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It's worse than my worst nightmares...
So as many of you might know, Digg is a great source of news and random information, and in my Digging through my Google reader I come via Digg to an article called: "Why English isn't the only language you should know." It looks like a very nice article, have yet to finish it, but halfway through I come across this paragraph. And youtube video...
My head hurts. Badly. I knew the average American was capable of doing stupid things. But this...
Somewhat of an embarrassment to the US, there is a YouTube video in circulation which features a reporter asking a few typical Americans some simple questions. Amongst them, “what language is spoken in Latin America?†is asked. The answer given is “Latinâ€â€¦ The other answers are just as “inspiredâ€fJuNgBkloFE
My head hurts. Badly. I knew the average American was capable of doing stupid things. But this...
Comments
Oh, and some answers were not that uninformed. Tony Blair might as well be an actor and Germany once was in the Axis
This. I'm pretty sure that if you went to Europe, and asked enough people, I imagine you would get a lot of stupid answers. Maybe not as many as in certain parts of America, but it's not like there are no idiots in the rest of the World. It's not really the average American answering those questions. The people answering those questions might be closer to the average than in other nations, but they're not average.
*glares at Paige and the link* Studying Americans... *face desk*
Question, the 30% average Americans Linkigi mentioned... to what can you compare them to in Canadathe rest of the world?
Anyone who does enough interviews with proper editing can find idiots to say things like this. It proves nothing and shows little more than the knowledge of those interviewed.
(1) They see a camera crew and an interviewer. The interviewer asks them a question that everyone should be able to answer. Now, if it were me, a light would go off in my head and I would realize that they're taping one of these man in the street things and they're gonna probably play the stupid responses on TV somewhere. I now have a choice: I can answer the question correctly and be consigned to obscurity or I can make up something stupid and be on TV. I think many people simply decide they want to be on TV.
(2) It's likely staged even more than that. The interviewer probably introduces himself as "Mr. X" from "Show XYZ" tells them the question he'll ask, and gives them the answer he wants them to recite to the camera if they want to be on the show.
Even so, I still think a very, very large percentage of Americans are incredibly stupid. We "elected" GWB twice. We deserve every slight to our intelligence that comes our way.
Besides, this thread hasn't been terribly focused on making logical arguments.
adj. stu·pid·er, stu·pid·est
1. Slow to learn or understand; obtuse.
2. Tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes.
3. Marked by a lack of intelligence or care; foolish or careless: a stupid mistake.
4. Dazed, stunned, or stupefied.
5. Pointless; worthless: a stupid job.
n.
A stupid or foolish person.
Source.
I stand by my use of the term.
@ WaterIsPoison. Yes, it's relative. Can you do a brain surgery without fucking the patient up? Can you repair a clutch? (probably you'll be able to figure it out, being a technical person, but fix it properly... hmmmm...) Do you know how to use scissors to cut somebody's hair into a specific model? Though, why does not reading a book make you stupid? I can understand the two things one has to learn, but reading a book. Hell, I'll say then that if you haven't read the Bible or Koran in it's original written language you're an idiot. But we were talking about stupid people, see Hungryjoe's definition, not idiots. Here, dictionary.com's definition of idiot: @ Apreche, I'm positive you make similar mistakes in your second language, third if I am bastard enough to count Frisian to which I most surely have been exposed to before English.
Ignorance alludes to a person's lack of knowledge. I am ignorant of how to do brain surgery; that does not mean I would be incapable of learning.
For example, in October 2002, 77 senators and 296 representatives (this is not argument ad numerem, simply an illustration that it was a bipartisan decision) voted to authorize the war. Those elected officials, while I disagree broadly with many of the policies, were not stupid; they were simply ignorant because they had been provided with faulty information in close-session security conferences.
The very fact that so many Americans are screaming bloody murder over social and political injustice -- and the fact that the trend of self-hating Americanism is so prevalent -- would seem to indicate that as a nation we're not stupid. It indicates we've identified our shortcomings and are trying to address them. I believe the next election will prove that (politically active ones at least) Americans know how to learn.