Shit for brains -- why there are so many dumb Americans

[Ponietz]

“You're careful about every morsel you put into your mouth, exquisitely conscious about the potential impact on your growing baby's development.

But there is a catch: No matter how careful you may be, the food you eat and the beverages you drink likely contain one or more of some 10,000 chemicals allowed to be added to foods -- some of which are known endocrine (hormone) disruptors linked to developmental, cognitive and other health problems in babies and adults.

Yet the agency charged with protecting our food from unsafe chemicals -- the US Food and Drug Administration -- hasn't been doing the job Congress intended when it passed the 1958 Food Additives Amendment, according to a citizen's petition filed Wednesday and provided exclusively to CNN in advance.

"The FDA never considers the overall effect of these 10,000 chemicals on people's health, which is what Congress was after," said Tom Neltner, the chemicals policy director for the Environmental Defense Fund, a key signatory of the petition.

"And it's not simply one plus one equals two. We know that synthetic chemicals that harm hormones have what we call additive or synergistic effects," said Dr. Leonardo Trasande, co-author of the American Academy of Pediatrics' policy statement on the potential harms of food additives and packaging, which is part of the citizen's petition.

The additive effect of low levels of different chemical exposures can impact a baby's IQ and therefore his or her ability to excel in school and contribute to society at large, said Trasande, who is director of environmental pediatrics at NYU Langone Health.“

[link:https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/23/health/chemicals-in-food-fda-petition-wellness/index.html|

[Aristus]

1. Because they breed and pass their defective intellectual capacity on to succeeding

dumb generations.

[Act_of_Reparation]

3. Eugenics?

Cool story, bruh.

[Aristus]

6. Nice try. I didn't mention anything about eugenics.

Which has as its goal the elimination of certain communities of people. Which no liberal wants.

It was just an explanation as to why they're so prevalent when natural selection would seem to make idiocy a maladaptive trait.

[Act_of_Reparation]

17. You just made an argument for heritable intelligence.

Eugenics is the study of arranging human reproduction in such a manner as to increase the prevalence of "desirable" heritable characteristics, or the elimination of "undesirable" heritable characteristics.

So, you're saying there are a lot of stupid people because stupid people reproduce too much, but you're not making a eugenic argument? That's really fascinating my dude.

[Aristus]

18. No.

I made an argument about heritable un-intelligence.

Anyway, unlike sexual orientation, this one is both nature and nuture. If a not-too-bright parent wants his or her child to have every educational advantage they themselves had been denied, that's hope for the human race right there.

If this same parent cultivates in their children their own narrow-mindedness, squalor, and provincialism, that gets us, well, what we have today; the direction of a society dictated by morons.

Eugenics is the forcible prevention of pregnancies, or the ending of lives, of people considered 'undesirable' by others.

Not only is that not the argument I'm making, I stand opposed to that in the strongest terms. The solution is education, education, education.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

8. What the fuck is this shit right here.

[Wellstone ruled]

2. You are seeing the effects

of Reaganomics's and how it shaped a generation of vindictive self centered Racists looking for self pity from one another. It is just another form of Stockholm Syndrome complete with their own social Network too reinforce their beliefs.

[lastlib]

4. Television?

If I watch a sitcom these days, I'm likely to feel my IQ drop 10 points

[lpbk2713]

5. For one thing the (R)s have systematically devastated our school systems.

Any capable teachers who had any self worth would not work under the conditions that were left and they moved on to greener pastures. And I can't blame them a bit.

[Klaralven]

7. We Compared the Average IQ Scores in All 50 States, and the Results Are Eye-Opening

https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/we-compared-average-iq-score-in-all-50-states-results-are-eye-opening.html
But as imperfect as the IQ test is, at least it's a consistent metric. Here are the results.

Massachusetts 104.3
New Hampshire 104.2
North Dakota 103.8
Vermont 103.8
Minnesota 103.7
Maine 103.4
Montana 103.4
Iowa 103.2
Connecticut 103.1
Wisconsin 102.9
Kansas 102.8
New Jersey 102.8
South Dakota 102.8
Wyoming 102.4
Nebraska 102.3
Virginia 101.9
Washington 101.9
Ohio 101.8
Indiana 101.7
Colorado 101.6
Pennsylvania 101.5
Idaho 101.4
Oregon 101.2
Utah 101.1
Missouri 101
New York 100.7
Michigan 100.5
Delaware 100.4
North Carolina 100.2
Texas 100
Illinois 99.9
Maryland 99.7
Rhode Island 99.5
Kentucky 99.4
Oklahoma 99.3
Alaska 99
West Virginia 98.7
Florida 98.4
South Carolina 98.4
Georgia 98
Tennessee 97.7
Arkansas 97.5
Arizona 97.4
Nevada 96.5
Alabama 95.7
New Mexico 95.7
Hawaii 95.6
California 95.5
Louisiana 95.3
Mississippi 94.2

[WhiskeyGrinder]

9. FOH with this racist, classist bullshit.

[TheBlackAdder]

12. IQ tests are regional. Humans throughout the world, on average, have the same intellectual capacity.

.

Their education, media, society, family pressures and other influences affect their knowledge and critical thinking.

Many of these IQ tests are written to placate certain stereotypes or cultures, via 'standardized tests' and completely fail to assess one's intellect outside of their designed norms. Most are just bullshit designed to elevate certain classes of people and denigrate others.

BTW. On my "I. Q." standardized tests from years back, I scored a 136.4. Does that make me any smarter than people who did not have the same intersectional background I had?

.

[Midnight Writer]

16. This is actually a pretty close spread.

I doubt you could tell much difference talking to a 94 IQ or a person with a 104 IQ person.

In addition, there are many kinds of intelligence.

For example, Donald Trump cannot comprehend written material, but he is a master of manipulating people, even people with a much higher IQ than his.

[Cicada]

10. Watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix to understand some of the insanity

Millions get basically all information from social media. By controlling what they see you can control their view of the world. It seems impossible that millions believe the earth is flat. It seems impossible that millions believe celebrities and politicians have sex with children and then eat them. Former top executives at Facebook, Twitter, etc explain how it happens. They say that online firms use artificial intelligence to design profit maximizing algorithms which feed different information to different people. No human intended this but artificial intelligence has learned that conspiracy theories are great for profits. So online algorithms feed info to increase belief in insane conspiracy theories. Again no human decided to do that. Artificial intelligence which creates profit making algorithms “decided” to do that. Some former executives think that this very well Could create civil war in the US. A similar opinion about the power of Facebook to get people to believe anything desired was expressed by the Cambridge Analytica executive guiding the Trump 2016 Facebook effort.nThere the manipulation was done on purpose. I think the documentary for that was the Great Hack.

Yes people can be persuaded that Hillary Clinton eats children. Millions of people believe that.

[Silent3]

11. The general stupidity we're seeing in this country has a lot more to do with...

...poor education (especially critical thinking skills) and, without those critical thinking skills, the great magnifying effect of the internet on propaganda and misinformation. There has been a concerted "conservative" propaganda effort for decades now that has culminated in the fever pitch of Republican gullibility and hatefulness that we're seeing.

Food additives, and theorized possible interactions thereof, are way, way low on my list as an explanation for the current mess we're in. Germans put Hitler in power, Russians Stalin, Cambodians Pol Pot, etc., way before most modern food additives existed, and when those few that did exist were not in widespread use.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

13. I think religion has something to do with it.

Intelligent people with good education seem to still make crappy decisions because of religious indoctrination from childhood. I mean, they received a good k-12 education and even college, but their reasoning is still screwed up because of their religion. Religion basically teaches the opposite of critical thinking skills. Your supposed to believe in magical beings that you have no evidence for. I find that religious people are much more likely to fall for internet conspiracy theories and I think it's because the conspiracy theories don't sound all that far fetched when you compare them to the religious beliefs they already have.

[Silent3]

14. The two things are related, which is why the Religious Right was a great target...

...for Republican propaganda (and now Russian propaganda). Practicing the head games you need to play with yourself to swallow fundamentalist doctrines is great preparation for what Trump is selling now.

[betsuni]

15. I look and feel different depending on what I eat.

If I fall off the wagon and start eating processed food full of chemicals and sodium and sugar, I'm tired and irritable, bloated, get rashes and itchiness, indigestion. But it's addictive! Most other people probably don't have such obvious symptoms as I do and wouldn't notice how it affects them over time. Horrifying that children grow up eating processed food all the time.

Couple of years ago I saw a documentary about childhood obesity. Parents were overweight but not seriously. Child was. A chef taught them how to shop and cook homemade food. After a short time the parents said they felt so much better, more energy. Children lost weight. But then at the end there was a follow up a year later and almost all the children had gained the weight back. Tragic.