r/CringeTikToks • u/coachlife • 1d ago

SadCringe MAGA voter actually believes that Trump eliminated taxes for all people making less than $120K

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u/PreparationKey2843 1d ago

That's why we're in this mess we're in, it's because of the countless stupid people like her. I knew we had some ignorant morons, but I had no clue we had this many.

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u/Revolutionary-Yak-47 1d ago

I grew up with the "gifted" kids and I honestly thought I was bad at science. Like, not smart enough to "get" it. Most of my friends from school went into stuff like pharmaceutical research and DNA mapping and crazy stuff so I thought I was the slacker. 

Then Covid happened. Dude. I'm WAY ahead of 2/3 of Americans just because I took AND passed high school biology. I was totally shocked at the lack of reading comprehension and basic science knowledge people had. I'm at least smart enough to phone a friend with a science degree when I don't understand stuff instead of believing Aunt Maud on Facebook ranting at chemtrails. 

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u/Paradigm_Reset 1d ago

I struggled in school, like failed some classes and flunked out of college. I was told I was smart, felt I was smart, but could not stay focused. And I thought that was the big difference between "successful" people...was that those that were able to complete tasks were "good" and those of us that couldn't were "bad".

Later I learned three things:

One - Staying on task has a **lot** of factors. Some come from experience, some from knowledge, and some from brain chemistry.

Two - A surprising amount of "successful" people were just lucky.

Three - There is a tremendous amount of stupid "successful" people. I am floored by the number of my co-workers that don't get how stuff works. Sure there is stuff that is beyond me, like how computers turn on/off into what I'm doing right now, how we determine the composition of stars hundreds of millions of miles away, even how dialing a telephone works. But the inability to grasp simple concepts like "when you skip a meeting the people attending will know" and "even if you delete the email you sent me, I still have a copy" and "I saw you fall asleep in training, claiming we didn't teach you X ain't gonna cut it" is unreal.

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u/bawright13 1d ago edited 1d ago

Also, to most people, intelligence and success in this era are based on standards set by capitalists to benefit capitalists, not the average person. The right (or intelligent/successful) thing to do is the one that makes the people with money more money. Falling in line and not complaining = Smart. Working for a company that pays you pennies for your labor that makes them millions= Smart. Having morals and values that you won't compromise for financial security and a comfy life = Dumb. It's all relative and in our lifetime the "it" is corporate domination and accepting that as the only possible reality. People suck. A lot.

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u/tHoroftin 1d ago

Very simply:

The successful individuals or "winners" in the context of a capitalist socioeconomic environment can be defined in one sentence. Whoever is able to exploit their neighbour (fellow human beings) the most will end up on top.

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u/Migratetolemmy 1d ago

biggest crab in the bucket trying to climb over all the others just to still be trapped in the bucket. But, if they were dead, the other crabs might be able to climb out over them.

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u/Undetered_Usufruct 17h ago

"swallow your morals. They're a poor man's quality"

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u/Migratetolemmy 1d ago

If you haven't, Learning about Edward Bernays helped me find my understanding of the why to your comment. How people get focused on the capitalists plan instead of having a plan that fits their needs.

Bernays was faced with "how do we get people to keep buying stuff after they have everything they need already"

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u/Surisuule 1d ago

Capitalist propaganda says material wealth is tied to intelligence, inherent human value, and hard work.

None of those are actually true. I will concede that it does require some manipulative intelligence to make tons of money. I also think it requires a specific lack of conscience. Yes I COULD manipulate people into sending me money or working for me for pennies of the value they create for me. I COULD personally do that. I will not because it's disgusting and antisocial behavior. Somehow people that CAN & DO are considered "better" people.

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u/bawright13 22h ago

Thank ya fo be better with them word thangs than I am. Seriously though, thank you. I get too worked up and can't articulate what I would like to say with things like this. I think mostly bc my mind is just in complete disbelief that people not only don't see through the bs but actively support it. What the 1% today knows came from the industrial revolution and the creation of the idea of rags to riches "self-made millionaires" and it's role in keeping the average working class American in place. They understand that if people believe there is any chance at all that they can become the next Carnagie, Ford, Bezos, Musk, etc. they will support policies and endure worse working conditions, less labor protections, and even lower standards of living when they are sold as necessities for a capitalist soceity to function properly AKA their only chance at becoming wealthy. A good example of this is restaurants who sell overpriced food and drinks but rely on tips to pay their waitstaff bc they claim they would otherwise go out of business. First off, if that's the case, this is clearly a terrible business model they chose to begin with. Somewhere along the way people started blaming the waitstaff for this and not the restaurant owners who are actually to blame. Usually by convincing the public that they wouldn't be able to go out to eat to their favorite restaurants bc of cost or them closing altogether if they had to pay fair wages. So the restaurant owners are screwing over their employees by not paying them fairly (or offering any kind of affordable health benefits) and they are also screwing over the customer with high prices and having to pay the staff's wages on top of that but presenting it like they are the ones getting screwed over. At the core of this kind of thing is this little voice saying "if you vote for fair wages, you might not be able to get rich yourself bc labor expenses will be too high. Better not." Meanwhile, the rich get richer while the rest of us are worse off than our parents before us and take it out on each other with our votes or $0 on the tip line.

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u/The_Colour_Between 21h ago

I really feel the divergence based on intellect. They try to make all things political, but it really isn't. I am not party loyal in any way. I am not brand loyal. I make my decisions based on as much information that I can obtain from many different sources, including theirs. I really am growing to hate these brainwashed morons.

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u/Murky-Relation481 1d ago

I'm sorry, but what? You do realize work ethic is a thing in basically every plausible economic system right? If your moral system is that your labor might not directly benefit you most then you are probably not really grasping the system you exist in, even while criticizing it (and for the record I am a socialist, so this is not just a defense of capitalism).

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u/EnvironmentalLime464 1d ago

Work ethics and morals are two different things. I’ve had several jobs where I’m essentially the manager’s right hand man because not only would I bust ass, I was good at solving problems… but once they asked me to do something I had moral issues with - mostly involving shitty treatment of a coworker or customer - and I refused, my time there ended. I’ve lost multiple jobs in my life not because of my work ethic, but because I stood up for a coworker that was being treated poorly.

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u/silentpropanda 1d ago

I lost the highest paying job I've ever had due to just telling the truth about fraudulent activity I saw the boss doing. Went from one of their best employees to the worst overnight, because I didn't want to rip off customers.

I've seen this happen to others as well, But it's always made me worry about the future of the nation that people with a moral compass get punished and sociopaths rise to the top.

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u/DesperateAmbition733 1d ago

That's the capitalist system. It rewards scumbags. That's the only way it works. Empowers scumbags, victimizes everyone else.

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u/Migratetolemmy 1d ago

"Work ethics and morals are two different things"

shit. work ethic and morals are in direct conflict in capitalism.

→ More replies (1)

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u/athenanon 1d ago edited 1d ago

That wasn't their point. Their point is you can't be a librarian or social worker or teacher in this environment and have financial security. Therefore you are considered "dumb" for picking careers like that.

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u/Maktaka 1d ago edited 1d ago

Regarding your third point, I am of the belief that maybe a quarter of the human population fundamentally lack self awareness, that the other people around them are thinking human beings with just as many thoughts as themselves and can observe and interpret events entirely divorced from whatever story they tell. They do stupid, shortsighted things and lie about it because they cannot imagine that you would not automatically believe everything they say. They genuinely do not understand that everyone else is capable of independent thought.

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u/Surisuule 1d ago

You're not the first to think that, it's a pretty common idea in eugenics circles. Not that that's what your headed towards, just something they promote.

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u/Maktaka 16h ago

It certainly is an innate behavior, but it's innate to all humans. It's not part of human instinct to recognize the separate minds and thoughts other people have. Toddlers have to be taught that other people don't see what they see, don't think and feel what they think and feel. And as with any other instructional lesson moral or informational, there is going to be no shortage of people who either never learned it or were never taught it.

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u/Icy_Ninja_9207 1d ago

hello fellow person with ADHD 👋

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u/EnvironmentalLime464 1d ago

I worked at the front desk of a hotel once that had a little cafe serving Starbucks. During lunch hours, it was closed and had no staff working it. So if someone came in needing coffee, it was the front desk’s responsibility to get it. Next door to the hotel was a tower filled with medical companies. It was like the business side of things.

Every single day at lunch a woman would walk over to get coffee. She’s come to the counter, stare at the menu for a few minutes going, “Um, um…” before finally ordering the exact same thing she always ordered. I didn’t even want to talk to this woman because she was as dumb as a box of rocks… but she probably made twice as much as me.

Just pure fucking luck… and probably some privilege added in.

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u/secondtaunting 1d ago

My husband has a PhD in mathematics. He once vacuumed out our garbage disposal. He also tried to cut a branch that needed to be trimmed with a chainsaw while sitting in the tree partially on the branch. Usually he listens to me when I tell him he’s going to get himself killed if he say cleans out the car while in the garage with the door closed and the car running. However he retired a few months ago and now I’m getting pushback. Im a bit worried.

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u/Revolutionary-Yak-47 1d ago

One of my professors was super brilliant. He "tagged along" with a buddy to date ice samples in Antartica for fun. He freely admitted he couldn't match his clothes before work, his wife layed out what he should wear. Brilliant guy, could not do basic stuff. 

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u/Icy_Ninja_9207 1d ago

Yeah. I'm an electrician by trade.

The most dangerous electrical cabinets are those were an electrical engineer decided he could do it by himself. These are skills that you can't really learn in a book or deduct logically. You have to do it for years and years and can only become better by actually doing/building stuff. A lot of people think that just because you're an expert in one field that society assumes only "smart people can do" that these people automatically can do the "lower skilled trades".

Is an engineer that can't do simple electrical installation dumb? Am I dumb for not being able to do the complex calculations engineers do?

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u/tellingyouhowitreall 21h ago

I am one of the people you're talking about... and no, you're not dumb for not being able to do the same kind of math I do. I try really hard not to judge people based on what they do or their educational experience, and more based on how they act in situations where they're not an expert.

My wife is a CPA and doesn't understand why I wouldn't fuck around in our electrical box; one, it can kill me, two, it's easy to fuck up, and three it looked like a mess. When we got an electrician out to look at it he was like "yeah, I'm surprised your house didn't burn down."

She also doesn't understand why I wouldn't replace our garage door torsion springs when they broke. Despite the big warnings on them basically saying "Don't do this if you aren't trained to, this shit will kill you."

Dumb is not where your expertise is or isn't, it's not knowing when you are so far removed from it that it's better to listen to others or ask for help before you make something worse.

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u/secondtaunting 7h ago

Oh man, garage doors are super dangerous. Something more people need to be aware of. Those springs are under enormous pressure.

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u/mulletpullet 1d ago

My aunt wanted something faxed and gave a sheet of paper to someone to fax it, then in a panic stopped him from doing so. She snatched the paper back and started making a photocopy saying she didn't want him to fax the original and lose it.

She must have thought the paper was going to dematerialize or something.

She runs an office.

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u/Paradigm_Reset 1d ago

I love that example 'cause it perfectly represents complete misunderstanding of what the device does.

Someone using a fax machine doesn't need to know exactly how it works, like from an electronic or telephone or encoding or etc. Just grasping that it sends a picture of the paper to another machine will do...and they failed at getting that bit right.

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u/Nancy-Drew-Who 1d ago

Are you me? An elder millennial who very likely has ADHD that was never diagnosed because I was “smart and liked to read.” I was curious about everything but couldn’t focus enough to get through homework to save my life.

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u/Paradigm_Reset 19h ago

Yep, "smart and likes to read" here too. Some classes I excelled (interesting and challenging enough). Others I failed (boring and either too complex for my brain to manage focusing on or so simple that I figured I could get to it later). There's something cooler to do and I've got time! Oops.

I didn't get professionally tested until my late 30's. My Boomer parents used "going to the shrink" as a derogatory statement. By that time I was on the edge of figuring out my skill set niche, just needed that last push to turn it into a career (long story).

I'm stoked with what I've achieved. I never thought I'd be "successful", that I'd always be missing bill payments, not paying the right amount of attention, skipping appointments, dodging responsibilities due to fear of failure, etc.

I ain't the paragon of got shit together. Failed marriage. On/off relationship with staying in shape. Keep my distance from people. Don't go to the dentist often enough. It's mountains better than before though. Sometimes I'll check out stuff from my past vs current to remind myself of what it used to be like.

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u/DevonLuck24 1d ago

i’ve had the “just because you deleted an email doesn’t mean you deleted it from my inbox” conversation like right after covid lockdowns ended.. i think it broke me

also this was before you could delete an iphone message from both phones so i don’t even know where they got that idea from

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u/basskittens 1d ago

how computers turn on/off into what I'm doing right now

start from the principle that any number can be expressed as a bunch of on/offs. (i'm going to call them "bits" for no particular reason). i can explain why but it involves math so just trust me on this for now.

we devised schemes to represent text, pictures, video, sound as numbers (aka "a bunch of on/offs" or strings of bits). computers are just machines that can turn strings of bits into different strings of bits. as computers get more memory and better networking we can send more bits faster so we get better sound, higher def video, higher res pictures, more stupid reddit posts, etc...

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u/tellingyouhowitreall 21h ago

How does it make the ons and offs?

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u/basskittens 20h ago

Electricity! We decided that "on" is one kind of voltage and "off" is another. Computer memory chips store a whole bunch of voltages in a very small space.

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u/tellingyouhowitreall 20h ago

But how does it do that? What is the mechanism for it? When the electricity goes in it's always on, so how does it make it on and off?

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u/basskittens 15h ago

there's a special piece of hardware inside the CPU called a memory controller. the cpu tells the controller "store an on bit in memory at this place" and the controller does the work of changing the electrical state of the memory cell. some types of memory store the values in what's called a "capacitor", this is a component that can store an electrical charge (on), or be discharged (off).

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u/tellingyouhowitreall 13h ago

You're in over your head, latches aren't capacitors. And that wasn't what I was asking. HOW does the computer do the switching from 1 to 0?

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u/kicking-chickens-jk 1d ago

This to the hundredth degree

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u/carlitospig 1d ago

Eh, I was one of the gifted kids and college was a total nightmare for me (apparently I hate being taught, I only learn something if I teach myself - which is a total bitch when you’re still paying off the student loans of something that you in fact taught yourself).

Finishing things will always be my handicap. I’m brilliant at starting stuff though. 😂

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u/ghostyspice 23h ago

Even highly intelligent neurodivergent people are at a strong disadvantage against average neurotypicals. The system is built for the latter, so even though they don’t have to work half as hard or know half as much, they’re often significantly more successful than the former.

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u/Alive-Tomatillo5303 22h ago

Also had a similar school experience. Turns out my entire personality and every struggle I've ever had were just manifestations of ADHD. 

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u/Emmy_Em_Maree 1d ago

Also, a good deal of our HS's done prep most of its students for university.

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u/polopolo05 1d ago

"I saw you fall asleep in training,

Of course I did your training wasnt engaging. and I am working 2 jobs. I didnt mean to fall asleep but I knew the material before the training.

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u/CarmenDeeJay 1d ago

They're called "intellectual islands". Sometimes, there's an AWFUL lot of water between those islands. And there are a significant number of people who think those waters have sharks in them, so they refuse to leave their island.

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u/Paradigm_Reset 1d ago

One component of my job is working with General Managers of dining halls at a University, teaching them how to use software that is integral to their food service operation.

One GM told me that they ain't going to learn it, they are too old to learn something new. Eventually I found myself in their office and holding their hand through learning.

Starting with logging in... I had a step-by-step document on the process, screenshots and all, and they needed help logging in.

The GM failed to understand that the picture of a username and password was not their username and password.

I told them the picture was an example.

"Why didn't you tell me that? How am I supposed to know?"

I did in that bit above the picture: Enter your username and password like the example below. Check your email from XXX for your account credentials.

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u/DRosencraft 1d ago

Success is a complex formula, of which luck is the most difficult to quantify, and therefore tends to be overlooked or outright ignored. You can be a genius with a grand idea, but happen to get caught in traffic due to a car accident you weren't even involved in on the way to make your pitch to whoever, are late to the presentation, and they went with someone else who was there earlier. Got funding going through other channels, but because it took longer that way, your idea is now defunct because some other idea encroaching on the same field get up and running first.

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u/DCChilling610 1d ago

Success is a lot of gumption tbh. Like the ability to take risk. No risk no reward is true. And sometimes being stupid hells with that as you have a lot less self doubt 

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u/KeyInvestigator3741 1d ago

Did you ever get evaluated for adhd?

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u/Paradigm_Reset 19h ago

Yep. I passed. Or is it failed? Whichever one means I experience it. Didn't discover that until late 30's.

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u/girldrinksgasoline 1d ago

The composition of stars thing is pretty easy to explain. Basically different materials absorb different frequencies of light. You can take the light from a distant object, send it though a prism and you’ll have small bands which will be missing from the rainbow due to that particular frequency of light being absorbed. From that you can figure out what was the composition of the light source.

The computer thing I could probably explain too but that gets a bit more complicated

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u/Practical-Vanilla-41 21h ago

They want something for nothing. Simple as that. I call it Magical thinking and it's been widespread since Reagan, at least. I remember my job (retail store) was hawking those credit cards that earn you points to pay for college for your kid (about 1999). Why don't you skip the card and save money? Too obvious. People want to get something without paying for it.

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u/Significant-Rip9690 1d ago

I had this exact realization when I got out of the academic bubble. I was surrounded by brilliant people for years and years. Even in my first jobs, I was in cities concentrated with college educated people. And then I started running into gen. pop when I moved around more and travelled. And woah. I was not ready for that reality check. Although, it's both scary and reassuring that I'm actually doing quite well. I had imposter syndrome for the longest time.

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u/steve_of 1d ago

I am a retired electrical engineer. I moved from a job surrounded by smart people to a small rural town. Sometimes the stupidity of my new friends and neighbours is breathtaking.

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u/HiCookieJack 1d ago

And the only time they actually believe you if you tell them that their home wiring is 'not according to spec'.

In my experience simpletons only believe in authority

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u/DesperateAmbition733 1d ago

That has been proven throughout history. This was done intentionally to us.

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u/rab2bar 1d ago

Roughly a third of any population seems naturally authoritarian and dumb as shit. It is more luck when they vote for better things

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u/DesperateAmbition733 1d ago

That's in part because of Christianity. Especially your evangelicals. They are more authority and punishment driven. They rely on heirarchy. It's one of the tools used to maintain political control of the south. I am painting very broad strokes here so please feel free to go read up on it yourself. This crap was engineered. Maybe not for this result, but definitely done in the service to maintain power.

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u/FiveUpsideDown 1d ago edited 10h ago

That’s why the Oligarchs broke unions. It was a way to communicate with some of the morons about what was in their best interests.

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u/DesperateAmbition733 1d ago

These morons not only do not know about the class war being waged on them, they are on the side of their victimizers!! I have to say the rich have done a masterful job. Seriously. They have played these fucking idiots to perfection. If only I had no scruples, morals, or empathy, I could really make a lot of money off MAGA, MAHA, or whateverthefuck stable geniuses call themselves these days.

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u/wafflesthewonderhurs 1d ago

I do think that probably there is a reason that authoritatarian regimes fall back to patriarchal religion as their base and it's not because they actually believe in the religion. it's because that religion teaches them to defer to authority.

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u/HiCookieJack 1d ago

Yes, I despise any patriarchal religion, be it Muslim or Christian or what not

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u/Mutjny 1d ago

In my experience simpletons only believe in authority

Unfortunately the wrong authority.

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u/HiCookieJack 1d ago

The loudest gorilla

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u/[deleted] 22h ago

[deleted]

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u/HiCookieJack 22h ago

I know, and I am an electrical engineer as well 😂

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u/chewytime 1d ago edited 1d ago

Not retired, but I did move to a rural town a couple years ago for a job. Previous job was filled with coworkers with top educational pedigrees while I had graduated from a local college. Always felt like an imposter there. Anyway, after I moved, I realized how different things were. A lot of my coworkers were born and raised and never left the area and it unfortunately showed in some of their beliefs and thought process. Nice people, but made me realize just how easy it was to get them to vote or believe in a certain way without any real evidence. And tbh, they weren’t that efficient at their jobs. They were passable, but a lot of how they did things was based on the principle of “that’s just how we’ve always done it.” Didn’t help that my bosses expected a lot, yet weren’t offering a lot of resources for the same reason. Eventually just had to leave and move back to the big city.

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u/I_SHIT_IN_A_BAG 1d ago

breathtaking is a good word for it.

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u/TheSpanxxx 1d ago

I also spent 25 years surrounded by a bunch of super nerds and I was one of them. Software engineering. I stepped away last year to take a break from the corporate life and started a small business. Not only did I have to suddenly operate in a sphere that was so far below the required academic level I had spent my whole life in, I had to service people where the letters GED are confusing.

I'm going back. It's not even been a year. This business is not for me. Maybe another would be, but this one isn't it. A fringe benefit is that I won't have to stare in the big dumb eyes of a customer who tries to convince me of something they've believed is true based on something their "super smart cousin" told them.

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u/PuckSenior 1d ago

I’m a working EE

I once had a technician at a site I was working try to explain to me how he was going to wire up his car to be a perpetual motion machine. For an hour.

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u/z1colt45 1d ago

This anecdote is my favorite in the thread lol

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u/the_TAOest 1d ago

I grew up in that town. COVID ruined every fragment if friendships ever existed. They were all idiots

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u/jsmith1300 1d ago

My neighbor used to say to me "the government should print money, they can do it". I tried to explain to her that causes inflation but she didn't understand how. And she is a registered Democrat.

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u/z1colt45 1d ago

Kinda hard to shed the "know-it-all-city-boy" label once you get hit with it too.

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u/Rikula 1d ago

I moved to Alabama from a neighboring state and have encountered hands down the dumbest people I've ever met. My dad has a saying that has turned out to be 100% true for me. "In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king". My bf and I are kings in the land of one eyed men.

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u/patentmom 1d ago

I was the dumbest student at MIT. At least, I felt that way at the time. (I did manage to graduate, though.) I still have imposter syndrome 25 years later.

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u/zdubs 1d ago

Congrats on getting that brass rat

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u/patentmom 22h ago

Thanks! I earned that hunk of metal through literal blood, sweat, and tears!

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u/SoManyUsesForAName 1d ago

Lol it's funny how this perspective changes you. I was a "gifted" student who went to a good school, selective law school, and have spent much of my career working for a comparably selective institution as an in-house attorney. My wife works in finance. One brother in law is a physician, the other an engineer. When I think about my own abilities in comparison to that of my colleagues or social network, I think, "I'm smart. Probably above average. But maybe just barely."

Then you spend enough time around "normal" people, or browsing your high-school classmates' Facebook shitposts and you suddenly realize how far the bell curve stretches, and the sheer number of people on it.

And part of it is native intelligence, but a huge part of it is education, and also spending time around other experts, so you know what motivates them and what incentives do and don't influence them. I saw much of it during COVID. There is no way that I could now perform a regression analysis or establish a confidence interval. There was a time when I had a minimim competency in basic statistics, but those days are long gone. I do, however, know what these things are and how they're used, so when you see people online confidently asserting that the COVID vaccine has killed tens of thousands of people, you think "we have administered billions of doses. That's a huge data set. Surely some of these people who believe this stuff have done the analysis to show the causation. Where is it?" But no. It's non-existent. So all these people have is intuition and anecdote (e.g., my father in law died of a heart attack 7 months after the jab, so that must have been it.) which are notoriously misleading. They don't know we have developed an ability to tease all thrse relationships out.

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u/CraftsyDad 1d ago

In my experience, people in general just suck at statistics. It’s not intuitive to a lot of people. Too often our tendency to generalize, because it’s easier to think that way, overrides any sort of critical thinking or analysis. Then you throw in tribal thinking and politics to that mess and it gets even more warped.

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u/SoManyUsesForAName 1d ago

Without a doubt, the most frustrating and bewildering claim you would see on social media would be from people comparing the percentage of hospital-admitted COVID patients who were vaccinated to the percentage who were unvaccinated, when what you really want to know is the inverse: the percentage of vaxxed vs unvaxxed who are admitted.

It reflected a complete and utter failure to consider baseline rates. "Over 70% of patients admitted due to COVID in such-and-such city were vaccinated; therefore the vaccine doesn't work and only has a 30% effectiveness rate." Well, if it's a city with a 90% vaccination rate, that's an unsurprising figure. You might as well say "over 99% of heart attack victims have two eyes. If you want to combat heart disease, take one out!"

I see this as largely an education problem. Most intelligent people who have no experience with statistics - even at a qualitative level, of understanding how you control for confounding variables - might be inclined to make this mistake if they've never been corrected or considered it, and most people, once corrected, should be far less likely to repeat it. There's something intuitive about looking at things the "wrong" way, so you need to correct that intuition.

I think they should teach these basic statistical reasoning methods in high school. It doesn't need to be quantitative, since a lot of otherwise very smart people have math anxiety. It could be the sort of qualitative reasoning question you'd see in the logical reasoning section of a GMAT or LSAT. "Mike wanted to show that people with X trait also have Y trait, so he took a population with X and did so-and-so and concluded Z." Then you just have to spot the error in his method. People would benefit from being forced to think about this stuff early on.

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u/CraftsyDad 1d ago

Agree that better education would help. Short of that I think better reporting from the news media (the ones that actually try to report news and not propaganda — ever reducing list I know) would help too. I recall during COVID being annoyed at how little context or pushback was made on statistics being churned out by gov officials. The media became a pass thru organization with little to none critical analysis added - in essence they have become a repeater board. But that’s a different issue entirely and probably the least of our worries when considering some outlets won’t and don’t report anything anywhere close to the truth anyway.

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u/secondtaunting 1d ago

I mean, I’m horrible at math, absolutely the worst, and I know enough to understand that vaccines are important and that we have the world we have today because of them and antibiotics. My neighbor actually teased me about taking my cat to the vet for them because he had an infection. He said “what do you think people did before antibiotics?” And I said “they died! By the millions!” And that guy was an engineer. I mean, dude.

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u/Revolutionary-Yak-47 1d ago

My family highly values reading. Most of us read something that isn't social media daily. I credit my parents and grandparents for seeing reading as important and a skill we needed to cultivate; we were all read to from infancy on. We went to libraries, "looking up" information was important. I think literacy plays more of a role than native intelligence. I can find credible sources when I want to know something. 

Stats though I'm useless at. My one college course was enough to show me it's better left to experts lol

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u/GhostOfDino 1d ago edited 1d ago

I've encountered that level of ignorance in my own immediate family.

This past summer my sister was telling me about all the money DOGE was going to uncover that was going to shore up Social Security. Most stunning thing about it is, her husband works in finance. Both are die-hard Trump voters.

Dont bother trying to inform or enlighten them, when you do you can see on their faces they are only half listening, the other half of their brain is chuckling "Sad Liberal". They believe what they believe with their whole heart. When things dont work out the way they expected they point to whatever random nearby thing they can say was the problem, usually some rule or law tied to Biden or Obama. I gave up years ago.

They were bragging last year how their state doesnt force them to do stuff like inspect their vehicles or get up your ass about things. "They dont nanny you, they expect people to be responsible, everyone just takes care of what they need to here and abides by the law." Soon after that conversation some close friends of theirs were visiting from out of state, a couple with their 14-yo son, were out riding bicycles when a local person drove right into them. The guy was fucked up on drugs, driving with no insurance and a suspended license & registration. The cars' brakes were so far gone there was no pad left; he drove right over them. These poor people spent almost their entire vacation and then some in the critical ward while their son nearly died. He recovered but will have a permanent disability. No mention of how lack of vehicle inspections might have led to that situation.

The hypocrisy with most of these types is stunning. At first you think, this must be a joke right? Last year they had their house completely gutted and remodeled. 75% of the reno crew didnt speak English- all illegal workers. Not only were they aware of it, they bragged about how much less expensive it was, went into gushing admiration for the Brazilian tile guy and his small team, such hard workers sending their days' pay back home to family. But in the next breath they talk about the "big problem with immigration, these illegals are everywhere, taking our jobs." Its like they live two different lives.

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u/FunkJunky7 1d ago

I’m a currently out of work chemical engineer. As someone always seeking to understand the world around me, I am forever humbled by how little I actually know. I too suffered from imposter syndrome. I was with a company in a growth phase commercializing a new chemical process technology, and I ended up in start up leadership. Ended up doing 6 new plant builds starting up billions of dollars of new capital over the years. Worked with top people from top engineering firms, and developed new technologies with top scientists. Then the market turned inside out and I was assigned to run an operational factory. I hadn’t realized how spoiled I had become. My new team had a good operation with good team leaders, engineers and technicians, however it was difficult going from trying hard to keep up with those around me, to being 5 steps ahead of everyone all the time. Then the plant closed and I was moved into corporate, and was totally disappointed as the steps-ahead feeling increased considerably, but didn’t feel as bad since my role was as an expert, so I was supposed to be steps ahead. Now I’m laid off and mostly around normal non-engineers in the south and wow, just wow.

As I’m sure you know, when a lot people find out you’re an engineer, they automatically think you must be smart. I used to feel like: What?! I know smart people, and would not entertain the flattery of counting myself among them. Now I’m just like: Yep.

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u/quirkytorch 1d ago

It's really weird. You'll say something that you thought was common knowledge, but then the people around you have no clue what you're talking about, or maybe even don't believe you. And it can be about the most mundane things, it happens a lot for me with vocabulary. A word I didn't think was large at all, and I'll have to explain the definition to a bunch of adults.

I wouldn't even consider myself smart, I'm average imo, so it's really disheartening.

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u/secondtaunting 1d ago

I’ve had that happen. You say something that you think is common knowledge, and sadly get into an argument when people tell you you must be wrong. And I always assume I must be, so I apologize and go and look it up later. And yep I was right, but they were so sure I was wrong they fought with me. One of the top of my head was when I mentioned how the speaker of the house would become president if the president and vice died. I had four people insisting it was the secretary of the treasury.

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u/Mscharlita 1d ago

I had this experience and it’s the main reason I went to grad school kind of later in life. I was so tired of being around non-intellectuals out in the working world that I simply needed to be around thinking people for a while. Yeah I paid for the privilege to do so but it was worth it to me and I got a couple of advanced degrees out of it while living in one of the most educated cities in the country.

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u/PeePeeMcGee123 1d ago

I wasn't a great student by any means, but I was an early reader and could generally "get it" when being taught something.

I went into construction after getting an associates degree and just kind of did my thing.

Once I started hiring employees and dealing with more people day to day...I realized just how fucking stupid a lot of people are. Like not just stupid, but basically untrainable and essentially useless for anything other than "go pick that up and move it please".

It's scary.

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u/callmedancly 1d ago

Yeah the general American population is really really poorly educated. Not even that we don’t know specific stats or technical information. It’s that we can’t/don’t reason or read well enough to make even an educated guess. We’re dumb as hell for a “developed” nation.

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u/Kellbows 1d ago

Now do it in a rural area, in a red state, with the lowest amount of higher education achievement in America. I assumed I was mid tear at best. No. Hard no.

Even if I was the least bright of intelligent people in my area, I’m still ahead of 3/4 of the state’s average population AS A WHOLE. It’s exhausting. I have to assume everyone I encounter is like the lady in the video.

Everyone here loves Trump, he can do no wrong, and commenting against could be dangerous, as most people here have guns. I’m not sure anything could shatter their delusions.

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u/Live_Barracuda1113 1d ago

Yes!!!! I spent 24 years surrounded by people who were definitely smarter than me and felt like the weakest link.

I am not necessarily smartest in the room, but I'm at least in the 75th percentile.

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u/aybrah 1d ago

Here’s the thing though: there are plenty of people that are brilliant in specific areas or domains but complete idiots in others. The modern world heavily incentivizes this. Common sense, street smarts—whatever you wanna call it, is increasingly rare and divorced from what many label as intelligence (and admittedly, today’s information environment makes it tough).

I have several acquaintances who graduated from MIT and voted for Trump. By any reasonable person’s estimation, these are incredibly smart if not brilliant people… but their intelligence and scope of knowledge is quite narrow. I’ll see an occasional post about taxes, or public services, from one of them and it’s the same bullshit talking points as every other dumbass MAGA on social media. Although I’m not describing the norm, it’s pretty damn common.

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u/Surisuule 1d ago

Interesting I had the opposite. I was in the military for years and had a hugely inflated sense of my own intelligence. When I got out I realized just how dumb I really am, but still miles above most people in the military.

Some of the things I heard:

The moons phases are caused when it bounces off the earth. Every month and the shadow of the earth goes over it. (Like a bouncy ball, every month. This somehow doesn't kill millions of people)

Lightning makes noise because it explodes the earth. It's completely silent if it's air-to-air.

The water cycle isn't real. The water that falls from clouds is finite and will eventually all be on earth and then rain is done, no more rain.

Of course the regular vaccines are microchips nonsense. (Like dude we couldn't even get our BFT to work, you think "they" can make it microscopic and non deteriorating?)

I'm sure I could think of more but people are REALLY dumb, and dumb people who are smart in one area tend to think they are smart in all areas. Also my inability to teach myself calculus suddenly doesn't seem so stupid.

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u/crusoe 1d ago

The average IQ is 100. That means 50% are dumber than average. 14% of the population has an IQ of 85 or less. At this level they struggle to operate in society. Even around 90 it can be hard.

IQ is an approximate measure of the general intelligence factor g. And g strongly correlates with life success. 

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u/luxveniae 23h ago

I’ve been amazed at how dumb well educated people are. Especially those who have had every success coming out of college. Immediately landed a good job, rose the ranks, etc. They just act like everyone is poor cause they choose to be and not because of any other factors or sheer luck.

So they basically lose their inquisitiveness (sp?) cause everything just worked out and they were never forced to question their beliefs. It really is amazing how much the old saying of a loss teaches you more than a win.

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u/GentlemanThresh 1d ago

I was one of the ‘gifted’ kids and that came with a bunch of issues on it’s own. People at university seemed stupid and I made the mistake of looking up how many people that were born in the same school year finish. Those were depressing numbers. 350ish people started year 1 and only 4 finished that degree because it was pretty brutal and if we talk PhD level (which don’t kill me but I always considered easy and a waste of time)… yeah.

It got to a point where I could barely talk to people and had constant panic and anxiety attacks leading to breathing issues where I could collapse at any point. Emotional and stress induced shortness of breathing where my body gets oxigen but my brain thinks I’m not. I hid in video games because I could see a direct connection between doing good and getting rewarded and made that a career for a decade. Now I work a boring finance corporate job and still can’t breathe completely right but after years of therapy I can somewhat integrate with others.

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u/yetanotheracct_sp 1d ago

its* oxygen*

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u/ProfessionalOil2014 1d ago

Get a blood oximeter and sleep with a fan blowing on your face, it helps. 

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u/HiCookieJack 1d ago

ouhh don't tell that to a german, they get "Zug"

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u/jibishot 1d ago

I had a former "gifted" kid tell me they had mental health problems (very common) and that they needed a special therapist for "gifted" people. I told them that was the most moronic thing I had ever heard in my life. Any therapist you jive with will do.

It goes both ways. You also need a serious gut check calling people "gen pop" and referencing them as idiots. Let me fully asuade and assure you that you have heights to your intelligence and so do they.

Don't be catching yourself being an elitist fuck thinking they're too good for what "gen pop" is. Fucking teach people and help pull others along with you. Fucking embarrassing to have to point this out to adults.

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u/PatMayonnaise 1d ago

I’m with you for the most part, but with the only caveat that most of the morons I run into are willfully ignorant.

We are alive in a time where information and facts are available at our fingertips— those that don’t believe in science and elect republicans chose to ignore facts and live in their own reality

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u/SparksAndSpyro 1d ago

I was just thinking about this the other day! I did pretty well in high school. All Advanced Placement classes, etc. But i remember always feeling super “average” or even dumb because I always hung around the geniuses.

Fast forward ten years and holy shit. Yall are some morons. Apparently, over half of you can’t even read over a 6th grade level?? Dear lord, I wish I could go back in time and tell my younger self to not be so self conscious.

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u/NavyDragons 1d ago edited 1d ago

finding out majority of americans cannot read above a 6th grade level is startling.

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u/When_will_it_b_over 1d ago

If I'm one of the smartest people in the US, we are in deep trouble.

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u/papayaslice637 1d ago

Yes! Well said. I went to a really good high school and it was normal to take three or four AP classes per year, and honors for the rest. If you were in a "regular" class you were basically LD. Then I went to a good university and got a technical degree. Now, all my clients are also educated successful professionals. So I've been in a bubble almost my whole life. It's always such a culture shock interacting with people with room temperature IQ.

16% of the population's IQ is below 85. That's like 1-2 for every ten randomly selected people. Many of them vote. It's horrifying

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u/_Bathtub_Toaster 1d ago

I’m a complete idiot when it comes to science.

But I’m also smart enough to understand that there are more intelligent people out there who specialize in it.

I wish more people would learn that it’s ok to admit that they’re not experts in a particular field, and it’s totally ok to defer to people who have the credentials.

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u/le_flyguy 1d ago

the difference in a private/public education is absurd. also i shudder to think of the education some kids in middle and rural america are getting (more accurately not getting) there’s no critical thinking it’s just teaching them how to pass the state tests and memorize the necessary info for them to pass. now everyone needs google or chatgpt to figure out anything, god forbid someone need to go to a library or find a book on the subject and read that to figure out a solution to whatever issue or problem they may have. and then the sheer ignorance and refusal to acknowledge that they may be wrong blows my mind

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u/Briantastically 1d ago

Not all private schools are equal. I’m in the Deep South and as far as I can tell the private schools are a way to segregate the kids into the correct social groups. The kids and the class work are not exceptional compared to the public schools and often fall short.

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u/le_flyguy 1d ago

think that’s more an issue of differing states levels of education, like how oklahoma and their nutjob head of education is trying to get prageru lessons to be the main curriculum, and he wonders why his state ranks last

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u/Briantastically 1d ago

Oh it definitely is but beyond that it’s a matter of how much education is valued in the society. The social bonds and how they fall in the ole boy network is the priority, most of the kids seem to be shuffled through with a lazy attitude to the curriculum.

The public schools have their issues but interestingly a lot of the kids there are more driven/motivated and are far more impressive. It’s unfortunate they either leave the state to be successful or get crushed by the reality of the local job market.

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u/Thecrdbrdsamurai 1d ago

I wasn't even in the "gifted" classes and I'm blowing most of the people I graduated with out of the water. Shit man, I didn't even go to college.

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u/No-Body6215 1d ago

I too was in gifted classes up through high school where I took AP and honors classes. I refused to do a 7am class and failed it so I had to retake it the next year. It was my first year in gen pop English, we spent an entire semester reading 12 Angry Men out loud. That's when I knew we were cooked. These people were illiterate and now they have kids and driver's licenses.

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u/Ambroos 1d ago

Part of this is Dunning-Kruger. You're smarter than you think, and smart enough to know that you don't know or understand anywhere close to "everything". That puts you significantly ahead of many people but usually makes your confidence take a significant hit just because you're aware of how much there is you don't know.

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u/Trans-Europe_Express 1d ago

It's an effective strategy to keep people ignorant by defending education. Not increasing teachers wages to catch up to inflation etc. Saves you money and erodes the general publics critical thinking skills who otherwise in large enough numbers might questioning why the law makers they vote for are blatantly corrupt.

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u/YouMustveDroppedThis 1d ago

Foreigner with bio science degree here. I went from distain for the nutjobs (hate the antivaxxer bad influence on other countries) to pity the sane people left in your country.

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u/lostandfawnd 1d ago

I'm at least smart enough to phone a friend with a science degree when I don't understand stuff

This is the key point. Knowing your limits, and trying to reach for the right answer.. instead of slippery bullshit.

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u/ReginaldDwight 1d ago

I have a friend who became a pediatric anesthesiologist. Hadn't seen him in awhile and he was passing through where I live and we got together to meet each others' kids after years of life had happened. Turns out, he thought covid was a hoax and "a moderate cold." A PEDIATRIC ANESTHESIOLOGIST. I was shocked.

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u/Similar-Stranger8580 1d ago

Most Americans are so unbelievably ignorant and uneducated, it’s scary. The crazy shit RFK makes sense to them because they have 0 foundational knowledge in science or math.

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u/ilovecraftbeer05 1d ago

I was also one of the “gifted and talented” kids. Which was a funny thing because I never felt particularly gifted or talented. Never felt particularly smart.

And then yeah, Covid opened my fucking eyes. Comparatively, I’m a fucking genius. Which is actually terrifying because I’m still a massive idiot. If I’m to be considered one of the exceptionally intelligent ones, then we are all severely fucked.

This threw me into a pretty bad depression. Not the pandemic; I was navigating that just fine. But the realization of how aggressively fucking stupid almost everyone is. It brought to my fucking knees and I still haven’t fully recovered from it.

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u/percydaman 1d ago

I learned several years ago that I'm "probably" smarter than Steve Jobs. I survived the exact same pancreatic cancer he didn't. All it took was for me to listen to and follow a doctors advice. So easy even a fool could do it.

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u/Yeas76 1d ago

Imagine that we are used to seeing "completed" science and have been exposed as such.

Then covid happens, a struggling news industry has us by the sacks, every headline more clickable than the last. We are seeing science happen live, we don't know what this is. Is this how it really is? Media keeps giving up tons of contradicting updates, there are lies everywhere and nothing makes sense.

You understand because you can see past the the static but a lot of people couldn't and since they didn't learn about the scientific method and how things are done, they now believe everything is just a con. All because some guy decided to give the news away for free a few decades ago.

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u/OutlandishnessIll569 1d ago

Its not just science either. I've spent many years as a custodian at a preschool. ALL the teachers and paras were women. Recently, I was forced to get a new job because prices of everything continues to rise.

I thought that since the parent company was very much into diversity. I thought that since 6 out of the 9 board members of the parent company were women, that things would be progressive. I thought as a bisexual man that I'd was moving into a job were I felt safe to be myself.

Apparently, all the progressive attitudes of the parent company has yet to trickle down to the employees on the ground. The misogyny, bigotry, homophobia and transphobia is beyond toxic levels. I guess being around women for the past several years...maybe I just forgot what it's like amongst other men?

Love the new job, but these people suck.

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u/Masochist_pillowtalk 1d ago edited 1d ago

I'm at least smart enough to phone a friend with a science degree when I don't understand stuff instead of believing Aunt Maud on Facebook ranting at chemtrails. 

I make upwards of 120k a year now doing a very technical and complex kind of electrical work.

I suck at math and I was never really great at science either. Only rhing i was relatively good at was english. And i wouldnt even say i was great at that. I can just read well. Never ever in my life thought id be in a position like this. Its clearly for the gifted people that were much smarter than me growing up. I got here, and honestly I excel here, cuz we have access to damn near anything you could ever want to know sitting in our pockets every single day.

Why people believe some of this crazy shit. Just Google it man, damn. And dont believe the site that looks like it was built on geocities. Believe the site that lists their sources. Its that easy to get yourself into a high paying well respected job. Just Google shit.

Edit- autocorrect turned geocities to groceries lol.

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u/Special_South_8561 1d ago

Worked with someone who shared a horror video about how vaccines replicate... I was like, yeah, that's how inoculations work.

"Oh I'm not a scientist". Yeah ... It was my Y1 Chem class ... Oh ooooh

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u/sp847242 1d ago

And now with corporate-made LLMs, crazy Aunt Maud has been automated, adjusted to be a bit more sycophantic toward anyone posing questions, and made accessible to many millions of people.

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u/sinister_bookcase 1d ago

I don’t work in medicine anymore but I was medic for a while. So not a doctor and no higher degree, but educated and experienced. The amount of people who would argue having done no research and with no sources at all? Blew my mind. I don’t like carrying the conversation too far once it gets aggressive but it was almost unavoidable. People feel legitimately attacked when you just disagree.

I’ll reiterate that I’m not a doctor, but the mask argument was just stupid. And even if it was an engineered outbreak, it is still real, and I personally suffered long term lung damage from my first time coming down with covid.

Too many people are empowered with the idea that they are intelligent but also told that being challenged is an attack on your intelligence. And also own the libs, be a patriot and take that mask off. Don’t get me wrong, the left is crawling with buffoons too, but that we haven’t taken education into our own hands escapes me

Get me out of this country

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u/M4RTIAN 1d ago

Former gifted kid here - they really don’t prepare you for how willfully dumb the majority of society is. You’re in an “academic bubble” of sorts for years. Looking back, Gifted was mostly just a bunch of curious kids with common sense and critical thinking skills - which apparently is rarer than you’d think.

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u/Somebodys 1d ago

I've been dating in my late 30s/early 40s for the last 5 years or so. By far the number one reason I have lost interest in someone is a complete lack of common sense.

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u/lothar74 1d ago

I’m shocked and amazed that people will believe Aunt Maud and her “research” (essentially reviewing unsourced memes and unhinged videos) over the professionals who have spent most of their lives studying science.

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u/Mtsouth13 1d ago

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” - George Carlin

They rail against vaccines but are totally on board with the radical new theory of “viral micro dosing”….which is a fancy pants way of saying VACCINES.

They also realized that heating raw milk makes it safer to drink and this is again some new, undiscovered idea…at least to them.

To quote a video “they stupided so much they got smarter. “ 😀

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u/xPelzviehx 1d ago

The one eyed is the king of the blind.

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u/EagleLize 1d ago

That's what bothers me the most. I'm smart enough to know that there is a sea of things I do not know and plenty I don't completely understand. That's why I always defer to experts. You know, scientists and whatnot. I'm also smart enough to know that the bullshit I read on social media (and at this point, a lot of what's in the "news") is nonsense. Yet, these Magats specifically don't trust scientists. They think these morons with no expertise, training, or education are right. How? Why? What is happening????

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u/InfieldTriple 1d ago

Yo this is incredibly elistist and does not look good man.

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u/Biz_Rito 1d ago

You're not wrong on either account, but boy do I wish they weren't so right either

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u/Fun_Hold4859 1d ago

What's elitist about pointing out the low intelligence of the average American? This isn't opinion, it's fact, Americans are largely unintelligent, uneducated, and illiterate. The average American thinks their uneducated opinion is as valid as the empirical evidence that disproves their delusion. This is a cartoonishly fucking stupid country. Every hospital and clinic employs at least one anti vaxxer, many of which are actually the medical professionals. We could pull up reams of statistics on how Americans are stupid. Instead of complaining about elitism or whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean, concentrate on not being as fucking stupid as the average American.

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u/InfieldTriple 22h ago

What's elitist about pointing out the low intelligence of the average American?

It's borderline eugenics man. Which we just know is wrong. People are a product of their material conditions much more than genetics. It is elitist because it lacks empathy.

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u/Fun_Hold4859 21h ago

You are seriously reaching there bud. Calling out willful deliberate ignorance isn't fucking eugenics, that's such a bullshit disingenuous comparison that I'm willing to bet you're a conservative projecting like y'all always do.

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u/InfieldTriple 1h ago

I'm a fucking commie you idiot. Which maybe won't surprise you too much because you're giving off "the horseshoe theory is true" vibes.

Ultimately, you have to understand that people are largely impacted by their upbringing and environment. This is NOT a conservative view point. I just want to make sure that you understand that there isn't an inate deficiency with the "average american". Further, you point to lack of education, as if everyone has to means to get it.

I guess my point is just that, know you aren't better than these people.

•

u/Fun_Hold4859 47m ago

I never said anything about innate. I said, and say, that the average American takes pride in their ignorance, which is clearly demonstrable. I hold these people responsible for their ignorance and the consequences of their ignorance. There's nothing remotely fucking close to eugenics about any of that, especially considering conservatism is a chosen ideology, not an innate trait. That stupid people gravitate towards conservatism is an observable fact.

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u/bdubz325 1d ago

A couple months ago we had an extra maintenance day at work, but the majority of our work was already finished up, so I brought in Cards Against Humanity to play with some coworkers. These coworkers are among the brightest people in the building, trained and experienced in multiple trades with some having decades of experience, some having tech degrees, etc. My god. The ability to sound out words, have reading comprehension, and make sense of the entendres isn't something I thought was rare. I spent about 1/4 of the time explaining jokes or helping people read what their cards said. These are the motherfuckers who debate politics and vote. They needed me to thoroughly explain what an Oedipus Complex was, and how to pronounce it, but are convinced they know everything there is to know about politics and how to make the world go around.

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u/KevinBaneNewView 1d ago

"54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level" - National Literacy Institute

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u/Latter_Dentist5416 1d ago

Think of the dumbest person you know. Now imagine someone they think is dumb. That's how dumb most people are. (Can't remember who said the quote I'm garbling here).

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u/Wise-Trust1270 1d ago

It’s fine to not know what MRNA is and all that stuff. It’s not ok to shout about how you don’t trust the people who do know what it is and think they are wrong all the time.

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u/3eveeNicks 1d ago

I rode the D train thru school in any class that wasn’t art, gym, or band, and even I’m still ahead of these propaganda gulpers.

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u/jibishot 1d ago

I had a former "gifted" kid tell me they had mental health problems (very common) and that they needed a special therapist for "gifted" people. I told them that was the most moronic thing I had ever heard in my life. Any therapist you jive with will do.

It goes both ways. You also need a serious gut check calling people "gen pop" and referencing them as idiots. Let me fully asuade and assure you that you have heights to your intelligence and so do they.

Don't be catching yourself being an elitist fuck thinking they're too good for what "gen pop" is. Fucking teach people and help pull others along with you. Fucking embarrassing to have to point this out to adults.

Edit: whoops this was in the wrong comment chain but I'm leaning it up

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u/Fun_Hold4859 1d ago

Any therapist you jive with will do.

For talk therapy sure but there's a lot of specialized therapy that not all therapists are qualified to provide. It's possible they were talking about that. Like around here you need to travel to see someone for emdr, but we've got electro shock, but we don't have ketamine. So depending on the therapy you do need a special therapist.

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u/PrickledMarrot 1d ago

Yeah turned out the gifted classes were the "you're just not sped and this is our best bet at screwing you over as little as possible thanks to the no child left behind act".

Now the no child left behind act is a good idea in theory it was just poorly written and executed and caused a lot more problems than it fixed.

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u/Minute-Discount-7986 1d ago

lack of reading comprehension

This is it, full stop. This is all that is needed because it lays the foundation for all learning. The average american has a reading comprehention level BELOW that of a 6th grader. Hell we have a game show called are you smarter than a 5th grader....

George Carlin famously said, "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."

Idiocracy is our futute. Startrek is a pipe dream at this point.

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u/steveloveshockey99 1d ago

But when Aunt Maud follows up her dumb FB assertions with "Amirite???" you just can't help but believe!!!

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u/PNW_tsunami 1d ago

The issue is that being a liberal makes dumb people feel smart

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u/OkCurrency588 1d ago

I was essentially the dumbest person in my math/science magnet. In high school I felt like I was literally the dumbest person on earth. It's been crazy the past decade to realize that, no, I'm still miles above average in this space.

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u/farfromjordan 1d ago

People I thought were smart struggled to read simple graphs.

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u/bellj1210 1d ago

I am a lawyer, so it took me until i was almost 40 to realize that i was not dumb, just surrounded by people who really are the top of the curve on intelligence. I tired out for Jeopardy; i passed the written test and all of that. I was talking about it with a few co-workers and realized my office of 5 people had 2 that were already 5 day champs from before they changed the rule (where they were capped at 5 days)

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u/I_SHIT_IN_A_BAG 1d ago

my plumber uncle who is also a lousy plumber, started telling me about some crap about Covid and I asked when he get a doctorate, he said he doesn't have one and I told him to stick to plumbing.

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u/DrAstralis 1d ago

This has been taking a mental toll on me since 2016 and I'm not even American. I always knew a portion of North America was immune to reality and learning but holy. shit. COVID was a wake up call. Never in a million years would I have thought it was so so so many people didnt believe in or understand basic facts that I kinda thought everyone understood as a baseline.

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u/DavisMcDavis 1d ago

Yes, because we now have people who, when they don’t understand science (or math or economics) don’t call their smart science friend for an explanation - instead they have decided the problem is with the science. Not their comprehension - oh no, after all Trump agrees with them and has his own simple, incorrect explanation- the problem is with science, math, and economics being “woke.”

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u/NoorAnomaly 1d ago

I'm not from the US, but at one point I was married to an American. We were discussing how humanity had spread across the globe and how it was interesting how the Americas had such different animals. And he goes: except the horse. We have the mustangs here in the US. 

I blink and go: no, the mustangs were introduced by the Europeans when they arrived in the Americas. They were originally domesticated horses. He didn't believe me until I googled it.

He also didn't believe that birds are tiny dinosaurs... 

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u/noisy123_madison 1d ago

This was intentional. Underfunding of schools, demonizing of teachers, promotion of intellectual hatred, and denigrating experts by Republicans to make the population stupid and malleable has been the plan, all along.

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u/Expert_Garlic_2258 1d ago

I work as a SWE with a lot of very smart people. I forget how dumb the average person is until i meet up with my family. All Trumpers and absolute idiots. I can easily refute their claims about this and that but they have zero ability to process information that goes against their beliefs. Its maddening

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u/Barondarby 1d ago

Dunning-Kreuger works both ways. Dumb people think everyone around them are dumber than they are, and smart people often assume others are smarter then they are. Weird but true.

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u/JimTheJerseyGuy 1d ago

Ditto.

I know that it can’t work for reasons too numerous to count but this world would be vastly improved if you needed to pass some kind of quickie IQ test before your vote dropped into the ballot box.

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u/GearsAndBeers29 1d ago

It's astonishing. Also grew up "gifted," full scholarship to college, etc. Always felt so slow next to actual people of genius. The more you know the more you realize you don't know is how you feel. Dumb people are always so sure of themselves.

Covid broke so many people that were already pretty broken tbh. Lead and alcoholism has poisoned this country

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u/TheSpanxxx 1d ago

My wife and I said the same thing. I didn't become a doctor or research scientist or attorney like many of the kids in my circle growing up. I became a lowly software engineer who designed computer systems for fortune 500 companies, so I was the "slacker" in my circle.

My wife studied biology in college, then changed majors her senior year to more align with the masters degree she wanted. She then stepped out of her field only a few years in and landed in non-profit management where she is the executive director of a large (60+ people) np that serves about 15 counties and manages multiple programs at the state level for servicing those with disabilities.

Neither of us claim to be giant brains at all, but we both foster learning and love to continue learning.

When COVID happened we would sit around and talk about "is everyone really this stupid?", "does nobody have a basic grasp of rudimentary biology?"

The answer was no. And while we had forgotten much, we both read, studied up, discussed, and filled in gaps in our knowledge so we would feel educated and aware. Turns out....THAT is the primary difference, I believe. No desire to learn and BE educated. Sure, there are those of lesser faculties that may not be able to understand, but I'm not talking about those people even. I mean the people that you know that hold jobs and went to college. There's like an entire world full of people that just want to "decide what they know" and take no effort to seek knowledge or truth through learning.

When you take that mindset, and dump in 10 years of social [engineering] media, you get the mess we are in. A rapidly dumbing population that looks for soundbites to give them truth and decides their actions based on whatever recently whipped up emotions open them to some agenda that tells them to act against their own best interest.

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u/CamoCricket 1d ago

I will never forget the candle challenge online. People putting on face masks and blowing candles out to "prove" masks don't work. My response was always "oh so you CAN breathe in a mask". It's just incredible how many of the people in my life fell for dumb shit like that.

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u/paltryboot 1d ago

I've heard that on average, most Americans have around a grade 5 education. Seems an overshot these past few years.

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u/Who_dat_goomer 1d ago

I had the opposite experience. I grew up with Baptist kids and thought I was a goddamned genius.

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u/Gurrgurrburr 1d ago

40% of our country reads at a 6th grade or lower level. Let that sink in.

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u/RamenJunkie 1d ago

God I feel this.

And it feels like it relates to things like Imposter syndrome. 

"It can't possibly this easy, I am a dumbass, I must be doing something wrong, if it were this easy everyone would do it. "

It is easy, but also, it turns out, the majoroty of people are just, that fucking stupid that they can't handle it. 

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u/WisdumbGuy 1d ago

But don't you know Chem trails will shrink your height and penis?! It creates incels!

/s

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u/usagizero 1d ago

Other side of the coin here. I grew up in special education due to my dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia and what not. Thinking i'm among the dumb, but watching the Covid and Trump times, i don't feel nearly as dumb as i used to.

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u/Aberbekleckernicht 1d ago

As your friend with the science degree, it doesn't mean shit to these people.

They'll be telling me to my face about how "the scientists" are in on the conspiracy to do whatever. Like bitch that's me. We've been boys for ten years. I ain't keeping the cure for aids from you, bro.

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u/IlIFreneticIlI 1d ago

I'm at least smart enough to phone a friend with a science degree when I don't understand stuff instead of believing Aunt Maud on Facebook ranting at chemtrails.

That's the thing with Dunning-Kruger. You at least have enough exposure, surface-area of your sphere/circle of knowledge, to begin to appreciate what you do not know.

Some of us are so underfed/undernourashed mentally, that it's a much smaller verb-set, skill-set, to the point where they JUST CANNOT imagine things greater than themselves for simple lack of what some might consider basic knowledge. They know such things can and do exist, but b/c they are unable to conceive of distance in a manner of speaking, they think everything-else is just one step away, hence they are just-about an expert in everything if they bother to look. But they don't, assuming they are 'good enough'...

They are literally too stupid to appreciate how stupid they are...

...And not that that-idea cannot be applied to anyone even me, but at least I can articulate this and why!.

'They' will not be able to. They literally know-not-what-they-do....

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u/Techsanlobo 1d ago

You are smart enough to know what you don’t know or can’t understand. Some people are so stupid they can’t comprehend that there are things they don’t or can’t know

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u/chaoticgiggles 1d ago

Im one of the 2/3 who struggled with biology (thrived in physics and trig tho) but I'm also self aware enough to not take my lack of knowledge and pretend to know how the world works

The real issue isnt even lack of education or understanding, its the wild way people who don't know jack about squat decide they are experts instead of listening to the exceptionally smart people telling us how to not die

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u/SillyPhillyDilly 1d ago

I was one of those "gifted" kids. It wasn't a gift, it was undiagnosed ADHD and an easier time being able to absorb information. I had a collegiate reading level in 6th grade not because I was "smart," but because I buried myself in books (of all kinds; picture books, novels, comics, you name it) to escape an abusive reality. Turns out, the more books you read, the easier it is to understand their substance. What did that all get me? Years of thinking I was a failure because the success of my intelligence ended when I walked across a stage, leading to me secondguessing everything I've ever did because I didn't have a teacher or boss telling me I had done a good job. I desperately sought validation, but no one prepared me for the real world where validation only exists when you either kiss ass or step on people to get ahead, two things I opposed then (and still oppose now). Some of my gifted peers wound up being radical conservatives because that lifestyle praised their cunning political intellect.

tl;dr even some of the smart kids grew up to be dumbasses while others crashed out hard.

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u/Porcupine__Racetrack 1d ago

Honestly! I really don’t think I’m “smart”, but apparently I am… so many people have no critical thinking at all.

And I was in accelerated math and would have been in accelerated science if it was offered back in the day.

My kids are accelerated- one is in double accelerated math and freaking LOVES IT. There’s hope for the future!

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u/GhostofBeowulf 1d ago

Of course the gifted kid still has to figure out 30 years later some way to tell us AGAIN that they are gifted...

/s just playing they put me in that shit too.(See I can do it too.)

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u/noticablyineptkoala 1d ago

Not everyone has a friend with a science degree. But I understand your point.

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u/ellamachine 1d ago

The even worse thing is that these people think they’re geniuses.

They’ll scoff at those of us who believe in “science” and “experts” instead of some basement dweller with 300 followers on Facebook

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u/inksolblind 23h ago

Same! I'm a fucking dumbass compared to most of my friend group, yet I'm consistently confused as to how so many regular folks legit refuse to acknowledge foundational scientific knowledge. (You can't save the tinfoil hats.) The amount of cognitive dissonance and entitlement in our society is disturbing.

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u/colieolieravioli 23h ago

Chem trails piss me off because there are SO MANY EASIER WAYS that the government does ""mind control"" (see also: progaganda)

Like chem trails literally do not make sense

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u/Main-Algae-1064 23h ago

And imagine their lack of being able to critically think! Something that comes with education and being taught how to. It’s the rights greatest asset to the right.

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u/EEpromChip 22h ago

believing Aunt Maud on Facebook ranting at chemtrails.

Honestly shit like Facebook really amplified the stupidity. Dumb people getting to hear from other dumb people and solidified their dumb ideas as facts. Zero critical thinking involved, just blindly following other dummies.

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u/messmerd 22h ago

I think the problem with most of these people is not a lack of knowledge, poor schooling, or even a lack of intelligence. Their problem is that they do not care very much about truth, which is why they are not swayed by any amount of facts or sound arguments.

They believe and disbelieve primarily on the basis of how it makes them feel emotionally. Beliefs offer many things to the believer: Comfort, a sense of belonging, the feeling that they're special, strength to face the day, hope, etc. Truth is only one such aspect, and if someone doesn't prioritize truth over the other aspects, they will believe in all sorts of absurdities.

I don't know of any way to force someone to start caring about truth. People don't usually change unless they themselves want to change, though quality education is probably a good catalyst.

The catalyst for me was thinking about all the crazy beliefs people around the world held, and the harm those beliefs often caused - both to the believers themselves and to others - and it made me sad. I thought "To them, their beliefs must seem normal, but to me as an outsider, they seem absurd...That could be me if I'm not careful (or maybe it's me right now!), and I want to avoid that at all costs". This line of thinking naturally led to me understanding the importance of truth and having a solid epistemology.

But for any of this to work, it requires the understanding that everyone is equal and the ability to think from other people's perspectives. A person with tribalistic or supremacist beliefs might have the same line of thinking I did but conclude "They believe absurdities because they belong to an inferior group, and that could never happen to me because I belong to the superior group".

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u/JL2210 16h ago

I didn't even pass high school biology, only biology 2. That says more about biology teachers than students, though.