I have been thinking a lot since the election about what could explain the incredibly high numbers of Americans who seem incapable of critical thinking, or really any kind of high level rational thought or analysis.
Then I stumbled on this post https://old.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/16ires5/lead_exposure_from_shooting_is_a_much_more/
Which essentially explains that “Shooting lead bullets at firing ranges results in elevated BLLs at concentrations that are associated with a variety of adverse health outcome"
I looked at the pubmed abstract in that Reddit post and also this one https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5289032/
Which states, among other things, “Workers exposed to lead often show impaired performance on neurobehavioral test involving attention, processing, speed, visuospatial abilities, working memory and motor function. It has also been suggested that lead can adversely affect general intellectual performance.”
Now, given that there are well in excess of 300 million guns in the United States, is it possible lead exposure at least partially explains how brain dead many Americans seem to be?
This is a genuine question not a troll and id love to read some evidence to the contrary if any is available
Probably not.
My aunt spent a long time working in education in the USA, much of it in leadership roles. When she incorporated lessons on critical thinking into the curriculum, it resulted in a lot of pushback from parents who did not appreciate their kids applying the lessons at home.
People who actively resist the use of critical thinking will seem cognitively impaired because they are, in fact intentionally impairing their cognition. My intuition here is to blame religious fundamentalism, but that’s not a well-researched position.
Religion is a major component I’m sure but overall parents probably don’t want their ideals and norms challenged in their own house. This is probably why people (on the right) say that college liberalized their kids. No, college teaches you how to think and pursue answers to your own questions. Not our fault your ideals are based on tradition and ignorance.
Yeah man. When that kid starts asking questions and challenging the family norms, that’s the teacher’s fault for making their life harder. It isn’t a sign that the parent needs to adapt.
Adapting IS a pain in the ass. Some parents don’t have the faculties to do it. Some do, but don’t after getting done with work. It is truely a generational trauma that the parent has to head off in themselves for it to carry to early aged kids.
100%
“We are already providing all the answers you will ever need.” -religion
Organized religion is, fundamentally — at its very core — based on rejecting critical thought; to “just have faith” in the unknown/unknowable.
It is in no way surprising that it’s incompatible with advanced science/evidence-based civilization.
This is from the Texas GOP 2012 education platform.
“We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
They backtracked on critical thinking after the outrage it caused with this
- Munisteri told KVUE, "The platform plank is against a specific type of teaching called ‘outcome-based education.’
"The reason why critical thinking is mentioned is some places try to disguise the program of outcome-based education and just re-label it as ‘critical thinking.’ "
“Good Christian kids need fear-based learning, like we had!”
I got a wooden spatula that’s great for creating fear!
Fundamentalism is certainly a contributing factor, but there are others. Conservatives have been working to cut back on education since the early 80’s. Removing critical thinking training was one of the objectives… Conservative policies are unpopular and are often supported with misrepresentations and outright lies. To succeed, they need a public without the knowledge or skills to realize their arguments are invalid. Unfortunately, they have gone a long way toward accomplishing that.
A lot of parental pushback comes from frustration over the Dunning-Kruger effect, where somebody who learns a little about a subject feels like an expert. This is often where kids are at. If you keep studying the same material you realize how much you don’t know, which tends to make you feel ignorant, but as you continue you get better at gauging what level you’re at. A lot of it is a matter of maturity. Some parents don’t mind that the kids are learning new things, they just aren’t very good at parenting it. Highly religious people are more likely to see outside information and analyticals skills as a threat, because yeah they are - for good reason lol.
Most Americans don’t shoot very often, even if they own a bunch of guns.
Part of it is that ammo is just expensive. A trip to the range can burn hundreds of dollars in ammo in just a few minutes.
Yes, this shit is so obvious. I have been calling this out for a decade now.
lol no.
This guy leads!
Your joke is highly diverting me, thanks!
No.
No that’s kind of stupid.
The amount of lead exposure from shooting is not particularly high and would be concentrated in a very small number of people who are doing things like firing uncoated bullets A LOT ie. reloaders. Most Americans don’t own guns and even the ones that do don’t fire them indoors extremely regularly and most indoor ranges have soap intended for lead. The lead exposure we’re talking about is pretty tiny especially considering lead effects cognition the most during brain DEVELOPMENT and the amount of leaded gas and lead paint are going to be much, much more significant. People who occupationally encounter lead in things like bullets, such as range workers, armorers, etc, monitor their lead exposure and if they are within safe levels the average guy who goes to an indoor range a handful of times a year certainly is. Also, shooting is expensive, most people aren’t shooting thousands of rounds a year, so countries with mandatory service where every 18 year old learns to shoot a rifle, likely using thousands of rounds of rifle ammo for every boy as an early adult would still be a much more statistically significant thing, as anyone who has ever received military training has, simply due to cost, shot more rounds than a very large chunk of any population
That’s a very interesting hypothesis. For sure it affects it and there might be other chemicals that get combusted as well. Not sure if the quantity is the same as with leaded gasoline and I’m pretty sure the proportion of Americans that go to shooting ranges on a regular basis is pretty small. Interesting post regardless
It’s also in the American water and air, so probably a minor contributing factor.
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Or, you know, the lead that we put into the air for decades burning leaded gasoline…
Even though we’ve (mostly) stopped doing that, the effects are cumulative, and there are still plenty of people alive who were around when that was still a thing.
Somebody else in the comments said something very similar, I’lll paraphrase what I responded which is that I hadn’t really thought of that, and I’m starting now to come around to the notion that maybe even if there is some percentage of the population suffering the cognitive impairments associated with the adverse effects of lead, it’s probably more likely that they were exposed many years or decades ago vs recently
At first glance I thought this post was a bit facetious, but after thinking about it and reviewing some research around people manufacturing the bullets and how it affects them and understanding that detonating them in confined spaces probably is just as if not more problematic. And if you have a job that requires you to do it often, say a cop, does that create even more of an effect? Lead exposure causes a loss of impulse control as well as intelligence effects. Could that be one reason why cops are so much more violent than the average person? I’d love to see a study on lead content of blood in cops, especially ones who murder people they capture, but unfortunately, the NRA is probably too powerful to allow that to happen. And conservatives hate masks, so I doubt it would be easy to convince cops to wear them while practicing.
Is it possible? Yes
Could it at least in part explain some behaviour? Yes.
But the missing question really is how much, and the answer is probably infitessimally small even if Real.
For lead exposure there are far easier and more common ways to get exposed such as lead pipes (which the US has a lot of).
But also you’d have to establish that the underlying problem is brain damage, and that is probably not true and instead reflects cultural bias.
There are many other reasons to explain American culture and behaviour which does not default to brain damage (or at least provable brain damage).
I would look at social and cultural issues first: an extremely weak political system, a poor quality general education system, high levels of religion, poor quality general health care, high levels of inequality including shocking levels of poverty.
The problem with the US is the extremes - if you have money you have the best the world can offer; if you don’t then the state provision is shockingly poor. But alot of the crazies are also rich, and that comes down to the culture and society.
Lead poisoning is the least likely explanation, and is almost wishful thinking to try and explain things as a disease rather than normal human nature.
COVID causes brain damage too. We largely don’t mask anymore like even in doctor’s offices, or worse hospitals. I think COVID has done a large amount of damage in a short time.
It’s really the idiocracy theory. Dumb people have more and more kids while smart people tend to have 0 to 2 kids. It’s exponetially growing the amount of dumb people. Besides some people that had potential dumbed themselfs down by joining organized religion. very sad
It’s not smart vs dumb though, it’s educated vs uneducated. I seemingly small distinction but a critical one.
There’s a distinct inverse correlation with the mean education level of a population and their birth rate (the better educated a group is the fewer babies they have) especially when you look at the women in that population.
Uneducated parents don’t value education in their children and so on and so on. Educated parents very much do value education in their children and actively participate in the schooling.
These two factors together mean that there’s a increasing number of people who do not value educating themselves or their children and also tend to identify with those politicians who present as uneducated (while actually being highly educated and highly intelligent but lacking in any empathy or morality). This is one factor in why populist parties are gaining traction again in western democracies.
Don’t forget the gutting of the school system over the past 40 years. Now we’re at “Let’s abolish the Department of Education”. It’s so sick.
Ooh the “Idiocracy is about Eugenics!” crowd is here
hai!!
Eugenics but because a funny movie said it it’s suddenly acceptable to parrot. 🙄
It’s not eugenics. Nobody was forced to have more or less children and none of it was based on ethnicity. It’s an uncomfortable thing to talk about, but it’s real. Unlike eugenics.
I think you may have misunderstood me. I’m not saying Idiocracy is a movie about eugenics. I’m saying that believing the world is getting dumber because dumb people have more babies and smart people don’t is eugenics adjacent.
I think we’re operating on slightly different definitions of eugenics. I looked it up to see if I was mistaken. Eugenics, by definition, involves State power to arrange. Whether by policy, law, or even forced sterilization and outright murder.
I just learned that there’s an idea called new eugenics or liberal eugenics. It strips out the use of State power, leaving the decisions up to the parents.
That’s why I said eugenics adjacent.
Yes it it it at least spreads harmful ideas about genetic and biological essentialism.
And no its not because of “stupid people” that the election turned out the way it did.
The subject is more complex and saying it was due to stupidity is a very easy answer that ignores the role power and wealth and a broken system play into the victory of trump.
I’m not saying stupid people pass on stupid genes and I don’t think the movie did either. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it. It’s a fact that uneducated people have more children. It’s more that stupid people raise stupid kids and the school system is continually getting worse. So the kids just don’t have much of a chance.
what could explain the incredibly high numbers of Americans who seem incapable of critical thinking
Garbage education system.
100%. It’s been intentionally neutered to keep people ignorant and stupid in their decisions.
It’s ‘razing of the library of Alexandria’ bad for our near future. The only thing worse I can think of is plastic pollution.
There’s also the risk of lead from hunted meat.
hunted meat
Makes it sound like yous are running about in the woods shooting at packets of mince
