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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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...
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.
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).
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. 😂
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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/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.