We are stupid

Why are we so much dumber than we were even a hundred years ago It's not fair I was a great student. Excelling. I'm not even half the person people in my position were. I even went to University. But I am >monolingual >never read philosophy or classic literature >Have never taken calculus >don't know anything It's not fair. First world country. Top student. Nobody ever pointed out any deficiencies. But I read about people from the 1800s. It's insane. I'm just old and stupid. And if I commit my entire life to it. I still won't even be halfway to what these people were when they were in their 20s. I came out of school exhausted, stupid, zero intellectual curiosity, zero hobbies or interests. Just a longing for death

>>66953 So learn another language and learn calculus, I highly doubt intelligence is the actual limiting factor, probably motivational. People in not English speaking places don’t learn English because they are geniuses but rather because there is a large motivation to do so.

>>66954 This is accurate. Academia is english-dominated in the modern world, only a few French and Russians and Chinese still write anything in their native languages. Scholars were multilingual waybackwhen because they had to learn French and possibly Latin or German to read all the notable academic publications.

>Why are we so much dumber than we were even a hundred years ago Probably because 100 years ago when people wanted to learn something they just did it, they didn't even need school and they didn't have lainchan to come to and spend time complaining about not learning things when they could be learning things/

>>66954 >>66954 >>66955 >>66956 I just can't man.

I've been there Lain. Most public school systems (specifically that of the US) are soykafholes regardless. Teaching yourself will forever be the greatest form of learning. Especially with the tools we have nowadays. Start now on this new path you've found, Lain. You've really yet to live most of your life, Lain. You can experience the world however you want to in these times. That's a privilege so many people 100 years ago wish they had. Are you spiritual at all? You'll be perpetually stressed if you put everything on the life you live inside of your human existance. There is hope Lain.

>>66953 This is the underlying nexus blood of reality. You're dumb because long ago a bunch of clever and very devious, warlike types banded together and took over everything covertly. You're easier to feed on and control when you're weak and stupid. So they've been degrading you on every level since conception. The entire world was architected by them, and is designed to do this. Everyone else thinks it's fine, they're basically their trauma bonded minions. Carrot and stick. Beat it with the stick until it knows who's in control. Then throw its broken husk into the labyrinth, go chase carrots, stupid animal. The carrot and stick are fused WITHIN the animal, it is the end result. Fusion of carrot and stick. Life in the shadow of the stick, chasing the carrots. The animal is small and broken, and pretends to be big chasing shadows on the cave wall. While running towards the cliff, falling down into the meat grinder.

Things just hit different when we’re as imprisioned as we are today. The great scope of things in the past has diminished. We don’t live in the era of artists, adventurers, inventors and philosophers. Almost all the great art was made 200 or more years ago. The art that’s great today exists in subcultures, if they’re lucky maybe a few million at most know about them, a couple hundred thousand more likely, even less in some cases.

>>66963 Maybe we should stop adding halogens to the water. And mediocrity will fade.

>>66960 >>66962 >>66963 It would just be nice to have a true mentor and teacher for once in my life. I never had that. I think I have some things I might want to read. But I question my own purity of intent. It's all likely vanity. I don't know. Honestly it's difficult to believe any of that ancient stuff actually happened. I don't trust history at all. I've tried to be spiritual. Trying to read the Bible. But I just doubt man's ability to even keep that stuff straight even assuming it's original form was true. Everyone I talk to in real life about this stuff not only has no interest but thinks I'm weird for wanting to read 'old soykaf'. And that combined with my vague feeling that the old soykaf is fabricated. I just can't really believe in anything anymore. I'm an orphan so I never even had that kind of guidance or history. Genetically I'm a mess. I have no ties to anything around me or in me to be honest.

A great irony in all this is that for how exhausting, automated and distracting modern first world life is, we still have public libraries. Break your habits and learn how to use yours. Start there.

>>66965 Ah. Well, what I used to do, hard to describe and not really worthwhile because I didn't really find the answer either. I just compartmentalized. Knew the gist of how to appear normal "enough", walking the line between eccentric and offputtingly insane. It's about presence and absence. Enough of the right thinsg present to spur the mind to fill in what it wants to see, but not so much absent that there are glaring holes or unwanted questions. Likewise, a manner of organization should be achieved, whereby if you were to decompartmentalize and bridge your different realities, it wouldn't really break any of them or your existing relationships. I pretty much had odd experiences (like Lain, schizotypal with narcissistic traits) which I put in one box, and then normal stuff I put in another. The system is more complex than that with how information is structured, shared core memory, alters, inner entities, etc. Whatever, it worked at the time. I couldn't scale to the sheer demand and torture which came though, so it broke down. I couldn't hold onto everything and be everything, I had to let some things go. I'm literally working on gematria and numerology right now. Ancient symbolism, mythology. Adam Kadmon. I don't give a fuarrrk. I should, but I don't. Good luck I guess.

>>66962 OP WANTS to chase carrots though, he just feels bad that he didn't chase the right carrots.

>>66967 Also, I should add. After my father died (~22) I found myself, I don't know what the word would be, looking for male... it's not role models. I don't know, I saw it happening and it disgusted me (I don't need anyone, I do it all myself!) but I was also clearly looking for something. In retrospect I realize it wasn't a big deal. I don't know. I agree with Lain above. It's not a quasi-parental nor imitative process, it's just something vital to becoming an adult that I can't put into words. The only thing I could comprehend was dominance and submission, parent and child states. So I couldn't remain detached and take on the superior (parental) role, I would have to fight off being forced into the child state. I lacked an outward self, therefore lateral connection was not possible and also completely unwanted. I knew this. Many mistakes and malformations.

>>66953 Speak for yourself, fool. Also, how do you go to university but never take calculus?

>>66970 >Also, I should add. After my father died (~22) I found myself, I don't know what the word would be, looking for male... it's not role models. I don't know, I saw it happening and it disgusted me (I don't need anyone, I do it all myself!) but I was also clearly looking for something. In retrospect I realize it wasn't a big deal. Okay, this came across wrong. I was avoiding words like role models, attaching, following, looking for mentors or teachers. But that may be accurate, or at least what was supposed to be happening. But wasn't, because I'm fuarrrked up, and everyone else is too. It may be hardwired. Just like the Saturn return at 27. Life stages, run on a biological clock, not actually optional. I fought it. Don't know what to tell you. Find what you should be doing and just learn from whoever is around.

>>66969 What? No. >>66971 Don't bring this kind of talk here >>66967 >>66970 I guess I'm just not sure where to focus my energy. I get exhausted just thinking. Maybe I'm just not supposed to do it. Maybe educating me at all was a mistake. I wish I could erase who I was and let someone else have another chance at my life. I can't think for myself. I have no skills no knowledge It's hard to even tell people what I've been doing all these years because I don't know either but I have a degree I guess

>>66973 I mean, you said it yourself. You just wish you wasted time on other timesinks besides what you chose to waste time on.

>>66973 >I wish I could erase who I was and let someone else have another chance at my life. In other words, recast your part. Have someone worthy live your life. Or do you mean just wipe yourself from the script (and record) entirely? Well, I tried both. Didn't realize it entirely, until much later. Rejected opportunities and left someone else to live my life, watched it crash and burn. Would it have been so bad? Split into pieces, created wonderland and tried to achieve absolute control, wiped my memory (I crossed the river Lethe knowing full well I was headed to Hades, the split mind as I said). I just cut ties with everyone and tried to just by sheer absence and walling it off in my mind, just have them forget about me. I don't know you or what you need. I'll just say I did that and I can say things were seen that would not have been otherwise, but not much was really "learned". I continue to live with the consequences. Even those words are alien because I destroyed my own reflection and now I'm talking about a "me" that is experiencing "consequences". Invulnerability. Absolute control. Exemption from the natural order. Be everything, be nothing, do all, see all, all at once. Turns out to do that, you need to die. So that's what I did. Look in the mirror, see nothing. See no reflection in anything or anyone, when they respond I don't connect it to me. I look at my own footprints and see something someone else did. It came to the point where I was washing mud off the leg and I had this extreme sensation that I was taking care of someone else, a child. Like I was just a golem, an empty doll, a puppet, to my parents. So now I had taken on the role of the parent. And saw the body and mind the same way. Just puppets. Just something to take care of. A matter of shoulds and should nots, necessity, obligation, net benefit. Many difficulties. Not really worth it. Just find something to do and do it. And I understand that when you look within for the fire (will) you likely only experience a void. Nothing moves. So you don't move. And nothing happens day after day. I don't know waht to tell you, there are other ways than trying to become an inverted being that feeds on this void as a power source instead.

>>66953 1. More people go to school now then back in the 18th or 19th century. Austria and then followed by other holy roman states decided to make primary school a requirement to get reading skills up, also because of the enlightenment at a time. >Maria Theresa's reform established secular primary schools, which children of both genders from the ages of six to twelve were required to attend. However, universities were still for those who could afford it. Back then you could basically study all your life and there was not truly an "end" to your study as long as money didn't run out, this is very different to today's world. You HAVE to FINISH uni or college. Even the idea of finishing is purely against actual intellectual and scientific doctrine, how can you ever finish learning about something? What education has become is not in the benefit of the genius or science, it's for the benefit of capitalism and the nation. 2. Schooling has gotten to the point where it's not about science and discovery, it's purely about learning, all creativity to hell, you have to do it the "right" way. This of course kills all geniuses and creates fake geniuses, the ones that study blindly. (This is why chess to some point also is like kicking dead whales down the beach, as Bobby Fischer pointed out) 3. Why do you even get judged it school? What is the reason for that? Well to remember it, you would probably answer, but you will not remember it, maybe 25% if you have good long term memory. So what is it truly about? Well you have to beat the other kids to the goal of a good university. Not intelligent people go to MIT or whatever. The people that got good grades go to MIT. The main reason why grades exist then are that not everyone can go to the best universities, they have to create an environment where you have to compete with your grades, not intellect. Solution, have primary school to learn the basics as it is today and teach the scientific method and experiments and don't judge on grades, but rather on actual scientific discoveries or poetry or such, I am speaking about 12-14 yo there and I think it is very much doable for a 12 yo to write a phd paper when education is done the right way. Also don't make it requirement culturally to need to go to uni or something, because there are way too many people in unis that are actually stupid and just study 24/7 blindly. But I guess that's just one of the solutions and it might be a bit extreme. I just wanted to show why education is trash nowadays.

>>66977 I feel like homeschooling is the solution at least on an individual level. But people feel too weird about that. Who give a fuarrrk if your kid turns out to be a 'weirdo' in a society thats corrupt? Unless the only thing you want for your child is the pipeline to a middle tier six figure job doing what amounts to nothing.

>>66953 >monolingual I "know" several languages >never read philosophy or classic literature I've amassed several shelves worth of philosophy and classic literature over the last two decades. >Have never taken calculus I've taken all three, linear algebra, etc. >don't know anything I know plenty, but I'm always trying to learn more. The average person is an idiot. You just found out you're mediocre, too. So, change it.

>>66974 I don't follow >>66979 I don't understand the desire to kick someone while they're down >>66975 I just don't know what to do Books seem like the last piece of media that could appeal to me. But a lot do them just seem to offer entertainment at the end of the day even the things people 'study'. I feel like I'm looking for answers without a question. I don't know what I'm really doing.

>>66953 The way we use technology is making us dumber and weakening our cognitive skills. It's a combination of search engines, readily available internet connections and workaphobic laziness. >confronted by a problem? >Use his brain? >Nope >smartphone >google it

>>66953 I can't speak for the West, but my perspective as someone who's familiar with traditional Middle Eastern education (pre-Westernization) as well as had a standard Western education, the difference boils down to educational philosophy. In the past, educational systems like Mughal India's Dars-i Nizami curriculum focused on self-cultivation and producing a learned individual that embodied a certain ethical attitude and doing this through master-disciple relationships. There was an emphasis on learning languages by intensively studying their morphology and syntax, reading books by breaking down their grammar and logic, as well as having good enough knowledge in a broad area of subjects (mathematics, philosophy, mysticism, religious studies) that would allow you to investigate practically anything by yourself independently. The idea being, an educated scholar, who has the right kind of attitude and knows enough of everything, can use his brain and his learning to apply himself to any given situation while being a Confucian gentleman, a moral exemplar who guides others along the way. Education was also pretty cheap and often for free and valued by ordinary people. Scholars back then were also basically otakus, just people with an obsessive interest in something that wrote and preached about it at the same time, not someone employed to deliver standardized information. Today's modern education systems are productivity orientated. We create people who possess a set of standardized textbook information in any given field and can apply it in the real world. Why train people in multiple disciplines and languages only for them to end up as clerks when you can just drill the need to know information regarding a clerical job into someone's head for 4 years and then spit them onto the labor market? It's cheaper and much more profitable for colleges to train an office worker to be an office worker than produce a renaissance man who can be an office worker, or a teacher or an art dealer. It's also a product of the extreme division of labor in industrialized countries. The more specialized people get, the narrower and more retarded they become, suffering from extreme tunnel vision. How many scientists these days are actually familiar with economics or theology and vice versa? Today's schools prepare people for careers built around a series of repetitive and mundane tasks they will simply do over and over again at any given workplace. What we're doing is basically programming bots and the political benefit is that you get a passive brain dead populace who are easy to manipulate.

>>66985 Yes. Just completely omit the fact that the EM emissions of these devices cause brain damage. Pretend it's all conditioning. We can just pretend and pretend and pretend, and it'll all be fine.

>>66987 Yea. Just keep pretending that the loxnoid arent travelling through the metalanes and forcefeeding you that information when they kroplen.

>>66985 I agree. But one could argue that it's just part of a trend that stretches back to the invention of writing. People originally had to memorize the wisdom of their cultures in the songs and poetry. Originally writing served as an aid to memory, eventually replacing it. The printing press, too. In the past, if you wanted to have a certain book, you had to transcribe it, you couldn't just 'buy a copy', and in transcribing it, you would read it and interpret it as it passed through your pen, even if the transcription was verbatim (as should be.) I am resorting to that for certain classical-languaye books that I couldn't possibly find in my country, and can't afford to buy anyway. Now you can hoard books from libgen and never read them. Or simply skim them, there is no effort put in theor acquisition to motivate deep study. Of course, everything has it's pros and cons. Now I can find books on any subject I can think of, from ancient mayan literature to molecular biology. Also, the availability of writing and the cheaper ways to produce books, means that knowledge can evolve far beyond what is possible with poetry and songs alone. I do not pretend to ignore this or that TECH=BAD, I just want to point out the general trend and it's counter arguments. Search engines are indeed a crutch, though.

>>66991 I still memorize some books, I had no choice really. But I see your point, the medium is the message. The issue today is that we have this culture of convenience and laziness when it comes to tech. Look at games today, they hold the players hand in pretty much every way. It's as if every piece of technology only exists to make something easier, simpler, and quicker and this attitude doesn't sit right with me. It leads to a situation where we offload our basic cognitive skills onto machines in a way humans have never done before in history. So you now have people who freak out if they can't use google maps when there is a literal map displaying a simple route and how to get there. It's like we've let these machines into our lives and depend on them out of sheer laziness rather than using them responsibly and ethically. The other thing that really bothers me is the sheer amount of content that we're constantly being flooded with and how exhausting and overwhelming it can be. But I sense the real danger is when we start relying on technology to filter stuff out for us and so everything is basically fed to us by algorithms run by some corpo.

>>66980 >I don't understand the desire to kick someone while they're down No, what you don't understand is what you communicated, nor what I am communicating. At first, it appears you are discussing everyone as a whole, in which I would be inclined to agree, but my message would end the same. Just with a different note: Be the change you wanna see. However, you then made it about yourself exclusively. So, you say "We", I say "Not me", I then show you how. It's not because of what I have done, it's my mentality. "but I'm always trying to learn more". Maybe you failed to understand it. That doesn't matter. At least re-read the last line, that was the most important part for you. >The average person is an idiot. You just found out you're mediocre, too. So, change it. Do you need elaboration? You are the one that defined this mediocrity, in the first place. Maybe you didn't realize it. But then maybe you are just meant to be the mediocre person you think you are. It may be time to accept it. There's nothing wrong with being average. I'm uncertain about why people feel the need to claim "mediocre" is a bad thing, I suspect it may just be a rhetorical statement that has long-sense been lost by the general population, as is normally the case. But considering the majority of the people who think "mediocre" means "bad" tend to be less than mediocre... Well, maybe they just need something to be mad about. You say you feel like you are looking for answers without a question. I gave you the answer to the question you do not know., but the question does exist. Just remember that you can only blame the system up to the point in which you woke up. After that, it is your fault.

>>66996 I don't know what you're talking about. Why the rudeness? I already want to die. I guess I'm just worthless

>>66977 >What education has become is not in the benefit of the genius or science, it's for the benefit of capitalism and the nation. It was never about the benefit of genius or science. Universities have been clogged with rich doofuses there for the fancy piece of paper ever since universities branched off from seminaries. Academics only tolerate it because they get a sufficient amount of time to think and talk about stuff that interests them. I wouldn't be doing grad school if I knew people I could talk about research with in person. Unfortunately there are about 5 people in the region who I can have a productive discussion with about my research and they all hang out at the university. (they're all nice folks too) >I think it is very much doable for a 12 yo to write a phd paper when education is done the right way. Hmmm, I'm dubious of this claim. You may be thinking that you could manufacture wunderkinds, but with few exceptions this amounts to child abuse and those people burn out young. Terrence Tao is probably the only wunderkind in the modern age who didn't burn out before adulthood, and I doubt that even he could have written a good dissertation at age 12. On the other hand, if everyone with promise had the same education as he did, and there were a culture of true encouragement for youth, more people would be producing great works at age 17 or 18. I know that I would have gotten started much sooner if I hadn't been quietly going through the motions, never talking to people who could have been my mentor. I'm lucky I managed to find someone before I graduated from college, otherwise it probably never would have happened. >>66985 I do use google scholar to see what other people have done so I can avoid duplicating work, and wikipedia is the most convenient reference you could hope for. But, it is true, the things you really know are always burned into your brain.

>>66986 >How many scientists these days are actually familiar with economics or theology and vice versa? Most of them have some basic understanding of the principles of both fields, I'd wager. Obviously they haven't studied those fields in the same level of depth and rigor as their own special subfield, but it's really not hard to read about those subjects on your own time. Also, many people do switch fields at some point in their career.

>>67000 If you focus on one subject and also limit it to a subfield it could be easy imo. Like say you decide mushrooms biology - you can throw 90% of the biology field out alongside other subjects like history,art,..., just get some math&chemistry and then hyperfocus on mushrooms would suffice. Afaik there are music schools who follow this concept and accept only those they see gifted enough to make dedicating yourself to music only a viable path in life. >>66977 School is divided into public = drones trained to follow orders, academia=middle management, private = thinking elite.

only in a poorly balanced society can the average 12 y.o. meaningfully contribute to cutting edge research. 12 y.o.s are generally obviously inferior, interested in different things, if standards are so low that they can be 'peers' of 22 y.o.s then clearly something is amiss, standards&expectations need to be higher. I expect a lot of bright 12 y. olds could write a low end phd thesis (in certain feilds) with equivalent help to what grad students get, but this is not a good thing.

Their striving for greatness was out of love to intellectual pursuits rather than fear of failure or ego. I suggest you do the same.

>>66996 >Why the rudeness? But I am not being rude. You are only interpreting it as rude. You may want to reconsider your general attitude, lainon.

>>67000 >Universities have been clogged with rich doofuses there for the fancy piece of paper ever since universities branched off from seminaries. a more recent trouble though is the influx of poor doofuses, in USA for example since ~ the GI bill unis have been flooded by mediocre people, expectation has grown that everyone can/should go to university. Nowadays you get calculus classes where the average students dont know seventh grade math. These arent occasional rich doofuses but simply the average product of the US public school system, foisted on the (bloated, grotesque) public university system.

>>67006 Can we all please come to reality. You're not just seeing media programming the school system products. It's brain damage. Do you get it? BRAIN DAMAGE.

>>67007 > media programming show me in my post where I said anything about media programming you knuckledragger. Eugenics/general health/all these things are important but if you have standards so low that brain damaged morons graduate highschool in droves that is also a problem. When these people are going into more specialized 'high intelligence' spaces they are ruining them for everyone who through luck or good genetics or other means has either avoided these brain damaging things or just is bright enough to merit entering them anyway. UN CLAMP

Oh hey, another user makes another historically inaccurate thread, now with a heaping of over the top declinism and low self-esteem imposter syndrome nonsense. Fix your depression and maybe read up on literacy rates across the world in the 19th century. And of course the conspiracy theorists with an agenda are already here spewing their irrational garbage with the regularity of actual bots.

>>67009 there's a worry I think that you've elevated the average a bit (not clear how neccisarily/usefully) at the expense of the best. At the very least its clear that i.e. college/hs used to mean a whole lot more than they do now. Why can't we insist that to graduate from university everyone needs to know latin ?

>>67008 Did you really type all of that and not realize that you're REACTING? That's what the CLAMP wants you to do. React. You need to act. Yes, the public schools are letting them through or whatever agrbage you're fixated on. Say they don't, then what? Will people say "oh no look we're all brain damaged we need to fix this!" or wil they just cope and seethe and fuarrrk things up the same way they are now? You actually think the public school system would be a viable form of feedback? A chokepoint? fuarrrk no. There is way too much working against it from all angles, any attempt would be overrrun immediately. The average person cannot psychologically tolerate the awareness that they, and their children, will never be complete beings. That they are damaged and will never be what they could have, ought have, been. So they'll ignore the problem. You have to get at the roots.

>>67009 >maybe read up on literacy rates across the world in the 19th century. this is totally different from what OP is saying though and is irrelevant. your entire post is disingenuous as hell.

>>67010 >At the very least its clear that i.e. college/hs used to mean a whole lot more than they do now. Ehhh. I think you're overstating what an undergraduate college education consisted of centuries ago. As soon as universities were institutionalized (they started as informal collectives) they became status symbols not unlike today. Scholarship has always been something practiced by only the brightest students. >Why can't we insist that to graduate from university everyone needs to know latin ? Why did they learn latin in the olden days? Mainly it was because theological/philosophical/scientific treatises were written in (bad) Latin. This is not the case any more. >>67002 >just get some math&chemistry and then hyperfocus on mushrooms would suffice. specializing that much that early is probably a mistake. They'd be sticking to things they know far too early in their life. >School is divided into public = drones trained to follow orders, academia=middle management, private = thinking elite. not too far off the mark, for the modern corporate university system. There's a lot of inertia because the academics are used to being mostly self-governed, but it's still happening because of the money. >>67006 This is true, I am just trying to say that this idea that college used to be full of true scholars who were all miles ahead of the average college graduate today is not really true. >>67011 Shut the fuarrrk up, you're not helping.

>>67013 >specializing that much that early is probably a mistake. They'd be sticking to things they know far too early in their life. You're right of course, however I think it might pay off because kid brains are more creative on account of lacking ingrained solutions which tends to put tunnel vision on adults. Could combine old man + kids working together making up for each other deficiencies. And if you consider the longterm same kids by age 24 will have vastly higher knowledge accumulated in their small subfield than people walking the current regular path learning all the subjects. Looking how our knowledge stack is growing increasingly larger i believe focus will become increasingly more necessary because its already impossible to keep up with all publications. Another problem related is "oh i remember that one publication that would be useful here anyone remember it? no? nobody got a clue? guess we cant use it then." - even if you know the information is there you can't find it again. This runs of course contrary to the previous idea as this illustrates not learning what isn't immediately useful can hit you later but remember that in this case the information is in field and related already. tldr: spending more time making up for deficiencies in your profession over memorizing subjects you dont use and will forget would be more useful.

>>67013 >Shut the fuarrrk up, you're not helping. You wouldn't know about more than 1/3 of that (highly incomplete) list, at most, without me. -You- are not helping.

I wouldnt say we werent super smart back then either, grocery stores amazed people and people didnt quite get shopping carts either. Last thing I wanna mention was some fast food thing I read something about a bigger burger for a cheaper price, people couldnt get the fraction they were given. But yeah id say people were dumb back then too.

>>67021 A&W tried to sell a 1/3-pound burger to compete with the Quarter Pounder at the same price, but it mysteriously flopped; focus groups found that people thought 1/3 was smaller than 1/4, claims A&W's blog. But it doesn't explain why other restaurants have managed to successfully market their own 1/3-pound burgers despite widespread innumeracy. While it's no surprise to anyone who's ever worked a deli counter that you can't expect the lowest common denominator to have a whole understanding of fractions, it's only half of the story. A&W had seriously competed with McDonald's in the past couple of decades, but was already going downhill well before they launched the 1/3-pound burger -- by the mid-'80s, there were fewer than 500 restaurants. In a vaguely poetic and admittedly tenuous callback to the struggle of the original A&W location after its spot on the prime route between Detroit and Grand Rapids was bypassed by the new I-96, this really boils down to unfortunate positioning. When there are several McDonald's on the way to the nearest A&W -- if one is even aware that A&W is a restaurant and not just a soda -- it's hard to find a reason to bother unless you really like something specific to A&W, which, as you may guess, is not the burgers.

>>67015 brudduh, we've all seen that list before you started a'shi//ing it here. >>67021 you should be fuarrrking amazed at grocery stores, too. They're incredible. The reason shopping carts are so recent a development isnt because people were dumb so much as store rearragement with the dawn of the super market, itself a consequence of various technological achievements of the I/XX centuries. Maybe if they were brighter we'd have had internal combustion engines for thousands of years, but george washington wasn't missing out for want of a shopping cart. >>67014 >focus will become increasingly more necessary, too many papers to read A problem you neglect is that a lot of these papers are garbage. people need to publish in order to get money, hope of advancement, any shot at that comfy professorship they've been coveting. But publication standards are inconsistent / appalingly low. 'Peer review' doesn't always even mean anyone else read your paper let alone understood it letalone thought it was well done/respectable. This also means that many papers at least in some fields are actually infohazards, the 'knowlege' one gains by their study will move you further from the truth. >>67013 >I think you're overstating what an undergraduate college education consisted of centuries ago there are two elements to a degree or other certification. One is that you have completed certain training to a satisfactory level, the other is that you have been filtered from the rest and proven to be of quality of a certain level. If you i.e. force admit a whole bunch of enlisted troops whos average is only a bit higher than average you're diluting the quality of the uni population, likely diluting the quality of the cert, even if nothing about the 'education' has changed (and lets be real, a class of smart people is going to be a quite different experience than a class of average people, education quality is going to go down). We've also got a huge proliferation of universities just in general over century XX, placed that used to just be state teachers colleges are now universities of tens of thousands of students. >Why did they learn latin in the olden days? ability to learn a kinda awkward and clunky language I think may also just be a good filter. Anyway this is a chicken and egg problem, we don't learn latin because its not widely used in academia, we don't use it widely in academia because its not learnt. This is a situation of our own making. >modern corporate university system there's a significant presence of government/administrative organizm that shouldn't be ignored as well. >this idea that college used to be full of true scholars who were all miles ahead of the average college graduate today is not really true. this is largely due to the fact that people are just more or less the same and efforts at education can only do so much. Also its not like university has been a super stable system, has changed a lot during the last ~5 centuries, could be argued to have consumed more historic systems of i.e. apprenticeship/knowledge transfer. Starts out as a state sponsored system to just say 'this guy is bright, shouldn't need to worry about eating, lets make up some official post for him', now has been assumed to be the source of that persons brightness. Overall we should be caring less about the lowest and more about the highest. Probably always going to be some dumb people, barely monolingual, don't understand fractions. They exist today, but this is hardly new development. Important is to elevate&cultivate the people with great potentials, modern schooling generally tries to force these people to all coexist in the same place and tells them they're all equal. Very dehumanizing of those who have potential.

>>67030 >brudduh, we've all seen that list before you started a'shi//ing it here. SHil|ling? I MADE the list. And -you- are not helping,

You can still do all those things. I met a guy at my college (which was pretty low ranked) who was conversant in Latin, Hebrew, and homological algebra by the time he graduated. You certainly have the option to learn a lot in college, and youll probablt get encouraged by the professors too. If you dont its because you have fallen into the college trap and youre there for the degree, not to learn. Mandatory relevant SMBC

>>67035 This isn't relevant at all. I already went to school. What is your point?

>>67035 >Ha, behold! You are trapped! >Oh no I want to get away you don't control me! >Yes I do control you. >Oh okay, I submit.

>>67035 if you want to learn rankings aren't relevant because many field leaders sit in mediocre universities which means going high rank means missing out on best teacher if you particularly care about a subject. However especially in east ranking locks you in career options. China has even a law that gives you different treatment based on ranking of your alma mater for westerners.

>>67036 >comic about the exact problems with college that are being discussed in this thread is irrelevant

>>67040 Hence why there si research on immunological behavior modification in China, but no one bothers or it's suppressed in the West.

>>67041 I was responding to your post. I don't look at images

The amount of people wilfully misunderstanding OP just to brag about their own accouterments is absolutely ridiculous. The pure existential dread you feel when you go and read on what people use to study in schools and compare that to your own woeful education cannot be matched. You can even feel it with people from foreign countries who study calculus when they are 13, of course our media covers it up by saying things like 'its cruel to teach a 13 year old calculus.' eventually this sentiment gets expanded and expanded until it's cruel to teach a 13 year old anything at all. Maybe people can relate to the idea that they could have gone from early childhood education straight to college and not have missed a beat.

>>67146 >Maybe people can relate to the idea that they could have gone from early childhood education straight to college and not have missed a beat. This is the key. The school system is designed to waste the period of greatest plasticity, wonder, and information uptake on bullshit. It's designed to waste your time and youth. All of it could be learned very quickly. I was reading and writing when I was 3. Yes, 3. And yet in the US you have some preschool bullshit, whatever, and kids are in 3rd grade and many can still barely read. It's all about their aprents and how much they happened to be damaged previously. Read: >>67042 >>67007

>>67146 I have never felt despair due to hearing about what people studied in school. People used to study Euclid's elements in college math classes. Until around the 1850s, calculus was considered a very advanced field only studied by specialists. Many fields of math now considered part of a standard undergraduate mathematics education, like topology, hadn't even been invented yet. The main difference is that students were expected to know more about The Classics, which I guess is what OP is really talking about.

>>67146 >eventually this sentiment gets expanded and expanded until it's cruel to teach a 13 year old anything at all. the cruelest part, is where they take a bright 13 year old and stick him in a room surrounded by various 'children' whom he is told are his 'peers' and force him to watch--for years on end--as they occasionally struggle with math and language problems that he could have solved at a glance. They tell him that he has to be there. They tell him, that its for his own good. It would seriously be better not to teach 13 year olds anything if it meant not forcing them to be in school. Anyone bright could catch up quick to an undergraduate university level if and when they want to.

Those people from 1800s were either extremely privileged bastards that had private tutors since childhood or 1 out of million geniuses. And you only hear about the extraordinary cases not about the common folks, so there is a basic survivorship bias. Most people back then were as average and dumb as you and me are :)

>>67152 OP was classified as above average. Great student he says. Excelling. Was he misclassified ? Or did the school system fail him ?

>>67153 Great student and great scholar are different things. OP is probably indeed great in the school system which prepares people to be a cog in the workforce, but not so great compared to 19 century polymaths he looks up to

>>67157 What is your point? You've basically agreed with OP

>>67146 Sigh, the Illuminati are at it again. Because studying calculus at the age of 13 is going to make you happier. No, 13 is too late, you'd have to start as early as possible. Because you need to improve. Mark that one moment of not improving you've had when you were 4 and be sure to bash yourself over it until you've learnt better. You'll never be good enough. That's... Ah, that's just terrible. The ego, aghh, it hurts, aah. Get stoned, Sisyphus. And go do some push-ups, now. !

>>67163 Not really. As I've said a lot fewer people had access to university education back then and it was treated very differently. Yes, you were expected to know multiple fields and languages to be an intellectual. Majority people however only specialized in only one craft or no craft at all and were just servants. The modern school system was also started in the 19th century to prepare factory workers and this industrial-esque schooling expanded to universities as well in the 20th century. Now they too mostly prepare workers, cogs in the machine of the workforce that do not really need to read poetry or know Latin. You can argue it is for the worse or that it is for the better because if you focus only on applied skills hyper-specialization becomes possible which is what the majority of US do with their programs. I personally think it's OK that the universities became more applied. After all the most valuable crafts of today are not bonecutting or shoemaking, it's IT, management, logistics etc. If you want to become an intellectual in the classic sense you have to either teach yourself or go to a really fancy university that still upholds the tradition off giving multidisciplinary education like MIT or top universities in Russia and China

People barely worked back then because of abundance. Even peasants in feudal Europe only worked the growing season, then they could do anything and go anywhere they wanted. Curiosity wasn't something you do when you have time, it was their lifestyle, and "poverty" didn't exist outside of special cases like people born without arms.

>>67175 How does this disagree with anything OP siad

>>66953 >But I read about people from the 1800s. People from 1800s worth reading about were probably the cream of the crop. It's modern day equivalent of comparing yourself with top scientists and athletes.

>>67192 I disagree. This isn't true at all. Pretty dishonest.

>>67193 If you say so. I've been wrong before.

You know of them, but they do not know of you. Hence , you are a compounded product of your environment. You might be old, but you still need to know yourself better.

School is just a propaganda center...the dumbest people I've ever known have all had really good grades Even female get good grades

>>66953 Don't beat yourself up about it. Do you really think those intellectual glitterboys high up the priestly hierarchy of college are actually that intelligent? Whose standard are we using as a yardstick for intelligence? Aristotle was monolingual, clearly didn't read very much, and he didn't know calculus either! The Buddha was probably illiterate and didn't know much math, but if you read his sermons he was one of the smartest men that walked the earth. In the modern industrial society, what we prize most of all is technical know how and certificates. What qualifications do you have? What stats do you have on your resume? But that's not intelligence. If it was, the computers we're all using would me smarter than we are but we all know they are dumb as fuarrrk. Sure, go to any top grad school and you can find someone who knows multiple languages, has read a bunch of classical literature and philosophy, and won't shut up about it until you punch them in the mouth. But the reality is most of those people are soybrained glitterboys because when you probe them a little or poke holes in their ideas they just fall apart because the reality is they don't really know that language that well, they've never really bothered properly reading those philosophers or understand them, they are all just really good at faking it and getting grades. >I came out of school exhausted, stupid, zero intellectual curiosity, zero hobbies or interests. Just a longing for death This is a common feeling among graduates because when you get out of school you find that all the stuff they told you at school was just propagandistic soykaf and reality doesn't work that way. Let's face it, most of us are not popular enough to be one of the elite glitterboys of the academic star system living it up in grad school, and when we enter the market we realize nobody cares about our opinions, our thoughts, or our interests anymore. We're supposed to just soldier and keep our mouths shut and then you just start thinking, what was the point? Why did I go through this? I must be really fuarrrking stupid to end up like this, it must be my own fault. Well nope, it isn't. The idea that good grades = drastically better life is just propaganda, so don't think your the one whose stupid because you don't know calculus or whatever. It's not on you anon.

In the same way that sports will reinforce the muscles you use for the activities and ignore the rest, mental activities also reinforce the neural pathways that are being focused and leave the rest to atrophy. The geniuses of the past were genuine nobility, people who didn't have any particular intellectual focus and could consider many different subjects. Modern humans are always driven to something, even the "elite" are bourgeoisie and not true nobility. We're quickly approaching the realm of the hyperspecialized retards.

>>67272 Why do people keep saying genius when OP isn't referring to genius or prodigy. Why do people keep using the nobility/rich excuse when that isn't the case either.

>>67273 Because most of the old thinkers and writers were geniuses and nobelmen. If you're talking about the average peasant, he was a retard. OP's post only makes sense if he's talking about the elite.

>>67274 This is nonsense man. You sound like someone who is just working off assumptions. It's the 1800s not the fuarrrking dark ages

>>67275 Universal literacy was still very far off in the 19th century. People weren't very different back then, either.

>>67276 This is still not what is being discussed

the romans put lead in the water pipes to dumb down the population the controllers use other techniques nowadays people who cannot rely on their own intelligence are easy to control if you look at the reddit teachers subreddit you'll constantly see posts about how 5th graders can't read anymore

>>67278 See these images: >>67007 >>67042 I really want to drive this in. It's not magic. You can start deconstructing the biological and the psychosocial developmental layers, and it's pretty clear what's probably going on and how it all interacts.

>>66956 That's the opposite of the truth. 100 years ago you had to buy books. If you didn't have the money or motivation you'd go to the pub to bitch about it.

>>67285 They had free libraries already in rome. Christian evangelists destroyed them cause they were run by the temples and they purged all the temples entirely. As for the matter of going backwards 2021 oregon said kids cant read? just pass bill so you dont need reading to graduate. You can just search "oregon senator signs bill" if you want full story.

>>67286 >Boyle said in an emailed statement that suspending the reading, writing and math proficiency requirements while the state develops new graduation standards will benefit “Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.” Cool, empower them by not teaching them to read, write or reason.

>>67288 Cattle are made to sow, reap, and eat from the trough. They give milk, they give young, then they give blood and flesh and everyone takes their cut. They are made and propped up to be used and drained, other than this they have no reason for being. They are created and removed the same way. They are livestock in a pasture. You don't empower livestock any more than you teach a dog to read and write.

>>67286 All the bill does is remove standardized testing requirements. Given that standardized testing is the strongest tool of enforced conformity that schools have, and that they are widely criticized by teachers as pointless, this doesn't seem so bad.

>>67294 Personally, I won't be satisfied until average IQ is ~80 (inb4 average is always 100). Numeracy should be reduced to addition and subtraction. Multiplication is not needed by the masses, nor division. They should be empty little dolls to play dress up with.

>>67294 removing a test standard leads to same result - teacher makes test easy enough everyone can pass while getting most things wrong. Their only obligation is have kids pass after all, if they let kids fail they get punished but if kids pass without learning anything? Nobody cares. What disappointing me more from a real experience is people get 90% wrong, get a good grade and boast oblivious to their failure

You're (we're) not "dumber" than a 100 years ago because we lack knowledge. Knowledge isn't tied to intelligence, it's tied to motivation. If you decided to learn calculus and read philosophy it wouldn't be because of your intelligence, but rather more because of your motivation. Reading and discovering about new things might grant you knowledge which in turn could bring wisdom. But actually reading and discovering stuff isn't based on intellect but motivation to do so. And as other people explained, we live in a world now where people less have actual "needs" to learn stuff which in turn diminishes our reason to learn things.

>>67296 on the other hand common sense and scientific evidence show that standardized test performance, especially multiple-choice, is mostly about how good you are at taking tests, not how well you know the material.

>>67446 Standard testing isn't perfect but for the level of effort it takes its a lot better than anything else available. The problem here is that you've got a factory with obviously decreasing quality (why exactly that is is irrelevant), and taking this as a solution is just firing all the quality checkers and pretending things are fine. This is bad, it looks bad, at the best all it does is screw up long term data about school performance tracking. Standard testing isn't required to have standards, but having standards is very important. Unfortunately standards are obviously getting pretty bad even with standard testing so who gives a soykaf.

>>67446 >multiple choice bad then dont? Its a separate issue anyway. You dont need multiple choice for standardized testing. Other countries give open questions and guidelines for partial credit. Its a solved problem, the only hurdle is lazyness / unwillingness to slot more time for testing.

>>67447 >Standard testing isn't perfect but for the level of effort it takes its a lot better than anything else available. How about just not punishing teachers for giving students bad grades? >Unfortunately standards are obviously getting pretty bad even with standard testing so who gives a soykaf. They've been pretty bad for a while. I think actual performance just hit a temporary dip for obvious reasons and the legislators used their typical solution of pretending the problem isn't real.

>>67453 >How about just not punishing teachers for giving students bad grades? The thing about standardized testing is that it takes the grading out of the teacher's hands altogether. Problem solved ?

>>66953 We're not. It's easier than ever to become smart. There are more smart people on Earth now than ever before. People have always been people. Smart people were just normal people when they were born. Then they got smart. You have to go out of your way to educate yourself. Even then, what is the standard, really, for being smart? Does standardized learning, the system that apparently failed you, make you smart? If making you smart is >knowing more than one language >read philosophy and classic literature >teach yourself calculus >know some things then you have complete control over not being smart. I think what you'll realize is that most people are smart in some way. That's what we do. We adapt, and to do so you must learn. If you can't adapt, you're out of the game. There will always be people who actively detriment of mankind, but generally that's not because they're stupid. You have the internet. Become whatever you want.

>>67456 >he fell for the education-makes-u-smarter meem man I wonder how it feels to be that dumb. >>67296 >What disappointing me more from a real experience is people get 90% wrong yeah this is a bit annoying but I do think depending on the test sometimes this is reasonable. Huge red flag of course if i.e. 5 years ago people were getting only 75% wrong though. Test performance is always a proxy for real performance, they're an instrument and they need calibration and long term comparison to work best.

>>66953 You are right, average iq in victorian England was 120 for example, but also there are too many distractions nowadays and you are forced to wagecukck.

Thee are still people like that, OP. But elite education has only ever attained by maybe 8% of the population at best. Veey few people realize that the mass produced version is so inferior. To add insult to injury, most of us had to pay out the nose for it. On the bright side, we have more leisure time and access to knowledge than ever before, and plenty of anons have educated themselves to impressive levels. You might even consider spending any disposable income you have on private tutors, which was actually the tral secret sauce of how elites of old became so much smarter than the ones we have today.

Because there are more brown people plus the fertility rate of low IQ people is higher. Next!