Is America getting stupider?

[Elstupido]

Go away, I'm baitin

My wife was tard, now she's an airline pilot

 

[fishmonger12]

By and large I think the "stupid" level is staying around the same.

I don't think saying "dumb people" reproduce more is accurate. Your assuming the following:

Children are not normal goods, in the economic sense. I don't think this is an accurate assumption. As income levels rise, people tend to acquire more of what makes them happy. Children make people happy. Income is directly correlated to education, which we'll use as a rough estimator of intelligence given the lack of other indicators. Therefore, there should be a modest, (think R^2 = .2) positive correlation between income and family size.

I'll go look up some data real quick and get back to you.

OK, census data:

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www...edincsizeandstate.html

As you can see, there's very little difference in family income between family sizes. Now I'll take another second to go look for the correlation between income and educational level.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www...nings/call1usboth.html

Obviously there's a clear correlation between income and educational attainment.

More interesting read:

http://findarticles.com/p/arti...200/is_v127/ai_3794097

I think that you're just observing that larger families tend to have children with lower achievement and assume that the parents are dumb, when the causation works in the opposite direction.

 

[TehMac]

Originally posted by: scott
yes..
ourt Mexican friends flood in ceaselessly because Prez Bush refuses to close the border because he's a 1-world government Bohemian Grove Trilateral Commission Bilderburghers stooge.

The Mexican society is class-stratified.

The type of mexicans flooding in are mostly the peasant class.

The mexican peasant class it's not that they're bad people, it's that they don't have a culture of treasuring education.

they truly are pulling us down down down down. to ruin.

but hey, I respect the fact thqat you may not see this at your location and if not, you truly just don't get it. To you this sounds extremist - believe me, you don't understand.

I kind of see what you're saying. I think American society is getting polarized--middle class is becoming richer and devoting less time to more conventional pursuits like education, in place of learning we have "ramming facts in your head until they slush out of your ass.."

And that's not good.

 

[seemingly random]

Originally posted by: Fmr12B
Is stupider a word? I always thought it was "more stupid"

It is - the comparative form. The op didn't state what he's comparing it to though (stupider that what?).

 

[LongCoolMother]

is it? Flip on mtv. Take a stroll through any K-12 classroom in California. Look at the most popular television programs/magazines in this country. 'Nuff said.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: mitchel
*Warning*

Overarching generalization (that's probably true).

*warning*



Given: Smart people don't have a lot of children, say 1 or 2 per family. They know that children make them poorer so they choose not to have lots of kids.

Given: Stupid people have lots of kids because they suck at financial planning.

Then: Stupid people will have a much higher rate of reproduction than smart people. This then drives down the overall IQ of the nation.

if you fail to reproduce, you aren't very "smart". based on the darwin/survival of the fittest standard it is the ultimate fail.

 

[seemingly random]

If you are a failure and reproduce, then you have done mankind a disservice.

 

[nonameo]

Originally posted by: seemingly random
If you are a failure and reproduce, then you have done mankind a disservice.

By the above poster's logic, reproducing IS the goal, and thus is the litmus test for success.

edit: the poster above you, not me(which is you)

 

[seemingly random]

Originally posted by: nonameo
By the above poster's logic, reproducing IS the goal, and thus is the litmus test for success.

It probably was important 40k years ago. Now, it's just as important to slow things down - unless there's another planet waiting to take our excess population. At this point, continued exponential population growth will doom the species.

 

[chuckywang]

This is the exact premise of Idiocracy.

 

[SlickSnake]

Why the Number of Stupid People on Earth is Increasing

I had visions, I was in them
I was looking into the mirror
To see a little bit clearer
Rottenness and evil in me

Fingertips have memories
Mine can't forget the curves of your body
And when I feel a bit naughty
I run it up the flagpole and see who salutes
(but no one ever does)

I'm not sick but I'm not well
And I'm so hot cause I'm in hell

Been around the world and found
That only stupid people are breeding
The cretins cloning and feeding
And I don't even own a tv

Put me in the hospital for nerves
And then they had to commit me
You told them all I was crazy
They cut off my legs now i'm an amputee, G*d damn you

I'm not sick but I'm not well
And I'm so hot cause I'm in hell
I'm not sick but I'm not well
And it's a sin to live so well

I wanna publish zines
And rage against machines
I wanna pierce my tongue
It doesn't hurt, it feels fine
The trivial sublime
I'd like to turn off time
And kill my mind
You kill my mind

Paranoia! Paranoia!
Everybody's coming to get me
Just say you never met me
I'm going underground with the moles
Hear the voices in my head
I swear to God it sounds like they're snoring
But if you're bored then you're boring
The agony and the irony, they' re killing me

I'm not sick but I'm not well
And I'm so hot cause I'm in hell
I'm not sick but I'm not well
And it's a sin to live so well

Flagpole Sitter Lyrics
Artist: Harvey Danger

 

[secretanchitman]

actually...one of my friends is born into a family of 5 kids (including himself) and both of his parents are doctors...

thats just one family mind you, lol.

 

[everman]

I'd say that most of the world is becoming less sophisticated.

 

[SlickSnake]

Originally posted by: everman
I'd say that most of the world is becoming less sophisticated.

So I can go to the store dressed only in my torn, skid marked stained underware now?

 

[seemingly random]

Originally posted by: everman
I'd say that most of the world is becoming less sophisticated.

You mean the world is less cultured? more naive and coarse?

I've given some thought to comments from people who watch a lot of cable 'news' and say that the world is falling apart. My conjecture is that the aberrations, though growing in absolute number along with increased population, is actually falling in terms of percentage of the total population.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I think so. As an Asian, I wonder why is it that our parents are coming in from overseas and raising kids that get sent to America's top schools. Why is it that you go to retarded schools like CSU Chico and you have a huge white population, but you hit up a top notch school like Cal or UCLA and you have 40-50% Asians? You tell me.

 

[Squisher]

The proliferation of the infomercial is the most sure sign.

 

[biggestmuff]

Originally posted by: DLeRium
I think so. As an Asian, I wonder why is it that our parents are coming in from overseas and raising kids that get sent to America's top schools. Why is it that you go to retarded schools like CSU Chico and you have a huge white population, but you hit up a top notch school like Cal or UCLA and you have 40-50% Asians? You tell me.

So which intellectual powerhouse did you go to where you learned how to disparage people of a different social class than your own?

 

[theprodigalrebel]

Is ATOT getting stupider?

 

[GiggleGirl]

Originally posted by: Fmr12B
Is stupider a word? I always thought it was "more stupid"

i was thinking exactly that.

 

[sweetpea70512]

Ok I have to voice in on this one.....I am a retired special education teacher. Kids are not born stupid, it is the education system that makes them stupid. The government got involved with this "no child left behind" crap and teachers were encouraged to teach to the test in order to keep the school test scores up. That along with the pigeon holeing kids into special Ed and convincing them that they are stupid because they don't get "A's" in everything. When I was in elementary school everyone was in the same classes and encouraged to compete, yeah not everyone got an "A" but we were told to try harder and get over it. Now if you don't seem to be able to compete with the other kids you are immediately labeled as SPED and put in a slower class so you don't have to work as hard. "Way to motivate kids" Kid today are lethargic and don't care, that is because there is no competition, someone might get there feelings hurt. Just more of the "pussification of America"

 

[Red Dawn]

Originally posted by: DLeRium
I think so. As an Asian, I wonder why is it that our parents are coming in from overseas and raising kids that get sent to America's top schools. Why is it that you go to retarded schools like CSU Chico and you have a huge white population, but you hit up a top notch school like Cal or UCLA and you have 40-50% Asians? You tell me.

Don't worry, those Asians going to the better schools will raise Americanized children who will be as big of slackers as the white kids.

 

[Sumguy]

I don't think they are getting dumber. I actually remember seeing an equation somewhere that explained how the IQ of a populace always steadily increases as a whole, given that intelligence is an inherited trait (or at least that there is some sort of factor that relates to intelligence).

I think that kids today are just lazy and less disciplined. That, and it seems that being stupid is sort of fashionable.

Edit: Found it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

The equation isn't there, but the idea is there.

 

[sponge008]

Originally posted by: sweetpea70512
Ok I have to voice in on this one.....I am a retired special education teacher. Kids are not born stupid, it is the education system that makes them stupid. The government got involved with this "no child left behind" crap and teachers were encouraged to teach to the test in order to keep the school test scores up. That along with the pigeon holeing kids into special Ed and convincing them that they are stupid because they don't get "A's" in everything. When I was in elementary school everyone was in the same classes and encouraged to compete, yeah not everyone got an "A" but we were told to try harder and get over it. Now if you don't seem to be able to compete with the other kids you are immediately labeled as SPED and put in a slower class so you don't have to work as hard. "Way to motivate kids" Kid today are lethargic and don't care, that is because there is no competition, someone might get there feelings hurt. Just more of the "pussification of America"

The thing is, the reason American schools are so bad is partially intentional. When America industrialized in the late 19th/early 20th century, mandatory schooling popped up as a way to throttle the independent approach American culture had fostered. At first, the teachers (understandably) taught to make the kids smarter, but increasing pressure made the schools increasingly standardized and the approach increasingly designed to dumb kids down. The cause of America's modern state can't be genetic; during WW2, 96% of the soldiers drafted were judged to be literate enough to serve. During Korea, only 81% had the fourth-grade literary proficiency needed. In Vietnam, only 73% of the soldiers could read at all; many of these couldn't actually do much more than understand "See Spot Run". The problem here is that the source of these men's education in reading was the public school system. There seems to be a problem here.

 

[Excelsior]

Based on the people I come into contact with at the retail store I work at, the average person certainly isn't getting smarter.