Post: #1

Inspired by Emech's Mac thread I decided to look into other things in society that possibly make us dumber, and raise awareness for you on the forum. Surprisingly, we are surrounded now by technology and environmental factors that have this effect. Here's a list to discuss:

Quote:Google
Back in 2008, Nicholas Carr wrote an article for “The Atlantic” that sparked a national debate that rages even now. The title of the article: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” So...is it? Short answer: yes and no. In July 2011, scientists at Columbia University announced that, thanks to Google, we now store less information in our minds. However, we're also better at remembering where information is stored, so your answer really depends on which skill set you value most.

Quote:Sugar
According to scientists at UCLA, steady sugar consumption "slows the brain, hampering memory and learning" in as little as six weeks. And, according to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Americans consume 35 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup each year. You're still smart enough to do that math, right?

Never heard of this one.

Quote:Smartphones
Well, technically it's not smartphones that are making us dumber. It's the thing the smartphone enables, which is chronic, relentless multi-tasking. Dr. Sandy Chapman, chief director for the Center for Brain Health in Dallas, says, "It's really keeping us at this distracted level, so everything that we're thinking about tends to be more quick, more minute, less synthesized, and that's what's making us dumber."

Just iphones, not Android. FYI.

Quote:Reality TV
Everyone knows that you are what you eat, but did you know that you're only as smart as the television you watch? An Austrian researcher recently proved that subjects performed worse on knowledge tests after reading a story about a stupid person, thus proving that the media we consume directly affects our behavior. So unless you're watching reality TV shows about Nobel Prize winners, chances are good that your favorite guilty are making you dumber.

I wasn't sure if it was stupid people watching reality tv, or it was making them dumber. Maybe it's both?

Quote:Wife Beating
Household violence doesn't just damage us emotionally—it actually lowers our IQs. A Boston University study of more than 1,000 pairs of twins showed that children exposed to high levels of domestic violence had IQs that were, on average, 8 points lower than unexposed children.

Whatever. If bitches were smart to begin with they wouldn't mouth off to get if smacked off their face.

Quote:Gum
Chewing gum may double your pleasure but it cuts your smarts by half (give or take). A 2011 study at Cardiff University in Wales determined that chewing gum "impairs short-term memory for both item order and item identity." Chew on that, smartypants.

Every time I see a chick smacking gum I assume she's a tard.

Quote:City Living
Two people go for a walk. One walks through a park, one walks down a busy urban sidewalk. At the end of the walk, who's smarter? Turns out, it's the person who walked through the park. In a real-life, large-scale version of this experiment at the University of Michigan, people who walked through the city had worse memory, poor attention and learning problems. In fact, just looking at a picture of a city produced the same effect.

Now why is it city folk think they are smarter?

Quote:Jet Lag
Jet-setters, take note: when scientists at Cal Berkeley simulated jet lag in hamsters, they found that the hamsters produced 50 percent fewer neurons than normal and took longer to solve simple problems.

How do you simulate jet lag in a hamster? That’s another story for another day.

Scary, as much as we like to travel.

Quote:Poor Ventilation
Excess carbon dioxide is doing more than wrecking our climate—it's also making us stupid. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley Livermore slowly increased the amount of CO2 in a poorly ventilated room while college students attempted to solve a series of complex, strategic problems. Not surprisingly, the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more mistakes the test subjects made. So the next time you're feeling slow, crack a window.

Yep, goes with that big city living.

Quote:Whuppings
Not one but TWO wide-ranging studies* have proved conclusively that spanking children lowers their IQs and gives them post-traumatic stress disorder. "The more spanking, the slower the development of the child's mental ability. But even small amounts of spanking make a difference," says Murray Straus, professor at the University of New Hampshire and author of one of the studies.

*University of New Hampshire in 2009 and University of Manitoba in 2012.

I'm calling bullshit on this one. Kids get beat cause their stupid to begin with.

Quote:Stress
A Yale University study has found that stressful situations "can reduce the number of connections between neurons in the brain and impair the ability of managing tense events in the future." And chronic stress only exacerbates the effect.

If that news stresses you out, relax. Behavioral therapy, like yoga and meditation, can help repair the damage.

Fuck me. I though stress kept you sharp.

Quote:Meetings
The phrase "governed by committee" is synonymous with mediocrity for good reason. "Group settings can diminish expressions of intelligence, especially among women," according to a study from Virginia Tech. So the next time you feel like a company meeting is making you brain dead—you're probably right.

100%. You're only as smart as the dumbest person in the room.

Quote:Air Pollution
Car exhaust, second-hand smoke, smog, factory emissions...the list of common air pollutants is long and depressing. And all of them are making us dumber. Researchers at Columbia University found that the more air pollution children are exposed to, the lower their IQs.

Speaking of which, when’s the last time you changed your air filter?

See: Big city living. You guys are tardbots.

Quote:Emails
The bad news: If you compulsively check your email, you may be making yourself dumber. Researchers at the University of California recently proved that constant email stresses us out and reduces our ability to concentrate.

The good news: All you have to do to get smarter is to wean yourself off of it. Test subjects who limited email time or went without had lower blood pressure and better recall.

Stop PM'ing me, you're making me dumber!

Quote:Weed
Back away from the bong, junior. This may seem like a no-brainer, but Duke University researchers have found that smoking marijuana consistently from adolescence causes "neuropsychological decline broadly across domains of functioning, even after controlling for years of education." The scariest part? Even after test subjects quit using, their IQs never recovered.

Where you at Kickboxer?

Quote:Fast Food
Thinking about grabbing some Happy Meals for your hungry little ones on the way home? Think again. Children who regularly eat fast food will grow up to have lower IQs than those who regularly eat freshly cooked meals, according to a study from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Poor diet affects a lot more than just weight.

Quote:Fluoride
This one might leave a bad taste in your mouth. According to the journal “Environmental Health Perspectives,” children with high levels of fluoride in their drinking water “have significantly lower IQ scores than those who live in low-fluoride areas."

In this case the Brits should be mega smart.

Quote:Evolution
A Stanford University researcher named Gerald Crabtree recently posited that human intelligence may have peaked back in caveman times, and that it’s all been downhill since then. The cause? Our survival no longer depends on it.

“A hunter-gatherer who did not correctly conceive a solution to providing food or shelter probably died…whereas a modern Wall Street executive who made a similar conceptual mistake would receive a substantial bonus and be a more attractive mate.”

Ouch.

I believe in the Bible, so evolution doesn't pertain to me.

Quote:Fox News
Here's some fuel for your partisan fires: two separate studies* have found that "Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources" such as MSNBC, “The Daily Show” or NPR.

*University of Maryland in 2010 and Fairleigh Dickinson University in 2011.

What the fuck ever.

Quote:Sponge Bob
Big Bird may be even more awesome than we suspected. In a University of Virginia study, children who watched nine minutes of SpongeBob, "had impairment in their executive function compared with children who were assigned a drawing task and those who watched educational television." Remember that come pledge-drive season.

These new kids shows will rot the brain. Nothing like the old school Animaniacs.

Source

Post: #2

Quote:Quote:
Evolution
A Stanford University researcher named Gerald Crabtree recently posited that human intelligence may have peaked back in caveman times, and that it’s all been downhill since then. The cause? Our survival no longer depends on it.

“A hunter-gatherer who did not correctly conceive a solution to providing food or shelter probably died…whereas a modern Wall Street executive who made a similar conceptual mistake would receive a substantial bonus and be a more attractive mate.”

Ouch.

I believe in the Bible, so evolution doesn't pertain to me.

Hahahahaha!

Post: #3

How did my thread inspire this? This should be titled if you want to get smarter listen to elmech more and spend your computer time being creative instead of dealing with computer fuck ups. Which didn't make me smarter unless knowing how to restore a virused computer that has anti virus on it which is a virus itself.

Post: #4

"Jet Lag
Jet-setters, take note: when scientists at Cal Berkeley simulated jet lag in hamsters, they found that the hamsters produced 50 percent fewer neurons than normal and took longer to solve simple problems.

How do you simulate jet lag in a hamster? That’s another story for another day."


Okay, am i the only one who caught himself thinking of whole other type of hamster?

Post: #5

NPR doesn't make you smarter, it makes you want to kill yourself.

MSNBC is a cesspool of self-preening assholes who thinks the world hates them because they are a woman or gay or whatever.

As for weed, look at Purple Urkle's post while blasted off his nuts high. Pure mental masturbation. Probably could toss in misogyny or patriarchy every four words and get it published by feminists.

Post: #6

Ali said "More Stupider" in the title.

Post: #7

(09-03-2013 10:54 PM)2Wycked Wrote:  As for weed, look at Purple Urkle's post while blasted off his nuts high. Pure mental masturbation. Probably could toss in misogyny or patriarchy every four words and get it published by feminists.

I've been high probably 40% of the time I've posted in the last 6 months.. I like to think it doesn't decrease my ability to think all that much

Post: #8

Your responses to evolution and Fox made laugh so hard.

Post: #9

Here is my list. It has one item:

1). Women's sexual liberation.
Once women were allowed the liberty to let it all hang out, their sexuality started to crowd out all the other elements that made society workable: the intellectual, the artistic, the scientific.

Today smart music is dwarfed by women's perverted sex "concepts;" intelligent books go unpublished because book companies can make more money off romance-porn; and photography has been degraded by the likes of women like Annie Lebovitz. Even science has degenerated into idiotic "Save the Boobies" and "Save the Tatas" campaigns.

This is something no one wants to say (definitely not the Atlantic) because it's basically saying that women show up, flash their tits and everyone gets stupider. But that's what happening.

Women's sexual liberation has turned America from a (metaphorical) library or small town into a seedy strip club. Women calling men perverts and creeps is a form of projection, because it's they who are the true pervs and creeps, walking around half-naked, saturating everything with sex, and then playing innocent.

Post: #10

I'm fairly convinced that moderate drinking increases intelligence over time, if the average teetotaller is any indication.

Post: #11

(09-04-2013 12:08 AM)Big Nilla Wrote:  Ali said "More Stupider" in the title.

What, can you think of something more better?

Post: #12

(09-04-2013 12:38 AM)Hades Wrote:  I'm fairly convinced that moderate drinking increases intelligence over time, if the average teetotaller is any indication.

I think it's the other way around. Smart people like drinking because it slows them down and gives an escape from an overactive frontal lobe. Dumb people can't afford that luxury.

Post: #13

One thing the list doesn't contain is the list itself. LOL A lot of the points are misleading and/or just plain wrong. Several of these are correlation where causation is impossible to determine. (Beating wife causes dumber kids? More likely that dumb fathers beat dumb mothers and they give birth to dumb kids.)

Gum? I've read studies that say the exact opposite. Doing exercise of any sort, although chewing gum isn't exactly an exercise so let's say physical activity, while learning increases retention.

Jet lag. Does the study measure people's problem-solving skills WHILE they are experiencing jet lag or are they being tested years later. Being 'dumb' while your body is all f'd up is not the same as saying that "jet lag makes you stupid", which implies a long term cognitive decline.

Fast food. Kids growing up eating fast food have lower IQ's. Or maybe it's just that stupid parents, who produced a genetically dumb child, think it's OK to feed their kids crap 5 days a week.

Not to mention the fact that the list constantly confuses intelligence with memory. Intelligence is hard to define, sure, but it's a whoooooole lot more than, um, what was that word again? Oh yeah, memory.

These studies cannot draw the conclusions they do with any confidence at all. Don't believe everything you read.

Post: #14

I nominate trap music and EDM.

Post: #15

(09-04-2013 05:35 AM)Caligula Wrote:  

(09-04-2013 12:38 AM)Hades Wrote:  I'm fairly convinced that moderate drinking increases intelligence over time, if the average teetotaller is any indication.

I think it's the other way around. Smart people like drinking because it slows them down and gives an escape from an overactive frontal lobe. Dumb people can't afford that luxury.

That's why I drink. When my brain is in overdrive I need a break. It won't shut up on its own. Get drunk, go to sleep, wake up and start over.

Post: #16

(09-04-2013 03:35 AM)Aliblahba Wrote:  

(09-04-2013 12:08 AM)Big Nilla Wrote:  Ali said "More Stupider" in the title.

What, can you think of something more better?

More 'stupider' is grammatically incorrect which leads to further irony in the topic you wished to discuss..hehehe

Post: #17

(09-03-2013 08:59 PM)el mechanico Wrote:  How did my thread inspire this? This should be titled if you want to get smarter listen to elmech more and spend your computer time being creative instead of dealing with computer fuck ups. Which didn't make me smarter unless knowing how to restore a virused computer that has anti virus on it which is a virus itself.

Post: #18

(09-04-2013 09:26 AM)Moma Wrote:  

(09-04-2013 03:35 AM)Aliblahba Wrote:  

(09-04-2013 12:08 AM)Big Nilla Wrote:  Ali said "More Stupider" in the title.

What, can you think of something more better?

More 'stupider' is grammatically incorrect which leads to further irony in the topic you wished to discuss..hehehe

Let's give Ali a little bit of credit, Guys; I'm about 120.1000% certain he did that on purpose.

Post: #19

I hate multitasking. It's all the rage too, but research has shown that multitasking is detrimental to cognitive tasks and that it may even be making someone dumb and effecting their learning by altering their brain to make them like little crack babies.

Plus women love to bust out the claim they are better at multitasking than men, aka doing many things shittly at once.

Post: #20

Apple- They are serving a growing chunk of the population that is computer illiterate. When the system goes down, users just stare at it in disbelief, and then go pay a fortune to a hipster at the store to repair it. Go back to Emechs thread and look at how much help we got from the fanboy forums.

When I was running Linux, and learning on the fly, the forums were always helpful to lurk for data, as well as my techie friends.

A comparison:

Linux community is like the tribes of N. America, working in harmonious groups and mostly staying out of each others way.

Micro$oft is like Nazi Germany with relentless control.

Apple is like France. (no explanation needed)

Post: #21

Calling bullshit on most.

Sugar... I might believe that. It also reduces testosterone right after consumption, so, dumb and emasculated.

Post: #22

GPS- Guvmint controlled and can be restricted to the public and rest of the world. China and Russia are working feverishily to get their own up and running. People rely on them now and are completely directionally disfunctional. I grew up using a compass, topo map, and a 2m amateur radio to navigate the mountains. This is a skill becoming long forgotten. Just like a road atlas when travelling.

Calculators- Schools aren't teaching long hand anymore. Students aren't learning math at the core level, and don't understand it. I see kids in the grocery store unable to calculate percentages on paper. Scary.

Post: #23

Ali, a lot of kids may not be able to spit out their multiplication table like us older folks could, but that's not really "intelligence". Two things here... Are we talking about memorized knowledge or intelligence as in problem-solving skills?

A lot of older people complain that the young generations are going to hell in a hand basket but that's been going on for eons and worse, it's just not true. The problem is that talking about how kids today can't divide 72 by 6 in their heads today is cherry picking. Maybe it's true that kids' dependence on calculators has resulted in a generation of people that can't do fairly simple arithmetic. But kids today have learned so much more about other things because the world is many times more complex than it was just 25 years ago. When I was a kid, we didn't have FB, didn't have computers and smartphones, etc. Our TVs had exactly two functions - an on/off switch and a channel dial. Maybe brightness and contrast, too, but that's about it. Today's TVs have a lot more functions to play with and they also hook up to the net. On one hand, computers make certain things a lot easier for us such as calculations. On the other hand, to use one properly and efficiently, one needs to learn a shitload. Just composing an email involves several steps that must be memorized. If you think it's as easy as just using common sense, try introducing an iPhone to an 80-yr-old relative who's never seen one. See how far they get. Not far.

My point is that, in terms of absolute memorized knowledge, I'll bet kids today have brains crammed with twice as much stuff as I did when I was a kid simply by the complexities the world throws at them. They might not know the exact same things as I did, but if we're talking about the volume of knowledge, they have had to learn a lot more than people did when times were much simpler. When I was 10, I didn't have to learn how to navigate FB. PC-DOS only had a handful of commands compared to what computers can do today. We didn't have wireless networks to configure. These are all things that many kids today can use effortlessly. They don't know the same things but to conclude they know 'less' is not a logical conclusion.

In terms of problem solving ability, what I consider more 'intelligence' than memory only, I don't think kids are stupider today. However, they might have different problems to solve. They might not have learned what you consider 'important', but what is important is subjective. Certainly, learning to use a compass is an arbitrarily chosen skill that in and of itself means nothing since no one ever needs to use one today. They don't need to because they have GPS. Being dismayed by the fact kids can't use a compass (not sure if they really don't, but for the sake of discussion) is akin to my father calling me stupid when I was a kid for not knowing the proper way to kill a chicken for dinner. I didn't need to because we had supermarkets where we could buy our food. My dad had to learn that skill as a child because that's how things were done in his day. Not knowing how to kill a chicken didn't make me stupid. But my dad would look at us as if "the young generation doesn't know anything". Perhaps my grandfather though my dad was stupid for not knowing how to dig a hole to shit in.

The world changes. Our needs change. The knowledge we need to navigate the world changes. And there is no doubt in my mind that the amount of shit I know at my age is infinitely greater than the amount of shit a guy my age knew in 1359. Not the same shit, but the amount of shit.

Post: #24

I'm talking about problem solving. Kids aren't getting it. In 20 years they'll be watering plants with Gatorade.

Post: #25

1. List make people dumber.
2. See cracked and msn lists for inspiration.
3. Insert random picture here.
4. Insert snarky or sarcastic comment here.
5. Insert tab A into slot B.
6. Add comment section filled with dregs of society.