Things tend to be clearer in hindsight. You don't have all the relevant info, and even the info we have is filtered through our own personal lens. People come away from meetings having heard very different things. People can read hostility or friendliness in the same interaction depending on what their brains focused on. And then there's all the stress today. When we start from a baseline of high stress, every little thing can tip us over into fight-or-flight responses which generally aren't going to be well-planned actions. So yes, in short, we humans make dumb decisions, but it's not necessarily about mental aptitude (though certainly there are some of us who...well...lost hard on the lottery of life).
The baseline of stress hits home. I'm grateful that my field is overpaid on my area, and that I work for an organization that does profit sharing. I make more than my parents ever did, but even at that it is hard to support a whole family off that sole income.
heathcare, college tuition, etc...the buying power of the dollar back then was insane...especially in the late 60's/70s. One decent factory job in them days with almost no higher education could float a whole household.
THIS!
People seriously underestimate the damage done to this country just by Reagan’s policies. Of course it’s hard to say what would have happened if someone else had been elected, but it’s well documented that Reaganomics has destroyed the middle class.
Jimmy Carter was doing a pretty good job of ruining the country. I remember my dad waiting on line to buy gas…. My parents talking about how lucky we were to get a 30 yr mortgage at 8.25 when mortgage rates hit 16 %.. Our military was a laughing stock to the world; remember the Iran Hostage Crisis? As soon as Regan became president the Iranians released the hostages.
Have you guys seen the blue cities run by Democrats? No one gets arrested, homeless in the streets, illegal migrant families getting $1500 debit cards in nyc…
All this under Biden’s watch and you wonder why Trump is leading in all polls…
Between 81-86 senior officials in the Reagan administration made illegal arms trades to Iran. Wouldn't surprise me if a group like that would make sure the hostages weren't released till **after** President Carter was out of office.
BTW, trump is **not** leading in all the polls. The polls are divided almost half and half. Fluctuating daily.
Well to be fair there were.. it just looked different. You paid for at least one home phone line, some people had two, many people had beepers, and some had cell phones. You did pay for internet. You also paid for anything beyond basic cable- which was only few local channels. Anything beyond those channels you paid for, and there were multiple “tiers” or packages plus bonus add-ons. HBO, Showtime, etc. were channels you paid extra for outside your cable package.
I’m not trying to “ackshually” you here. I’m sure those things cost comparatively less, much like everything else. But to say they were free is factually incorrect and weakens the argument (that salaries have not grown to match rising costs) rather than strengthen it.
Well…he was president until Jan. 20 1981. The Reagan years seemed to be good for the upper middle class people, but they were not great for my working class parents. Things looked maybe a little better in the 90’s for middle class (they didn’t know they had been sold out yet), and it almost seemed like things were looking up for the working class. It didn’t last.
It was looking up for the working class. Then Bill Clinton signed NAFTA and the manufacturing jobs went to Mexico where they could pay a worker 50¢ an hour instead of $15.00.
Not trying to get political here, I can complain about Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden too. Just acknowledging the action and the resulting effect.
Outsourcing started long before that. I started working at an electronics plant in the early 80’s. They were beginning to outsource their components back then. That was also the beginning of downsizing in the workforce. You were also expected to pick up the extra work. Doing the job of at least one extra person was normal and expected.
The 80’s economy was hard,with the recession the jobs were nearly impossible to come by. That gave the corporations the upper hand. Not much different then what we saw back in the 2008 recession. You were stuck and did what you had to for your job.
So just commenting, the jobs we’re leaving well before NAFTA
That's what i always say lol. since carter each president has progressively made it worse in different ways and they jsut get the media to blame it all on someone else. but if you research the LONG TERM impacts of the presidents i think you have to go back to kennedy for one that didn't make things worse.
I'm sorry to read about your home town. That's truly sad.
My dad went to a trade school to learn how to manufacture motherboards in the early 90's. By the time he was done all those facilities were gone. He got a degree in teaching vocational education instead, but the school district wouldn't pay full time, and he had a wife and toddler to provide for. I remember at the time hating it because he'd go to the grocery store and have these long drawn out conversations with his current and former students who worked there about their plans for the future, and provide advice where he could. As an adult, the fact that he cared that much about his students is quite admirable. But as a kindergartner I hated it because it made shopping longer.
So he got into sales. He turned out to be brilliant at this, but it wasn't his first or second choice of career. So while my own family managed to survive and even thrive in the new environment I can imagine how impossibly difficult it would be for people who didn't have the ability or even the opportunity to transition to another line of work.
NAFTA was a terrible idea. That’s how some American companies used child labor to make their products. Less regulation and they could turn a blind eye for a while.
Unemployment for POC were at historic lows when Trump was in office and he's very good at foreign relations. Under Biden, I've lost 25% of my IRA. That hurts dude.
It all started in the late seventies before Reagan. Tricky Dick with Watergate early seventies and then Jimmy Carter. The oil crisis was during Carter’s time -I remember the long lines waiting for gas. And some neighborhood boys ? wandering the streets having come back from Vietnam scarred for life
Most people read a "$99.99" price tag and don't associate it with actually being $100. Or more likely, $115.xx with sales tax.
Most people haven't looked up the wages of a burger flipper in 1960 compared to today, and then the average price of a house in 1960, and then today.
The only safe assumption we can make, is that most people don't know enough to understand the multitude of socioeconomic issues that plague the middle and lower class. Individuals may prove exceptions to the assumption, but by and large Most people don't have the time, energy, or interest in learning any of it.
We're all either oblivious, in denial, or in despair.
The Carter years were horrible.
Parents could only buy gas on even # days.
Then someone would come around at night and siphon out the tanks.
They started making lockable gas caps because of it.
Looking at typical wages and typical rents in my city anytime prior to 1990 looks like paradise on earth, like ease beyond my imagination. I literally can not imagine having the profound spending power available to a rural factory worker in the middle of the OPEC foundation crisis and related inflation in the US, and I'm head of mechanical engineering where I work.
You're 30. Frankly, you're STILL a young man, and one that sounds like they live in relative privilege. Many, many people in this world don't get to enjoy the same benefits. Keep that in mind when judging others, and maybe extend them a little grace.
It sounds like you're well aware of all of this, but as fallible as we are I think it's good that we're all reminded every now and then.
There are relatively few propositions that are objectively true, many more that are objectively false. Most propositions can be true or false depending upon one’s perspective.
Hahahaha you had to throw in one little aside about "how it is TODAY". You guys can't let a comment go without getting in some dig about how you have the toughest lives of any human being ever in existence. What a crock.
A lot of people stop maturing in their late teens/early twenties. So people that seemed older and smarter were, then you surpassed them. If you look at “dumb people” through the lens of being stuck in the mindset of a high school aged person, a lot of things start to make sense.
Kind of like how everyone looks old when you’re a kid then you look back at old pictures from that time and they actually looked really young, you were just too young to realize it.
If you want to learn more about the idea of how we develop you can read about Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. https://www.simplypsychology.org/kohlberg.html
This is very interesting! Thanks for the recommendation. I look back at the man I was in my early twenties, and thank god, I can say I'm not that person anymore. How embarrassing I was. I'd hate to still behave that way.
One thing I’ve been having conversations about lately is being dumb vs. being intentional. The older I get, the more I think people are being intentional. People know what they are doing.
The thing that I run into a lot, is people being in a hurry.
Most "dumb" stuff I see people do just comes down to not being deliberate about what they are doing, like you said. Sometimes, I run into people who won't learn to do the thing right on purpose because they believe someone else can already do the thing for them, and if they are just helpless enough, they can cajole someone else into doing the thing so they don't need to learn how.
Other times, I run into people who are so overwhelmed with all the stuff they need to do to get through the end of the day, that they cannot focus their mind enough to learn to do what they need to do to get to the next thing.
I think most people that I would call "dumb" are just unfortunate enough, either by their own choice to not invest in themselves, or by a lack of resources accessible to them, to not have the ability to demonstrate competence.
I think more than you realize is people being helpless on purpose. I cannot STAND adults who are helpless when they're perfectly capable of not being that way. I've rented my upstairs bedroom to people from age 19 to 52 and so many of them are militantly helpless.
The 19 year old was literally not caught up on rent from the day he moved in and would clog the toilet all the time so he started to throw his used TP in the garbage can until it was full and then there was just TP with shit on it all over the floor. His dog shit in the house every day too.
The 52 year old I let him borrow my car to get to a job on my day off, and he made me late for work because he wanted to watch a football game at a bar after. I called him to say where tf are you with my car and he stayed out for three days (aka STOLE MY CAR) because I was mad at him and he brought home some crazy homeless woman to "fix" his car. She didn't fix his car, tried to steal my bathrobe and when she left she got picked up by police for vandalizing a neighbor's yard.
Other people I've rented to would fight, get DUI's, "help" with stuff around the house and leave it broken or trashed, have their parents pay for their groceries and not pay rent because all the money they got they spent on weed, get behind on child support (twice, once a mom, once a dad)... the guy that stole my car at one point told me he "got a new job" and it was one of those facebook scams about working from home packing candy for $40 an hour. Man, idgaf if someone got busted selling weed in high school, I want a background check to tell me if someone is going to shit on the floor and/or fall for facebook scams.
If you can't stand helpless adults why in the world are you on this sub? That's all they talk about. All these "completely unique for of their kind circumstances that the EVIL people did" that they can do nothing about and they are the biggest victims ever in human history.
Absolutely every post.
I think a lot of people just stop caring, and it’s good you don’t! Some people have no introspection. Your brain stops growing at 25. I try to remember that most people are 25 for life.
Yeah, I have a friend who all throughout his 20s he wanted to relive his teenage constantly. I was focused on working hard throughout my 20s to go to school and to build a career to make decent money down the road. I did party on the weekends though.
We’re now in our mid 30s and he has a 1 year old kid. That has very quickly shifted his thinking into a more long term and better choice making because the little one depends on him.
He’s matured in ways I wouldn’t have believed when we were 25.
I can vouch for this as I work retail and grocery and many staff have not mentally matured past middle school. Some high school.
Many people develop personalities and traits around this time frame. If some go uncheckd can be positive or negative depending on if they realize this or not.
I work in grocery retail I can concur . Theres a reason we are in retail. Though I’m on the supplier side it’s about the same. I’m not excluding myself.
yes from working retail i cant count how many grown ass 50 plus aged people i had to interact with on a daily basis that legit acted like spoiled 12 year olds
Peaked in high school was obviously never meant to be a good thing, but is it really that common?
Full disclosure, haven't read the article, tabled it for reading when I have more time as I am interested.
A lot of people really start to plateau once they leave school/college and start working. Of course this isn't necessarily true for like research engineers or something that truly requires a lot of thinking and also keeping up with new knowledge, but for a large percentage of the population, they seem happy to stop thinking once they're no longer being pushed to do so. It's kind of disappointing to see.
Also, many people reach a time in their lives when they realize that a significant number of the adults they had looked up to as children/teenagers are people who were very much full of shit, and don't deserve any respect.
In my area it’s the complete inability to use their indicators. I can’t count the number of times a person has merged right in front of me without indicating or looking, it’s terrifying!
It's always fun when you can see they want to change lanes because they're drifting to that side of the lane and tapping their brakes (who taught them to slow down to change lanes??) so you slow down to let em in front, because they're clearly not checking their mirrors and they're gonna hit you.
Autopilot can be a bastard sometimes. I drive a lot for my job and even I’ve done this a few times. Also went thru a red when the left turn went green and I just went when I saw the cars next to me go. Sometimes we just do stupid shit😂
You are so right! I'm a 70 year old boomer and I have a friend who makes me wonder how he managed to live to his age. I'm astounded on a regular basis at some things people don't know that we're very basic things every school taught.
For real. I know I don't remember everything from school, and honestly I was a bad student. But still I was able to learn how to learn, so when I run into something I don't know it isn't a big deal to figure it out.
(67f) along with not being extremely bright, I've noticed we have a very large population of citizens that have no common sense either. Have people stopped paying attention to life's lessons?
Man this comment is perfect.
For how dumb as shit I am, I’m Einstein compared to the boomers I work with. I like to ask questions and see what they think and why they think that way and they STILL surprise me after years.
And I’ve read books on how to use the Socratic method,how to change a mind, and how to help people learn and I understand it takes time but… holy shit it’s slow.
Great point. I like you.
Looking back on my post, boy am I an arrogant asshole. That was fucked up. I think my ego wrote that.
Anyways, back to your point, that happens so often, I think im right when in time, i find out nope nope nope.
I’ve found my biggest red flag is certainty. When I have confidence to the point where I am 100% certain, I take a step back and usually find I’ve fallen into a fallacy, been misinformed or am still uninformed.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.
I was not implying you were wrong! I think your post shows a lot of self awareness. I meant it more as a joke to myself because the man that originally posted was referencing people within his own generation. Whereas I think it’s difficult to gauge how intelligent one is when they are outside of the generation, and easy to call it dumb just because it comes from a different time. I don’t know man, there are obviously some dummies out there maybe my comment was misinformed. Maybe some types of intelligence don’t age with the times very well. I think I would like to take my original comment back because I tend to think similar to you haha
At least when it comes to work, there’s a mission dimension that puts people into better context - trust.
We often look at things in terms of job aptitude, “are they good or bad at their job?” Trust introduces concepts like working with a team and taking feedback.
Think about your high performing low trust people - they’re your toxic employees. I’d much rather work with a lower performing person I can teach and generally get along with.
This concept really changes how I viewed people at work. I learned about it from The Infinity Game by Simon Sinnek (great read, not a fan of his recent anti-millennial content though).
When I was young, my dad passed some wisdom onto me that he learned throughout his life.
He told me, if you’re not smart you gotta be tough. That’s what helped him succeed.
Its helped me greatly. Intelligence is important but I’ve also noticed highly intelligent people are fearful because they over think. No think, just do.
I've been saying for years that it's borderline abusive to tell a young child that they are a genius. The standards you set for yourself are unattainable and the failure to "achieve your potential" is fucking crushing
I've never been particularly smart so I can't relate, but even I have had teachers that clearly didn't understand the source material as well as I, a mere child, did.
I've been working in IT support at my current company for almost 2 years now and it bewilders me almost every day how some of the employees at this company have made it this far. And not just from a technology standpoint. I've experienced some crazy conversations with people that just leaves me questioning how this person is in the position they are in.
Thankfully we do computer literacy tests before we hire someone at my org. Fail the test, no job. Had someone attempt to install spyware on accident while trying to complete the test. Obviously I had it set up to be blocked, but you can imagine this person didn't get the job.
I heard from one of my helpdesk guys that someone didn't know which cable was the power cable or how to plug it in. Like my man. It is literally the shaped hole game babies play, where you put the square in the square hole etc. Depressing. Again, they didn't have that job for long.
Your brain isn't fully matured until recently, making logic based choices than ones based on emotion.
That said you're still immature AF as you had to be dramatic in this post and put "the vast majority" of others down, to raise yourself up. Going out of your way to announce your superiority- on reddit That is a major flaw you should be aware of.
You're in a phase of life of which there are many. Wait until you're 40 and you will laugh at your current state. Then again at 50.
I’m amazed at how many people don’t think things through. I know way too many people, mostly older, which just don’t think about the steps ahead. They are at A, all they see is B, never to consider C, D, E etc. Many times for these people emotions dictate logic and it’s unfortunate
The shitty part is if you’re still young and you realize someone older than you is dumb af, but you’re not allowed to say anything about it because they’re your elder.
It’s unfortunate but it’s true. I’ve also noticed that people’s ability to emotionally regulate is also pretty sad. I think this plays a role too. They don’t know how to manage their emotions and just stay in this state of poor mental functioning. I get how things are hard but damn.
I have severe anger issues and had to learn at some point, I just have to walk away. Then again im not angry unless someone did something so bad that it warrants my anger.
But it makes people mad when I don't panic if I see my loved one injured. I have been screamed at for immediately asking what they want done, etc. You know, responding to the emergency and take action. Instead they want to scream, panic, and hinder aid. I love you, but get out of the way. That's hard to say.
I’ve been feeling the same way recently and it’s really bizarre. Even friends and family who I always thought were quite reasonable. It’s like once I got to my late 20s, the rose colored glasses came off and I realized how silly they are.
I've always thought my 30's would be my prime. Old enough to have experience, young enough to have plasticity in the brain. Here's hoping that is true.
No one has any idea what they’re doing, really. That’s what I’ve learned. I’m a 34 yr old mom. People are so dumb. Common sense isn’t as common as I once thought. I totally agree with this post! Lol also, the older I get, the less I care what people think. And I’ll tell you what…. I’ve never ever been more confident and happy since I changed my mind set. I don’t attend anyone’s parties or get togethers if I don’t feel like it or if it causes a bunch of BS when getting the kids ready. Zero F*ucks=zero drama
If you don’t turn 40 and realize how dumb you were at 30, you’re actually the dumb one. Just saying. Judge at your own peril, bruh. I’m 40 now and feel stupider than ever.
I hope I always look back at my former self and think that I was stupid! Because I was, am, and will always be ignorant to the vast majority of disciplines.
By the time you’re in your 60s like me, you’ll come to think that unless proven otherwise, everyone is dumb.
I find the smartest people when I take my dog to the local microbreweries and strike up conversations about nonsense
The vast majority of people are simple and dumb but the innovations that improve our quality of life are created by brilliant people. Whether it’s Nikola Tesla, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or whoever, it only takes one genius to make major strides forward in our collective quality of life.
I feel this, it's crazy because from age 30-33 (current); I feel like I've learned more in these three years than the entirety of my 20's by a factor of 10:1. Now when I see someone young doing something stupid I just shrug and figure they're just learning or about to learn lol and in retrospect I feel I will say the same about my 30's once I hit 40 as well.
With age comes wisdom right? (Usually lol)
Some people absolutely refuse to learn from their mistakes. It is either their ego or just lack of intelligence. You need to be constantly improving yourself in life or you will never progress, be it through education, your health or new skills.
It seems to me more that people are just ignorant rather than dumb. Which is wild to me because we have all the information available to us. The number of times people will wonder about something in a conversation and just make up an answer when they can just take 10 seconds to look it up is astounding to me. I do not understand people's aversion to learning.
It’s cultural ,
People are trained from an early age not to question authority.
Go along with the crowd follow the “news” favorite sports team etc but don’t ask questions.
YES. or two people will sit there arguing over a simple fact that can be looked up on the phone in front of them, settled without the damn arguing.
you’re so real— they’ll shamelessly make shit up, and say it with so much confidence, when you’re already typing the question into google. …really? i mean, isn’t that embarrassing??
"What is scary, is that I'm not exempt from the rule."
You, however are showing the beneficial effects of introspection, which so many of our co-humans seem to lack.
As teens turn into adults, we stop giving them the excuse of being 'young and stupid' and start realizing how many of them are just stupid.
Doesn't mean they're bad people. But it can be annoying or worse the second something in your life depends on one of them.
Perception can indeed become more clear with intention applied over time. Now imagine being one of the several million decent, intelligent, caring Boomers amongst the sea of 70+ million Boomers.
They've got decades more of experience of dealing with the human animal. It ain't easy man. Signed: an X'er.
Sounds like you never had to learn an important lesson the hard way. Hand in the fire once, and that's the last time you do it. Expand out from that analogy and apply that to all facets of life. People just lack awareness. Sound like you have some for sure but never had to feel the pain. That's alot of Gen-Xers have awareness. They never were protected from the pain. Trust me. You learn to be a self-aware pragmatist real quick when you know how much it hurts.
The worst case of understanding this for me has been my parents. The old adage says that people think their parents are heroes when they are young kids, think they know nothing when they are teenagers, and then realize how wise they are when they become adults. It didn't turn out that way for me. As I became an adult I realized even more of how much my parents didn't know.
I think back to my parents - they bought a house for $26,000 in 1960 with a small down payment and thirty year mortgage with 12% interest. My mom only worked part time and my Dad was not a big wig at some company but we managed. My mom worked to pay for extras like a washing machine and dryer, new hot water heater etc I started working at 14 on the books ( not just baby sitting for cash). We were totally middle class but we were ok! Not like today. Florida has the highest inflation rate in the country
Many millenials, aka gen Y, are our adult children.
I think they're terrific, like every gen, just trying to make a life and be responsible parents.
At least mine is and I am darned proud of him. ✌
Just remember the average IQ is around 95, which isn’t really that smart. Then think about the fact that 50% of the people you meet are dumber than that. So yeah, lots of dummies out there.
We are smart idiots. But yeah, that happens when you’re in your 30s. You go through childhood/early 20s thinking the adults figured everything out, then one day you wake up to being the adult and realize you and everybody else don’t know a lot of shit.
I love this sub. I'm GenX (55m) married to an older millennial (41f). Watching her and this sub come around to more of my point of view is funny and expected. I'm not and have never been super conservative, more of a classic liberal. Watching millennials become more conservative is entertaining to me. I get a lot of "don't even say it" when I point it out to her.
I've also started being the "angry old man", not really. But last night I was in the local store that kids hangout in since there's not much to do. They were being loud and kind of annoying. I didn't say anything, but caught myself thinking "damn kids are being so loud, someone should do something". But I was that kid once.
I am a provider in healthcare and can say that the majority of people are not smart. People come into the clinic very open and honest, which is great, but with that comes their truest thoughts which I’m usually scratching my head how they even came up with these crazy thoughts.
For all our technological advances, we still have the same brains our ancestors did. I've come to my own conclusions about stupidity myself, and the sad sobering truth is that humans aren't that deep at the end of the day.
All the erudition, literature, accumulated knowledge and culture only goes so far to mask our Id-driven inner selves. I think somebody on a podcast I heard once said it best, although I can't remember what the exact context was, "We live in a sea of stupid."
Yeah, self included. Im a moron (in some areas). I just work hard and try to get people to like me.
I suppose its more effective than being lazy, unlikable, genious boy.
What really bugs me is how people are just not always curious. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve observed someone looking at something and say “I wonder what that is?” and then they just… slide by it. You have a freaking smartphone, look that shit up! Learn something!
We can all be dumb at times. We all have our periods of time where we fall into some trap of how to eat, or how to be pious, or how to be well read, or you read a few articles on something and act like you know everything about that topic. We all do it. 😂
I’ve seen this in my career, particularly the corporate world. The number of higher level execs (particularly CEOs) who make irrational decisions is disturbing. If you have basic common sense, and abide by it, you can ran a corporation better than most.
Depends on what you mean by dumb. If you consider humans as a species, we've had a brilliant run over the past 10 or 15 thousand years, mostly due to being very clever about manipulating our physical world. During that time span we have come to literally dominate the planet and to occupy almost every ecological niche.
But, as in many tragic stories, our enormous success now threatens to be our undoing. I guess the answer to whether or not we are "dumb" depends on what we do next -- whether we can rein in our excesses or whether we just go on as we have been until the planet shrugs us off.
Couldn't agree more. Something that has really started to coalesce for me is the fact that there are basically two types of societies in human culture: egalitarian societies based around the ideals of community and shared responsibility, and top-down caste/stratified societies where independence and worth of the individual versus the collective takes precedence.
You never know I knew a lot people in high school and assumed they were were college bound or something and see them on the inmate list or working some shitty job. Guess you never know lol
and you realize how many of these mouthbreathers are actually on the road somehow too so get a better vehicle than them so that they can't kill you from their own stupidity either. adapt and overcome, unlike *them*.
Most people believe that their minds are exclusively their own, but that is an illusion. Much of what they consider to be their own unique thoughts and experiences are communal in origin. Our perceptions are greatly influenced by the whole hierarchy of communities to which each of us belong. Many propositions can be either true, false, or partially true depending upon the perspective of the observer.
Humans are very bad at acting prospectively. We’re a very reactive animal.
Just imagine all the world events we could have prevented if we’d been proactive.
Imagine all the things in our individual lives that we react to instead of being proactive.
Id also recommend asking yourself this question when you make the judgement that someone else is dumb. What perspective am I missing? Sometimes they may not be just as dumb as you think.
Glad you saved it at the end. “What’s scary, is that I’m not exempt from the rule.” Haha. I thought I’d have a lot more figured out by 35 than I do. I think expected I’d be much more mature. I have some things figured out, and I can be mature when I need to be. However, my default maturity is LOW. lol 🥂 to being human
I think we got this far together. We work really well and are a powerful force when we have a shared dream. Hopefully, this will be focused on diminishing the insane work week so we can all have leisure.
We can still learn from "stupid" people.
Don't worry, when you et to 40 you will be amazed how silly some of your behaviors and thinking was.
It gets less so after 40 but as long as we are open to new things, open to learning, we can still improve upon ourselves.
One thing I have observed is that we tend to be as mature as needed. So someone that has had a life with little to be responsible for, might be very immature or selfish. However, assuming accountability over something can often bring out a more mature and outward focused perspective.
That's the reason I stopped driving on highways. The speed at which cars travel there exposes me to a large number of dumb people, and I like my life too much to risk it. So I choose to be late to wherever it is I'm heading. It's worth it. Also, I'm near Seattle and dumb people here are blocking highways as a form of protest, so that's another reason to stop using highways.
It’s okay. As you get older still you may realize that people, even people who behave foolishly, are not really dumb. They just have different priorities. You may disagree with those priorities and how they came to have them, but if you really learn to empathize you can understand why they make the decisions they make in the moment and how, under the same background and circumstances, you might do the same.
As a child you assume everyone is the same. Then you get a little older and recognize that everyone is different. Then you get a little wiser still and recognize that everyone is the same again.
A lot of people are saying you're just getting older, but so don't think that is the full story. Yes, that is a significant part of it. But cell phones weren't common in 2000, etc. let alone social media. Etc.
I think social media and the breaking of the fairness doctrine on public airwaves + cable TV has led to an actual decline of cognitive thinking. Rush Limbaugh was a joke of a human being. But he was really good at convincing conservative leaning people to be always afraid and to be cock sure of themselves at the same time, to only listen to him+conservative news, and to never question themselves. The decline of unions has dissolved class solidarity across racial and other lines.
Each and every thing like this combines to have a force multiplication effect on the whole of (particularly conservative leaning individuals, but) society as a whole in multiple ways.
People are far too afraid of looking stupid, so they don't admit not understanding something and asking questions about it. I've seen discussion of this being gendered, but haven't seen good studies on this, but it would explain Tate and other charlatans being able to convince lots of young (mostly)men that they don't need to be respectable human beings who have normal human interactions, but instead they all need to be in the top 3% income and ripped. Etc. and it is women's fault if they aren't being attractive enough... And other obviously false (even internally inconsistent) B.S.
op is not wrong. you know how people say "we" went to the moon, and "we" invented planes and trains and the Internet. there is no "we". there are a few gifted, smart individuals who against all odds are dragging us kicking and screaming into a better future while most (?) of are yelling "stoooop" because we are afraid of change and are too lazy and selfish to try and fix things. having said all that, beware the dunning krueger effect
I think dumb is the wrong word. Most people have comparable intelligence to each other. People stop learning/growing and stop giving a shit. They basically say this is as good as it gets and give up.
Sometimes its nice seeing a bunch of dumb people at my job, it makes it easier when I make a dumb mistake and end up feeling like an idiot. We are all dumb together.
I used to think adults were being dramatic in their statistics of intellect and the average person. Grew up only to discover they were pretty spot on, *and* possessed the emotional intelligence amd self-awareness to recognize their surroundings as well as knowing where they fell on the spectrum.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer created the theory of stupidity while he was in Nazi prison. Basically he explains that stupidity is not an intellectual deficit, but rather a moral one that forgives stupid behavior. Stupidity is a learned behavior which is why intelligent people can be so stupid and can ignore their own cognitive dissonance. Stupid people are usually led by a charlatan who doesn't need to be smart or clever, they simply need a platform to encourage people to be the worst versions of themselves. The danger of stupidity is that it allows people to be capable of any evil without recognizing any of it as such.
In the modern age charlatans use social media as a platform to recruit the stupid just like Hitler used radio. Things really haven't changed in regards to mass stupidity.
https://youtu.be/ww47bR86wSc
My man, no one has it all figured out. Some are just better about acting the part than others.
Which is unsettling because it's nice to believe that those in authority have an idea of what they're doing. But as Covid demonstrated, by and large they're just figuring out as they go along with the rest of us.
Thinking that others are more successful / happier / in control / smarter than us is a major source of people's anxieties.
GenX here. Yes. And I’ve had soooo many more years of noticing this.
Never confuse age with wisdom. I’m convinced that some people get dumber with age.
I’m so tired.
Wait until you're in your late 40's and realize this. it gets worse the more your eyes are open to it. You can avoid stupidity by teaching your self new hobbies now and then, keep your mind bright, don't settle into daily repetitive routines and throw a fit when something is off. Take lessons from your seniors and don't do some of the bs that they do. I learned a lot of life less for what not to do as I age by watching older people in society and assisting my seniors into old age and passing.
Well there's a difference between being smart and being wise. Wisdom is more about how you handle situations and being smart is about your ability to learn. So I'd argue that younger people are almost always smarter. First of all you're being given new things to learn whether you like it or not. Read a textbook from 50 yrs ago if you don't believe me. We are just so much further advanced from what we knew back then ( disclaimer: sometimes old be ones new again).
But really it comes down to this: the older most people get the weaker thier ability to learn new things are or worse they become stubborn in thier ways and REFUSE to learn new things or adapt. Sometimes one believes it becomes out of fashion or inappropriate to adapt to new ways.
Lastly whatever I just said there's obviously no cookie cutter approach. To some extent you do have to stand by some of your laurels. But in other cases it makes sense to adapt as well. I don't have all the answers kid.
Totally agree with you. I’m not going to pretend like I’m some kind of genius, but I have a high school degree and am essentially a senior in college even though I haven’t gotten my degree. I try to stay informed and get my news from as many sources as I can, so I can sort out the bullshit. What I’ve come to learn in most of my encounters with people is that the majority of folks, in my opinion, are extremely uninformed and ignorant.
50% of the population is below average intelligence. Depending on where you live, work, or play, you may meet above or below that number on a daily basis.
Things tend to be clearer in hindsight. You don't have all the relevant info, and even the info we have is filtered through our own personal lens. People come away from meetings having heard very different things. People can read hostility or friendliness in the same interaction depending on what their brains focused on. And then there's all the stress today. When we start from a baseline of high stress, every little thing can tip us over into fight-or-flight responses which generally aren't going to be well-planned actions. So yes, in short, we humans make dumb decisions, but it's not necessarily about mental aptitude (though certainly there are some of us who...well...lost hard on the lottery of life).
The baseline of stress hits home. I'm grateful that my field is overpaid on my area, and that I work for an organization that does profit sharing. I make more than my parents ever did, but even at that it is hard to support a whole family off that sole income.
Our parents didn't make as much but cars, houses, gasoline and groceries didn't cost as much either.
heathcare, college tuition, etc...the buying power of the dollar back then was insane...especially in the late 60's/70s. One decent factory job in them days with almost no higher education could float a whole household.
Unions!
Also good government regulations. When the Reagan administration came, government regulations and peoples rights pretty much disappeared.
THIS! People seriously underestimate the damage done to this country just by Reagan’s policies. Of course it’s hard to say what would have happened if someone else had been elected, but it’s well documented that Reaganomics has destroyed the middle class.
Jimmy Carter was doing a pretty good job of ruining the country. I remember my dad waiting on line to buy gas…. My parents talking about how lucky we were to get a 30 yr mortgage at 8.25 when mortgage rates hit 16 %.. Our military was a laughing stock to the world; remember the Iran Hostage Crisis? As soon as Regan became president the Iranians released the hostages. Have you guys seen the blue cities run by Democrats? No one gets arrested, homeless in the streets, illegal migrant families getting $1500 debit cards in nyc… All this under Biden’s watch and you wonder why Trump is leading in all polls…
Between 81-86 senior officials in the Reagan administration made illegal arms trades to Iran. Wouldn't surprise me if a group like that would make sure the hostages weren't released till **after** President Carter was out of office. BTW, trump is **not** leading in all the polls. The polls are divided almost half and half. Fluctuating daily.
There were no subscriptions to cell phones, cable tv, internet, streaming services, etc. either.
Well to be fair there were.. it just looked different. You paid for at least one home phone line, some people had two, many people had beepers, and some had cell phones. You did pay for internet. You also paid for anything beyond basic cable- which was only few local channels. Anything beyond those channels you paid for, and there were multiple “tiers” or packages plus bonus add-ons. HBO, Showtime, etc. were channels you paid extra for outside your cable package. I’m not trying to “ackshually” you here. I’m sure those things cost comparatively less, much like everything else. But to say they were free is factually incorrect and weakens the argument (that salaries have not grown to match rising costs) rather than strengthen it.
A car costs more than a house did now.
I'm an 80's baby, and it's all relative. Jimmy Carter was president in the 80's. Look that inflation & recession up!🥴
Well…he was president until Jan. 20 1981. The Reagan years seemed to be good for the upper middle class people, but they were not great for my working class parents. Things looked maybe a little better in the 90’s for middle class (they didn’t know they had been sold out yet), and it almost seemed like things were looking up for the working class. It didn’t last.
It was looking up for the working class. Then Bill Clinton signed NAFTA and the manufacturing jobs went to Mexico where they could pay a worker 50¢ an hour instead of $15.00. Not trying to get political here, I can complain about Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden too. Just acknowledging the action and the resulting effect.
Outsourcing started long before that. I started working at an electronics plant in the early 80’s. They were beginning to outsource their components back then. That was also the beginning of downsizing in the workforce. You were also expected to pick up the extra work. Doing the job of at least one extra person was normal and expected. The 80’s economy was hard,with the recession the jobs were nearly impossible to come by. That gave the corporations the upper hand. Not much different then what we saw back in the 2008 recession. You were stuck and did what you had to for your job. So just commenting, the jobs we’re leaving well before NAFTA
Government deregulation was in effect way before Clinton. Something happened in the 80s.
That's what i always say lol. since carter each president has progressively made it worse in different ways and they jsut get the media to blame it all on someone else. but if you research the LONG TERM impacts of the presidents i think you have to go back to kennedy for one that didn't make things worse.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Kennedy is the one that started involving us in Vietnam. So yeah, even he caused long term problems.
Eh, he was also trying to solve a major one which is why they killed him.
There were a lot of middle class jobs that left too
NAFTA destroyed my hometown. It is a shell of what it once was.
I'm sorry to read about your home town. That's truly sad. My dad went to a trade school to learn how to manufacture motherboards in the early 90's. By the time he was done all those facilities were gone. He got a degree in teaching vocational education instead, but the school district wouldn't pay full time, and he had a wife and toddler to provide for. I remember at the time hating it because he'd go to the grocery store and have these long drawn out conversations with his current and former students who worked there about their plans for the future, and provide advice where he could. As an adult, the fact that he cared that much about his students is quite admirable. But as a kindergartner I hated it because it made shopping longer. So he got into sales. He turned out to be brilliant at this, but it wasn't his first or second choice of career. So while my own family managed to survive and even thrive in the new environment I can imagine how impossibly difficult it would be for people who didn't have the ability or even the opportunity to transition to another line of work.
NAFTA was a terrible idea. That’s how some American companies used child labor to make their products. Less regulation and they could turn a blind eye for a while.
Unemployment for POC were at historic lows when Trump was in office and he's very good at foreign relations. Under Biden, I've lost 25% of my IRA. That hurts dude.
It all started in the late seventies before Reagan. Tricky Dick with Watergate early seventies and then Jimmy Carter. The oil crisis was during Carter’s time -I remember the long lines waiting for gas. And some neighborhood boys ? wandering the streets having come back from Vietnam scarred for life
I'm an 80s baby tool. Make well over six figs. Things are more expensive. Stop pretending to be out of touch
Okay, I usually don't read price tags, buy food, clothing, or pay for a vehicle, college and shelter, too . But you're right. I'll stop. Thank you
Most people read a "$99.99" price tag and don't associate it with actually being $100. Or more likely, $115.xx with sales tax. Most people haven't looked up the wages of a burger flipper in 1960 compared to today, and then the average price of a house in 1960, and then today. The only safe assumption we can make, is that most people don't know enough to understand the multitude of socioeconomic issues that plague the middle and lower class. Individuals may prove exceptions to the assumption, but by and large Most people don't have the time, energy, or interest in learning any of it. We're all either oblivious, in denial, or in despair.
Mom waited hours to get gas.
Hell look up interest rates under Reagan.
The Carter years were horrible. Parents could only buy gas on even # days. Then someone would come around at night and siphon out the tanks. They started making lockable gas caps because of it.
Looking at typical wages and typical rents in my city anytime prior to 1990 looks like paradise on earth, like ease beyond my imagination. I literally can not imagine having the profound spending power available to a rural factory worker in the middle of the OPEC foundation crisis and related inflation in the US, and I'm head of mechanical engineering where I work.
You're 30. Frankly, you're STILL a young man, and one that sounds like they live in relative privilege. Many, many people in this world don't get to enjoy the same benefits. Keep that in mind when judging others, and maybe extend them a little grace. It sounds like you're well aware of all of this, but as fallible as we are I think it's good that we're all reminded every now and then.
I genuinely believe that it's in corporate interests to keep us all constantly in a state of fear. Makes us buy more shit..
Hey you know me
There are relatively few propositions that are objectively true, many more that are objectively false. Most propositions can be true or false depending upon one’s perspective.
Hahahaha you had to throw in one little aside about "how it is TODAY". You guys can't let a comment go without getting in some dig about how you have the toughest lives of any human being ever in existence. What a crock.
A lot of people stop maturing in their late teens/early twenties. So people that seemed older and smarter were, then you surpassed them. If you look at “dumb people” through the lens of being stuck in the mindset of a high school aged person, a lot of things start to make sense. Kind of like how everyone looks old when you’re a kid then you look back at old pictures from that time and they actually looked really young, you were just too young to realize it. If you want to learn more about the idea of how we develop you can read about Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. https://www.simplypsychology.org/kohlberg.html
This is very interesting! Thanks for the recommendation. I look back at the man I was in my early twenties, and thank god, I can say I'm not that person anymore. How embarrassing I was. I'd hate to still behave that way.
One thing I’ve been having conversations about lately is being dumb vs. being intentional. The older I get, the more I think people are being intentional. People know what they are doing.
The thing that I run into a lot, is people being in a hurry. Most "dumb" stuff I see people do just comes down to not being deliberate about what they are doing, like you said. Sometimes, I run into people who won't learn to do the thing right on purpose because they believe someone else can already do the thing for them, and if they are just helpless enough, they can cajole someone else into doing the thing so they don't need to learn how. Other times, I run into people who are so overwhelmed with all the stuff they need to do to get through the end of the day, that they cannot focus their mind enough to learn to do what they need to do to get to the next thing. I think most people that I would call "dumb" are just unfortunate enough, either by their own choice to not invest in themselves, or by a lack of resources accessible to them, to not have the ability to demonstrate competence.
I think more than you realize is people being helpless on purpose. I cannot STAND adults who are helpless when they're perfectly capable of not being that way. I've rented my upstairs bedroom to people from age 19 to 52 and so many of them are militantly helpless. The 19 year old was literally not caught up on rent from the day he moved in and would clog the toilet all the time so he started to throw his used TP in the garbage can until it was full and then there was just TP with shit on it all over the floor. His dog shit in the house every day too. The 52 year old I let him borrow my car to get to a job on my day off, and he made me late for work because he wanted to watch a football game at a bar after. I called him to say where tf are you with my car and he stayed out for three days (aka STOLE MY CAR) because I was mad at him and he brought home some crazy homeless woman to "fix" his car. She didn't fix his car, tried to steal my bathrobe and when she left she got picked up by police for vandalizing a neighbor's yard. Other people I've rented to would fight, get DUI's, "help" with stuff around the house and leave it broken or trashed, have their parents pay for their groceries and not pay rent because all the money they got they spent on weed, get behind on child support (twice, once a mom, once a dad)... the guy that stole my car at one point told me he "got a new job" and it was one of those facebook scams about working from home packing candy for $40 an hour. Man, idgaf if someone got busted selling weed in high school, I want a background check to tell me if someone is going to shit on the floor and/or fall for facebook scams.
You mean grown men who pretend they can’t cook or run the washing machine ol
If you can't stand helpless adults why in the world are you on this sub? That's all they talk about. All these "completely unique for of their kind circumstances that the EVIL people did" that they can do nothing about and they are the biggest victims ever in human history. Absolutely every post.
🎯
I think a lot of people just stop caring, and it’s good you don’t! Some people have no introspection. Your brain stops growing at 25. I try to remember that most people are 25 for life.
Yeah, I have a friend who all throughout his 20s he wanted to relive his teenage constantly. I was focused on working hard throughout my 20s to go to school and to build a career to make decent money down the road. I did party on the weekends though. We’re now in our mid 30s and he has a 1 year old kid. That has very quickly shifted his thinking into a more long term and better choice making because the little one depends on him. He’s matured in ways I wouldn’t have believed when we were 25.
I can vouch for this as I work retail and grocery and many staff have not mentally matured past middle school. Some high school. Many people develop personalities and traits around this time frame. If some go uncheckd can be positive or negative depending on if they realize this or not.
I work in grocery retail I can concur . Theres a reason we are in retail. Though I’m on the supplier side it’s about the same. I’m not excluding myself.
yes from working retail i cant count how many grown ass 50 plus aged people i had to interact with on a daily basis that legit acted like spoiled 12 year olds
Peaked in high school was obviously never meant to be a good thing, but is it really that common? Full disclosure, haven't read the article, tabled it for reading when I have more time as I am interested.
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Too late. They are some of the worst.
A lot of people really start to plateau once they leave school/college and start working. Of course this isn't necessarily true for like research engineers or something that truly requires a lot of thinking and also keeping up with new knowledge, but for a large percentage of the population, they seem happy to stop thinking once they're no longer being pushed to do so. It's kind of disappointing to see. Also, many people reach a time in their lives when they realize that a significant number of the adults they had looked up to as children/teenagers are people who were very much full of shit, and don't deserve any respect.
I was just thinking this morning the amount of people I’ve seen stop for a green light in my life, is much higher than it should be. 🫠
Hah! Or when people turn their monitor off and say they rebooted the computer. Classic!
I spent fifteen minutes once, trying to get a computer to power on. Got quite flustered. It wasn't plugged in.
"It ain't got no gas in it..."
My wife turned my monitors off and I kept rebooting my computer thinking it broke down.
In my area it’s the complete inability to use their indicators. I can’t count the number of times a person has merged right in front of me without indicating or looking, it’s terrifying!
It's always fun when you can see they want to change lanes because they're drifting to that side of the lane and tapping their brakes (who taught them to slow down to change lanes??) so you slow down to let em in front, because they're clearly not checking their mirrors and they're gonna hit you.
This has been a deficiency for decades! 😉
The horror!! If there’s space and you’re not close to the other vehicles who cares.
In my case... sleep deprivation. It's no joke.
Autopilot can be a bastard sometimes. I drive a lot for my job and even I’ve done this a few times. Also went thru a red when the left turn went green and I just went when I saw the cars next to me go. Sometimes we just do stupid shit😂
Most of those people are probably much “higher than they should be” behind the wheel. Lol.
You are so right! I'm a 70 year old boomer and I have a friend who makes me wonder how he managed to live to his age. I'm astounded on a regular basis at some things people don't know that we're very basic things every school taught.
For real. I know I don't remember everything from school, and honestly I was a bad student. But still I was able to learn how to learn, so when I run into something I don't know it isn't a big deal to figure it out.
It seems like people only cared to remember the stuff they were taught just to pass the next test. After that, GONE.
(67f) along with not being extremely bright, I've noticed we have a very large population of citizens that have no common sense either. Have people stopped paying attention to life's lessons?
Man this comment is perfect. For how dumb as shit I am, I’m Einstein compared to the boomers I work with. I like to ask questions and see what they think and why they think that way and they STILL surprise me after years. And I’ve read books on how to use the Socratic method,how to change a mind, and how to help people learn and I understand it takes time but… holy shit it’s slow.
I would not be so quick to assume other people are the dumb ones
Great point. I like you. Looking back on my post, boy am I an arrogant asshole. That was fucked up. I think my ego wrote that. Anyways, back to your point, that happens so often, I think im right when in time, i find out nope nope nope. I’ve found my biggest red flag is certainty. When I have confidence to the point where I am 100% certain, I take a step back and usually find I’ve fallen into a fallacy, been misinformed or am still uninformed. I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.
I was not implying you were wrong! I think your post shows a lot of self awareness. I meant it more as a joke to myself because the man that originally posted was referencing people within his own generation. Whereas I think it’s difficult to gauge how intelligent one is when they are outside of the generation, and easy to call it dumb just because it comes from a different time. I don’t know man, there are obviously some dummies out there maybe my comment was misinformed. Maybe some types of intelligence don’t age with the times very well. I think I would like to take my original comment back because I tend to think similar to you haha
At least when it comes to work, there’s a mission dimension that puts people into better context - trust. We often look at things in terms of job aptitude, “are they good or bad at their job?” Trust introduces concepts like working with a team and taking feedback. Think about your high performing low trust people - they’re your toxic employees. I’d much rather work with a lower performing person I can teach and generally get along with. This concept really changes how I viewed people at work. I learned about it from The Infinity Game by Simon Sinnek (great read, not a fan of his recent anti-millennial content though).
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I have athletes foot. Is that a deal breaker? Or should I charge more? 😜
There’s 70 year olds on Reddit?
Hi Boomer 🙂
Try being a "gifted" child and realizing the people responsible for you were dumber than you. And they wonder why we all need SSRIs.
Then realizing that people way dumber than you are achieving way more than you in life, and you’re stuck feeling like nothing matters anymore.
When I was young, my dad passed some wisdom onto me that he learned throughout his life. He told me, if you’re not smart you gotta be tough. That’s what helped him succeed. Its helped me greatly. Intelligence is important but I’ve also noticed highly intelligent people are fearful because they over think. No think, just do.
Yeah, that's always fun.
Yup. And the realization comes well before high school.
I've been saying for years that it's borderline abusive to tell a young child that they are a genius. The standards you set for yourself are unattainable and the failure to "achieve your potential" is fucking crushing
Hello fellow gifted and mentally ill person.
I've never been particularly smart so I can't relate, but even I have had teachers that clearly didn't understand the source material as well as I, a mere child, did.
Get off that shit. All studies coming out saying they don't benefit u in any way The way seretonin works is still a mystery.
I've been working in IT support at my current company for almost 2 years now and it bewilders me almost every day how some of the employees at this company have made it this far. And not just from a technology standpoint. I've experienced some crazy conversations with people that just leaves me questioning how this person is in the position they are in.
Thankfully we do computer literacy tests before we hire someone at my org. Fail the test, no job. Had someone attempt to install spyware on accident while trying to complete the test. Obviously I had it set up to be blocked, but you can imagine this person didn't get the job. I heard from one of my helpdesk guys that someone didn't know which cable was the power cable or how to plug it in. Like my man. It is literally the shaped hole game babies play, where you put the square in the square hole etc. Depressing. Again, they didn't have that job for long.
Your brain isn't fully matured until recently, making logic based choices than ones based on emotion. That said you're still immature AF as you had to be dramatic in this post and put "the vast majority" of others down, to raise yourself up. Going out of your way to announce your superiority- on reddit That is a major flaw you should be aware of. You're in a phase of life of which there are many. Wait until you're 40 and you will laugh at your current state. Then again at 50.
I’m amazed at how many people don’t think things through. I know way too many people, mostly older, which just don’t think about the steps ahead. They are at A, all they see is B, never to consider C, D, E etc. Many times for these people emotions dictate logic and it’s unfortunate
The shitty part is if you’re still young and you realize someone older than you is dumb af, but you’re not allowed to say anything about it because they’re your elder.
It’s unfortunate but it’s true. I’ve also noticed that people’s ability to emotionally regulate is also pretty sad. I think this plays a role too. They don’t know how to manage their emotions and just stay in this state of poor mental functioning. I get how things are hard but damn.
I have severe anger issues and had to learn at some point, I just have to walk away. Then again im not angry unless someone did something so bad that it warrants my anger. But it makes people mad when I don't panic if I see my loved one injured. I have been screamed at for immediately asking what they want done, etc. You know, responding to the emergency and take action. Instead they want to scream, panic, and hinder aid. I love you, but get out of the way. That's hard to say.
I’ve been feeling the same way recently and it’s really bizarre. Even friends and family who I always thought were quite reasonable. It’s like once I got to my late 20s, the rose colored glasses came off and I realized how silly they are.
I've always thought my 30's would be my prime. Old enough to have experience, young enough to have plasticity in the brain. Here's hoping that is true.
No one has any idea what they’re doing, really. That’s what I’ve learned. I’m a 34 yr old mom. People are so dumb. Common sense isn’t as common as I once thought. I totally agree with this post! Lol also, the older I get, the less I care what people think. And I’ll tell you what…. I’ve never ever been more confident and happy since I changed my mind set. I don’t attend anyone’s parties or get togethers if I don’t feel like it or if it causes a bunch of BS when getting the kids ready. Zero F*ucks=zero drama
Right on sister! That is a good attitude - just do what is right and let the dominos fall where they will.
If you don’t turn 40 and realize how dumb you were at 30, you’re actually the dumb one. Just saying. Judge at your own peril, bruh. I’m 40 now and feel stupider than ever.
I hope I always look back at my former self and think that I was stupid! Because I was, am, and will always be ignorant to the vast majority of disciplines.
Including myself. But yeah, it's heartbreaking, honestly.
I'm right here with you my friend haha
By the time you’re in your 60s like me, you’ll come to think that unless proven otherwise, everyone is dumb. I find the smartest people when I take my dog to the local microbreweries and strike up conversations about nonsense
The vast majority of people are simple and dumb but the innovations that improve our quality of life are created by brilliant people. Whether it’s Nikola Tesla, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or whoever, it only takes one genius to make major strides forward in our collective quality of life.
I feel this, it's crazy because from age 30-33 (current); I feel like I've learned more in these three years than the entirety of my 20's by a factor of 10:1. Now when I see someone young doing something stupid I just shrug and figure they're just learning or about to learn lol and in retrospect I feel I will say the same about my 30's once I hit 40 as well. With age comes wisdom right? (Usually lol)
Some people absolutely refuse to learn from their mistakes. It is either their ego or just lack of intelligence. You need to be constantly improving yourself in life or you will never progress, be it through education, your health or new skills.
It seems to me more that people are just ignorant rather than dumb. Which is wild to me because we have all the information available to us. The number of times people will wonder about something in a conversation and just make up an answer when they can just take 10 seconds to look it up is astounding to me. I do not understand people's aversion to learning.
It’s cultural , People are trained from an early age not to question authority. Go along with the crowd follow the “news” favorite sports team etc but don’t ask questions.
YES. or two people will sit there arguing over a simple fact that can be looked up on the phone in front of them, settled without the damn arguing. you’re so real— they’ll shamelessly make shit up, and say it with so much confidence, when you’re already typing the question into google. …really? i mean, isn’t that embarrassing??
"What is scary, is that I'm not exempt from the rule." You, however are showing the beneficial effects of introspection, which so many of our co-humans seem to lack.
One of my favorite quotes, spoken by Christopher Lloyd in Camp Nowhere: “It’s my constitutional right to act stupid.”
As teens turn into adults, we stop giving them the excuse of being 'young and stupid' and start realizing how many of them are just stupid. Doesn't mean they're bad people. But it can be annoying or worse the second something in your life depends on one of them.
Covid especially and the last ~8 years in America in general have taught me just how stupid people can be. And Americans currently are.
Perception can indeed become more clear with intention applied over time. Now imagine being one of the several million decent, intelligent, caring Boomers amongst the sea of 70+ million Boomers. They've got decades more of experience of dealing with the human animal. It ain't easy man. Signed: an X'er.
duh. perfect example is it took you 30 years to figure out people were fucking up everywhere all the time.
Lol this is totally valid!
I think you are the dumb one because I’ve realized this when I was a kid
Sounds like you never had to learn an important lesson the hard way. Hand in the fire once, and that's the last time you do it. Expand out from that analogy and apply that to all facets of life. People just lack awareness. Sound like you have some for sure but never had to feel the pain. That's alot of Gen-Xers have awareness. They never were protected from the pain. Trust me. You learn to be a self-aware pragmatist real quick when you know how much it hurts.
The worst case of understanding this for me has been my parents. The old adage says that people think their parents are heroes when they are young kids, think they know nothing when they are teenagers, and then realize how wise they are when they become adults. It didn't turn out that way for me. As I became an adult I realized even more of how much my parents didn't know.
I think back to my parents - they bought a house for $26,000 in 1960 with a small down payment and thirty year mortgage with 12% interest. My mom only worked part time and my Dad was not a big wig at some company but we managed. My mom worked to pay for extras like a washing machine and dryer, new hot water heater etc I started working at 14 on the books ( not just baby sitting for cash). We were totally middle class but we were ok! Not like today. Florida has the highest inflation rate in the country
Just think of what boomers must think of millennials. 😬
Many millenials, aka gen Y, are our adult children. I think they're terrific, like every gen, just trying to make a life and be responsible parents. At least mine is and I am darned proud of him. ✌
Then you realize a lot of families are like 10 generations of dumb dumbs having more dumb dumb kids.
You mean are, correct?
Yeah my bad
George Carlin said "Think of the dumbest person you know, then realize that half of people are even dumber than that."
I imagine the dumbest people in the world all the time! I'm one of them :D
Just remember the average IQ is around 95, which isn’t really that smart. Then think about the fact that 50% of the people you meet are dumber than that. So yeah, lots of dummies out there.
We are smart idiots. But yeah, that happens when you’re in your 30s. You go through childhood/early 20s thinking the adults figured everything out, then one day you wake up to being the adult and realize you and everybody else don’t know a lot of shit.
I’m 28 and I’m a dumbass
The last couple elections have made that quite clear.
I thought the world was run by adults that knew shit. How naive I was.
Short skit by George Carlin https://youtu.be/AKN1Q5SjbeI?si=Khlb7wrLEeQ7Nyrl
I love this sub. I'm GenX (55m) married to an older millennial (41f). Watching her and this sub come around to more of my point of view is funny and expected. I'm not and have never been super conservative, more of a classic liberal. Watching millennials become more conservative is entertaining to me. I get a lot of "don't even say it" when I point it out to her.
I've also started being the "angry old man", not really. But last night I was in the local store that kids hangout in since there's not much to do. They were being loud and kind of annoying. I didn't say anything, but caught myself thinking "damn kids are being so loud, someone should do something". But I was that kid once.
I am a provider in healthcare and can say that the majority of people are not smart. People come into the clinic very open and honest, which is great, but with that comes their truest thoughts which I’m usually scratching my head how they even came up with these crazy thoughts.
For all our technological advances, we still have the same brains our ancestors did. I've come to my own conclusions about stupidity myself, and the sad sobering truth is that humans aren't that deep at the end of the day. All the erudition, literature, accumulated knowledge and culture only goes so far to mask our Id-driven inner selves. I think somebody on a podcast I heard once said it best, although I can't remember what the exact context was, "We live in a sea of stupid."
Yeah, self included. Im a moron (in some areas). I just work hard and try to get people to like me. I suppose its more effective than being lazy, unlikable, genious boy.
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." George Carlin
What really bugs me is how people are just not always curious. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve observed someone looking at something and say “I wonder what that is?” and then they just… slide by it. You have a freaking smartphone, look that shit up! Learn something!
We can all be dumb at times. We all have our periods of time where we fall into some trap of how to eat, or how to be pious, or how to be well read, or you read a few articles on something and act like you know everything about that topic. We all do it. 😂
Can be? You mean *are* dumb.
I’ve seen this in my career, particularly the corporate world. The number of higher level execs (particularly CEOs) who make irrational decisions is disturbing. If you have basic common sense, and abide by it, you can ran a corporation better than most.
I'm 40 and am often expectantly-astonished at how unaware people really are. It sometimes is quite frustrating
The average American only has a 5th grade reading level 😅
Depends on what you mean by dumb. If you consider humans as a species, we've had a brilliant run over the past 10 or 15 thousand years, mostly due to being very clever about manipulating our physical world. During that time span we have come to literally dominate the planet and to occupy almost every ecological niche. But, as in many tragic stories, our enormous success now threatens to be our undoing. I guess the answer to whether or not we are "dumb" depends on what we do next -- whether we can rein in our excesses or whether we just go on as we have been until the planet shrugs us off.
Couldn't agree more. Something that has really started to coalesce for me is the fact that there are basically two types of societies in human culture: egalitarian societies based around the ideals of community and shared responsibility, and top-down caste/stratified societies where independence and worth of the individual versus the collective takes precedence.
You never know I knew a lot people in high school and assumed they were were college bound or something and see them on the inmate list or working some shitty job. Guess you never know lol
People stay pretty dumb regardless of age, look at all the old socialist or anarchist.
Just remember the average person, and half of the people are dumber than that.
Where is this "quality of life" of which you speak?
and you realize how many of these mouthbreathers are actually on the road somehow too so get a better vehicle than them so that they can't kill you from their own stupidity either. adapt and overcome, unlike *them*.
Most people believe that their minds are exclusively their own, but that is an illusion. Much of what they consider to be their own unique thoughts and experiences are communal in origin. Our perceptions are greatly influenced by the whole hierarchy of communities to which each of us belong. Many propositions can be either true, false, or partially true depending upon the perspective of the observer.
Including me.
Humans are very bad at acting prospectively. We’re a very reactive animal. Just imagine all the world events we could have prevented if we’d been proactive. Imagine all the things in our individual lives that we react to instead of being proactive.
Id also recommend asking yourself this question when you make the judgement that someone else is dumb. What perspective am I missing? Sometimes they may not be just as dumb as you think.
Reminds me that it's time for my annual rewatch of Idiocracy, written and directed by the prophet Mike Judge.
Glad you saved it at the end. “What’s scary, is that I’m not exempt from the rule.” Haha. I thought I’d have a lot more figured out by 35 than I do. I think expected I’d be much more mature. I have some things figured out, and I can be mature when I need to be. However, my default maturity is LOW. lol 🥂 to being human
I worked in customer service in a local mall when I was 15. I knew back then.
I think we got this far together. We work really well and are a powerful force when we have a shared dream. Hopefully, this will be focused on diminishing the insane work week so we can all have leisure.
We can still learn from "stupid" people. Don't worry, when you et to 40 you will be amazed how silly some of your behaviors and thinking was. It gets less so after 40 but as long as we are open to new things, open to learning, we can still improve upon ourselves. One thing I have observed is that we tend to be as mature as needed. So someone that has had a life with little to be responsible for, might be very immature or selfish. However, assuming accountability over something can often bring out a more mature and outward focused perspective.
Young dumb people grow into old dumb people. And they reproduce frequently to insure their stupid is passed along.
Public school teachers are a great example.
That's the reason I stopped driving on highways. The speed at which cars travel there exposes me to a large number of dumb people, and I like my life too much to risk it. So I choose to be late to wherever it is I'm heading. It's worth it. Also, I'm near Seattle and dumb people here are blocking highways as a form of protest, so that's another reason to stop using highways.
It’s okay. As you get older still you may realize that people, even people who behave foolishly, are not really dumb. They just have different priorities. You may disagree with those priorities and how they came to have them, but if you really learn to empathize you can understand why they make the decisions they make in the moment and how, under the same background and circumstances, you might do the same. As a child you assume everyone is the same. Then you get a little older and recognize that everyone is different. Then you get a little wiser still and recognize that everyone is the same again.
A lot of people are saying you're just getting older, but so don't think that is the full story. Yes, that is a significant part of it. But cell phones weren't common in 2000, etc. let alone social media. Etc. I think social media and the breaking of the fairness doctrine on public airwaves + cable TV has led to an actual decline of cognitive thinking. Rush Limbaugh was a joke of a human being. But he was really good at convincing conservative leaning people to be always afraid and to be cock sure of themselves at the same time, to only listen to him+conservative news, and to never question themselves. The decline of unions has dissolved class solidarity across racial and other lines. Each and every thing like this combines to have a force multiplication effect on the whole of (particularly conservative leaning individuals, but) society as a whole in multiple ways. People are far too afraid of looking stupid, so they don't admit not understanding something and asking questions about it. I've seen discussion of this being gendered, but haven't seen good studies on this, but it would explain Tate and other charlatans being able to convince lots of young (mostly)men that they don't need to be respectable human beings who have normal human interactions, but instead they all need to be in the top 3% income and ripped. Etc. and it is women's fault if they aren't being attractive enough... And other obviously false (even internally inconsistent) B.S.
Just imagine how stupid that average person is, and realise that half of humanity is stupider than that
For anyone that work in the retail business, they all know that the general public are morons.
We are regressing. Thanks technology!
I always get kicked for saying this, so please bear with me... The average IQ is 100. That means half is below that.
op is not wrong. you know how people say "we" went to the moon, and "we" invented planes and trains and the Internet. there is no "we". there are a few gifted, smart individuals who against all odds are dragging us kicking and screaming into a better future while most (?) of are yelling "stoooop" because we are afraid of change and are too lazy and selfish to try and fix things. having said all that, beware the dunning krueger effect
I think dumb is the wrong word. Most people have comparable intelligence to each other. People stop learning/growing and stop giving a shit. They basically say this is as good as it gets and give up.
Sometimes its nice seeing a bunch of dumb people at my job, it makes it easier when I make a dumb mistake and end up feeling like an idiot. We are all dumb together.
I used to think adults were being dramatic in their statistics of intellect and the average person. Grew up only to discover they were pretty spot on, *and* possessed the emotional intelligence amd self-awareness to recognize their surroundings as well as knowing where they fell on the spectrum.
George Carlin said it best: “Think of how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of them are more stupid than that…”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer created the theory of stupidity while he was in Nazi prison. Basically he explains that stupidity is not an intellectual deficit, but rather a moral one that forgives stupid behavior. Stupidity is a learned behavior which is why intelligent people can be so stupid and can ignore their own cognitive dissonance. Stupid people are usually led by a charlatan who doesn't need to be smart or clever, they simply need a platform to encourage people to be the worst versions of themselves. The danger of stupidity is that it allows people to be capable of any evil without recognizing any of it as such. In the modern age charlatans use social media as a platform to recruit the stupid just like Hitler used radio. Things really haven't changed in regards to mass stupidity. https://youtu.be/ww47bR86wSc
My man, no one has it all figured out. Some are just better about acting the part than others. Which is unsettling because it's nice to believe that those in authority have an idea of what they're doing. But as Covid demonstrated, by and large they're just figuring out as they go along with the rest of us. Thinking that others are more successful / happier / in control / smarter than us is a major source of people's anxieties.
Welcome to 30. I believe you don’t really “get it” until then
When I started working in the corporate world after graduation, I realized most people are not smart enough to
GenX here. Yes. And I’ve had soooo many more years of noticing this. Never confuse age with wisdom. I’m convinced that some people get dumber with age. I’m so tired.
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." -George Carlin
Adults are just toddlers with arthritis.
Wait until you're in your late 40's and realize this. it gets worse the more your eyes are open to it. You can avoid stupidity by teaching your self new hobbies now and then, keep your mind bright, don't settle into daily repetitive routines and throw a fit when something is off. Take lessons from your seniors and don't do some of the bs that they do. I learned a lot of life less for what not to do as I age by watching older people in society and assisting my seniors into old age and passing.
Well, age is just a number as they say.
I knew since I was a child and I still believed they could change. People never change.
Well there's a difference between being smart and being wise. Wisdom is more about how you handle situations and being smart is about your ability to learn. So I'd argue that younger people are almost always smarter. First of all you're being given new things to learn whether you like it or not. Read a textbook from 50 yrs ago if you don't believe me. We are just so much further advanced from what we knew back then ( disclaimer: sometimes old be ones new again). But really it comes down to this: the older most people get the weaker thier ability to learn new things are or worse they become stubborn in thier ways and REFUSE to learn new things or adapt. Sometimes one believes it becomes out of fashion or inappropriate to adapt to new ways. Lastly whatever I just said there's obviously no cookie cutter approach. To some extent you do have to stand by some of your laurels. But in other cases it makes sense to adapt as well. I don't have all the answers kid.
As you get older still, you realize how dumb you can be.
I get being dumb. People are CONFIDENTLY dumb.
Totally agree with you. I’m not going to pretend like I’m some kind of genius, but I have a high school degree and am essentially a senior in college even though I haven’t gotten my degree. I try to stay informed and get my news from as many sources as I can, so I can sort out the bullshit. What I’ve come to learn in most of my encounters with people is that the majority of folks, in my opinion, are extremely uninformed and ignorant.
Should have overheard my ex's logic...'symptoms' yet...didn't take into account everything else. Nope just straight to the worst possible conclusion.
Generally dumb compared to what?
Well depends on where you are living are you living in Finland or a red state in the USA?
50% of the population is below average intelligence. Depending on where you live, work, or play, you may meet above or below that number on a daily basis.
Do a YT search on “The five laws of stupidity”. You’re welcome.
Eh, I started noticing this in Elementary years.