Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 16 - Is We Getting Dumberest?

Episode Date: January 2, 2017

What happened to the good old days when dumb, lazy fucks used to just die in the pre-industrialized, non-welfare state world of yesteryear?  It’s never been easier for the least motivated members of society to stay alive and procreate. Is our gene pool getting shallower as a result?  Find out as I try to answer one of society's most important questions: IS we getting dumberest!?!

You ever think about how dumb lazy fucks you should just die in the pre-industrialized non-welfare state world of yesterday? year I do When pioneers were settling the West they either grew some crops, you know shot some deer built their cabin chops Some firewood open a tavern in the local town Sold their sweet-ass for cash and a local brothel Supported themselves who some other working means or they fucking died There's no government subsidized housing with central AC and food stamps or tasty vittles from the local croaguer or Safeway,

and look, I'm not against the impoverished, but it's never been easier for at least motivated members of society to stay alive. I think that's a fact, at least in my mind. And when people stay alive, on average, it's 10 to 10 kids. We've never had so many lazy, willfully ignorant fucks popping out more lazy, willfully ignorant fucks

before in human history. I think based on that and the fact that modern medicine is keeping the physically weakest members of our species alive when they would have died in any other era, that's creating the bottom rungs of our socioeconomic ladder to become more crowded than they've ever been before with dummies, who are growing greater in numbers than ever before.

But I don't know, that's just me in my head. That's what I think. Let's hope I'm wrong. And let's find out as we answer an incredibly important question in this idiotic edition of TimeSack. Is we getting dumberist? You're listening to TimeSack.

Yeah. Is humanity actually getting stupid or overall? Are we getting dumbest? Are we heading toward Mike Judges' idiocracy? Maybe that movie is brought up a lot during this last presidential election by myself and a lot of other people. If you're not familiar with it, it's Mike Judge, the creator of Beavis and Butthead, office space, Silicon Valley, and HBO. In 2006, he barely got out a satirical comedy

about a future 500 years from now. I say just barely, because there's a lot of studio drama behind it, where the studio thought it would piss people off, I think too much, or that it wouldn't be commercial enough, which is very ironic if you've seen this movie, and he had really had to fight to get the movie released. It's become a cult classic now, but it's about this future 500 years from now where cultural and intellectualism and increasing dependence on ad-driven commercialism and the lower

rungs of the socioeconomic ladder having much more kids than the higher rungs, this all combines to form this population of consumeristic fucking idiots. And it's starting to feel like a documentary more than about the president, more than a satirical look at the future. And a lot of people, or I guess I joke around about a lot of people, and I kind of casually assume that we are getting dumber and that dumber people have more kids, blah, blah, blah. But is this all just in my head?

Is this, in my just, I like this movie, so I'm agreeing with some of these things. It's not like it was a piece of scientific research. It is just a film. But this is something I've wondered a lot about for a long time. And now thanks to this podcast, I'm gonna get to the bottom of some shit. Figure out if we are, fact getting Dumber. I started off doing my research for this

episode by just typing, are we getting into my Google search bar? And Dumber was the fourth thing to come up. Are we getting Dumber was the fourth thing. The first article, when you do decide to click on Arby getting Dumber, is from the Huffington Post, and it sites this study that was done in Intelligence Magazine, how aptly titled, the research that the average Westerner, those from Western Europe or colony settled by Western Europeans,

have lost 14 IQ points since the Victorian era, which is a substantial amount of IQ. And this study that was also broken down in Forbes Magazine, the way they decided to figure this out, they used a metric, the metric that kind of used, rather than comprehensive IQ test scores, which kind of vary through different ages, so it's hard to get a strong comparison

for one of the next. What they did was they studied reaction times, because they feel like basically reaction times do correlate to general intelligence. And psychological kind of parlance, the study of reaction times is called mental conometry. And basically, if you participated in a mental conometry study,

you're presented as stimulus, like a flashing blue light on a monitor. And you're asked to react to the stimulus as quickly as possible. So as soon as you see the stimulus, you hit a bell or you say, got it, or fuck yeah, whatever. And then it measures your reaction time.

And basically our reaction times have gotten substantially slower. But this study does just reference Westerners. So I started to wonder, well, is it the whole world or is it just Western society that's kind of on the intellectual decline? Like are we getting down the overall or is America specifically like how do we compare to the rest of the world and the rest of Westerners? In short, not great. Not great. In 2016 study, the most intelligent countries in the world based on average IQ does not include the US.

The top five are Hong Kong, which isn't even technically a country, but it does operate somewhat independently from China. Average IQ of 108, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, also not technically a country, but only because China is being a dick and not letting them leave. In Singapore, that's the top five, all non-Western nations,

although Hong Kong wasn't a British control for many years. But in all fairness, the bottom half of the top 10 were all in Europe. Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Sweden. And then in a separate 2015 BBC study I found, ranking the world's nations on science and mathematics, acumen, the US ranks 28. Latvia and Slovenia both ranked higher than us on that list. And until reading that study I forgot that those two places were countries.

Why? Because I'm in American. So why aren't we smarter? You know, I feel like most Americans assume that we're the smartest people in the world. I think there's a certain cultural arrogance we carry around. And I think we do so because of how our entertainment culture has influenced the rest of the world and because of our military might. That's my hypothesis, backed up by no study. But much of the rest of the world, they do want to dress like us, they want to watch our

movies, TV shows, they want to travel to our country, live here. No one wants to fucking start a war with us. So we must be the best and the brightest, right? Well, studies disagree. And I wanted to say because we're less educated than some of the other nations ahead of us on these lists and know when you look up the most educated nations in the world, the US does crack the top 10. In a world economic forum study cited by business insider, the US's rank

number eight on a list of the most educated nations of the world, quote, a large proportion of adults in the America, 43% have a university education. That is the proportion of adults in the America, 43% have a university education. That is the fifth highest proportion in the organization of economic cooperation and development, an intergovernmental group of 34 developed IE Western countries. Number one of that list is Singapore. But I can sing a poor man. Might not do a time suck on those sons of bitches.

Apparently, they're smart as shit. I don't know anything about them. So does our education system then need to be improved? If we're educated, but not smart, I think it does. Personally, I think there's a poor attitude toward the education in this country, especially in rural areas. I think part of its funding,

part of its nature of our current educational system. To get into that, part of it's a culture that looks down on people who speak proper English and are intellectually curious. I'm from an area like that, you know, where you start using too many fancy words, and you definitely get this vibe from people of like easy, easy college boy, you know,

rather than people the wrong way. Because a lot of those people are willfully ignorant. And you know, fucking annoying. I grew up around some of these people. My grandma, my dad's side is, she was a past away, but she was a wife of a Pentecostal minister, my grandpa, her whole life. And when I learned from an early age that Christian

fundamentalism and intellectualism, tend not to correlate well with one another. My grandma tried to talk me out of going to college. I was the first person in my extended family to ever go to college, I got a scholarship academically to Gonzaga, and she was like, don't go. She said, quote, Catholics destroy the Bible, and they're all going to college, he got a scholarship academically to Gonzaga, and she was like, don't go. She said, quote, Catholics destroyed the Bible and they're all going to hell, Danny.

I remember that so vividly. Seriously, this is the same fucking woman, by the way, who tried to make my gay uncle, my obviously gay from the time he's a kid uncle, or repent his entire life as he died of AIDS in a San Francisco hospital, because it was, you know, he was, he was living in sin. Uh, same woman who along with her, you know her, past her husband convinced my dad and his brothers not to go to college because the rapture was coming. And the world wouldn't even exist by 1980

and you don't wanna fucking learn that college filth, that scientific, anti-bid local shit. Uh-uh, not if you wanna go see the Jesus. Well, obviously 1980, you know, the world didn't end. And now you know why I get fucking angry about this stuff. I just grew up in a lot of ignorance in some ways and super fucking annoying, super fucking annoying. And it's, you know, I see it all over the place,

twint around the country, just people who are just truly anti-intellectual in nature, which is just such a weird way to fucking live in my mind. It's like, why wouldn't you be curious about the world? But obviously, I tend to be more curious now than I would have started this podcast. More curious and so, that's kind of cocky. And I do think a lot of our schools are underfunded.

I know this based on my sister being a teacher in Idaho, there's dealing with constant budget cutbacks. There's squeezing more kids into smaller craft classrooms. Always pressure to get kids past certain tests, you know, these standardized tests so they can keep getting funding, which is kind of a, it fucks up learning for a lot of kids because what happens is the teachers, so they don't get fired because they're graded on how other kids do. They end up having to focus on the, you know, three, four, five kids who are struggling

the most in class to bring their scores up to passing to hit certain quotas. And when they do that, they don't have the energy and the time then to focus on nourishing the intellectual curious kids in the classroom. Because those kids are going to pass the test. So you know, all right, don't need to spend time with them. You got to focus on these other kids. And then the ones who are then curious don't have that curiosity nurtured.

And you know, and sometimes when it's not there, it fucking goes away. And our IQ test drop, and we fucking hear about it on this podcast. And I see the stuff in my kids' classes firsthand too. You know, I volunteer in my kids' classes. My daughter, she's in third grade, and I go to her class, and there's this one kid who I've seen ever since kindergarten,

who hogs up about 50% of the teacher's time. He's a sweet kid, I've seen ever since kindergarten, who hogs about 50% of the teacher's time. He's a sweet kid, but he's a little fucking nuts. Constantly has to be redirected for behavioral problems. He's always getting sent to the principal's office like a couple times a day for doing shit that I've witnessed, like throwing himself down in a temper tantrum, like bawling on the floor, squirming around because someone looked at him wrong or because he's feeling off or because, you know, someone wouldn't was not playing with him on recess. And then, you know, you got to

take it out in the hall and talk to you, get sent down to the principal office, send them back, they never do shit. If man, when I was a kid, a little fucker, they would have grabbed, I mean, I feel bad, you could have got some problems, but he would have been fucking drugbed the goddamn ear to the principal's office, you know, his parents would have been brought in, he would have been given detention, he would have been talking about suspended him, you know, he would have been fucking drug by the goddamn ear to the principal's office. His parents would have been brought in, he would have been given detention, he would have been talking about suspended him, he would probably have beat at home. And then next time he's thinking about throwing himself

down the floor and disrupting fucking mass facts, kind of fucking think twice about the consequences. There's way less consequences for kids being dicks than ever before and it's fucking us up But anyway, those days are gone man, and I'm sure in some ways it's good that you know kids are being beat as much as they used to you But I do think it's bad in other ways, you know, I was disruptive when I was in school I remember one time I got you know drug out of the hall Got my desk put in the hall

I would have to stay there for a few days like literally like separated ostracized from my classmates because I wouldn't stop talking to them. And then I shut the fuck up a little bit more when I got back in class or it was at least sneaky about it, not as disruptive, well played Mrs. Williamson. So let's dig into this further,

our education system. I found some studies kind of based on what I'm talking about, like the compared our education to the rest of the world. And the best study I found, I love this one so much. This is on a website called seethroughedu.com. It's a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation written by the Sky Richard Vetter, who I love. And it's talking about why Americans are getting dumber.

And one of America's foremost testing agencies, the Educational Testing Service, has released a new report that is incredibly sobering. This is a pretty good article here, I'm reading. Quoting, demonstrating that adult Americans, regardless of educational attainment, are, as a group, less literate with respect to both words and numbers and less capable

of solving problems than counterparts throughout the industrialized world. Moreover, if anything, the problem has worsened over time to spacked despite the fact, that the formal levels of education attainment have risen. We have more schooling than ever, but are relatively speaking clueless about the most basic knowledge needed to communicate and make decisions in a complex market economy. We are doing less with more. Learning per year of school is almost certainly falling with respect to the most basic forms of knowledge needed to cope in an advanced economy.

Moreover, the millennials, those born after 1980, despite their higher levels of schooling, as opposed to learning no less than their elders. To be a bit harsh in America, the dumb are becoming dumber." I fucking love that so much. I love the quote, millennials despite higher levels of schooling no less than their elders. I couldn't even read more. I'm kind of on the borderline of being a millennial there

and my elderly neighbor Jim, these baby boomers, they're cut from a different cloth than any guy I know like my age or younger. These guys know how to invest, they know what kind of work ethic it tastes, it's exceeding, how to save, how to fix shit around the house, how to use power tools.

My grandpa built his own rental properties in the 60s and 70s on the weekends away from the sawmill he was working at. To this day, cuts down his own firewood, fucking chainsaw, acts on all that shit. My seven year old neighbor who was talking to me yesterday about building his own fucking boat dock, give me tips on tax breaks I can get, you know, because he pays attention to

that shit and actually reads the paper. Nobody I know my age or younger would know anything about any of that stuff. I built a fucking tree fort this past year. My friend's acting like I was goddamn Bob Vee, some reference from even an old for me, like I was a licensed general contractor, you know. So basically like, you know, you're saying that people are good and educated, but what are they actually learning? Anything useful? Any basic life skills, you know?

I think I'm jumping off of that. I think also a fucking common sense class should be taught at school, or like a man or at least, don't do this, don't be a dick in this situation. Don't act like a fucking shithead in this situation. That'd be nice. So anyway, Dumber than our first wheeled peers, per peers, yeah, onto the specifics, first wheeled peers. Perp peers, yeah.

On to the specifics, looking at 23 cohorts from different countries. One of the few cases, parts of countries, the US millennials ranked last, and this is still that same guy. Last in numeracy, along with Italy and Spain, as well as in problem solving and technology-rich environments. The youngest examined, those 16 to 24 years of age,

ranked dead last in numeracy, along with Italy. Even our quote, those 16 to 24 years of age, ranked deadlass in numeracy, along with Italy. Even our quote, best and brightest, fair and partly, looking at numeracy, which is the ability to understand and work with numbers, you know, like practical math. The scores of Americans age 16 to 34 years, ranked in the top 10 percentile of US students taking the test. The score of 323 was statistically and significantly below the organization for economic cooperation and development average of 3.34. Even more below that of such industrial competitors as neighboring Canada, 3.36, Japan, 3.42, or

Sweden, 3.46. Americans scores are only slightly better with respect to literacy and problem solving. So yes, the American dumb are dumber than ever before. Sorry about that ding, forget to turn off part of my computer. Even worse are those in the bottom 10th percentile. The US numeracy scores for that group, 16 to 34, were the lowest in the world. This is the scariest kind of thing I read about the heading towards a deocracy. Like basically our dumbest people are dumber than they've ever been before.

You know, barring from Charles Murray, he says, we are a nation that is quote, coming apart. The educational gaps are growing along with the income gaps. And increasingly, the rich and poor literally try to avoid each other, witness the rise of gated communities. So basically, you know, again, he's saying the dumbest are the dumbest they've ever been before and I do feel that's to be true I feel like I see you know amongst some of our population a little more dead in the eyes a little more slack in the jaw recently You know, I've done some free ticket show nights at comedy clubs where job integrity is the only thing keeping me from just walking off the stage Because I'm so fucking frustrated with how much I have to slow down What I say to get people to understand what the fuck I'm talking about.

You know, I've taken a policy lately of having hecklers just tossed out instead of trying to reason with them because I used to think they were just being assholes, being disruptive in the show, but no, they literally just don't know how to fucking act. They are just been so willfully ignorant, their entire lives and no one, no parents or teachers, you know, were able to take the enough time to fucking educate them the right way about how to behave in the world. That they, you can't even reason with them. You can't even like, you know, somebody be talking in the front row of a comedy show. openly, like they're like they're at home, like full volume or like on the phone and I will gently be like, hey, hey, what's going on?

Just kind of just talk to them and they, and they always look back at me like, what the fuck is happening? How dare you single me out? And I'm like, hey, could you, you know, you're disrupting the people around you? Could you maybe just kind of quiet down? And just so much attitude. One lady I did that with immediately just flipped me off. Ah, and I had that bitch thrown out. Ridiculous.

All right, let's go back, let's get back to Richard though. Now he gets into the why. Why this stuff is happening. He says, he says, why is America doing poorly? It is not lack of money. Are spending per pupil levels compare favorably at the K through 12 levels?

And we blow the world away in per student higher education spending. That's huge. We blow the rest of the world away. And how much money we spend per student for college kids. And he thinks the answer though of why all that money is being wasted relates to a growing disdain for learning facts, basic concepts, et cetera.

It is reflected to collegiate level in a decline in the relative importance of general education and of core liberal arts type learning. The self-esteem movement and the idea that we should say anything hurtful to students is a further manifestation that education is increasingly viewed as less about learning and more about feelings. Fuck yeah, Richard, can I call you Dick?

Can I call you Dick? I think I can't. Loving everything you're saying, Dick. This article alone has better material and it did 50% of comics working in the road right now. Just goddamn it. This culture of everyone being a winner no matter how much they fucking suck,

is not helping things. That's not gonna create a good future for us. It's ridiculous. That's not how the world is supposed to work. You know, everybody doesn't get fucking born equal. Everybody doesn't get to be the fucking president or an astronaut. That's fucking idiotic.

I hate it so much. My son played soccer for six years on these little soccer teams. And each year, we realized after watching many games and practices with more certainty, that he was not good at soccer. But because he always got the same medal, everyone else did the same praise, he thought he was fucking amazing. Finally, I couldn't take it. I broke it down for him. I just watched a game where his team easily, the worst team in the league,

lost yet again by a wide margin. And he had sat on the bench for most of the game, you know, just kind of kind of space cadet when he was playing the game. No goals, no stops, no what's this, nothing meaningful. After the game, I asked him if he still wanted to be professional soccer player when he grew up, because the time he thought he wanted to be Lionel Messi. He said he did. And I was like, okay. and I asked him how he thought he did that day. And he said, I think I did great. I think we did great. And then we had a little talk about reality. I'm like, we need to talk about great. What great means?

Getting your ass beat again, being the worst team in the league, not great. All right? Contributing nothing to the team, not great. I told him, you know, if you want to be team, not great. I told him, if you want to be gray, I'll help him, but it takes a lot of sacrifice. You gotta practice for hours a day. Push harder in games, be more aggressive, blah, blah, blah,

you know all that kind of shit. I told him, his soccer, I had a Lionel Messi sacrifice, his childhood for soccer, practice for hours, day after day after day, constantly to become who he is now. Six years into soccer, Criotid had practiced about a total of two hours with me, total at my urging, at my insistence,

zero minutes on his own. And he was basically just had this moment of clarity and he was like, oh shit, really? I gotta fucking work this to make millions of dollars. I don't just show up and get fucking metal for everything I do, God damn, okay, maybe I don't wanna do that. And since then, we start talking about wanna do things.

I do try and encourage him and not be too adult for the same time because he's getting really into something and I'm like, all right, well, just so you know, here's what being a baker would look like. And then you don't get to just walk out of baker school and have your own successful bakery. It's gonna be a lot of hard work. It's gonna be long hours.

You're not gonna have your own health insurance. I mean, he's a smart kid. He's only about to turn 11. So some people I think that's a bit much for a kid. But, you know, I just am mad that no one had those talks with me when I was growing up. You know, like Gonzaga, you know, where I spent, you know, tens of thousands of dollars to get this psychology degree that isn't worth fucking wipe my ass with, you know, as far as, you know, economically. My guidance counselor never was like, hey man, what are you gonna fucking do with this, dummy?

What are you gonna do with a liberal arts bachelor degree? You fucking jackass. How are you gonna get a job with that? You know, where are you gonna work? I'll tell you, fuck, nowhere. Or, you know, you're gonna have to go to grad school and take out even more loans. And then you're gonna maybe get a job

making this much a year. Colleges don't wanna do that because it's not in their interest because if they fucking did that, people would be like, ah shit, maybe I shouldn't take out all these loans and put myself in debt, get in degree,

that it's not gonna pay itself off. But that's because you know, colleges become fucking businesses. You know, just not unlike Walmart. Walmart wants to sell you candy toys and questionable meats. Your local liberal arts college wants to sell you fucking hopes and dreams based on 19th century English literature and human ecology

And then they're gonna hang you out to fucking dry and the cold hard winds of student loan debt fucking savages But I got I got distracted there. That was not planned. Ah, okay, but there's more fundamental problem in America education is Quote of adults by adults and four adults This is still going with a with dick. This is rent, seeking educators at all levels, including universities, are more interested in maximizing their wealth, their prestige, their power, their social standing. At the K-12 level, unionized teachers fight innovation,

educational choice, and rewarding people on achievement rather than longevity. Professors work on trivial research that will get them promotions and lower teaching loads rather than on mentoring students University presidents are more relentless money grabbers than moral and intellectual leaders more like prostitutes without the sex appeal than soccer Socratic wise persons grand children of the greatest generation We are the most selfish generation running up debts that our kids will have to pay avoiding hard decisions to rain in unstable that our kids will have to pay avoiding hard decisions to rain in unsustainable, unsustainable entitlements,

and an education worried more about teaching loads in our perks than the learning of the next generation, shame, God damn dick, I love what you do. And again, that's Richard Vetter, directs the Center for College of Fortability and Productivity, teaches at Ohio University and is the adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute to fuckin' dick wherever you are.

I hope you hear about this podcast and I hope you come to the show. I'd love to buy you a drink and then proceed to verbally shit all over the edit masses. So basically all that stuff, you know, we're just talking about college, just not equal smart. And I can speak to that firsthand, it's someone who went to college, you know, got a degree that's not really useful. And also I did a couple hundred shows at colleges for a while. In my late 20s, I was doing these college circuits,

which is constantly disappointed with the overall intellectualism of the students I was working with. Just as far as like practical basic stuff. Like I remember one time, you know, these kids booked me to do a college where they paid me, you know, way too much money.

And I'm coming in to their school to do a show for the students, you know, just getting paid out of, you know, the money that comes from their tuition. And they had seen me perform on a stage in front of several hundred people with a lighting right and the sound right and people asked to be quiet and turn their phones off. And then I get to their school and they put me in a cafeteria with no stage, no lights, shitty little radio shack mic that literally they just planted in between some round tables in the middle of a study slash eating area, did not promote the show, so the few students there

were just people studying and or eating, who were like, what the fuck is that guy? Why does he have a mic? You know, it's like I just, you know, guerrilla comedy, like I just, you know, decided to sabotage their study environments. And even better, there was a fucking empty auditorium on the floor above us, directly above us. I asked them, like, well, why can't we just set up in there?

At least the people who then come to the show could get a decent show. And they were like, no, that spot was reserved. And I'm like, oh, so someone's using it. And they were like, no, here's what happened. Somebody had reserved that spot, like eight months earlier, then canceled a few months later, and because of some weird fucking red tape bullshit, technicality, it was still technically under the domain of whoever organization had reserved that

and then their organization couldn't use it, even though everybody knew, known with you, what a fucking typical just ivory tower fucking idiotic academic thing to do which is so ironic because that's supposed to be where we're getting smarter but you know and I stopped doing college shows because of the pc bullshit people get so fucking offended which is like ridiculous man you should be going to college to open your fucking minds. Not be, you know, you know, spoon fed, safe little things like a sad little fucking pussy. That's what we're fucking raising in America. Sad little pussies.

The United States of sad little pussies. Oh, well, anyway, not everyone agrees with Richard and I. Some people think that you don't need to know everything, you know, about certain subjects to be quoting intelligent. Some people think it's okay to be less curious about the world than people were before. What does it matter in the end? We're just gonna die, right? Why do I need to know foreign policy?

Why can't I just know how to do whatever my specific job is? I can answer the phone to the telemarketer and then that's all I need to fucking know and I know how to turn the TV on at home. Well, you know why? Because you end up sound like such a fucking piece of shit idiot. I want to show you what happens when you live that way. This is a YouTube video that an Australian journalist did. And it's titled, this is why people think Americans are stupid.

Oh my God, check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out.

Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out.

Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Check this out. Is long I don't know who won the Vietnam War. We did. What were you even in the Vietnam War?

Okay again. It was Pedal Castro. I was a singer. How many sides does a triangle have? Damn. Four. There's no sides. One.

What is the currency? There's no. There's no sides. And these are, these people, if you just, you know, again, this is why people think Americans are stupid, just put that in YouTube. They don't look stupid. They just look like, you know, your average American.

Holy shit, man. It's Rayleigh, how do you not know the Jewish people there? How do you not know the We're in Vietnam? How do you not know that a Buddhist monk is fucking Buddhists? Oh, you get like that if you're not intellectually curious. And there has been a long tradition of anti-intellectualism in America. This is from a psychology today article. Unlike most other Western countries, and I can speak to that, traveling around, doing comedy abroad.

I mean, the rest of the world, you know, as far as Europe and like Canada, like South Africa, much, much, much more curious about what's going on outside their own communities than we tend to be. Richard Hofstetter, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his book, and intellectualism in American life, describes how the vast underlying foundations of anti-lead, anti-reason, and anti-science have been infused into America's political and social fabric. Famous science, science, fiction, writer, Isaac Asimov once said, quote, there is a cult of ignorance in the United States and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through

our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. I love that quote. My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. Willfully ignorant. And you know, if you, and if you, excuse me, keep, you know, pushing willful ignorance 500 years in the future, you could end up with something like this. This is my favorite scene from anyocracy where Luke Wilson, His character goes to find out where he is. He doesn't understand he's in the future yet. He thinks he's just suffering some side effects from the drugs that they use to kind of put him under

to allow him to hibernate until the future. And he goes to see a doctor played by Justin Long and check this out. Hey, how's that? I guess. Yeah, right. Well, not so good. I don't really know what's going on, but I'm seeing things.

I think it might be because of these drugs, the army, put me on. But if you could just get me well enough to get back to base. Right. Good gas. Well, I don't want to sound like a dick or nothing, but it says on your chart that you fucked up. You talk like a fag and your shit's all retarded.

What I do is just saying, you know, I mean like, don't worry, scroll. Now that plenty of tarts out there have been really kick ass lives. My first wife was tired of it. She's a pilot now. Uh-huh. Ha! Ha!

Ha! That's so funny to me. Don't worry, Scroll. There's plenty of tarts out there with a kick ass life. Ha! Ah! That seems to be we're heading

from all this stuff. Uh-huh. Before we get out, I want to dig into some more stats here, just kind of going with what I'm going. This is from another psychology today, to the app today article. Check this out, backing up Mike Judges premise that we're heading this direction. After leading the world for decades and 25 to 34 year olds

with university degrees, the US is now in 12th place. The World Economic Forum ranked the US at 52nd among 139 nations in the quality of its university math and science instruction. Yep, so you know just the quality of education is going down and it's starting to go down as far as like our youth, how many people are actually even getting the shitty degrees. The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, a commission-specific education poll amongst public students, surprising 77% did not know who George Washington was, did not know he was the first president. Holy shit! That is amazing to me. According to the National Research Council report, only 28% of high school

science teachers consistently follow the National Research Council guidelines on teaching evolution. 13% of those teachers explicitly advocate creationism. Are you fucking kidding me? Separation of church and state, fucking idiots. 18% of Americans still believe that the sun revolves around the earth. According to Gallup poll. All right, now I hear that. I understand how shit like a flatter theory takes flight flatter three. Oh my god That's a whole another time suck. It's basically people who just believe that yeah the earth is a fucking flat disc It's a flat disc with the Arctic Circle in the center and an Antarctica

150 foot tall wall of ice around the rim This is fucking giant fuck you to all astronaut and space exploration. So all those pictures were fabricated. Okay, it's run with that. According to the National Endowment for the Arts Report, 1982, 82% of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure, two decades later, only 67% did. Readership is going down. That is not good. The closing paragraph for the psychology today article written by Ray Williams, president of a firm based in Vancouver that provides executives coaching and professional speaking services, and an author of various business literature, he says, quote, I love this, I love this quote.

We're creating a world of dummies, angry dummies who feel they have the right, the authority and the need not only to commit to comments on everything, but to make sure their voices heard above the rest, and to drag down any opposing views to personal attacks, loud repetition and confrontation. I fucking love you, Ray. He sounds like he's talking about Trump there, but he actually wasn't.

That came out before him, before the election, God damn it. You and me and Dick need to have a loud angry dinner, full of steak whiskey and blatant disregard for the lives of the general population. And by the way, I don't want to come across like I think I'm some genius in this. I do just have intellectual curiosity.

You know, I do think that knowledge is power. And you know, and unlike a lot of Americans, you know, on the kind of politics thing, I just reference, I don't want a president who's just like me, I want a president who's way fucking smarter than me. And I'm amazed how many people don't seem to want that. And that's not a comment on Hillary by the way.

I'm not even gonna get any election. Other than I do think Trump is a fucking pompous jackass. Yeah, just forget the election. Him is a per, like pre-election from the fucking reality show. He was always like, fuck that asshole. But, you know, people love him because he fucking says what they think. God damn, help us all, fuck that asshole. But people love him because he said what they think.

God damn, help us all, help us all. So another theory about intelligence is that, though, kind of like what that last guy was touching on there at the end about the angry voices drowning other people, doesn't just seem like we're getting dumber thanks to living in the social media and YouTube area. We've never been so continually exposed to ignorant comments. This is from a cool article I found on MakeUSEOF.com.

It says, last but not least, it is plausible that idiots just have more opportunities to be heard than ever before to compound this. The prevalence of smartphones that are capable of excellent photo and or video documentation of just about anything makes it pretty difficult to hide the stupid things that we do. Within the social media era, the opportunity to say or do something stupid and watch and horror, is other people find it? Is it an all-time high, even if they don't find you directly? There's syndication through social media channels and major publications, as well as the near certainty of your

stupid act indexed by Google. And it says, don't feed the trolls. Trolls dominate the internet, at leasts dominate the internet. At least some of the credit for our overall perception of dwindling intelligence in an online setting has to be attributed to trolls. More often than not, trolls like to light a fire by saying something stupid or argumentative comments that they might not even agree with,

and then retreat so they can admire their handiwork from a distance. Now, I think based on what I've learned during the research of this podcast is that we are in fact getting dumber and social media and YouTube are just constantly reminding us in exposing that. But why? Why are we getting dumber?

Are there factors other than education system that needs to be fixed and a growing cultural disposition to anti-intellectualism? Yes, there's another huge fucking factor. The basic premise for idiocracy and that's that stupid people are having more kids than smart people, and over time that trend is dumbing down the gene pool. Researchers of various intelligence related studies tend to believe that the drop is related to an intelligence disgenic fertility, and that's jargon for the theory that smarter people have fewer kids. And there is science to back this up, like one study which was conducted by

fewer kids. And there is science to back this up, like one study which was conducted by Satoshi Kansawa, a researcher at the London School of Economics, found that a woman's urge to have kids decreased by a quarter for every 15 extra IQ points. I buy it, grown up in a small Idaho town, some of the dumbest families in town had four or five, six kids. The four best teachers I had there, by far the most intellectually curious people I knew growing up, Mr. Mrs. Bagley, Mr. and Mrs. Outter Grove, zero kids between those two, between those two couples. Also never forget as a Gonzaga professor encouraged me in my classmates to have kids for the same reason he just said in class, he's like,

dumb, you're going to have kids. You know, you guys, you know, you, you students, not again, that we the smartest people ever, but he said you guys need to have kids balanced out. And this is a Catholic priest saying this, you know, you students, not again, that we the smartest people ever, but you guys need to have kids to balance it out. And this is a Catholic priest saying this, who ironically, you know, had zero fucking kids because he's a priest, you know. God, God, gamut, God help us all. All right, now that you know we're doomed to be dumb, Dums,

let's recap the most important points we made about general stupidity with some top five takeaways. Time suck, top five takeaways. Number one, watch idiocracy. So good. So sad how plausible that satire really is becoming so good. Number two, Ray Williams believes we've created a world of quote angry dummies and God damn it so do I.

I just hope, you know, either not one of them, or I'm dumb enough to never figure out that I am one of them. Number three, extremely intelligent women are much less likely to want to waltz around with a toddler stuck to their nip, than the truck stop janitor who already has three kids would mind four more. Fuck. Number four, 77% of Oklahoma public school students don't know who George Washington is,

which makes me wonder how the flaming lips ever made it as an art rock musicians in that state. The other 23% of that population must be incredibly supportive. And number five, dumb people are having more kids than the rest of us. So if you're intelligent and don't want to be part of the problem, have kids yourself or there's only one other option, kill some dumb people before they can breed. Time suck, tough, five take away. Oh, well, hopefully this wasn't too depressing this episode. I was very passionate about it, something that fascinates me. Excuse me, a little sad to find out something stuff I did.

But not surprise. You know, I'm not surprising. I, it's funny, I kept thinking back to my days as a personal trainer before comedy about this anti-intellectualism kind of concept in our country. And I would just go to still frustrated with clients who they didn't want to hear the truth because the truth isn't often easy. They, they didn't want to hear that if they wanted to lose weight, they needed to work out consistently and strenuously, you know, they needed to challenge themselves, change

their workouts around, need to break down muscle fibers so they burn calories, rebuilding them, need to get their heart rate elevated for a certain amount of time to keep burning calories after they left the gym. They needed to eat balanced meals and not just have empty carbs late at night and they didn't want to fucking hear that, they wanted a supplement. They literally wanted just a pill. Just give me a pill that makes me have a six pack. Give me a pill, you know, that makes me look the way I want to just appeal. Just give me a pill that makes me have a six pack. Give me a pill,

you know, that makes me look the way I want to do. And I feel like that's good kind of anecdote for our culture in some ways, where it's like, I don't want to dig into politics, I don't want to dig into economics, give me a fucking pill. Give me, give me a pill that lets me shut my mind off and just, you know, not digging any things and just kind of make it through the day. And, you know, it is frustrating. It is frustrating. And it's funny, this has come from somebody who's worked on a lot of dumb projects.

You know, I hosted some dumb shows on the Playboy channel. I was a panelist for three seasons. I've a show called The World's Dumbest on True TV. And there's a lot of mindless entertainment out there. And I'm not totally against it. I think it has a place, it has value, but it shouldn't be all you do. It's just kind of LCD, lowest common denominator things.

It's like, have a milkshake, I love a milkshake, but I don't wanna only have milkshakes, I don't wanna only have pie. I like video games, but I don't wanna only play the PS4. Sometimes read a book, watch a documentary. But most importantly, you keep listening to this goddamn podcast. Keep listening to time suck time suckers.

I love you guys, I love that you're curious. Stay that way. Talk to you next week. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.