Being an idiot is not an insurmountable problem. If you are aware of how moronic you actually are, there’s a good chance you’ll try to do something about it. The real problem is not ignorance itself, in other words. It’s ignorance of one’s ignorance. A recent YouGov poll reveals that only 4% of Americans think they are less intelligent than the average American.
This makes sense. No one wants to consider himself “below average.” But the fact is that the whole idea of “average” means that, necessarily, 50% (minus 1) of any population is lower than average. That’s what average means. Being of below average intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean you’re stupid either. The average millionaire still possesses more wealth than most. And the average genius is smarter than I am by far.
The YouGov poll doesn’t tell us much about how smart Americans actually are. It mostly tells us how arrogant most of us are. We inflate our self-worth, mostly by devaluing the worth of others. For instance, in this same YouGov poll, only 44% of survey-takers thought Americans in general were “averagely intelligent.”
So the 4% number is even worse than you thought. Most Americans think they are smarter than the average American, apparently, because the average American believes the average American is a complete dundermuffin. On that, I think I can agree. The YouGov poll even corroborates that to some degree.
There are some really interesting tidbits in the poll. For example, one percent of people with doctoral degrees consider themselves “much less intelligent” than the average American. How is that even possible? Did they get their doctorates in self-depreciation? Also, white people, rich people, and men are more likely than their counterparts to overestimate their intelligence. No real surprise there, I guess.
This YouGov poll doesn’t really indicate much about the current state of American intelligence. But it does indicate that Americans aren’t going to get much smarter in the near future: why would you improve if you don’t think you need to? And given the currently insipid state of America, that is harrowing news indeed.
46% of Americans believe the planet is less then 10,000 years old so it’s obvious that the people living in the “fly over” states aren’t that bright.
Whereas the Blue States can’t even name who the VP is. The do know where the food stamp and welfare office is.
Of course it’s the blue states that are wealthy & educated while the red states are poor & uneducated.
Yawn
You left out lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.
I would also add, baby killers, meddlers, delusional, and liars.
Feel free to add to this list.
Doug, everybody LOVES money. That’s why they call it money!!!
Watch the man on the street interviews in New York and California and then tell me how smart they are. I see you are whipping out your standard red state blue state BS MrMalibuBarbieLABobE. You do know that on standardized tests California kids don’t score any better than Louisiana kids don’t you Booby?
Forget about Beverly Hills, San Francisco or Palo Alto. The brainiac’s are coming out of places like Lake Providence in the rural south!!!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Go to a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania and they’ll answer Joe Biden. Joe’s family has a blue collar background.
Obviously you missed the broadcast. In fact you seem to miss a lot of things like your buddy LaBobby. See if they know who Biden is in Phila. and Pittsburg and then get back to us with some Obama grade lies.
Is WAY higher than 4%. Proof? Obama.
This is the results of public education. You can’t tell a student they have the wrong answer or keep score at an athletic event because you might damage their self-esteem. Common Core must have been designed to help people maintain stupidity and be proud of it.
Did you go to public school?
You obviously did!
I did and you know what? By 9th Grade I was in trouble for correcting my English teachers. I dropped out in the first month of 10th Grade and then joined the Army with parental consent at 17… At 18 after training I went and took the pretest for the GED, did VERY well and then took and passed the GED with no classes…
This means that for all intents and purposes I knew all I needed to graduate by 9th grade as I had no additional training that would apply to high school materials or coursework. This is because I LOVED to read and made myself read and learn in many different fields of study.
Public schools are a joke that are NOT designed to produce intelligent people able to use critical thinking but the next wave of worker bees. The takeover of the education system and the DOE assured this. http://www.kjv-truth-ministries.org
What rubbish – think I’ll go get a GMO soy latte made with artificial milk and sucralose.
Lets get the SSAN of those with no ID who want to vote and cross check against all the welfare rolls. If they have no ID then they are not legally getting welfare or Social Security and we should cancel those.
THEN THEY MUST HAVE POLLED THE WRONG PEOPLE……BECAUSE WAY TOO MANY VOTED FOR OBOZZO
It appears they interviewed a bunch of liberals. We all know they think the are smarter than everyone else. Take some of the trolls that haunt these websites for instance.
How are you smarter?
Thank you for making my point
The first troll speaks up.
Suppose you think you need to improve, but you know that you can’t trust the system to improve you or to help you improve. This assumes that education is the means to self-improvement and that that education must be institutional. When you read about and see all the problems that are not being addressed and how dumbed down America has become because of education standards, there is really no impetus whatsoever to waste money in a system that will not enable you to improve yourself, your earning potential or your standard of living, or, by extension, the amount of taxes you pay to a government which controls those standards.
it’s funny that the dumber someone is, the smarter they think they are.
Just like in Lake Woebegone, where all the children were smarter than average?
Which just goes to show how stupid they actually are.
It would appear that they all think they live in Lake Woebegone, where everyone is, in every regard, above average.
Bunch of morons our schools are producing.
most rational people know that 51% of Americans are mentally deficient. They gave us the moron in the white house.
And those 4% are running the country……
Average to me you are as close to the bottom as you are to the top! I think highly of myself. I do not consider myself average nor do I think that I am the sharpest knife in the drawer! The American people have been dumbed down for many years past and give the answers to test during the same period, plus any other tricks the teachers could think of.
I listen to a Teacher speak about her teaching habits of teaching to the lowest student learning ability. This to me meant all would come of her class at the same level. Bottom if you please!
There is a big difference between knowledge and intelligence. I knew people that did not graduate from high school yet could evaluate and comprehend situations better and more rapidly than Haavaad graduates.
I’m sure you’re surrounded by people that did not graduate from high school but I seriously doubt that you know a single person that graduated from Harvard
51 percent voted for barry , what does that make them if not stupid
500% of them are Republicans…
With an IQ of 165, I think I can claim to be above average. That probably will not matter to liberal Democrats and immoral people.
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