Evolution and Americans

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Ever see the movie Idiocracy? I can see that happening to us.

That movie isn't based on sound science. As depressed as you can get by looking at the morons around you, the truth is that they were even dumber in the past. As we have observed in the Flynn effect, average IQs have been persistently rising. Also, intelligence is affected by other factors than just pure genetics.

I wasn't being serious..... (not in the other thread either)

I know the movie was not based on sound science. It was made for entertainment.

The IQ may raise, but the demand of modern society also raises. Just to manage our personal finances reasonable we must understand interest rates, the relation of interest rates to risk and inflation, etc. To use a computer, even on a very basic level we use an amount of abstract thinking which was in former time rarely needed.

When it comes to the political area the issue is even more complex. 30 years ago political decision were made mostly on national (or even local) level, today they are international as well as the economy. If the people want to make reasonable political decisions they need to process much higher amounts of data and need more background information. Go in the next pub (or on the street) and ask around about the constitutional framework of French President in opposite to the German President is or how the EU concludes an international treaty or in which cases the WTO can make binding decisions. This are not academic question, but basic information just to understand the newspaper.

The consequence is an electorate which vote for people without understanding the issues those people had to decide and without an understanding of the qualifications needed.

The needs of the general public are always catered to. Dumbed-down operating systems for computers such as Windows or Mac OS X will always allow the most incompetent to use a computer. Personal finances are not too terribly difficult to understand, and for the most part it is unnecessary for an individual to calculate the relation between interest and inflation.


Those questions are mostly irrelevant in my locale. It doesn't matter to Americans how the French and German governments differ because we don't live under either of them. For the most part it is satisfactory to have some conception of how one's own government works. The workings of the EU also are not important to the US voter, and US voters do not make decisions relating to the WTO but rather on issues such as gay marriage, abortion, gun laws, and social welfare programs. There is also some choice in voting for a more or less interventionist government.


So? Reactive voting (voting for incumbents if you're happy with the status quo, voting for the opposition if you are not happy with the status quo) has been studied as a way of the electorate making decisions without needing an understanding of the issues. Given the high cost of being informed and the negligible marginal utility of an informed vote versus an uninformed one, reactive voting is the most rational decision.

1) OS/Computers: Google a bit for "support stories windows" ...

2) Personal finances: If people would understand money, loan sharks, the most insurances, a lot of saving plans etc. wouldn't find any costumers.



This is general misconception within the US - the EU rules into the USA and vice-versa. Any merger of two bigger US-companies is subject also to EU-regulation, if one of both companies does business in EU - and the other way around too. How-and-if US-farmers are allow to sell the poultry, soya or beef in the EU is subject to WTO-regulations. Even with the current recovery-plan congress had to consider WTO and EU-regulations. The anti-trust decision of the EU-commission and the EU-court in Luxembourg had drect consequences for the business of Microsoft in US. The same game is played in Europe - when Siemens had their corruption law case in New York they had to allow US-lawyer access their offices in Munich and Erlangen and the rulind did directly influence their business in Germany.

Any decision in Washington DC of some importance has influence in Europe and the other way around too. The consequence for the US is to handle with (as I like to call it) the most complex institution since the end of Holy Roman Empire.

But is not only Europe: The stability of the US-$ is relying for a very good part on the interest of the Japanese and Chinese government on a stable US-$.

The people think they are still in charge, because they can vote on issues like gay-marriage - but they aren't charge: Not because there "dark elites" working secretly, because they don't understand the questions. It is all published, any single line of the EU-proceedings are in public domain, as well as the WTO-treaty a.s.o. But: The complexity of today's world is far beyond the mental horizon of the vast majority of voters. Not because the voters got dumper, they are perhaps smarter than ever, because became so complex.



It is dangerous, because masses are more easily to manipulate - I do not have quick fix for this problem. I want to preserve democracy, but I see a raising danger of an manipulated electorate.

Some people get scammed. So? Most people do not get scammed, and probably the number of people getting scammed now is not appreciably higher than it was a hundred years ago.


OK. But the typical US voter doesn't have any say on those issues, so an understanding of them is superfluous and unnecessary.


And voting decisions, fortunately, do not have to take into account every possible existing fact or the full complexity of the whole world. When voting between McCain and Obama, voters did not have to understand trade relations with the EU.


What's dangerous? Reactive voting? Nah, not that dangerous. It's pretty much the common practice in democracies that have political parties, and even without organized parties factions will tend to form. Why *must* democracy be preserved if, as you say, the typical person is incapable of understanding the issues they're voting on? I dunno, your views seem self-contradictory. People are too stupid to cast good votes, and yet you want to preserve democracy in an unmanipulated electorate. If you are so certain that "the people" are incapable of handling these decisions, then you should advocate that they shouldn't be making such decisions and promote some sort of elitist oligarchy to replace current representative governments.

Speak, hear and see no evil topic

Cute. Chimps debating the theory.

No - the very most people got scammed ; look into the numbers of credit-card-debt, look into the insurance people buy, etc.



He thinks to have a say on everything else. I watched the candidate presidential debates. No single question was really in some deep regarding e. g. the influence the US can have on European affairs or how to deal with a re-shaped EU, when the Treaty of Lisbon will be in force. This are important issues for the US.

But: I do not want start a US-bashing; in Europe it is the same. Whilst the media take care regarding each fart done in national parliaments the work of the EU-Commission or the WTO is mostly not reported, even they are most importance. Why? Because the rules are of uppermost complexity.



Certainly? This trade relations are for both sides of the Atlantic more important than the idiotic war in Iraq or even the nature of the rescue package.



I am far form being certain that this not already the case - since centuries. There was in 1980s a TV-comedy in the UK: "Yes Minister" and later "Yes Prime Minister". The plot of this series was the interaction of minister with his senior civil servant. Even the minister had formally all the power it was the civil servants how won the game, because they had all the background information. One of my obsessions is history and I read the most of the proceedings to the Imperial Dials between 1495 and 1654 of the Holy Roman Empire. The all-powerful were in my impression not the princes (or the emperor), but those councillors which made the real decisions and set in council and negotiations and I am in strong doubt that the princes even understood the wordings of the Imperial Recesses.

The main different to today is that the princes are replaced by democratic elected politicians. The most important small print, in other the real politics, is done by civil servant, who run in reality the government. If you look on e.g. the post-war relations between Germany and France, they did not change since the early 1950s, even conservative and left-wind government switched every 5 to 12 years in both countries.

Once again, the US has a monopoly of idiots, stupid people, and trailers. Really, America, if you'd only embrace socialism and athiesm, we'd actually take you seriously...

I guess since I'm one of the few people who actually lived in a trailer (twice), I must be an out and out creationist...thanks for knowing me better than I could ever know myself...

We refer to ourselves as North Kakalaki... And I live only a few miles from the Containment Area for Relocated Yankees (Cary, NC), which is bringing culture and enlightenment to the unwashed, tobacco-spitting masses here. We even have a hockey team now...


sorry...rant over. But I do get tired of being the sole source of evil for the entire world every now and again... Nothing bad ever happens in Europe? The whole continent is composed of cultured, superior people? Really?

No, but the elites in Europe have their people under better control - just a few centuries more experience in this game.

(Occasionally accidents like in 1789 or 1933 excluded).

Of course. No European would ever round up millions of people and send them to death camps (especially not Jews). No European would ever colonize and exploit other parts of the world. No European would ever start a war to gain territory, or a war for purely political purposes. They're much too sophisticated for that. It's only us uncivilized Americans who would ever do such barbaric things as intervene to save Europe from a rampaging, genocidal madman, or send obscene amounts of money to foreign aid, or be the muscle to protect Western Europe from those scary Russian Communists for fifty years.

Also, Europe is always at the forefront of technological development, because Americans are simply too stupid to excel in scientific or technical fields. This is why all major software corporations are located in Europe, run by Europeans. Americans are also, unlike Europeans, not intelligent enough to understand, much less invent, such useful things as the telephone, light bulbs, movie cameras, assembly-line production, airplanes (and certainly we could never accomplish space travel!) nuclear technology, or the Internet.

Wish Canada was on that list.



But of course many more than that believe in evolution. Far different from the states(and Turkey!)

Says here that about 59% of Canadians believe evolution is fact, 19% are 'unsure' and 22% believe god created humans in the last 10000 years.
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/16178

Little less than Hungary, Ireland and Luxembourg.

Must evolve intoa legendary epic!

OpenOffice is originally a creation of StarDivision, a Hamburg based company, brought by Sun Microsystem. Europe has quite good share in software companies, not the big names, but a lot of specialist small ones.

First calculating machine: Blaise Pascal - Theory of an universal computing machine: Alan Turing; First free programmable computer: Konrad Zuse.



Philipp Reis in 1860 (German)



Sir Humphry Davy in the 1820s (English)



Louis Le Prince (French, 1888)



Roman - Mass production of Terra sigillata, 50 B.C.



Clément Ader, French



Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner (German)



CERN, Pan-European

Didn't actually work or do anything useful.


I'm not finding a source. Are you referring to the ridiculous Davy Lamp? That was a candle inside a wire mesh, not a light bulb. And it resulted in an increase in mining accidents.


Wasn't viable. Edison's was.


Applied to modern industrial production.


It helps if the airplane actually flies, since that's the main point of an airplane. This seems to be a recurring theme, so I'll just lay down the ground rule that in order to claim to have invented something, you actually have to get it to work.


We got there first.


ARPANET was first.

The US leads the world in scientific research and technological innovation.