I have been thinking a lot since the election about what could explain the incredibly high numbers of Americans who seem incapable of critical thinking, or really any kind of high level rational thought or analysis.
Then I stumbled on this post https://old.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/16ires5/lead_exposure_from_shooting_is_a_much_more/
Which essentially explains that “Shooting lead bullets at firing ranges results in elevated BLLs at concentrations that are associated with a variety of adverse health outcome"
I looked at the pubmed abstract in that Reddit post and also this one https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5289032/
Which states, among other things, “Workers exposed to lead often show impaired performance on neurobehavioral test involving attention, processing, speed, visuospatial abilities, working memory and motor function. It has also been suggested that lead can adversely affect general intellectual performance.”
Now, given that there are well in excess of 300 million guns in the United States, is it possible lead exposure at least partially explains how brain dead many Americans seem to be?
This is a genuine question not a troll and id love to read some evidence to the contrary if any is available
My aunt spent a long time working in education in the USA, much of it in leadership roles. When she incorporated lessons on critical thinking into the curriculum, it resulted in a lot of pushback from parents who did not appreciate their kids applying the lessons at home.
People who actively resist the use of critical thinking will seem cognitively impaired because they are, in fact intentionally impairing their cognition. My intuition here is to blame religious fundamentalism, but that’s not a well-researched position.
100%
“We are already providing all the answers you will ever need.” -religion
Organized religion is, fundamentally — at its very core — based on rejecting critical thought; to “just have faith” in the unknown/unknowable.
It is in no way surprising that it’s incompatible with advanced science/evidence-based civilization.
Fundamentalism is certainly a contributing factor, but there are others. Conservatives have been working to cut back on education since the early 80’s. Removing critical thinking training was one of the objectives… Conservative policies are unpopular and are often supported with misrepresentations and outright lies. To succeed, they need a public without the knowledge or skills to realize their arguments are invalid. Unfortunately, they have gone a long way toward accomplishing that.
This is from the Texas GOP 2012 education platform.
“We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
They backtracked on critical thinking after the outrage it caused with this
- Munisteri told KVUE, "The platform plank is against a specific type of teaching called ‘outcome-based education.’
"The reason why critical thinking is mentioned is some places try to disguise the program of outcome-based education and just re-label it as ‘critical thinking.’ "
“Good Christian kids need fear-based learning, like we had!”
I got a wooden spatula that’s great for creating fear!
Yeah man. When that kid starts asking questions and challenging the family norms, that’s the teacher’s fault for making their life harder. It isn’t a sign that the parent needs to adapt.
Adapting IS a pain in the ass. Some parents don’t have the faculties to do it. Some do, but don’t after getting done with work. It is truely a generational trauma that the parent has to head off in themselves for it to carry to early aged kids.
A lot of parental pushback comes from frustration over the Dunning-Kruger effect, where somebody who learns a little about a subject feels like an expert. This is often where kids are at. If you keep studying the same material you realize how much you don’t know, which tends to make you feel ignorant, but as you continue you get better at gauging what level you’re at. A lot of it is a matter of maturity. Some parents don’t mind that the kids are learning new things, they just aren’t very good at parenting it. Highly religious people are more likely to see outside information and analyticals skills as a threat, because yeah they are - for good reason lol.
Religion is a major component I’m sure but overall parents probably don’t want their ideals and norms challenged in their own house. This is probably why people (on the right) say that college liberalized their kids. No, college teaches you how to think and pursue answers to your own questions. Not our fault your ideals are based on tradition and ignorance.
Most Americans don’t even own guns. A minority of Americans own lots of guns.
Yeah, but I read something on reddit that says Americans all have guns and love shooting them. So they must all have brain damage
According to Gallup, 44% of American households have guns. This is survey based. If fact, the actual number is unknown. A good guess is somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3.
Gun ranges where I live (California) require employees to wear an exposure monitor for a week or so each year. I talked to a range officer about it, and he said that they had never had the monitors indicate anything that is remotely a problem. Nevertheless, careful gun owners are aware of the problem and ranges that I’ve been to post notices and have hand cleaning stuff ready at hand.
Before trump, I’d have agreed with this. After trump, it’s now increasing at an incredible rate. It was like 32% owned a firearm. Latest pew from this year is 40%. Now with trump back in power, I’m betting you will see us hit 50% or nearly 50%.
Leftists woke up and realized we need to be armed.
Truth
I mean increasing numbers of Americans are being threatened by the government
%100 fact.
Only takes a minority to go off the rails and spread conspiracy theories. Squeaky wheel and all that.
haven’t shot a gun in at least 20 years and I’m retarded as shit. so…
I’m sure this will get rained with downvotes at some point but just know you gave me a good chuckle man, and I greatly needed it. Have a great night!
I only downvoted you for saying you’ll be downvoted. Didn’t want to disappoint you.
Being self aware enough to think that probably means you’re not all that bad.
No.
No that’s kind of stupid.
The amount of lead exposure from shooting is not particularly high and would be concentrated in a very small number of people who are doing things like firing uncoated bullets A LOT ie. reloaders. Most Americans don’t own guns and even the ones that do don’t fire them indoors extremely regularly and most indoor ranges have soap intended for lead. The lead exposure we’re talking about is pretty tiny especially considering lead effects cognition the most during brain DEVELOPMENT and the amount of leaded gas and lead paint are going to be much, much more significant. People who occupationally encounter lead in things like bullets, such as range workers, armorers, etc, monitor their lead exposure and if they are within safe levels the average guy who goes to an indoor range a handful of times a year certainly is. Also, shooting is expensive, most people aren’t shooting thousands of rounds a year, so countries with mandatory service where every 18 year old learns to shoot a rifle, likely using thousands of rounds of rifle ammo for every boy as an early adult would still be a much more statistically significant thing, as anyone who has ever received military training has, simply due to cost, shot more rounds than a very large chunk of any population
I doubt that there are enough people shooting enough guns often enough for it to be more than just trace exposures, it likely must be something else.
It’s regular old religion, shit culture, and propaganda just like it always is.
Don’t forget the deliberate effort by Republicans to nerf the public education system
Nerf is too nice a way to say it. They want to abolish the Department of Education. Their goal is that only the children of the rich will get anything close to a good education.
It’s by design. Keep people stupid, and use religion for its intended use, a tool for control.
We the masses are the foundation for their wealth and power.
Nailed it! Religion, shit culture and propaganda are all major sources of stupidity!
Yes it’s actually a pretty ignorant idea. Lead exposure is more likely from car exhaust from leaded gas, which has been severely limited since the 80s.
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The average ACT score in Florida among college-bound seniors is about 18. To be clear, that is only slightly higher than my cat can score by guessing. It’s an astonishing result. They are actually illiterate. And again, that’s the average for the state (nationally it’s around 22), and half of them do worse.
If you’ve ever tried to have a conversation with an average person… well, you can’t. There’s nothing to discuss except sports, since everything else is way too complicated. So now imagine a standard deviation lower.
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I find this comment super compelling, especially in combination with some of the other good points in the comments here. thank you
Was the majority of the German voting public lead-poisoned in the 30s? I don’t think lead was even put in gas then. Those Germans almost certainly were not lead poisoned, and they put a monster into power.
I get wanting a good explanation, but in reality, it’s a simple but unsatisfying explanation. It applies to every country and every population in every era. People are fuckin’ stupid. Carlin said it best:
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
The German population went through serious economic troubles. Wheelbarrows of cash to buy stuff. Economically troubled people get angry and revolt, and in democratic systems that means firstly voting for the extreme candidates, the ones with a good story. Anger shuts down critical thinking and they don’t think about other consequences of their vote.
That’s how many elections went in a lot of counties in the last few years too.
Yeah, I get that saying people are fuckin stupid is dismissive and over simplified in a lot of cases… But it’s also still true and a factor, which adds to all the other factors you’re talking about. Ultimately I think if people were more educated and intelligent, they could overcome a lot of irrationality.
Right, but that’s where the analogy breaks down “wheelbarrows of cash”. You can try to reference that situation, you can try to talk about desperate people just wanting to lash out but no one is pushing around “wheelbarrows of cash”. Whatever desperate situation people think they are in pales before the reality. The huge difference in severity means they are hardly comparable at all. By pretty much any stat, we should be doing ok: there have been many times we’ve had it worse, so why is this the moment?
This is where the last couple decades of hatred and divisiveness come in. Politicians bringing forth blame, scapegoats, stoking outrage at our problems. The hatred is always there. The violence is always there. Were conditions to a constant state of anger so that’s where too many turn for even a minor downturn
I got curious; looks like leaded fuel was first introduced in the 1920s.
Interesting. Though I can’t say when Germany added it. I believe the 20s was when America started doing it, but according to a podcast I listened to recently, America was the first to start doing it. And also the effects of lead poisoning take decades to manifest.
I see where you are going, but you probably should focus less on the guns. Most Americans don’t regularly shoot guns, even those that have them. A whole lot also don’t own any. But lead is all over in shit like water pipes. Other heavy metals and chemicals are present in higher levels than allowed elsewhere. Also full metal jacket is much more common than it used to be which reduces the lead particles when shooting.
As far as lead water pipes go, they’re not nearly as dangerous as they’re made out to be. The lead quickly bonds to things in the water creating a layer of corrosion which means the lead doesn’t really get in the water.
Don’t get me wrong, they should still all be replaced.
The vast majority of Americans don’t own/shoot guns. There’s 300 million guns because some people own multiple.
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/
Also, the British literally voted to have a worse economy. We don’t have a monopoly on headassery.
Also, the British literally voted to have a worse economy. We don’t have a monopoly on headassery.
Our Brexit vote narrowly won for the same reason that Trump won again - the weaponisation of our stupid people via social media by right-wing shitbags.
It’s not like these people are getting 75% of the vote and the opposition is fractured. Is’s mostly pluralities or, at best, 52%ish percent of the vote. And 20% of people in any country are just change voters no matter what the change is.
There’s not really mandates in the U.S. Trump won’t even be able to control the House. We got a Belgium situation where there’s no government.
For those that don’t know, Belgium is the world’s most successful failed state. There’s enough chocolate and beer around so no one cares but they suck at forming governments. I think they beat Iraq’s record at just not forming a government.
Or, you know, the lead that we put into the air for decades burning leaded gasoline…
Even though we’ve (mostly) stopped doing that, the effects are cumulative, and there are still plenty of people alive who were around when that was still a thing.
Somebody else in the comments said something very similar, I’lll paraphrase what I responded which is that I hadn’t really thought of that, and I’m starting now to come around to the notion that maybe even if there is some percentage of the population suffering the cognitive impairments associated with the adverse effects of lead, it’s probably more likely that they were exposed many years or decades ago vs recently
This seems like reaching for the most esoteric and niche explanation to a fairly simple phenomenon.
America’s school system sucks, and the anti-authoritarian nature of a culture formed by rejecting monarchy has been coopted to convince people that science and reason are authority figures you ought to fight back against.
The vast majority of Americans aren’t gun owners, and the vast majority of gun owners don’t shoot very often. You haven’t provided evidence for Americans being incapable of critical thinking, but you want evidence for why guns aren’t the source of american stupidity.
This is a very silly post. 😅
I’m not sure why you think it’s esoteric or niche, there are something like 400 million guns in the US, with 1/3 of Americans directly owning at least one gun and 44% of us households having a gun owner. I think that’s pretty far from “the vast majority” not being gun owners https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own-guns.aspx
Moreover, lead exposure is known to cause cognitive impairments. I do agree however that most gun owners don’t shoot very often.
But if you need me to cite evidence that millions of Americans seem incapable of critical thinking you are either trolling or just not paying attention.
Here’s an entire book on the subject in case that helps https://www.amazon.com/Americas-Critical-Thinking-Crisis-Education/dp/1735942200
Finally, I’m not sure how you could construe my question as wanting evidence that it isn’t guns causing the problem, I pretty clearly asked a question, provided some links to explain what I had read that led me to that question, and then welcomed contrary evidence, of which you cited none by the way.
A sample size of 1000 people isnt exactly huge to be fair.
I’d like to clarify- I wasn’t intending to be hostile, though I can see how it came across that way, and I apologize, I did a kind of shitty job of conveying my idea in a way that would connect with you. I think in online spaces it can be really hard to break the habit of making your point in a way that will register with bystanders rather than the person you’re ostensibly actually talking to. I did a great job at expressing my perspective in a way that would validate the confusion I think amercians are likely to experience reading this post (as reflected by the votes), but I did a kinda crap job of actually addressing you, sorry about that. I’ll do my best to be a little effective in communicating what I meant and why I felt that way.
As an American, this feels like a cartoonishly out of touch representation of the issues my country faces (which to be fair, would be entirely understandable if you don’t live here and don’t have any first-hand experience with the US). We have plenty of them (issues, that is), and there’s lots of discussion to be had on the impact of guns on society, and also from where I’m standing it seems like are far more probable explanations for people lacking critical thinking skills than that we all just shoot our rootin’ tootin’ guns all the time over here in yeehaw land, and so we all have lead poisoning from all the bullets we’re shooting’. (Not trying to build a straw man of things you didn’t say, my point is that it feels like an caricature, and not one that aligns with the experience I have actually living here)
To reach past “crappy educational system”, “weaponized anti-authoritarianism and individualism”, and even “lead from drinking water or gasoline”, or any number of other likely causes, to instead land on a caricature of American life feels a bit silly to me. Thats an acute risk associated with an activity most people don’t participate in, and that even the people who do participate in, don’t very often.
The book you linked appears to be about how the American educational system is conceptually flawed and approaches education in a way unlikely to yield meaningful critical thinking skills- a point I think I’d likely agree with it on. But to be fair, a book also isn’t actually a quantitative reflection of poor critical thinking skills. It wouldn’t totally suprise me if America did struggle with critical thinking, there are lots of possible reasons we might- and at the same time, it’s a little frustrating for someone foreign to my country to look from the outside and say “man, I wonder if they’re all dumb cause they have lead poisoning from shooting guns all the time” while providing evidence for the link between shooting and lead exposure (makes complete sense) but no evidence for the premise that we’re dumb; that part is just taken for granted.
It kinda feels like you’re asking if the caricature of us all shooting guns all the time is the reason for the caricaturization of us all being dumb. And in doing so, overlook much more systemic far-reaching explanations for how a nation might end up in a state where critical thinking skills are lacking.
I’m not wading into looking for evidence because the nature of these things is that it takes a looooot of evidence to dispute an idea that can be thrown out with only a little. My mental health is horrible and I don’t really have the energy for that at present 😅 I think lots of other folks have made valuable contributions to the discussion, but I didn’t see anyone speaking to the fact that this feels like it’s borne out of an outsiders perspective based mostly on an imaginary idea of what it’s like to live here.
I don’t expect my expressing that idea to change your mind, but I still think it has value for providing perspective and context to the things you’re considering. If you don’t actually know much about the US first-hand, it might not be apparent that folks in the US are unlikely to see that a realistic source of the problem you’re describing given the actual experience of living here.
All I really hope to add to the conversation is that perspective. Its fine if you don’t see it the same way that I do, to be totally honest sometimes there are instances where being immersed in or “too close” to something impairs your ability to see it clearly. Though I don’t think this is one of those times.
Sorry this is all over the place, I’m pretty spent and didn’t have it in me to edit further for clarity (or try to be succinct, as you can probably tell by the like 30 paragraphs where a couple of more carefully thought out ones might have sufficed.)
Well, I’m sure the exposure from going to the shooting range is a lot smaller than this, but lead poisoning from leaded gasoline apparently had a measurable impact on IQ levels.
I 100 percent agree that the big problem of the educational system, though! It is also interesting how self-fulfilling the adversity to government has been: it has made it so easy for men with bad intentions to tear down an at least functional democracy by promising to “fix” it.
That makes complete sense to me, that’s a widespread systemic exposure; I’d kinda expect usage of leaded gasoline that to have that sort of impact
And yep, it sure is frustrating 🙃
Bro started off talking about how Americans are incapable of critical thinking and proceded to write the rest of the post.
Critical thinking isn’t taught in schools anymore. That’s the main problem.
Most Americans don’t shoot very often, even if they own a bunch of guns.
Part of it is that ammo is just expensive. A trip to the range can burn hundreds of dollars in ammo in just a few minutes.
Is it possible? Yes
Could it at least in part explain some behaviour? Yes.
But the missing question really is how much, and the answer is probably infitessimally small even if Real.
For lead exposure there are far easier and more common ways to get exposed such as lead pipes (which the US has a lot of).
But also you’d have to establish that the underlying problem is brain damage, and that is probably not true and instead reflects cultural bias.
There are many other reasons to explain American culture and behaviour which does not default to brain damage (or at least provable brain damage).
I would look at social and cultural issues first: an extremely weak political system, a poor quality general education system, high levels of religion, poor quality general health care, high levels of inequality including shocking levels of poverty.
The problem with the US is the extremes - if you have money you have the best the world can offer; if you don’t then the state provision is shockingly poor. But alot of the crazies are also rich, and that comes down to the culture and society.
Lead poisoning is the least likely explanation, and is almost wishful thinking to try and explain things as a disease rather than normal human nature.
COVID causes brain damage too. We largely don’t mask anymore like even in doctor’s offices, or worse hospitals. I think COVID has done a large amount of damage in a short time.
It’s a known risk, and there are guidelines to lessen or prevent lead exposure at the range, but I’d wager most shooters aren’t aware.
For example:
Use jacketed or lead free bullets and primers.
Wash your face, arms and hands after using the range.
Change your clothes and shoes after using the range.
Wash your range clothes separately from your families.
Do not eat, drink, or smoke on the range.
Take the same precautions after cleaning your guns.
That being said, the folks at largest risk for this kind of exposure would be those who fire guns the most often, so that population would be the canary in the coal mine so to speak.
https://www.quora.com/How-often-do-police-officers-practice-at-ranges
"How often do police officers practice at ranges?
Most departments require re-qualification training once a year.
My department required shooting three times a year, once with our sidearm, once with our 12 gauge shotguns, and once with our AR 15 carbines.
As for my self, I go to the range 8 to 10 times a year. I am usually accompanied by 5 or 6 of my fellow officers. We are not for the fun, we are training by using the state required shooting plans and we add a little extra to it.
Most officers I know only go to range when required for re-qualification. Not because they don’t want to, shooting off a couple hundreds rounds is an expensive proposition."
Yeah… Might be a reason cops seem dumber than average, and they don’t hire the brightest to begin with.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
Thanks for being the first person in this thread to actually post some useful tips to get the lead out, so to speak.
What a fucking retarded post
