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.
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.’ "
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.
lol no.
This guy leads!
Your joke is highly diverting me, thanks!
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
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.
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
Religion is the cause. You are not allowed to think outside the cult. There are a lot of idiot Americans who don’t own guns or are exposed to them, so the lead theory is not valid in that sense.
Look at this guy, he doesn’t know gun ownership is a cult. Praise firearm Jesus.
There is a venn diagram where Idiot is the center. Not everyone who is a xian owns a gun, not all gun owners are xians, and yes, there are xians who worship the NRA. National Russia Association
nOt EvErYOnE WhO iS rEiLiGiOuS iS a cUlTIsT.
The dumbest and most religious ones usually own the most weapons though, so it’s a persistent state of mutual amplification.
haven’t shot a gun in at least 20 years and I’m retarded as shit. so…
I’m sure this will get rained with downvotes at some point but just know you gave me a good chuckle man, and I greatly needed it. Have a great night!
I only downvoted you for saying you’ll be downvoted. Didn’t want to disappoint you.
I think they meant the other guy for dropping the “retard” line without censoring
The euphemism treadmill is ridiculous. People are always going to just use the new euphemism as an insult, causing the creation of a new euphemism. I’m drawing the line at retarded. I rarely use it but I will not stop.
Being self aware enough to think that probably means you’re not all that bad.
The damage has been done, probably 😂
The vast majority of Americans don’t own/shoot guns. There’s 300 million guns because some people own multiple.
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/
Also, the British literally voted to have a worse economy. We don’t have a monopoly on headassery.
Also, the British literally voted to have a worse economy. We don’t have a monopoly on headassery.
Our Brexit vote narrowly won for the same reason that Trump won again - the weaponisation of our stupid people via social media by right-wing shitbags.
It’s not like these people are getting 75% of the vote and the opposition is fractured. Is’s mostly pluralities or, at best, 52%ish percent of the vote. And 20% of people in any country are just change voters no matter what the change is.
There’s not really mandates in the U.S. Trump won’t even be able to control the House. We got a Belgium situation where there’s no government.
For those that don’t know, Belgium is the world’s most successful failed state. There’s enough chocolate and beer around so no one cares but they suck at forming governments. I think they beat Iraq’s record at just not forming a government.
Don’t joke too flippantly about it to their face, though.
I did once and the dude sat me down and very patiently explained to me all of the ways people still suffered because of that period, like how his friend had to suddenly pay his cancer treatment out of pocket for months and months and would have ended up homeless if not for being able to crash on this guy’s couch.
It’s a known risk, and there are guidelines to lessen or prevent lead exposure at the range, but I’d wager most shooters aren’t aware.
For example:
Use jacketed or lead free bullets and primers.
Wash your face, arms and hands after using the range.
Change your clothes and shoes after using the range.
Wash your range clothes separately from your families.
Do not eat, drink, or smoke on the range.
Take the same precautions after cleaning your guns.
That being said, the folks at largest risk for this kind of exposure would be those who fire guns the most often, so that population would be the canary in the coal mine so to speak.
https://www.quora.com/How-often-do-police-officers-practice-at-ranges
"How often do police officers practice at ranges?
Most departments require re-qualification training once a year.
My department required shooting three times a year, once with our sidearm, once with our 12 gauge shotguns, and once with our AR 15 carbines.
As for my self, I go to the range 8 to 10 times a year. I am usually accompanied by 5 or 6 of my fellow officers. We are not for the fun, we are training by using the state required shooting plans and we add a little extra to it.
Most officers I know only go to range when required for re-qualification. Not because they don’t want to, shooting off a couple hundreds rounds is an expensive proposition."
Yeah… Might be a reason cops seem dumber than average, and they don’t hire the brightest to begin with.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
Thanks for being the first person in this thread to actually post some useful tips to get the lead out, so to speak.
Thanks for being the first person in this thread** to actually post some useful tips** to get the lead out, so to speak.
Sorry to contradict you here but, like I suggested in another comment, reading a book instead of playing with a gun is also a very efficient (and cheap) way to lessen lead exposure :p
