Quote Originally Posted by Carpe Coma View Post
Hah! I wasn't meaning the average individual intelligence, just the ratio of an individual's capacity of understanding to everything that is understood. Since that ratio is very very small, even amongst the brightest, the average person's knowledge on any random subject is going to be abysmal.
And in sane societies, the recognition of this long-standing fact leads people to consult experts. In insane societies, it's an article of faith that everyone's opinion is as good as the next, and anyone who claims to know better just because he's studied the subject for years and done all the research is "elitist".
That said, there is a lot that could be done to raise the average person's awareness and ability to think critically about common issues.
A few schools teach critical thinking. They're always private and marginalised, because the state and business want schools to teach uncritical acceptance of what you're told.
This isn't the first time there has been an immigration backlash and it probably won't be the last. The same doom and gloom predictions that are circling now were circling then.
Too true. The panic that the US would be taken over by the Irish lasted well into the 20th century, and had its last echoes in worries over Kennedy's Catholicism. Before that, both the English and Americans were afraid we would be overrun by the Chinese. And now I've had apparently sane Americans tell me quite seriously that France has been taken over by Muslims (presumably to explain why the cheese-eaters wouldn't join the Willing) and England is about to go the same way. So it goes on.