by Country, 2011 and 2000" America is way down the list. Interesting the % for many countries has gone down.
 
Today two coworkers confused the Parthenon with the Pantheon. That I could forgive. But in the ensuing conversation it came out that neither knew the Parthenon is in Athens, and one of them didn't know that Athens is in Greece. He did think Rome was in Greece. He's in his fifties and is a college graduate.
 
Today two coworkers confused the Parthenon with the Pantheon. That I could forgive. But in the ensuing conversation it came out that neither knew the Parthenon is in Athens, and one of them didn't know that Athens is in Greece. He did think Rome was in Greece. He's in his fifties and is a college graduate.


Is this a dreadful thing? I don't know. I do know there are a million things I couldn't tell you about US history that your average 14 year old US schoolchild could reel off. Is it more important to know about ancient Greece? I don't know.

I have similar thoughts about Americans without passports - If I want to go somewhere snowy, I need to leave the country, if I want to go to a desert or somewhere tropical, I need to leave the country. If I want to go see really big mountains, I need to leave the country. A resident of the US doesn't need a passport to get to all that stuff, I do.
 
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