The proliferation of stupidity

Ignorance combined with a sense of entitlement seems to be the hallmark of the current generation.

I've been to stores and have had to count change back to teenage clerks.

One girl tried to give me a couple of extra dollars. She literally didn't know -when- to add and -when- to subtract. She just gave the money the computer told her to. But in this case there'd been some sort of problem and the computer wasn't doing the math for her.

I totally understand that you can get flustered and make mistakes, but that's not what this was. I actually did have to kind of indirectly teach her how to count to 2000 in multiples of 100.

Younger generations have always been stupid (or at least for a very, very long time). You just notice it now because you're not longer part of the younger generation. This is why your parents and grandparents and great grandparents etc etc complained about their young whipper snapper kids.

Also, stupidity is a lot more noticeable now because we have interactions with a MUCH larger base of people than in the past. 50 years ago your chances of encountering stupidity were pretty slim because your interactions were basically limited to your immediate social circle. Now, we're exposed to stupidity every day via the Internet, TV, and all the other wonders of the age of technology and mass media.

There seems to be a lot of people in a college setting that seem to think that they are smarter than everyone there. I've overheard several conversations that all go the same way. T.A./student 1: Man everyone around here is so stupid. T.A./Student 2: Yeah, I know eh. Everyone but us and our social group of friends are so stupid.

In contrast, what I've noticed about students who do poorly regularly is that their heads are in another place, as opposed to actually being dumb.

Deathwing_sl said:

Can you calibrate a pipette without a computer?

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Do I have access to deionized water and a decent scale?

Titan_atlas_sl said:

Wondering if others are noticing this as well. It seems to me that with greater access to knowledge through technology we as a whole would be getting smarter. I work in the restaurant industry so not the best breeding ground for people going somewhere in life. Nonetheless these high school aged people just seem to have no base of simple knowledge. I mean the stuff we were taught in high school. It seems like we are using all this tech to socialize constantly and even worse we are trying to make those interactions shorter and more efficient to our detriment.

Wondering what you guys are noticing both in your own lives and in different industries, maybe some that are more brain demanding than my own.

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The deplorable state education system in most of the country combined with parenting from the worst generations humanity ever produced (Baby boombers and Gen X).

Everyone in this thread is probably over 35. Everyone things the younger generation is stupid.

McCheese_sl said:

Younger generations have always been stupid (or at least for a very, very long time). You just notice it now because you're not longer part of the younger generation. This is why your parents and grandparents and great grandparents etc etc complained about their young whipper snapper kids.

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I think this is probably dead on. Just face it, the majority of people are idiots. It's just when you're younger, you are more oblivious to it. Plus, relatively, those people were more intelligent than you.

The older I get, though, the more I realize how dumb everyone around me is. It's actually somewhat freeing when you notice that everyone you work with is borderline retarded so you can put in minimal effort. The oddest thing is as I've moved up (in a job currently where everyone is required to at least hold an undergrad degree, and no liberal arts), I've noticed it more and more. Whether that's just me being more aware of my surroundings (as above) or that they're actually dumber, I don't know.

IfIwere smarter (or less lazy), I'd probably figure out a way to leverage that to my advantage, but I've become pretty apathetic about it.

Think of how just dumb the average person is. By definition half of them are even dumber than that!


The one thing that keeps it from being "those damn kids on my lawn" is looking for specific instances. So we're not saying we weren't dumb -- I was and continue to be one dumb motherfucker, we're just saying that they're SUPER dumb.

It's more of a point and laugh kind of thing.

They may not be stupid but if the country ever loses power for more than a few weeks there will be many, many deaths due to people not knowing how to take care of themselves. Common sense is very rare these days, this includes people in our own generation.

http://www.p4rgaming.com/majority-of...er-mario-bros/

This year, around 90 percent of the test participants were unable to complete the first level of Super Mario Brothers. We did not assist them in any way except by providing the exact same instruction manual we used back then. Many of them did not read it and the few that did stopped after the first page which did not cover any of the game mechanics.

We watched the replay videos of how the gamers performed and saw that many did not understand simple concepts like bottomless pits. Around 70 percent died to the first Goomba. Another 50 percent died twice. Many thought the coins were enemies and tried to avoid them. Also, most of them did not use the run button. There were many other depressing things we noted but I can not remember them at the moment.

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Deathwing_sl said:

Sure, as long as you didn't need a computer to produce either of those.

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Balance scale with finely lathed mass cylinders it is!