Don't take away my teabagging !!!!!!
Last edited by Stubbee (2013-10-08 21:53:35)
The US economy is a giant Ponzi scheme. And 'to big to fail' is code speak for 'niahnahniahniahnah 99 percenters'
Don't take away my teabagging !!!!!!
When will people learn to leave the internet alone?
The irony of guns, is that they can save lives.
I always love articles like this where the solution is to simply spend more money. We're always a few billion dollars away from solving some grand problem, if only we'd make the investment...RTHKI wrote:
http://nypost.com/2013/10/08/us-adults-are-dumber-than-the-average-human/
We've always had a love/hate relationship with schools and education in this country. We always pay lip service to wanting to improve the lot of our children, we want them to be high achievers etc. but our culture teaches kids the opposite. Everything has to be practical, everything has to have some use. How many times did you hear a classmate in school ask a teacher 'why do I need to learn this? when will I ever use it in my career/job?'. How many times has a parent said the same thing about their child's homework? We have a culture that does not learn for the sake of learning but instead practices escapism as if it were our true calling. This is why we have athletes and movie stars and musical artists making tens of millions of dollars a year.
It doesn't matter if we pay our teachers $50,000 or $500,000 a year because it's not the teachers that are really the problem. Sure, there are great teachers and shitty teachers, but the average teacher is competent at the least. No, the problem is the students, very few of whom put any effort at all into their studies beyond the bare minimum to get by, and again, very few that actually bother to learn anything not taught in the classroom. Ever been the smartest kid in a classroom? I have. Know what I did in my free time? I read. Know what the kid who didn't pay attention and constantly caused the rest of the class to slow down their learning pace did in their free time? They watched tv or played video games or bullshitted on the phone with their friends for hours every night.
Finally, what we've seen over the previous decade is treatment of schools as national investments. They treat them like businesses: put x money and time in, get y result out. They keep pouring more money in, and school years keep getting longer and longer, and are kids getting any smarter? No, they're getting dumber. They're doing worse on tests. Why? Because they're burning the kids out and the culture has gotten even more distracted rather than intellectual. Look at cable television. History Channel used to show documentaries on the Civil War and other useful stuff. Now it has Ice Road Truckers. TLC used to show open heart surgery, now it shows Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. I'm not indicting America today, I'm indicting American culture from its birth, because these aren't symptoms of a new decline, America has always been this stupid, cable television just became more democratized recently and the stupid outnumber the smart by a very, very wide margin.
All the money in the world won't make Americans any smarter until America has a very real, sustained, culture change. Remember that the next time someone says that the solution to our problems is spending more money. It's not. It hardly ever is.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
for some reason this doesn't read like a jay post at allJay wrote:
I always love articles like this where the solution is to simply spend more money. We're always a few billion dollars away from solving some grand problem, if only we'd make the investment...RTHKI wrote:
http://nypost.com/2013/10/08/us-adults-are-dumber-than-the-average-human/
We've always had a love/hate relationship with schools and education in this country. We always pay lip service to wanting to improve the lot of our children, we want them to be high achievers etc. but our culture teaches kids the opposite. Everything has to be practical, everything has to have some use. How many times did you hear a classmate in school ask a teacher 'why do I need to learn this? when will I ever use it in my career/job?'. How many times has a parent said the same thing about their child's homework? We have a culture that does not learn for the sake of learning but instead practices escapism as if it were our true calling. This is why we have athletes and movie stars and musical artists making tens of millions of dollars a year.
It doesn't matter if we pay our teachers $50,000 or $500,000 a year because it's not the teachers that are really the problem. Sure, there are great teachers and shitty teachers, but the average teacher is competent at the least. No, the problem is the students, very few of whom put any effort at all into their studies beyond the bare minimum to get by, and again, very few that actually bother to learn anything not taught in the classroom. Ever been the smartest kid in a classroom? I have. Know what I did in my free time? I read. Know what the kid who didn't pay attention and constantly caused the rest of the class to slow down their learning pace did in their free time? They watched tv or played video games or bullshitted on the phone with their friends for hours every night.
Finally, what we've seen over the previous decade is treatment of schools as national investments. They treat them like businesses: put x money and time in, get y result out. They keep pouring more money in, and school years keep getting longer and longer, and are kids getting any smarter? No, they're getting dumber. They're doing worse on tests. Why? Because they're burning the kids out and the culture has gotten even more distracted rather than intellectual. Look at cable television. History Channel used to show documentaries on the Civil War and other useful stuff. Now it has Ice Road Truckers. TLC used to show open heart surgery, now it shows Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. I'm not indicting America today, I'm indicting American culture from its birth, because these aren't symptoms of a new decline, America has always been this stupid, cable television just became more democratized recently and the stupid outnumber the smart by a very, very wide margin.
All the money in the world won't make Americans any smarter until America has a very real, sustained, culture change. Remember that the next time someone says that the solution to our problems is spending more money. It's not. It hardly ever is.
The paradox is only a conflict between reality and your feeling what reality ought to be.
~ Richard Feynman
~ Richard Feynman
Why not?Spark wrote:
for some reason this doesn't read like a jay post at allJay wrote:
I always love articles like this where the solution is to simply spend more money. We're always a few billion dollars away from solving some grand problem, if only we'd make the investment...RTHKI wrote:
http://nypost.com/2013/10/08/us-adults-are-dumber-than-the-average-human/
We've always had a love/hate relationship with schools and education in this country. We always pay lip service to wanting to improve the lot of our children, we want them to be high achievers etc. but our culture teaches kids the opposite. Everything has to be practical, everything has to have some use. How many times did you hear a classmate in school ask a teacher 'why do I need to learn this? when will I ever use it in my career/job?'. How many times has a parent said the same thing about their child's homework? We have a culture that does not learn for the sake of learning but instead practices escapism as if it were our true calling. This is why we have athletes and movie stars and musical artists making tens of millions of dollars a year.
It doesn't matter if we pay our teachers $50,000 or $500,000 a year because it's not the teachers that are really the problem. Sure, there are great teachers and shitty teachers, but the average teacher is competent at the least. No, the problem is the students, very few of whom put any effort at all into their studies beyond the bare minimum to get by, and again, very few that actually bother to learn anything not taught in the classroom. Ever been the smartest kid in a classroom? I have. Know what I did in my free time? I read. Know what the kid who didn't pay attention and constantly caused the rest of the class to slow down their learning pace did in their free time? They watched tv or played video games or bullshitted on the phone with their friends for hours every night.
Finally, what we've seen over the previous decade is treatment of schools as national investments. They treat them like businesses: put x money and time in, get y result out. They keep pouring more money in, and school years keep getting longer and longer, and are kids getting any smarter? No, they're getting dumber. They're doing worse on tests. Why? Because they're burning the kids out and the culture has gotten even more distracted rather than intellectual. Look at cable television. History Channel used to show documentaries on the Civil War and other useful stuff. Now it has Ice Road Truckers. TLC used to show open heart surgery, now it shows Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. I'm not indicting America today, I'm indicting American culture from its birth, because these aren't symptoms of a new decline, America has always been this stupid, cable television just became more democratized recently and the stupid outnumber the smart by a very, very wide margin.
All the money in the world won't make Americans any smarter until America has a very real, sustained, culture change. Remember that the next time someone says that the solution to our problems is spending more money. It's not. It hardly ever is.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
It makes sense.
I'd love to see those exam results broken down by demographic. I'd bet money that there is a residual effect based on where the Americans ancestors hailed from. My bet would be that those Americans of Scots-Irish, English, Spanish, Italian and black heritages would be on the lower end, just like they ranked lower on the world survey...
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
don't forget the school taxes go your school. So schools in nice neighborhoods are better funded. White people live in better neighborhoods on average. Skews the results.
In my neck of the woods, the school taxes are pooled and dispersed per student capita.
In my neck of the woods, the school taxes are pooled and dispersed per student capita.
The US economy is a giant Ponzi scheme. And 'to big to fail' is code speak for 'niahnahniahniahnah 99 percenters'
There's very little disparity in school funding on Long Island between towns. There is, however, quite a lot of disparity in schools because of the culture of the towns they are located in. Long Island is very... neighborhoody for lack of a better word. You have Jewish majorities here, Italian majorities there, black majorities over there, hispanics over there, German/Irish/WASPS over there etc. Basically all of the public school districts you want to send your kids to are located in the German/Irish/WASPy and Jewish majority towns. Yes, the parents in those towns tend to have more money, but the spending per pupil is roughly equivalent. They're the ones with the 99% graduation rates and the 90% college acceptance rates. It's a cultural thing.Stubbee wrote:
don't forget the school taxes go your school. So schools in nice neighborhoods are better funded. White people live in better neighborhoods on average. Skews the results.
In my neck of the woods, the school taxes are pooled and dispersed per student capita.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
I'd be interested to know whether the test had imperial unit measurements when given to US adults, or whether it was just metric.
And the Red Cross, yet another case of an organisation making ridiculous claims about something it really doesn't understand.
Want to make war games more realistic? Howbout we enforce a compulsory 10 minute pre-war diplomacy/propaganda trailer? Why don't we make ware games cover the war-protest movement? Or maybe even add non-combat player classes, say logistics corp, or maybe administrative staff? (Just unlocked the magnum office chair and stapler in Battlefield 6, HELL YEAH! 10-page SAP report streak badge here I come!!!)
And the Red Cross, yet another case of an organisation making ridiculous claims about something it really doesn't understand.
Want to make war games more realistic? Howbout we enforce a compulsory 10 minute pre-war diplomacy/propaganda trailer? Why don't we make ware games cover the war-protest movement? Or maybe even add non-combat player classes, say logistics corp, or maybe administrative staff? (Just unlocked the magnum office chair and stapler in Battlefield 6, HELL YEAH! 10-page SAP report streak badge here I come!!!)
I just downloaded the sample questions from the test they referenced and it's stuff a fifth grader should know
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
detroit spends the most per student and yet has a huge drop out rate.
i agree with the cultural part with jay. parents play a huge role in how their kid shape out. look at all the "omg azns" that come from poor ass backgrounds but parents expect nothing but an A.
i agree with the cultural part with jay. parents play a huge role in how their kid shape out. look at all the "omg azns" that come from poor ass backgrounds but parents expect nothing but an A.
Immediately practical and ultimately practical are a little different.Jay wrote:
Everything has to be practical, everything has to have some use.
Thats because you were too poor to have a videogame.Ever been the smartest kid in a classroom? I have. Know what I did in my free time? I read. Know what the kid who didn't pay attention and constantly caused the rest of the class to slow down their learning pace did in their free time? They watched tv or played video games or bullshitted on the phone with their friends for hours every night.
I think most nations, even America were better and are slipping rapidly backwards.Finally, what we've seen over the previous decade is treatment of schools as national investments. They treat them like businesses: put x money and time in, get y result out. They keep pouring more money in, and school years keep getting longer and longer, and are kids getting any smarter? No, they're getting dumber. They're doing worse on tests. Why? Because they're burning the kids out and the culture has gotten even more distracted rather than intellectual. Look at cable television. History Channel used to show documentaries on the Civil War and other useful stuff. Now it has Ice Road Truckers. TLC used to show open heart surgery, now it shows Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. I'm not indicting America today, I'm indicting American culture from its birth, because these aren't symptoms of a new decline, America has always been this stupid, cable television just became more democratized recently and the stupid outnumber the smart by a very, very wide margin.
'Idiocracy' Is one of the few films which actually changed my thinking. I used to think it was OK for people to do whatever they wanted, spend their schooling at the back of the class making fart noises, join the infantry, waste their lives drinking and racing quad-bikes, the whole libertarian dream etc.
Now I don't, its socially damaging and brings us all down. Authoritarianism isn't actully so bad.
I'm not sure whether Murdoch has some agenda, or if he just wants to make the cheapest crap and sell it at the highest price, but there seem to be two steady threads running through Fox programming now.
- Its OK to be an illeducated loser and waste your life on a shitty dead end job - if you can express your personality with banter, facial hair, piercings and tattoos - and who knows, one day TV might want to make a TV program about you, you being awesome as you sort through wriggling invertabrates and slime while being hosed with freezing saltwater/fix up old cars in a ghetto workshop/wrestle animals in mud/drive some sort of machine to a background of generic guitar riffs. You! TV! You! On TV!
- Its OK to be a bottom-feeding shyster who rips people off - doesn't matter if its old people, stupid people, dead people, poor people or desparate people you're ripping off - just get dat green
Keeps people distracted and enough money flowing around that no-one notices whats been quietly siphoned off.All the money in the world won't make Americans any smarter until America has a very real, sustained, culture change. Remember that the next time someone says that the solution to our problems is spending more money. It's not. It hardly ever is.
Last edited by Dilbert_X (2013-10-10 03:47:53)
Fuck Israel
Americas Army had that whole virtual war crimes stuff, dont shoot civies or get sent to jail lel.
I think people in general are competent enough to run their lives effectively, much more effectively than some remote authoritarian with imperfect knowledge and one size fits all solutions. I don't believe thst the average bureaucrat is any smarter than the average layman, no matter how many degrees they might hold.Dilbert_X wrote:
Immediately practical and ultimately practical are a little different.Jay wrote:
Everything has to be practical, everything has to have some use.Thats because you were too poor to have a videogame.Ever been the smartest kid in a classroom? I have. Know what I did in my free time? I read. Know what the kid who didn't pay attention and constantly caused the rest of the class to slow down their learning pace did in their free time? They watched tv or played video games or bullshitted on the phone with their friends for hours every night.I think most nations, even America were better and are slipping rapidly backwards.Finally, what we've seen over the previous decade is treatment of schools as national investments. They treat them like businesses: put x money and time in, get y result out. They keep pouring more money in, and school years keep getting longer and longer, and are kids getting any smarter? No, they're getting dumber. They're doing worse on tests. Why? Because they're burning the kids out and the culture has gotten even more distracted rather than intellectual. Look at cable television. History Channel used to show documentaries on the Civil War and other useful stuff. Now it has Ice Road Truckers. TLC used to show open heart surgery, now it shows Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. I'm not indicting America today, I'm indicting American culture from its birth, because these aren't symptoms of a new decline, America has always been this stupid, cable television just became more democratized recently and the stupid outnumber the smart by a very, very wide margin.
'Idiocracy' Is one of the few films which actually changed my thinking. I used to think it was OK for people to do whatever they wanted, spend their schooling at the back of the class making fart noises, join the infantry, waste their lives drinking and racing quad-bikes, the whole libertarian dream etc.
Now I don't, its socially damaging and brings us all down. Authoritarianism isn't actully so bad.
I'm not sure whether Murdoch has some agenda, or if he just wants to make the cheapest crap and sell it at the highest price, but there seem to be two steady threads running through Fox programming now.
- Its OK to be an illeducated loser and waste your life on a shitty dead end job - if you can express your personality with banter, facial hair, piercings and tattoos - and who knows, one day TV might want to make a TV program about you, you being awesome as you sort through wriggling invertabrates and slime while being hosed with freezing saltwater/fix up old cars in a ghetto workshop/wrestle animals in mud/drive some sort of machine to a background of generic guitar riffs. You! TV! You! On TV!
- Its OK to be a bottom-feeding shyster who rips people off - doesn't matter if its old people, stupid people, dead people, poor people or desparate people you're ripping off - just get dat greenKeeps people distracted and enough money flowing around that no-one notices whats been quietly siphoned off.All the money in the world won't make Americans any smarter until America has a very real, sustained, culture change. Remember that the next time someone says that the solution to our problems is spending more money. It's not. It hardly ever is.
I've just come to expect very little from people on the whole. I value people for their intelligence and what they can teach me, and those people are very rare. Fart jokes and other banter bores me to tears. Give me a spirited argument instead.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
I think most people are too dumb to do whats in their own interests, let alone society at large.
And then there's hipsters.
And then there's hipsters.
Fuck Israel
Work in rehab.Dilbert_X wrote:
I think most people are too dumb to do whats in their own interests, let alone society at large.
Can confirm this statement.
Whoa... Can't believe these forums are still kicking.
So you, who has a very mighty opinion of his own intellect, are ok with a government committee deciding how you should behave in your daily life? Or are you one of those that believes he will be the one of the intellectuals writing said laws and regulations rather than obeying them?Dilbert_X wrote:
I think most people are too dumb to do whats in their own interests, let alone society at large.
And then there's hipsters.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
- globefish23
- sophisticated slacker
- +334|6562|Graz, Austria
Billions and billions of people all around the world have let religion dictate how they should behave in their daily life since the dawn of humanity, when the first idiot came up with the principle.
So intelligence is tied to genetics?Jay wrote:
I'd love to see those exam results broken down by demographic. I'd bet money that there is a residual effect based on where the Americans ancestors hailed from. My bet would be that those Americans of Scots-Irish, English, Spanish, Italian and black heritages would be on the lower end, just like they ranked lower on the world survey...
The US economy is a giant Ponzi scheme. And 'to big to fail' is code speak for 'niahnahniahniahnah 99 percenters'
maybe more socio-economics, is the point I think he was trying to make.Stubbee wrote:
So intelligence is tied to genetics?Jay wrote:
I'd love to see those exam results broken down by demographic. I'd bet money that there is a residual effect based on where the Americans ancestors hailed from. My bet would be that those Americans of Scots-Irish, English, Spanish, Italian and black heritages would be on the lower end, just like they ranked lower on the world survey...
Thats what we have now, via government, laws etc. It works reasonably well.Jay wrote:
So you, who has a very mighty opinion of his own intellect, are ok with a government committee deciding how you should behave in your daily life?
Or you can move to Somalia, plenty of freedom there.
No, thats 'Libertarians', they want freedom for themselves which means tyranny for everyone else.Or are you one of those that believes he will be the one of the intellectuals writing said laws and regulations rather than obeying them?
Last edited by Dilbert_X (2013-10-11 16:58:27)
Fuck Israel
No, inherited culture. I'm not talking about intelligence, there are plenty of intelligent people that never get out of the gutter, just as there are many of average or less intelligence who rise high and do well in business and other things. The latter benefit from being raised in cultures that esteem learning. I think even in multiple generation scenarios there will still be some residual cultural influence based on country of origin. Values get passed down from generation to generation just like recipes.Stubbee wrote:
So intelligence is tied to genetics?Jay wrote:
I'd love to see those exam results broken down by demographic. I'd bet money that there is a residual effect based on where the Americans ancestors hailed from. My bet would be that those Americans of Scots-Irish, English, Spanish, Italian and black heritages would be on the lower end, just like they ranked lower on the world survey...
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat