NOT FROM THE ONION: 1 In 4 Americans Thinks The Sun Goes Around The Earth, Survey Says

SHOMTIMESH THE SHUN GOESH ROUND THE MOON

We have a fucking idiot who looked directly at an eclipse who was elected president. A person who doesn't know the god damned constitution even if James Madison himself tattooed it onto his fore head backwards so he could read it in the mirror is the president which is like a doctor who has no idea what stethoscope is.

This should come as no surprise.

forehead*

Hopefully I can be the first person to land on the sun.

I used to work for firms that used case interviews - we wanted to test how people thought about problems, actual technical knowledge and skills, general knowledge about the world around them, and how they worked in collaboration with other people (especially if they got frustrated) since they would often have to work with client staff.

For analyst positions straight our of undergrad, I often asked a basic question like "how many planets are there?" I would actually have accepted any answer above 8 if you could explain it by discussing the downgrade of Pluto and the existence of suspected planets beyond Neptune/Pluto.

These are people graduating from "top" universities, including Ivy League schools. A significant number of them simply had no idea.

I also used to ask "which is larger, the sun or the moon?" most would answer the sun, but then if I said, "yes, but the moon is so much larger in the sky." This would confuse them and almost all of them changed their minds to moon.

I am not surprised at all at this statistic. I'm actually surprised it isn't larger.

[quote]These are people graduating from "top" universities, including Ivy League schools. A significant number of them simply had no idea.

Well, I'm sure a lot of them had parents of the Mr. Kushner variety who wrote really big checks so that their idiot offspring could take away a seat from a more deserving student.

I remember some Texas frau challenged Bill Nye the Science guy about this in some community forum there years ago. She refused to believe him because the bible.

One thing I'll give Trump, was his ability to realize how many idiots there are in America and harness their stupidity to win the Presidency.

This what happens when you allow homeschooling and unaccredited schools, for profit online universities, charter schools and school district fraud.

Every election, we have some education issue where they are demanding more tax dollars and guess what, nothing ever changes.

Also, public education has been decimated over the last 30 years or so. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" just taught kids how to take tests. Learning and critical thought are no longer taught.

Also, no one wants to pay any taxes for anything except the military. Is it any surprise that people are stupid and our roads and bridges are crumbling around us?

It's not just homeschoolers. In fact, I am loathe to admit it but the few home schooled individuals I have met were actually more informed than the average American. You see this same ignorance among many Ivy League grads as an earlier comment pointed out.

Some of the problem is the American education systems' obsession with vulgar emotional prying rather than teaching basic facts. Much of middle and high school education is now centered on encouraging students to write about their feelings and personal life experiences and how it relates to "X" book or "Y" historical event. Rather than exploring these subjects on their own merit.

[quote] You see this same ignorance among many Ivy League grads as an earlier comment pointed out.

While some Ivy League graduates many not be Einsteins, I'm pretty sure close to 100% believe the earth goes around the sun

CNN was interviewing people on the beach Memorial Day Weekend, when the reporter asked one lady if she wasn't worried about being so close to other people without a mask, her reply "I don't want to die, but if that is what God wants for me, I am fine with that"

I wonder if I could convince her to play Russian Roulette with that mind frame. After all if God didn't want her to die, she wouldn't.

[quote]"I don't want to die, but if that is what God wants for me, I am fine with that"

This line is such BULLSHIT. She'd be a "Karen" demanding a hospital bed and doctors treat her ahead of everyone else because she has CHILDREN!

quote]One thing I'll give Trump

A flaming bag of shit?

A fatal disease?

A grenade with the pin pulled out?

It doesn't?

The sun has more Mass so Earth likely circles sun but why expect people to be astronomers? Why would anyone know this stuff? Give people 10 minutes to Google it and they would know. Ask people if "might is right". Everyone should answer yes. Important to know to understand life.

Are you for fucking real R17? The earth likely circles the sun? Fucking asshole.

Why am I not surprised I already had R17 on ignore? He must be a crackpot.

Ah...after further review of R17’s previous comments in other threads, he is s a consistent devil’s advocate and shit stirrer. He even suggested gays could be fixed through conversion therapy.

Kind of question jay Leno would ask. Makes the audience feel good about themselves. Irrelevant piece of information. Not an indication of iq or anything else. Why don't you go take one of those online iq tests where everyone scores 130.

If you are in bottom 25 percent, how low is your IQ? Around 70?

[quote]If you are in bottom 25 percent, how low is your IQ? Around 70?

IQ test scores are recalibrated so that the average is always 100 with a normal distribution. 68% of scores fall between 85-115. 13% falls between 70-85 and 115-130.

[quote]Kind of question jay Leno would ask. Makes the audience feel good about themselves. Irrelevant piece of information. Not an indication of iq or anything else.

General knowledge of the world around you is a leading indicator of a lot of personal and intellectual traits, such as curiosity, especially when that information is so commonly known and not part of a esoteric discipline. Knowing basic facts suggests that you both read widely and retain information. That you have wider ranging interests than those specific to your every day life.

If someone doesn't have a grounding in basic facts about how the world operates, you end up with people who think vaccines cause autism or that frequent close contact with other people during a pandemic is a good idea...or that god will protect them, so if they get sick, it's god's will.

In order to have a meaningful discussion with people, you have to have a common frame of reference and fact base. People who lack basic knowledge of the world around them, like whether the earth revolves around the sun or not, likely do not have a other crucial facts and their disposal that make rational discourse possible.

^^^25% percentile is about 87. It requires a few transformations on the normal distribution to find it.

Forgot to add that.

R17 is a typical Trump voter