Are people getting more ignorant?
I saw in a UK poll yesterday that even a year after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic about 50% of respondants could not name the disease's major symptoms. I find this level of ignorance staggering. I can only assume these people no longer access news media of any substance. Has the decline of newspapers and broadcast TV news, plus the rise of social media and the ability to choose among an ever wider selection of streaming or online 'news' providers resulted in people being more ignorant than say 10 or 20 years ago?
Comments (53)
I think yes because sadly our governments no longer invest in culture and knowledge development. We live in a junk culture and food era... nobody cares about thoughts, feelings, happiness, etc...
sometimes I think they want ignorant people just to reinforce their power
Also, in America at least, we focus on STEM. STEM produces good little producers and consumers. However, when you combine STEM with hunger, there is no way in hell the United States will ever compete with China and India. So, we should remember that which made us great in the first place, which is the Liberal Arts. If you arrive at STEM because you are hungry, you will never hold a candle to someone who arrives at STEM through deep-seated, fun and love of natural intellectual curiosity.
Nothing stimulates intellectual curiosity like the Liberal Arts. When you get a guy like Thomas Jefferson or some of the other men of the Enlightenment, and you raise them on Philosophy, the language arts and things like Latin and Greek, and history and political science and etc. then of course they will develop an interest in medicine, chemistry, geography, botany, etc. And those folks will always outshine the producers and consumers.
The brain is like a muscle and just because everyone has one, and every one's a critic, doesn't mean they know how to use it. Some resist education because they think they, or their kids, are being taught what to think. In reality, the liberal arts teaches how, not what.
So, the problem manifest in the local school district. Cletus comes home from a long, hard day at work. Hi sits down at the dinner table with his lovely family and happens to let out the smallest complaint. Then, little Bobby and Sally roll his socks in argument, probably some political shit, and Cletus gets pissed. He think those commie teachers at school are filling his kid's heads with liberal BS. So, when it comes time to support the mill levy for the school and education, he votes against it. Meanwhile, he's got his preacher thumbing the book and telling him what's what so his interest in education shifts that direction and things get worse.
So, I'm not so sure people are getting more ignorant. I think they always have been. However, I think in the past people were more inclined to read a book and, after a day of plowing (Yeoman Farmer) they were more willing to be humble and defer to the likes of Jefferson, et al.
What we need is a re-enlightenment. Our founding fathers were fans of public education. But now we have a plutocracy using their accumulated wealth to pick and choose which charity they want to give their money too. Since they aren't really taxed, they can afford to do that, while government is left to be the punching bag for all of societies failures and the plutocrats get to hold themselves out as these great benefactors of society. And the great unwashed swallow it, hook, line and sinker.
When I drive thought various towns and see the old Carnegie Library, I see an ancient memory of a modicum of enlightened self-interest. Self-interest now is sans the enlightenment. Milk those cattle for the last drop this quarter and move on.
Finally, I look around Europe and see them creeping ahead, because the have some enlightenment. And I look at the far and middle east and see the art and architecture we used to lead the world in. And we continue to rot. And we continue to blame the ivory tower intellectual elites and the liberals for all our ills. When, in fact, they could very well be our salvation.
Oh well. I do have some faith in the kids these days. On the rare occasion when I can pierce their mysterious lexicon and magic veil, I often see goodness, energy and enlightenment. If only they didn't have to lead themselves. If only they had worthy mentors. Nevertheless, I think they are going to pull it off. They may roll their eyes at our selfishness, but the too will develop their own skeletons and their own areas where they "knew better" and failed to do better. It's human.
The only way to determine whether people are becoming more ignorant year to year is to compare their knowledge over time. If we go back 3 years for example, I would assume the knowledge base regarding Covid-19 was zero, yet today, the average Brit appears to be fully aware of 50% of the symptoms. Based upon that, I'd say we know more today than 3 years ago and we should be applauded by our advances in education.
May need to wait for a Netflix drama on the subject.
What does it take to be knowledgable about general history, general science, current affairs, and the like? It takes lots of reading in these areas, selective TV viewing (mostly PBS), and discussion with others likewise informed. Avoiding the slop troughs of social media is also helpful.
Why don't more people do these things?
Time, for one. As a gay man I've never had the demands of raising children. I have had time to read a lot. I've generally worked at professional service jobs where there were other college educated people. The more one comes to understand, the more one can fit into a better understanding of the world.
Social reward is another. It helps if others appreciate one's knowledge.
On the other hand, we well-informed people should be grateful that most people are taking care of business, and not spending al their time reading.
True, but some business is as useless as reading, but offers an education as well. I just bought 3 goats. My embarrassing ignorance of goats will soon be relieved, not through passive learning, but through active engagement. The goats I raise won't do anything for the betterment of the world I fear, but I'll finally be able to hold my own in a conversation at the feed and seed.
Quoting Hanover
Is that because you, in particular, raise them, or because of some other reason? Judas goats have contributed to the betterment of the world by leading the sheep to the slaughter. You like lamb, right? Well, Judas goats help you get it. And of course, a Judas goat could keep your three ladies pregnant. Are you going to eat their children---mmm, young goat!? Goat isn't quite as good as lamb, but goat milk is quite good.
Wow! Are they pygmy goats?
I’m a middle-class, part-time professional raising two teenage children with a full-time teacher husband. We make time to read a lot, and read to our children from when they were small until they picked up the habit themselves. But then, we also agreed to forego the work-til-you-drop path of social reward (with its bigger [s]debt[/s] income, new house and cars, latest tech and annual trip to Bali) for a broader experience of reality, and the wiggle room to make informed rather than ‘popular’ choices.
Time is a poor excuse. It’s about the value of staying informed.
"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you're misinformed."
-- Mark Twain, allegedly
To not know the symptoms of COVID in the current era suggests something more than mere ignorance but I am not certain what it is. I don't think the decline of mass media and the introduction of mess media can explain this one.
Let's talk goats...
I'm awaiting my kids to be weaned from the teat. If you bottle feed them, they remain very clingy. Once I get them, I'll have them neutered. They are then called withers. If you leave them intact, they release strong pheromones and piss on their beards to woo the ladies. To smell like a goat is a real thing to be avoided.
Female goats go into great heat every 21 days and they don't take to feminine hygiene products, so blood will be a thing. They also get difficult due to hormonal issues if you never breed them. Spaying goats is not a thing because general anesthesia isn't good on goats. A boy goat can get castrated from where he stands though. Ripe for the taking as it were.
Disbudding of all goats is common. It avoids horns caught in fences and annoying head slams.
With all this, you ask "why goats"? Here's why:
I'm naming mine Tater, Jasper, and Cornbread. Jasper the friendly goat is the reason for that name. Kinda funny. Kinda stupid. Therefore perfection.
So you haven't got them.
I bought them. They're still with their mom though.
Some high-profit minded farmers rent their goats out to clear kudzu. They selectively eat it. It's environmentally healthy. And there's the fertilizing pellets.
Will Georgians see you with your shepherd's hook and goat group culling the kudzu?
Yes they are. Not many people know that. Meanwhile, the wild goats have eaten all my tulips. They don't eat daffodils though.
:rofl: :rofl: Going into my quotes collection. :up:
Getting?
Seems so.
I don’t think people are getting more ignorant, I think people seem more ignorant because the breadth of human knowledge is so much greater than an individual can know. Its not that ignorance of things is growing so much as the knowledge of things is growing. It’s the contrast of the individual humans ability to know things vs the breadth of the knowledge humans have breached as a species/civilisation.
Take technology for example...its advancing much faster than people are able to adapt to so there are huge gaps in peoples technological knowledge and expertise. I think other knowledge (facilitated by technology/internet) is like this too. There are so many frontiers of knowledge, so many areas of knowledge that humans seem to know so much less.
Basically human knowledge is leaving the individual behind.
That makes sense. Where one's ability to drive a car is unrelated to their understanding of how it works, the difference is not as great as that between my ability to type and send this, and my ability to understand what the hell is going on. Good point. Of course it doesn't help when a mechanic back in the day might graciously tell me how an internal combustion engine works, whereas IT might roll his eyes and tell me to STFU, or maybe even lie and tell me there are little gremlins inside running things around. And once the gremlins are aligned with a political party, forget it. All knowledge goes to hell.
If you take a look at the folks that attended the most prestigious global universities and observe the mess they have made of this world, then you will truly understand ignorance.
Ignorance is not only a lack of knowledge, more importantly, it is a mis-understand of the same.
True, though I would call that misinformation rather than ignorance. That there are bad actors trying to keep people ignorant is a whole other can.
Anyway, chickens will clear an area of ground down to the dirt, ready for sewing seed. The only advantage that accrues to goats is that they will eat the more woody weeds. The disadvantages in terms of broken fences and chewed valuables outweigh their benefit.
Remember a goat is not just for Easter, @Hanover; Or will Tater, Jasper, and Cornbread finish in a curried Christmas carnival?
News item, that you and the other respondents to this thread missed: THERE ARE NO MAJOR SYMPTOMS TO THIS DISEASE.
Most people are symptompless, who get it. What do you call that symptom?
Some people display flu-like symptoms, some others go into a form of pneumonia that very likely kills them. Which is the MAJOR one? There are NO major symptoms, so those who answered "correctly" are the ignorant ones, which still makes it fifty percent... the ignorance level is unchanged at 50%.
I am just trying to give you guys some perspective. The ignorance level is 50%; but ignorance is present not on the same side as the newspaper articles and you all claim.
Errr.... no. Whilst this is true it misses the salient point that the following symptoms have been hysterically conveyed to the population for a year.
Could almost write a song based on the chorus of: fever, body ache, dry cough, fatigue, chills, headache, sore throat, loss of appetite, ...
I am not denying that there are or can be visible simptoms. But I deny that there are major ones. That word, "major", alone, destroyed any meaningfulness inherent in the question.
Any of those. I hear what you are saying about 'major" but I don't think it needs a genius to throw out the symptoms they keep hearing about - surely they are major ones...
But are people getting more ignorant? Who the hell can tell?
And truth to be told, the most major symptoms are no symptoms at all. Most Covid infected people display no symptoms. So if you go with the "most numerous" or with the "dominant" definition of major, the no symptom is the major symptom.
People are not ignorant. The news media is stupid. They are replete with idiotic journalists, who learn how to write well, but their gray cells are not employed in the process.
Well, the newspaper said, something to the effect, "what are the major symptoms." if they news paper said, "people could not name the symptoms repeatedly asked of them", then you would be right.
It's all in the wording. Journalists should be aware of the importance of the meaning of words.
Carry on. I am getting out; I had my say.
:ok:
Given the prominence of Covid in the news over the past year, for 50% of people to say they don't know what symptoms to look for in their own health as indications of whether they have caught the virus is surely alarming. It shows that people are not only not taking in what the trustworthy news media say, but that they are so complacent about the virus that they aren't bothering to find out about it for themselves.
Another sign is that vaccine uptake is so low in some communities - even those mainstream populations of the largest EU countries, where I'd have thought education rates would be high. Many people still believe the scare stories and conspiracy theories, regardless of how many eminent scientists restate the facts.
I'm tempted contemptuously to throw them into my TSTL bucket. (Too stupid to live). But I suppose I should be more forgiving..
My goats will be like my kids were and one day my grandchildren will be. They will have no utility, will destroy all sorts of things, will bear additional costs, but I'll be able to take pictures and videos of them to share with people who couldn't care any less but will tell me how cute they are.
Quoting Banno
I'm not planning on eating my pets, but the economy is unpredictable. In the event I do hold a disturbing backyard slaughter, I'll save you a leg. Come to think of it, maybe a roasted leg of goat has a place on the seder plate because, as you noted, they are not just for Easter.
Wild goats? Do you live on a cliff?
. All knowledge is superfluous. Knowledge as such is superfluous. And all knowledge creates only an illusion that we know - we don't know. You can live with a man your whole life, and you can think that you know him - and you don't know him. You can give birth to a child, and you can think you know him - and you don't know him.
. And whatsoever we think we know is very illusory.
. Somebody asks, 'What is water', and you say, 'H2O' - you are simply playing a game. It is not known what water is, nor what H is nor what O is.
. You are just labelling. Then somebody asks what this H is - this hydrogen - and you go to the molecules, to the atoms, to the electrons... but you are again giving names. The mystery is not finished - the mystery is only postponed. And at the last, there is tremendous ignorance. Nobody knows what the electron is.
. In the beginning we did not know what the water is - now we don't know what the electron is, so we have not come to any knowledge. We have played a game of naming things, labelling things, categorising, but life remains a mystery.
. Ignorance is so profound and so ultimate that it cannot be destroyed. And once you understand it, you can rest in it. It is so beautiful, it is so relaxing ... because then there is nowhere to go. There is nothing to be known, because nothing can be known. Ignorance is ultimate. It is tremendous and vast.
. All that we know is illusory. Somehow we manage the illusion that we know. Somebody introduces you to somebody else, tells them your name, your qualifications, your country, and it is thought that you have been introduced. You remain completely unintroduced, because your name is not you, neither is your country nor is your religion. You are that profound ignorance inside.
. But when I use the word ignorance, I don't use it in any negative sense - I don't mean absence of knowledge. By ignorance I mean something very fundamental, very present, very positive. It is how we are. It is the very nature of god to remain mysterious. It is the very nature of things to remain mysterious. Everything is illusive, and that's why it is so beautiful. If man succeeds in knowing everything one day, there will not be anything left except to commit suicide.
. We can go on knowing and knowing and knowing, and we never arrive - the ignorance remains untouched, undisturbed by it.
. To come to an understanding of this ignorance is to become enlightened. Hence the socratic dictum:
. 'I know only one thing - that I don't know.' That's what enlightenment is all about. If you can accept your ignorance - welcome it, cherish it, enjoy, delight in it, because this is how things are: nothing is known, nothing can be known and everything is mysterious your life will have a quality of magic.
. Logic will be gone, and your life will be more magical; a charm, a tremendous grace will be there, because now there are no boundaries - nothing is defined. This undefined is what god is. And I call this ignorance divine.
. The very urge to know is an egoistic urge, because by knowledge we want to become powerful. Yes, bacon is right when he says, 'Knowledge is power.' And our search is really for power. We go via knowledge. We want to know because by knowing we can manipulate.
. The word science means knowledge, and the word religion should really mean ignorance. It is the polar opposite.
. Science is an effort to know about things, and religion is not any effort to know - rather, it is an effort to live whatsoever is... to relax into it and to celebrate it.
. If one can rest in one's ignorance, there is no problem, no anxiety. The mind by and by disappears.
. It makes ripples no more.
. You must have heard the old proverb: Ignorance is bliss. It has some depth in it. And I always say, 'Blessed are the ignorant, for theirs is the kingdom of god.' And I don't say, 'Theirs will be the kingdom of god'; I say 'Theirs is the kingdom of god.'
. So just have a taste of ignorance, and you will have a taste of me. I am not a man of knowledge. In fact I don't know anything - because nothing can be known; that is not possible. If somebody claims that he knows something, he is claiming the impossible. I don't know anything. But this not knowing is so blissful, who bothers to know?
. So let this surround you more and more. Even your husband is not known to you - how can a mystery be known? If you live together, you love each other, you share each other's space, but the space is such that it can never be reduced to knowledge. The moment you feel that you know your husband or your child or your friend, your mother, your father, you have reduced them to things. A husband becomes a thing, a wife becomes a thing. Then they are no more persons, their glory is lost - and the agony begins.
. If you can remain in this ignorance of 'How can I know?' then life is very alive, flowing. You are never stuck, and there is always much to explore. In fact there is everything to explore, and every day is a new beginning of a new exploration. You never feel that you have known this man for so long. You are never fed up... you are never bored.
. Boredom comes out of knowledge. The fed-up feeling comes out of knowledge. The moment you say that you know this man, now the exploration has stopped. Now you are stuck together. Maybe you are together for some other reasons - security, finance, society, morality, religion, a thousand and one reasons - but now the exploration is no more there. And when there is no more exploration there is no more love.
. My definition of love is: when you are exploring the other, you are in love.
I would argue we live in the "set it and forget it" age. No it started with just turkeys. Then it expanded to children (video games and TV/V-chip parenting). Then commerce (order nearly anything whilst sitting on your couch and get it delivered to your doorstep in no time at all). Then social interaction as a whole (social media, status updates, online dating, etc.). Now finally it may reach the last frontier, human anatomy and biology itself. I always knew that Ron Popeil was the Antichrist. I just never could prove it.
Why waste time learning anything? Just Google it bro. Why learn a skill or trade or how to do anything of use? Just call the guy, man. Etc., etc.
Yes. The resulting ubiquity of misinformation and the encouragement and availability of immediate, emotional and thoughtless response to it has the result that the ignorance that's always there is rendered invincible, to use Catholic terminology.
Did the poll control for confounding factors like confidence, trust, or question misinterpretation? Did you check before concluding that it represented evidence that people were more ignorant? I ask because I find the general level of ignorance about what polls can and cannot be reliably used to demonstrate quite staggering.
This would be the wrong way to assess knowledge levels of people. It's too narrow a window to get a clear view of how aware people are of facts. The way I see it, basing your conclusion on UK poll is like judging people's facts stockpile by asking them a question on Schrodinger's equation. Quantum physics is a highly specialized field and so is medicine and we can't expect laypeople to possess information on them. Plus, you're aware of course that this is the information age which to me translates as information explosion. There's just too much to grasp and real estate in our brain's memory centers seems not to have undergone any changes to accommodate that, meaning we have to be very selective as regards what we want to retain and perhaps COVID-19 symptoms simply fail to make it to the list of our priorities, explaining the dismal results of the UK poll.
The difference today is the democratization of mass communication technologies (i.e the internet, particularly social media), which has allowed people to broadcast their idiocy more effectively. The media, rapidly losing income due to increased competition (the internet has lowered barriers to entry), and the increased ability of people to get news for free has slashed reporting budgets. The result is endless articles that end up at the top of generic, incognito mode/cookie free Google News feeds that are literally reporting on screen captures of Twitter. This creates a feedback loop, as idiots are given a bigger microphone and more incentive for their idiocy. A small minority of people use Twitter and of its users a small minority account for a huge amount of the posts. People lie about their backgrounds and troll as outrageous members of opposing social camps. It's a terrible substitute for interviews, but it is cheap, so it thrives.
However, people in developed nations are getting dumber. The Flynn Effect is the general rise of IQ in nations across the 20th century. The increases are very substantial. As nutrition, medicine, and access to the stimulus of education got better, intelligence rose measurably by wide margins.
That has since reversed. Across the developed world, IQ is decreasing. This isn't due to migration as some might claim. Due to intergroup differences in IQ, IQ is necessarily mapped to demographic groups. The children of native Europeans and "native" Americans is decreasing.
No casual mechanism has fully been identified. TV and computers could play a role. So could enviornments toxins. Male testosterone and sperm count has been plummeting mostly due to plastics, so such an effect wouldn't be unprecedented.
Still, the main hypothesis is dysgenics. Intelligence is highly heritable. Higher intelligence is now correlated with less reproduction, particularly for women. There are plenty of plausible hypothesis for this, and the effect size when estimated could be substantial enough to push intelligence down. That said, people today are solidly more intelligent (as measured by the tests we've developed) than they were a century ago.
The trend of wealthier people to start reporducing less and less as civilizations' exit their expansive phase shows up way back in ancient Greek writers. It may very well be a cyclical force in history. It's an impossible hypothesis to truly prove out, but historical examples abound of falling birth rates as societies hit higher levels of development (vis-a-vis surrounding civilizations).
A major premise that OP is based on is that their knowledge is complete or at least complete enough. Thus if people do not know exactly what I know, then they are ignorant. This is a very arrogant and dangerous assumption, as we are all (probably) not medical experts but just crayon eating internet surfers that proclaim we are philosophers. There's an argument to be made that the evidence is overwhelming, but that evidence tends to be based on journalism, which we all know is trustworthy.
There may be an article that interests some people talking about a research paper that concluded that the US death rate has not changed at all in 2020 compared to previous years, among other things. Meaning the introduction of Covid was not significant in the US death toll. Most interestingly, this research was pulled a couple days after its release, as if there were people who did not want the word getting out
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/11/27/johns-hopkins-study-saying-covid-19-has-relatively-no-effect-on-deaths-in-u-s-deleted-after-publication-n1178930
My sympathies. That's what some people think philosophy is; hair splitting for hair splitting's sake.
Quoting Tim3003
Define "people"
lol
Potentially, people live in a far more information rich environment than they did, even 20 years ago - but there's a hidden distinction between knowledge and understanding I've been quietly grinding about. Being able to whip out your iphone and google the name of the King of Sweden in 1444, doesn't require you know the first thing about history. Most of the people I know are pretty damn smart and quite well informed - so I find that statistic difficult to believe. I suspect it's just the media - justifying playing to the lowest common denominator by portraying people as stupid - and so lowering the bar on their unimaginative, low brow, cheap formats. That said, 50% of people (minus one person) are, by definition - below average intelligence. Now there's a statistic to keep you up at night!
That's a good question. It's not clear. I believe it depends on a topic for topic basis, and it depends on how far back you're willing to go. If you back to the 1950's or 60's, we still had countries that legally sanctioned racist laws and women were quite marginalized by today's standards. Cigarettes were still, I believe, advertised by doctors and animals rights were much more restrictive. So people have become more knowledgeable in these respects.
On the other hand, people took it for granted that the state played a crucial role in helping society out, and welfare benefits were much more proportionate and egalitarian. Even Eisenhower said that those who didn't think New Deal policies were necessary in society, had no business doing politics. This is of course, not mentioning Europe, where certain countries had extremely high living standards. Compare than now to "libertarians" or people who believe in Q and such madness. As you mentioned, the internet can be an excellent tool, if used properly. But since people can look anything up at any moment, no effort is made in learning things and people tend to look for info that reinforces beliefs.
If you go back further than this, by several hundred years, ignorance increases quite a lot. Though quackery has and will always be around in some form or another.
So, yes and no.
How would you establish if this means people are more ignorant today than, say, 35 years ago? I wonder how we would work this out. Anecdotal I know, but the people I knew 35 years ago were certainly no better informed than the people I encounter today, Wisdom...? No idea. What I do see is people are more tribal these days and much quicker to get angry over culture wars issues. This plays a role in what people accept, read, follow, believe.
Being very destructive and mean makes them quite interesting. The wild boars are so destructive that many states have open season on them, no laws whatsoever governing the killing of them. This makes them a prime target for people who want to test out their own home made weapons of mass destruction. The YouTube footage seems to get a lot of views so some people must be interested. And you think the backyard slaughter of a few goats is disturbing.