Work at a university; try telling that to the academics. Some of them are phenomenally simple. They may be convinced of intellectual superiority because they're a world expert in frog genders, but they struggle to solve simple problems or absorb reasoning without having it dumbed down.
A university is like a daycare for those adults. And the trantrums and toy throwing they have with each other, oh my god. Daily I wonder how some of these people would survive if they ever had to leave school.
Academia is a good walled garden for those hyper specialized researchers. They progress research and the institution acts as a patron and sanctuary from the world. Perhaps we should reward continued general education though
It also seems that the more specific a person's education gets, it replaces general knowledge and thinking. For many it seems their entire thought process changes to focus on that specific thing, to the detriment of anything else. Doctorates seem to be less capable of working outside their specific focused niche compared to those with lower degrees. They've spent so much time focusing that they can't unfocus very well.
To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.
"book smarts" and "street smarts" are two completely different things. My sister is book smart. skipped a couple grades, went to university twice, once for her degree and again for her masters. She's by all means well educated.
She's dumb as a bag of rocks. She's really good at studying. she's a pro at it. but none of that knowledge is ever retained for extended periods of time. Once its "useful" i.e. for a test/exam/SAT/etc then it's tossed out of her head. I can't recall what she earned her masters in but if you challenge her to talk about it today she can't. that's the primary reason I can't remember is because she literally is unable to talk about it.
she's a teacher...that's what scares me more. she's teaching kids. And the even MORE scary thing is she hates kids. she refuses to have her own because, and I quote, she "can't stand children". Essentially she's good at cramming/studying the lesson plans and then info dumping it on the kids. Now trying to get her to actually understand or teach you what's she's actually dumped onto the kids well after the fact? good luck. I tried that once. One week she taught the kids some subject on earth science, tectonic plates I believe, I asked her a week later at a family dinner about it because she brought it up. she couldn't explain it. it was out of her mind already.
i'm a mechanical engineer. i know something about electricity and physics. i also have a degree in international trade.
until 2 yrs ago i didn't know how eggs get fertilized and yesterday my wife had to show me how to remove olive pits while preparing ouur cooking.
by all accounts i'm a dumbass with 2 degrees in specific fields that i don't encounter in day-to-day life. i have no idea how to survive in this world. i am sure others feel the same.
The difference is the conclusions drawn from the knowledge obtained. Dumb people can survey knowledge and come to wrong conclusions, it happens all the time.
I heard that after the Vietnam war with most the protesters being college students they made an effort to remove lessons that teach critical thinking and problem solving to make people more compliant and less likely to do that again.
So current education is more about regurgitating information unless you go for your doctorate I would think. Dont know in that one, just a guess.
The federal government does not control university curricula. It doesn't control what professors teach or how they teach it. Professors often have tenure, and can barely be fired by their own university for being subversive.
Certainly not. At least not in the US. Afaik, what is taught in public schools is defined by various levels of government. For example, the federal government sets standards for levels kids should achieve in reading at various ages, and mandates testing for this. The states define what should be taught in history classes in broad strokes (should be taught US history, world history, etc) but typically don't get into the details (you must teach the battle of Gettysburg). Then school boards, or sometimes the schools themselves, choose textbooks to teach the topics. The textbooks are written by private publishers - information from one book to another will be largely the same, since it is mostly well established facts, but emphasis might change between books as much as the authors want. For classes like English, teachers can typically assign whatever books they want - though for classes with standardized tests (like AP classes), teachers must stick to a (fairly large) list of approved books so that test graders will be familiar with them when evaluating essays.
At the university level, the government typically has even less influence. Really, anyone can claim to be a university - hence Devry and Pheonix. But if you want to be a university anyone gives a shit about, you need to be accredited as a university, and accreditation happens via a non-government organization which exists to maintain the standards of university education. Core classes at the undergraduate level tend to be fairly standardized - not by any central planning, but simply because the knowledge is fairly standardized in any given field and universities often must transfer credits for students from other universities. Professors - especially tenured professors - can teach more or less whatever they want in their classes, but class curricula are typically set by department committies to ensure continuity in students' education. And professors typically stick to the curriculum that has been set, since (1) it is probably a decent definition of what the students need to learn, (2) they don't want to catch flack from their collegues next semester when the students dont know something they should, and (3) cranking through the syllabus is faster and easier than being subversive, and they have grants they need to write.
That makes sense. This is a very thorough explanation, thank you very much for taking time to explain that, I appreciate it. Always up to learn something new! :)
maybe for public k-12 yea,theres definite attack on that. but private instituition have thier own curriculum, and its not the same at each school, some schools have better teachers than others, and better resoruces for experience in stem field. the more elite ones though have a different mentality, it breeds elitist/entitled graduates.
Education is just a narrow overview of a particular field. Once you're out the narrow scope of what you're taught - it's all about your general knowledge. I know a world-class physicist who does not comprehend basic things about society, economy, relationships etc. And, working in a scientific field, I see plenty of such examples.
Stupid as in unable to aggregate data and synthesize understanding?
The state of modern tech and media more broadly eats heavily into people's attention span. People have harder time concentrating, and it gets so much worse when they need to aggregate all the sources they have. They just don't have enough short-term memory to keep it all together.
Stupid as in making weird life decisions?
Everyone's life experience is drastically different than yours, and, seeing only the surface, people often downplay what others went through and how it shaped their thinking. Sometimes it introduces genuine logical errors into the behavior, and sometimes it just comes from a much different perspective than you can imagine. In their world, the decisions they make makes sense. In your world, you also normally make sense for yourself, even if you're actually irrational in one thing or another. This does, by the way, include all the typical political rants - high-ranking politicians and their numerous advisors are unlikely to all be stupid. More likely, these people pursue different interests from what you imagine.
Overall, the word "stupid" is heavily overused and applied to a lot of different things. So, it always makes sense to clarify, or else it looks more like a rant rather than a genuine question.
Complaining about people being stupid is as old as the world itself, yet it's not very productive or done in good faith. Before claiming anyone stupid, try to ask them for their perspective and the way they look at a problem. And if you're able, unpack what you think is wrong.
My mom worked as a university professor, then advisor, and what she said about college was "it just shows a prospective employer that you can follow rules and commit to doing something for a few years and follow through on it. That's why they want the degree. Also cuts down on applicants, fewer to sort through."
So, from someone on the inside, she didn't think the main reason was education, in terms of specific jobs. I know in accounting I don't use so much of what I learned and that's a pretty specific degree. Anyone with a mind for numbers & systems could be trained on the job to do what I do.
I've used the advanced systems analysis math I learned in university as an actual calculation in my job precisely zero times.
I roughly think about how those models apply to situations and how that will effect the various likely outcomes and behaviours etc on a literal daily basis.
University isnt just about training you to do a job.
I am an expert in my field. Because I devote all my time and brain to being so. I am average to terrible at everything else. So many of us like to think otherwise. I don’t get why. I’m tired at the end of the day and I just wanna be bad at shit lol. Ego?
Yep. Education isn't inclusive of neurodiversity, non white western ethnic groups, or just different types of intelligence. Academic isn't intelligence
College tutor here. Held a 4.0 GPA and graduated with honors on an academic scholarship. And I am very much the stoooopid type of person. I would be your worst nightmare as a co-worker. Well, maybe not "worst" but definately on the wrong end of that particular bell curve.
Now let's dive into the question!
There's a lot of different kinds of stupid. Some stupid people can be taught. Others just don't get certain concepts but other times, they pick up things very quickly. Some can learn, but if the knowledge sits dormant for too long, it disappears. Some people just don't care - if something isn't interesting to them, they don't pay attention.
I think what we're seeing is a HUGE rise in ADHD. All of the above can be signs of a hyperactive mind. We know, of course, that screen time - especially doom scrolling - increases ADHD. People who practice meditation and/or exercise and get the fuck off their screens aren't as susceptible.
I speak as someone who daily watches with horror as my social skills, wits and mental acuity slowly but surely move left on the x-axis of that bell curve we talked about earlier. My attention span wanes with a constant bombardment of information. I ingest a meme, but before it's thoroughly digested, I'm on to the next. I read a comment and jump to a conclusion, imagining my clever response but fast losing interest and deleting paragraphs of wordsmithy in a single stroke.
WE ARE NOT STUPID! WE ARE ADDICTED! AND IT'S KILLING US!
Also, this is a contagious condition, so get the fuck off Lemmy and hug a tree. Lemmy will still be here when you return. Thank you I love you good night!
Some people are very intelligent in their area(s) of expertise, but are alarmingly senseless outside of a lab/classroom/office environment. The “clueless professor” trope wasn’t just made up for laughs; it’s real. I’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve talked to spouses who love the “brilliant moron” they’re married to. Some people with degrees acknowledge their limitations with good humor, others don’t.
wow, im not surprised. i was in a forum where these people had MS/MA degrees in stem. but refuse to follow proper research, and believe in a pseudoscience like chronic lyme(they all convinced they had lyme permanently), most of symptoms sounds like a mental illness, psycosomatic disease. there seems to be a correlation in believing pseudoscience(flat earther, fake diseases) and undiagonised mental illnesses.
It's worth noting that college degrees are often not hard to get, assuming you have ample finances. Colleges are businesses, and they care more about cashflow than education.
I have a bachelor of science in electrical engineering. Of my graduating class, probably only about a quarter of us actually understood anything. And now working in the industry, it seems like that's a pretty reasonable average for other institutions in my field (there are exceptions, a few colleges have higher standards).
Depends on the place, I guess. In the US and Canada, it's pretty common. I've attended four different institutions and taught at one, and they've all been pretty money-focused.
There are some aspects of the discipline that are hard to grasp--in my experience, it was differential equations and advanced control systems. But those are a pretty small part of the curriculum. The number of people who graduated without demonstrating even basic understanding of rudimentary concepts is alarming, but it explains a large amount of the shitty engineering that exists in the world.
When you say, "fucking stupid" is "stupidity" actually the problem? Like what, they can't do math?
Raw brainpower is only a fraction of what's involved in good judgement. Book knowledge is another fraction. But there's a whole host of other factors that can influence decisions. Poor impulse control, psychological hangups, bad habits, greed, privilege, etc. That's assuming that the education they received actually taught them how to think critically in the first place.
The vast majority of the time, when I have a problem with someone, it's not just a matter of lacking brainpower or education. Condensing those problems down to "stupid" is, aside from any other concerns, simply inaccurate.
A four year degree, for the most part, proves you can hand in coursework and pass tests. It does not demonstrate the ability to apply any of that education in the real world, nor does it demonstrate any ability to acquire and apply new knowledge outside of a classroom setting.
When you look at careers where the application of knowledge and critical thinking are vital to the work, all of them tend to have some kind of post-graduate schooling or follow-on apprenticeship where one works under an experienced professional, and even people in those fields can be pretty fucking stupid when it comes to things outside of their specialty...
If they pay tuition, do the bare minimum to get the bare minimum grades, they'll graduate with a degree, and you'll never know where they fell on the scale. Having a degree has nothing to do with how smart they are. I have met plenty of dumb people with degrees, and plenty of seriously intelligent people without one.
You know what they call the guy who graduated last in medical school? Doctor.
I know someone who earns six figures who can't spell, doesn't know that he's Caucasian, doesn't know the difference between Chinese and Japanese people, thinks it's a fine idea to sit in a swimming pool during a lightning storm, and once wrote a $1000 check to himself, thinking the bank would honor it and he'd suddenly have an extra $1000 in the bank.
College degrees mean you can read and write with a purpose. It doesn't mean you can think. There's a reasons you don't see a ton of conservatives in research science.
Only about 10-20% of my students showed any evidence of engagement or understanding with the material.
The other 60% were just parroting everything, but that's good enough to get B/C and pass the class and that's all they care about.
And about 20% were total idiots who didn't belong in a college classroom, but the school won't fail them even when they cheat because money. 10% of my students cheated and I reported them and only about 3% of those that cheat get punished for it, the others get passed with a low grade.
Staring at teacher's boring Powerpoint presentations and reading through a chapter an hour before a test only to forget it after doesn't magically make you a smart person. In fact, I felt more like it numbs the brain.
In addition to the many other fine comments here, I will add that when you think someone is so stupid there is often something missing. You may not understand what information they are acting on or you might be interpreting the context according to different values than theirs. As an observer, not understanding someone else’s choice can feel exactly like “damn what a stupid choice.” I try as much as I can to take these as opportunities to dig further and use my imagination to figure out what they must be thinking. Occasionally I come up with something.
I appreciate your outlook and empathy. I think I'm smart. I know I ignore certain things and probably look stupid. But you are absolutely right that you can't know what exact information they're working with as the basis for decisions/statements/opinions. Being able to identify some base misconception can bring about resolution so fast. I still have sudden realizations that uproot some belief I had based on some bullshit my dad said decades ago. If you never had reason to question it, it doesn't enter the critical reasoning part of your head.
Only example off the top of my head is he once said tetanus was, effectively, caused by dogs urinating on rusty metal. I was probably under 10, who am I to question? Well, tetanus is such a rare topic that I never thought about. Working under rusty cars from my teens onward? Not a problem, dogs aren't peeing up into my car. Well, a friend mentioned he'd was updating his tetanus shot around 30 since he also works on rusty cars. "Wait, any rusty metal?" it was a dolly-zoom moment. Turns out, any source material that's contaminated while puncturing skin can do it. It just happens to often be lost nails or broken glass. But I carried that belief for like 25 years.
most stupid people I meet who have all that stuff, it's because most of it was inherited from mom and dad, or mom and dad had the connections to get them a 100K+ job straight out of college at a friends' company.
And they think anyone who doesn't have all stuff that is expensive as their stuff is stupid, because if they were smart, why wouldn't they be richer than them?
It absolutely astounds me that all the idiots currently running America went to Ivy League schools and have degrees. I thought for sure they all went to clown college. What exactly to they teach at Harvard and Vasser?
Ivy League schools are just places to make connections with other rich people, so they can land a seven figure job right out of college and think they’ve earned it
they also tend to produce elitist graduates too, some professors from my CC went to one of the ivy league schools and his attitude reflects upriging fromt he schools, pretty arrogant towards the student, and why they are not passing gen chem.
As a person who has recruited technical engineering staff: a degree will prove only that someone has been able to write about a subject, not that they actually know anything about it or are able to practice.
The proof of the pudding is in the probationary period.
I found that if something seems stupid to me, most of the time I just don't understand their viewpoint. We are all living in our own world based on our limited experiences.
Education has no bearing on intelligence, or how "smart" you are. Sure, being more educated CAN make you smarter, but most people can skate by and get a degree while learning next to nothing. Plus I think a lot of higher educated yet ignorant people have the nose-above-ear holier then thou complex and can't be told anything they don't agree with or believe in already without throwing a fit. Plenty of educated people are very intelligent, but I think the stupid educated people make a lot of noise and appear as a larger group than they are as well. You know that whole loud minority thing.
College is not a test of intelligence. It's a test of your parents' finances, perhaps, and your ability to conform and play the game, and in some cases one's willingness to cheat as well. In my experience very few people come out of college any smarter than they went in, and given the preponderance of people who seem to major in beer the opposite may in fact be true.
What worries me is not the number of people who manage to stumble through college and still some out the other side stupid. Based on my personal experience with my client base, what keeps me up at night is the sheer majority of people who apparently cannot read and possess no critical thinking skills whatsoever and probably shouldn't be trusted to tie their own shoelaces, but some asshole still saw fit to issue these people drivers' licenses, insurance policies, mortgages, and allow them to buy giant SUVs and guns.
It’s kind of interesting that most people here seem to assume that attending college is synonymous with education or knowledge. It would be nice if that were the case.
However, there are also quite a few people who went to college but didn’t learn a thing there - especially in countries like the U.S. or England, where a college degree costs an absurd amount of money, this happens all the time. It’s especially common there to find children of wealthy people who are as dumb as a box of rocks, yet still manage to buy their way into high society with a college degree - they’re guaranteed to get it, regardless of whether they learn even the slightest thing at university.
(Academic) education is not intelligence, and certainly not wisdom.
The worst part is this education doesn't protect you from falling for certain loopy ideas. Critical reasoning is a skill and like all skills it needs to be learnt and maintained.
People can cheat or learn to just memorize and repeat information without really accepting or retaining it. As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make a drink.
Or becoming better just ensures you get more work done, and thus more work shoved onto your plate.
I know a guy who was smart enough to go to University, but went to a basic college instead (or rather, a Dutch equivalent). "I don't want to do all that" is his defence in not going to Uni.
Not all colleges and not all degrees are equal. Some people can excel in a single field but struggle in everything else. Some people have excellent memory function but precious little ability to reason. Some people change dramatically from their late teens to their late twenties. The list goes on…
Because people have different standards and don't agree on what smart or stupid is.
I see people praising something as total genius, that I think is stupid as shit. And I see really smart things people say, downvoted into oblivion and called stupid.
People generally think stuff they agree with and makes them feel good is smart, and stuff they don't agree with and makes them feel bad is stupid.
Higher learning teaches students how to think critically (or develop a very good short term memory).
But it doesn’t necessarily teach students TO think critically.
They’re taught the tools they can use, but using those tools takes effort and causes discomfort. So most people choose to use them as little as possible.
So, the main difference is: people (speaking generally) who have some post-high school education have developed the tools to approach a topic in an intelligent manner. This means that, given enough effort, you can help them understand a topic. Without that toolkit, trying to show them how something is more likely true based on evidence is often pointless. But having that toolkit isn’t going to make them automatically come to evidence-based conclusions.
A bit of a flawed view there that higher education lands jobs magically. It's probably the other way around, and those with more than average curiosity and life ethics have a better shot at it.
Cause education is not equal to intelligence.
Work at a university; try telling that to the academics. Some of them are phenomenally simple. They may be convinced of intellectual superiority because they're a world expert in frog genders, but they struggle to solve simple problems or absorb reasoning without having it dumbed down.
A university is like a daycare for those adults. And the trantrums and toy throwing they have with each other, oh my god. Daily I wonder how some of these people would survive if they ever had to leave school.
Academia is a good walled garden for those hyper specialized researchers. They progress research and the institution acts as a patron and sanctuary from the world. Perhaps we should reward continued general education though
Reminds me of a joke from Ghostbusters, when Ray and Peter are kicked out of the university:
"You don't know what it's like in the private sector. They expect results!"
It also seems that the more specific a person's education gets, it replaces general knowledge and thinking. For many it seems their entire thought process changes to focus on that specific thing, to the detriment of anything else. Doctorates seem to be less capable of working outside their specific focused niche compared to those with lower degrees. They've spent so much time focusing that they can't unfocus very well.
This is the real answer. Most people conflate the two.
-Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Simpler & clearer:
Intelligence is solving-the-problem-efficiently/quickly..
Wisdom is realizing we'd been solving the wrong problem, & working-out what the right-problem is..
Wisdom's meta-intelligence.
_ /\ _
People keep saying that, but it's bullshit. In many countries outside the US, people can only do a degree if they've proven that they're intelligent.
But intelligent people can be really stupid too.
"book smarts" and "street smarts" are two completely different things. My sister is book smart. skipped a couple grades, went to university twice, once for her degree and again for her masters. She's by all means well educated.
She's dumb as a bag of rocks. She's really good at studying. she's a pro at it. but none of that knowledge is ever retained for extended periods of time. Once its "useful" i.e. for a test/exam/SAT/etc then it's tossed out of her head. I can't recall what she earned her masters in but if you challenge her to talk about it today she can't. that's the primary reason I can't remember is because she literally is unable to talk about it.
Sounds like she's good at cramming, not studying.
what is her profession in?, like her current career?
she's a teacher...that's what scares me more. she's teaching kids. And the even MORE scary thing is she hates kids. she refuses to have her own because, and I quote, she "can't stand children". Essentially she's good at cramming/studying the lesson plans and then info dumping it on the kids. Now trying to get her to actually understand or teach you what's she's actually dumped onto the kids well after the fact? good luck. I tried that once. One week she taught the kids some subject on earth science, tectonic plates I believe, I asked her a week later at a family dinner about it because she brought it up. she couldn't explain it. it was out of her mind already.
Her brain is a cassette tape😆
She is clearly not well educated.
She has been educated but of none of it sticks she herself is not educated and certainly not well educated.
i'm a mechanical engineer. i know something about electricity and physics. i also have a degree in international trade.
until 2 yrs ago i didn't know how eggs get fertilized and yesterday my wife had to show me how to remove olive pits while preparing ouur cooking.
by all accounts i'm a dumbass with 2 degrees in specific fields that i don't encounter in day-to-day life. i have no idea how to survive in this world. i am sure others feel the same.
Marcin Jakubowski talks about this in his TED talk; theoretical physicist realizes he cannot DO anything, becomes farmer, founds open source ecology.
This is the best answer.
Marcin Jakubowski talks about this in his TED talk; theoretical physicist realizes he cannot DO anything, becomes farmer, founds open source ecology.
Knowledge is not intelligence.
The difference is the conclusions drawn from the knowledge obtained. Dumb people can survey knowledge and come to wrong conclusions, it happens all the time.
Education isn't just learning knowledge, it's also skills and thinking. But it is usually restricted to a limited domain..
Intelligence and Wisdom are two separate stats.
C's get degrees.
I heard that after the Vietnam war with most the protesters being college students they made an effort to remove lessons that teach critical thinking and problem solving to make people more compliant and less likely to do that again.
So current education is more about regurgitating information unless you go for your doctorate I would think. Dont know in that one, just a guess.
This is conspiracy nutjob thinking.
The federal government does not control university curricula. It doesn't control what professors teach or how they teach it. Professors often have tenure, and can barely be fired by their own university for being subversive.
I thought education was standardized across all levels, didnt know universities had the leeway to do whatever with that curriculum. Thats interesting.
Certainly not. At least not in the US. Afaik, what is taught in public schools is defined by various levels of government. For example, the federal government sets standards for levels kids should achieve in reading at various ages, and mandates testing for this. The states define what should be taught in history classes in broad strokes (should be taught US history, world history, etc) but typically don't get into the details (you must teach the battle of Gettysburg). Then school boards, or sometimes the schools themselves, choose textbooks to teach the topics. The textbooks are written by private publishers - information from one book to another will be largely the same, since it is mostly well established facts, but emphasis might change between books as much as the authors want. For classes like English, teachers can typically assign whatever books they want - though for classes with standardized tests (like AP classes), teachers must stick to a (fairly large) list of approved books so that test graders will be familiar with them when evaluating essays.
At the university level, the government typically has even less influence. Really, anyone can claim to be a university - hence Devry and Pheonix. But if you want to be a university anyone gives a shit about, you need to be accredited as a university, and accreditation happens via a non-government organization which exists to maintain the standards of university education. Core classes at the undergraduate level tend to be fairly standardized - not by any central planning, but simply because the knowledge is fairly standardized in any given field and universities often must transfer credits for students from other universities. Professors - especially tenured professors - can teach more or less whatever they want in their classes, but class curricula are typically set by department committies to ensure continuity in students' education. And professors typically stick to the curriculum that has been set, since (1) it is probably a decent definition of what the students need to learn, (2) they don't want to catch flack from their collegues next semester when the students dont know something they should, and (3) cranking through the syllabus is faster and easier than being subversive, and they have grants they need to write.
That makes sense. This is a very thorough explanation, thank you very much for taking time to explain that, I appreciate it. Always up to learn something new! :)
Np!
maybe for public k-12 yea,theres definite attack on that. but private instituition have thier own curriculum, and its not the same at each school, some schools have better teachers than others, and better resoruces for experience in stem field. the more elite ones though have a different mentality, it breeds elitist/entitled graduates.
Depends on what you mean by that.
Stupid as in not grasping some concepts quickly?
Education is just a narrow overview of a particular field. Once you're out the narrow scope of what you're taught - it's all about your general knowledge. I know a world-class physicist who does not comprehend basic things about society, economy, relationships etc. And, working in a scientific field, I see plenty of such examples.
Stupid as in unable to aggregate data and synthesize understanding?
The state of modern tech and media more broadly eats heavily into people's attention span. People have harder time concentrating, and it gets so much worse when they need to aggregate all the sources they have. They just don't have enough short-term memory to keep it all together.
Stupid as in making weird life decisions?
Everyone's life experience is drastically different than yours, and, seeing only the surface, people often downplay what others went through and how it shaped their thinking. Sometimes it introduces genuine logical errors into the behavior, and sometimes it just comes from a much different perspective than you can imagine. In their world, the decisions they make makes sense. In your world, you also normally make sense for yourself, even if you're actually irrational in one thing or another. This does, by the way, include all the typical political rants - high-ranking politicians and their numerous advisors are unlikely to all be stupid. More likely, these people pursue different interests from what you imagine.
Overall, the word "stupid" is heavily overused and applied to a lot of different things. So, it always makes sense to clarify, or else it looks more like a rant rather than a genuine question.
Complaining about people being stupid is as old as the world itself, yet it's not very productive or done in good faith. Before claiming anyone stupid, try to ask them for their perspective and the way they look at a problem. And if you're able, unpack what you think is wrong.
And also: **Stupid as in willful ignorance? **
My mom worked as a university professor, then advisor, and what she said about college was "it just shows a prospective employer that you can follow rules and commit to doing something for a few years and follow through on it. That's why they want the degree. Also cuts down on applicants, fewer to sort through."
So, from someone on the inside, she didn't think the main reason was education, in terms of specific jobs. I know in accounting I don't use so much of what I learned and that's a pretty specific degree. Anyone with a mind for numbers & systems could be trained on the job to do what I do.
I've used the advanced systems analysis math I learned in university as an actual calculation in my job precisely zero times.
I roughly think about how those models apply to situations and how that will effect the various likely outcomes and behaviours etc on a literal daily basis.
University isnt just about training you to do a job.
education doesn't fix stupidity Education can however help with ignorance.
I am an expert in my field. Because I devote all my time and brain to being so. I am average to terrible at everything else. So many of us like to think otherwise. I don’t get why. I’m tired at the end of the day and I just wanna be bad at shit lol. Ego?
Education has no bearing on intellect. Or appropriate life experience.
Also, when people say someone is stupid, crazy, etc, it's because they don't understand that person's perspective.
Yep. Education isn't inclusive of neurodiversity, non white western ethnic groups, or just different types of intelligence. Academic isn't intelligence
College degrees are usually a way to differentiate the rich and poor not prove how smart someone is.
College tutor here. Held a 4.0 GPA and graduated with honors on an academic scholarship. And I am very much the stoooopid type of person. I would be your worst nightmare as a co-worker. Well, maybe not "worst" but definately on the wrong end of that particular bell curve.
Now let's dive into the question!
There's a lot of different kinds of stupid. Some stupid people can be taught. Others just don't get certain concepts but other times, they pick up things very quickly. Some can learn, but if the knowledge sits dormant for too long, it disappears. Some people just don't care - if something isn't interesting to them, they don't pay attention.
I think what we're seeing is a HUGE rise in ADHD. All of the above can be signs of a hyperactive mind. We know, of course, that screen time - especially doom scrolling - increases ADHD. People who practice meditation and/or exercise and get the fuck off their screens aren't as susceptible.
I speak as someone who daily watches with horror as my social skills, wits and mental acuity slowly but surely move left on the x-axis of that bell curve we talked about earlier. My attention span wanes with a constant bombardment of information. I ingest a meme, but before it's thoroughly digested, I'm on to the next. I read a comment and jump to a conclusion, imagining my clever response but fast losing interest and deleting paragraphs of wordsmithy in a single stroke.
WE ARE NOT STUPID! WE ARE ADDICTED! AND IT'S KILLING US!
Also, this is a contagious condition, so get the fuck off Lemmy and hug a tree. Lemmy will still be here when you return. Thank you I love you good night!
well good news, since it is happening to all of us, you may actually keep getting worse, but keep your place on that curve 😆
Some people are very intelligent in their area(s) of expertise, but are alarmingly senseless outside of a lab/classroom/office environment. The “clueless professor” trope wasn’t just made up for laughs; it’s real. I’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve talked to spouses who love the “brilliant moron” they’re married to. Some people with degrees acknowledge their limitations with good humor, others don’t.
I had a manager once. Very talented electrical engineer. Completely and totally refused to believe that anything about space, rockets, etc. was real.
wow, im not surprised. i was in a forum where these people had MS/MA degrees in stem. but refuse to follow proper research, and believe in a pseudoscience like chronic lyme(they all convinced they had lyme permanently), most of symptoms sounds like a mental illness, psycosomatic disease. there seems to be a correlation in believing pseudoscience(flat earther, fake diseases) and undiagonised mental illnesses.
It's worth noting that college degrees are often not hard to get, assuming you have ample finances. Colleges are businesses, and they care more about cashflow than education.
I have a bachelor of science in electrical engineering. Of my graduating class, probably only about a quarter of us actually understood anything. And now working in the industry, it seems like that's a pretty reasonable average for other institutions in my field (there are exceptions, a few colleges have higher standards).
Depends on the place, I guess. In the US and Canada, it's pretty common. I've attended four different institutions and taught at one, and they've all been pretty money-focused.
I mean, to be fair, electrical engineering is one of the most notoriously difficult to grasp disciplines.
People don't generally have a great intuitive sense for how pulsed electromagnet waves propagate through 3d space and time.
There are some aspects of the discipline that are hard to grasp--in my experience, it was differential equations and advanced control systems. But those are a pretty small part of the curriculum. The number of people who graduated without demonstrating even basic understanding of rudimentary concepts is alarming, but it explains a large amount of the shitty engineering that exists in the world.
When you say, "fucking stupid" is "stupidity" actually the problem? Like what, they can't do math?
Raw brainpower is only a fraction of what's involved in good judgement. Book knowledge is another fraction. But there's a whole host of other factors that can influence decisions. Poor impulse control, psychological hangups, bad habits, greed, privilege, etc. That's assuming that the education they received actually taught them how to think critically in the first place.
The vast majority of the time, when I have a problem with someone, it's not just a matter of lacking brainpower or education. Condensing those problems down to "stupid" is, aside from any other concerns, simply inaccurate.
Username/pfp checks out.
also different standards.
one person's clean is another's dirty. etc.
can't be smart at everything 🤷♂️
Education in one field doesn't mean so in all. I still do some things that may be considered stupid, it's just habitual at this point.
I don't think they're acting.
A four year degree, for the most part, proves you can hand in coursework and pass tests. It does not demonstrate the ability to apply any of that education in the real world, nor does it demonstrate any ability to acquire and apply new knowledge outside of a classroom setting.
When you look at careers where the application of knowledge and critical thinking are vital to the work, all of them tend to have some kind of post-graduate schooling or follow-on apprenticeship where one works under an experienced professional, and even people in those fields can be pretty fucking stupid when it comes to things outside of their specialty...
Intelligence and wisdom are separate things.
E.g. you are intelligent enough to know smoking is bad for you, but lack the wisdom to stop smoking.
Intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit, and wisdom is knowing to not put it in a fruit salad.
If they pay tuition, do the bare minimum to get the bare minimum grades, they'll graduate with a degree, and you'll never know where they fell on the scale. Having a degree has nothing to do with how smart they are. I have met plenty of dumb people with degrees, and plenty of seriously intelligent people without one.
You know what they call the guy who graduated last in medical school? Doctor.
I know someone who earns six figures who can't spell, doesn't know that he's Caucasian, doesn't know the difference between Chinese and Japanese people, thinks it's a fine idea to sit in a swimming pool during a lightning storm, and once wrote a $1000 check to himself, thinking the bank would honor it and he'd suddenly have an extra $1000 in the bank.
College degrees mean you can read and write with a purpose. It doesn't mean you can think. There's a reasons you don't see a ton of conservatives in research science.
I taught college for a few years.
Only about 10-20% of my students showed any evidence of engagement or understanding with the material.
The other 60% were just parroting everything, but that's good enough to get B/C and pass the class and that's all they care about.
And about 20% were total idiots who didn't belong in a college classroom, but the school won't fail them even when they cheat because money. 10% of my students cheated and I reported them and only about 3% of those that cheat get punished for it, the others get passed with a low grade.
These ratios hold pretty true with regards to competency in the workplace, too.
I went to school for business like a dumbass, so I didn't learn shit about shit. That and genetics made for one dumb bitch.
Staring at teacher's boring Powerpoint presentations and reading through a chapter an hour before a test only to forget it after doesn't magically make you a smart person. In fact, I felt more like it numbs the brain.
It's even worse when you find out they're not acting.
In addition to the many other fine comments here, I will add that when you think someone is so stupid there is often something missing. You may not understand what information they are acting on or you might be interpreting the context according to different values than theirs. As an observer, not understanding someone else’s choice can feel exactly like “damn what a stupid choice.” I try as much as I can to take these as opportunities to dig further and use my imagination to figure out what they must be thinking. Occasionally I come up with something.
I appreciate your outlook and empathy. I think I'm smart. I know I ignore certain things and probably look stupid. But you are absolutely right that you can't know what exact information they're working with as the basis for decisions/statements/opinions. Being able to identify some base misconception can bring about resolution so fast. I still have sudden realizations that uproot some belief I had based on some bullshit my dad said decades ago. If you never had reason to question it, it doesn't enter the critical reasoning part of your head.
Only example off the top of my head is he once said tetanus was, effectively, caused by dogs urinating on rusty metal. I was probably under 10, who am I to question? Well, tetanus is such a rare topic that I never thought about. Working under rusty cars from my teens onward? Not a problem, dogs aren't peeing up into my car. Well, a friend mentioned he'd was updating his tetanus shot around 30 since he also works on rusty cars. "Wait, any rusty metal?" it was a dolly-zoom moment. Turns out, any source material that's contaminated while puncturing skin can do it. It just happens to often be lost nails or broken glass. But I carried that belief for like 25 years.
Some people are really good at studying and terrible and doing anything else, specially thinking.
They are the perfect drones, they are smart enough to work the machines and produce for their boss, but dumb enough to ask why.
Certification is given to anyone with the money for it
There's no major correlation between IQ and wealth
To put it simply, there is a difference between "intelligent" and "smart".
I'm continually amazed at how fucking idiots have jobs, buy houses and cars and stuff.
most of them inherited their money.
most stupid people I meet who have all that stuff, it's because most of it was inherited from mom and dad, or mom and dad had the connections to get them a 100K+ job straight out of college at a friends' company.
And they think anyone who doesn't have all stuff that is expensive as their stuff is stupid, because if they were smart, why wouldn't they be richer than them?
Yeah some of them are.
Having rich parents makes it pretty easy to get a higher education. And you can pay people to do your homework.
A lot of rich kids cheat. Like. A lot of them.
Masters and PhDs is where it starts to get harder to fake it but occasionally you still get a few that make it through who are nepo babies.
PHD is probably the hardest , MA is probably the easiest one to still fake it, since its not an MS.
Nothing to do with rich people. Good education is free in Germany and people who have a higher education can be just as stupid.
It absolutely astounds me that all the idiots currently running America went to Ivy League schools and have degrees. I thought for sure they all went to clown college. What exactly to they teach at Harvard and Vasser?
Ivy League schools are just places to make connections with other rich people, so they can land a seven figure job right out of college and think they’ve earned it
they also tend to produce elitist graduates too, some professors from my CC went to one of the ivy league schools and his attitude reflects upriging fromt he schools, pretty arrogant towards the student, and why they are not passing gen chem.
Why would you expect them to be immune to stupidity?
As a person who has recruited technical engineering staff: a degree will prove only that someone has been able to write about a subject, not that they actually know anything about it or are able to practice.
The proof of the pudding is in the probationary period.
You major in like 1 specific thing... it doesn't turn your brain into an Artificial General Intelligence
turns it into an LLM.
I found that if something seems stupid to me, most of the time I just don't understand their viewpoint. We are all living in our own world based on our limited experiences.
Education has no bearing on intelligence, or how "smart" you are. Sure, being more educated CAN make you smarter, but most people can skate by and get a degree while learning next to nothing. Plus I think a lot of higher educated yet ignorant people have the nose-above-ear holier then thou complex and can't be told anything they don't agree with or believe in already without throwing a fit. Plenty of educated people are very intelligent, but I think the stupid educated people make a lot of noise and appear as a larger group than they are as well. You know that whole loud minority thing.
Education isn’t intelligence. Academic achievement is done through effort in studying.
All humans think fast and slow
College is not a test of intelligence. It's a test of your parents' finances, perhaps, and your ability to conform and play the game, and in some cases one's willingness to cheat as well. In my experience very few people come out of college any smarter than they went in, and given the preponderance of people who seem to major in beer the opposite may in fact be true.
What worries me is not the number of people who manage to stumble through college and still some out the other side stupid. Based on my personal experience with my client base, what keeps me up at night is the sheer majority of people who apparently cannot read and possess no critical thinking skills whatsoever and probably shouldn't be trusted to tie their own shoelaces, but some asshole still saw fit to issue these people drivers' licenses, insurance policies, mortgages, and allow them to buy giant SUVs and guns.
Because it's the emotional inner world that defines how people behave, not education or knowledge or wisdom.
It’s kind of interesting that most people here seem to assume that attending college is synonymous with education or knowledge. It would be nice if that were the case.
However, there are also quite a few people who went to college but didn’t learn a thing there - especially in countries like the U.S. or England, where a college degree costs an absurd amount of money, this happens all the time. It’s especially common there to find children of wealthy people who are as dumb as a box of rocks, yet still manage to buy their way into high society with a college degree - they’re guaranteed to get it, regardless of whether they learn even the slightest thing at university.
The current U.S. president is a good example...
Why do billionaires/oligarchs do it?
Principle of Least Effort.
It isn't particular to the "lower class" or to the "less educated" or to any particular faction of the population.
That's normal.
Some people, no matter how you "slice" the population up, still act so fucking stupid.
'Tis a fact of life, is all.
_ /\ _
(Academic) education is not intelligence, and certainly not wisdom.
The worst part is this education doesn't protect you from falling for certain loopy ideas. Critical reasoning is a skill and like all skills it needs to be learnt and maintained.
What makes you think it's an act?
There are only two options: Either they're stupid and can't comprehend things, or you're stupid and can't comprehend what they can.
If you identify educated people as drastically different from you, perhaps they are just trying to fit in when they're around you.
Formal education is just a means to an end, end being typically independence/jobs, not actually intellect (no matter how much it's marketed as such).
People can cheat or learn to just memorize and repeat information without really accepting or retaining it. As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make a drink.
College degrees just ensure we're specialized.
Or becoming better just ensures you get more work done, and thus more work shoved onto your plate.
I know a guy who was smart enough to go to University, but went to a basic college instead (or rather, a Dutch equivalent). "I don't want to do all that" is his defence in not going to Uni.
Idk all the reasons, but I watched this yesterday and it blew my mind. Ppl are crippled now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ynCVmw5AWk
Not all colleges and not all degrees are equal. Some people can excel in a single field but struggle in everything else. Some people have excellent memory function but precious little ability to reason. Some people change dramatically from their late teens to their late twenties. The list goes on…
Look up Cipolla's laws of stupidity, pretty much sums it up.
Because people have different standards and don't agree on what smart or stupid is.
I see people praising something as total genius, that I think is stupid as shit. And I see really smart things people say, downvoted into oblivion and called stupid.
People generally think stuff they agree with and makes them feel good is smart, and stuff they don't agree with and makes them feel bad is stupid.
If you're in the US, bachelor degrees are pretty worthless lol.
To quote a song lyric from an excellent rock band... "Clever, not very wise"
(Midnight Oil - Shipyards of New Zealand)
Higher learning teaches students how to think critically (or develop a very good short term memory).
But it doesn’t necessarily teach students TO think critically.
They’re taught the tools they can use, but using those tools takes effort and causes discomfort. So most people choose to use them as little as possible.
So, the main difference is: people (speaking generally) who have some post-high school education have developed the tools to approach a topic in an intelligent manner. This means that, given enough effort, you can help them understand a topic. Without that toolkit, trying to show them how something is more likely true based on evidence is often pointless. But having that toolkit isn’t going to make them automatically come to evidence-based conclusions.
because getting a degree is more about dodging Pedos and school shootings while paying the check than any kind of learning
All a degree gives you is skill in one particular thing.
It don't give you shit all else.
A bit of a flawed view there that higher education lands jobs magically. It's probably the other way around, and those with more than average curiosity and life ethics have a better shot at it.
People say books and college are for to be to make you smarter, but they can also be for to be to get you dead
Care to give an example?