[reb]

Your thoughts on this?

Source:
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We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities. There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a year. But even those who are supposedly literate retreat in huge numbers into this image-based existence. A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book. To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

[Delarge]

The current system is stifled by self-serving, opportunistic politicians who are rewarded for successfully manipulating public opinion, and a mob that doesn't know whether it's coming or going.

Implementing channels through which the masses may communicate their desires would be far more ideal than allowing their naivety to determine the outcome of a system they have a limited understanding of. Only merited individuals should be permitted to vote for those with genuine authority within their respective fields (economics, psychology/sociology, medicine, military, et cetera). I would also advocate establishing a strong constitution to ensure that the "line" is not over-stepped.

[Qweevox]

I tend to agree but would take it one, uncomfortable step further. It has more to do with intelligence then education. Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray addressed some of the problems faced by modern society in the 1994 book titled The Bell Curve. Empirical data can be so controversial!

We are faced with a big challenge. How do you deal with the unintelligent masses in a ever increasingly complex society? When it takes fewer and fewer people to produce the goods we consume what do you do with all the excess labor? The politicians promiss....what? "A Chicken in every pot" and free health care? That's a fantasy nightmare tried before by communist countries like the USSR which where more successful at spreading poverty and misery then wealth. Natural selection doesn't play a part in our human genome anymore.

The unintelligent and ill-equipped don't die off before breeding and passing on their genes to a future generation of dependents. For the most part society's dependents are willing pawns to the fantasy that our world does not have limited resources and the successful will always provide.

Many voters are ill equipped to make intelligent choice in a general election. You need no more proof to that fact then to see how many of them struggle to caste their vote. Instead of picture ballots with scratch-n-sniff options perhaps voting should be more complex. Perhaps voters should have to pass a test of qualification before they can vote.

In any case, I agree. Voting is to easy. The downfall of the Republic will come when the electorate realize they can vote themselves money...oh...to late...we are already there. Mob rule will work for a time but is ultimately doomed to failure.

[Reon]

	Originally Posted by Undead Bonzi To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I certainly felt illiterate reading it. I've heard of run on sentences but run-on words is a whole new level.

I think it had more to do with the op's pasting than the original authors grammar (sry, I read this before I went to sleep)

Originally Posted by Qweevox To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I tend to agree but would take it one, uncomfortable step further. It has more to do with intelligence then education. Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray addressed some of the problems faced by modern society in the 1994 book titled The Bell Curve. Empirical data can be so controversial! We are faced with a big challenge. How do you deal with the unintelligent masses in a ever increasingly complex society? When it takes fewer and fewer people to produce the goods we consume what do you do with all the excess labor? The politicians promiss....what? "A Chicken in every pot" and free health care? That's a fantasy nightmare tried before by communist countries like the USSR which where more successful at spreading poverty and misery then wealth. Natural selection doesn't play a part in our human genome anymore. The unintelligent and ill-equipped don't die off before breeding and passing on their genes to a future generation of dependents. For the most part society's dependents are willing pawns to the fantasy that our world does not have limited resources and the successful will always provide. Many voters are ill equipped to make intelligent choice in a general election. You need no more proof to that fact then to see how many of them struggle to caste their vote. Instead of picture ballots with scratch-n-sniff options perhaps voting should be more complex. Perhaps voters should have to pass a test of qualification before they can vote. In any case, I agree. Voting is to easy. The downfall of the Republic will come when the electorate realize they can vote themselves money...oh...to late...we are already there. Mob rule will work for a time but is ultimately doomed to failure.

How many people do you think are unintelligent, and in what standard, it sounds like if they don't meet your standard of intelligent, whatever that may be. The basic 'right' of living in america is the ability to vote, do you really think that, even if it is for the better, you can take that right away from a person without infringing on others?

Also, if I recall, we've already had iq test with our voting requirements in the past.

[Thumper]

I dug up
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if anybody wants an easier read.

Some of the numbers are astonishing, if true. Others don't make much sense ("A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school.", more High School grads read than college grads??). Regardless though, it is a serious issue. We're so inundated with visual entertainment that you really have to go out of your way to actually read something nowadays. The vast majority of people get their news from one of the few major networks which are run more and more like entertainment providers than providers of information. Elections have always been popularity contests, however the increased tendency to appeal to the lowest common denominator would be laughable if it wasn't so troubling. I don't know if things are quite as bad as the author makes them out to be as far as illiteracy and (un)education go, but the apparent dearth of informed adults in the general population does seem to become more obvious every day.

I'm going to nip this rant in the bud before I embarrass myself, but if anybody wants to do any further reading on the subject, Noam Chomsky has spent most of his life waxing eloquent about the government, media, intellectuals and ignoramuses. On this topic specifically a good place to start is his book (more of an essay really, you might even be able to read it online) titled Media Control, you should be able to find a copy in most libraries or bookstores. He speaks of the "bewildered herd", as he calls the less-informed majority, and how those in positions of power influence what they believe. It a quick, interesting read without getting too tinfoil-hat.

[PeterBristolUK]

I was going to start a new thread for this but I think from reading this thread it would be applicable here...

I watched this video -
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Just wanted to know if any of you have seen it, and/or what you think of it and the facts contained in it

[thod]

You overestimate intelligence as a virtue. Those with greater intelligence have a larger piece of paper than those less so. Yet it is what is written on the paper than defines the character of the man. An intelligent baby has nothing written on it and is thus helpless, others may have the greatest processing speed yet they are processing the wrong data.

This distinction between intelligence and wisdom is often heard without the terms being defined. Its quite possible to be highly successful by making all the rights moves, whilst someone far more intelligent fails because they were not weighting the evidence correctly. Some people seem to do this naturally, the rest of us through experience.

[Functianalyst]

Originally Posted by Qweevox To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I tend to agree but would take it one, uncomfortable step further. It has more to do with intelligence then education. Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray addressed some of the problems faced by modern society in the 1994 book titled The Bell Curve. Empirical data can be so controversial! We are faced with a big challenge. How do you deal with the unintelligent masses in a ever increasingly complex society? When it takes fewer and fewer people to produce the goods we consume what do you do with all the excess labor? The politicians promiss....what? "A Chicken in every pot" and free health care? That's a fantasy nightmare tried before by communist countries like the USSR which where more successful at spreading poverty and misery then wealth. Natural selection doesn't play a part in our human genome anymore. The unintelligent and ill-equipped don't die off before breeding and passing on their genes to a future generation of dependents. For the most part society's dependents are willing pawns to the fantasy that our world does not have limited resources and the successful will always provide. Many voters are ill equipped to make intelligent choice in a general election. You need no more proof to that fact then to see how many of them struggle to caste their vote. Instead of picture ballots with scratch-n-sniff options perhaps voting should be more complex. Perhaps voters should have to pass a test of qualification before they can vote. In any case, I agree. Voting is to easy. The downfall of the Republic will come when the electorate realize they can vote themselves money...oh...to late...we are already there. Mob rule will work for a time but is ultimately doomed to failure.

OMG enough with the Darwinism already. Only people who delude themselves as self-important even attempt to argue intelligence since there remains no empirical means of determining true intellect. Defining what intelligence is such a abstraction and infinite ordeal that at best we can merely say that there are vast types of intelligence which cannot be compared side-by-side.





Functianalyst added to this post, 22 minutes and 1 seconds later...

Reb, Thumper thanks for the articles. I actually edited Rebs as I read, so I will have to read it again. It's a great read and very accurate however as the author progressively admits this is nothing new and has always been a part of our history. And like history, there is nothing new under the sun but a more enhanced information age and readily available information. What the author describes is how my dad and I have discussed for decades as the demise of America. Is it no wonder that US voters have been called the "sleeping giant"? The greatest majority have no desire to know the truth and has always sought illusions masked as security, materialism and instant gratification. What is different now than the roaring 20's, the 30's with prohibition, the 40's post war in fabricated home buying and do we dare miss the 50's (the decade of what I would coin “stepfordism” begin).

I am happy that others think the same as I. I am going to read the article in its entirety again. I hope this thread stays alive, because I have always considered this the disease of mankind, not just America. I will be the first to admit that I do not consider myself, nor have I ever desired to be considered an intellectual. However this article does not focus on intellectualism in my opinion, but continuing down spiral of the majorities desire to be considered “sheople”.

[ATCGs]

I'm not concerned so much with the current state of the American electorate - literacy rates, high school dropout rates, etc, can be fixed. However, I am concerned with the anti-intellectual rhetoric from the right side of the political spectrum.

Somehow, if you are well educated, if you are intelligent, been to high-end institutions, etc, there seems to be the feeling that you cannot be trusted - it was very visible in the recent election, esp. from Sarah Palin. She spent a great deal of time painting Obama not only as a terrorist muslim etc, but also as an elitist outsider - not part of 'real america'.

It isn't the fact that people are uneducated that worries me - people can become educated. It is the sentiment that somehow becoming educated is a bad thing - that being a good person with good values is somehow precluded by being educated.

[Valiyn]

I disagree. It isn't all that accurate.

Visuals are the first form of communication everyone learns. Unless you are born blind, you learn how to take in information to the world around you and respond to it in some form.

The excuse "well I can't draw" is bullshit. Everyone can, it's just a matter of practice to get what visual signs down onto a medium in a way we want. The visual language is the first language we learn. I believe this was proven back in the 1800s? I'll have to look for the source again.

Visual communication does not make someone any less intelligent. In fact, it's really the only base common language all humanity shares. In art, the silhouette of a figure reads first. From that silhouette, you have to convey everything.

For example. What is this silhouette doing?

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Visual communication is a language all its own and I'm glad people are learning to speak it. That being said, people aren't learning to speak it in modern cultures. The author blames visual communication in general but most problems I believe comes from "normalizing people" and limiting their creativity. Preferring to read a comic book over a text book is not a culprit to our problems. In fact, go read Watchman. It isn't the TV or movies that are the problem. Those are visual arts as well, and can do a great job at communicating. Stargate and Kingdom of Heaven (the director's cut) are a good example of these.

Not like you can go out and learn about the arts from picking up a paintbrush. By far too expensive. So how do you expect children to learn about the arts if you take away comics, film, etc.? A comic book might seem a crude form of art at first glance, but it really is quiet the opposite ((I would know, I have a major in sequential art - which is comic books mostly, followed by storyboards.)). Comic books are just as good as a 100% text novel ((again, pointing to watchman.)). I don't believe the problem is people turning to visual forms of communication is the problem, I think it is even beneficial. The problem that anything that is seen outside the "norm" is considered a disorder. At least that's my opinion, I don't have any facts to back that up.

[Undead Bonzi]

Originally Posted by ATCGs To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I'm not concerned so much with the current state of the American electorate - literacy rates, high school dropout rates, etc, can be fixed. However, I am concerned with the anti-intellectual rhetoric from the right side of the political spectrum. Somehow, if you are well educated, if you are intelligent, been to high-end institutions, etc, there seems to be the feeling that you cannot be trusted - it was very visible in the recent election, esp. from Sarah Palin. She spent a great deal of time painting Obama not only as a terrorist muslim etc, but also as an elitist outsider - not part of 'real america'. It isn't the fact that people are uneducated that worries me - people can become educated. It is the sentiment that somehow becoming educated is a bad thing - that being a good person with good values is somehow precluded by being educated.

It is interesting to note the backlash against being well educated. Ironic that so many American citizens would rather have 'Joe Sixpack' running the country rather than 'Joseph Sixmasters'.

[Thumper]

You make some very good points Valiyn, but I don't think that's what the article was addressing necessarily. If everybody was spending time in museums, going to plays, watching thought provoking movies, shows, comics etc etc, we probably wouldn't have much of a problem. The issue is more along the lines of what ATCGs stated, that there's just no drive for people to educate themselves. Some forms of visual language would be very beneficial (and probably lead people to immerse themselves in more non-visual artforms and information sources), but when all people do is watch The Simple Life, Monday Night Football and reruns of Family Guy, there might be a problem. Not that these things are bad and you should refrain from them all together, they just don't lend themselves well to broadening one's worldview if they are consumed exclusively.

I don't think the article was saying anything that communicates ideas visually is bad, just that an overwhelming number of people ignore anything even remotely complex, whether it be visual, textual, aural or otherwise. He obviously focussed on the lack of literacy in America and perhaps I'm digging too deep into whatever meaning he was trying to get across, but I'd go out on a limb and say he'd probably agree with most everything Valiyn said in his post.

[birichinaedolce]

This was the most amazing election, in that, I was a voting group merely by the fact that I'm educated? A really scary proposition. What's next? Will the beasts come up from the belly of the earth to drag me down into it's bowels and devour me? Or was that some movie I saw? Fact, fiction or prediction?

[Karamazov]

Ah, now I see. I just read it from it's original source. Hedges is one of the few real journalists left. He was a war correspondent for the New York Times (among others) and he's covered the wars in South and Central America, the Balkans, the Middle East; including the myriad issue surrounding the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and the list goes on. One need only to read War is a Force that gives us Meaning to see why he has largely been marginalized by the boyar media establishment.

He's avoided much of the pitfalls and trappings that are bane of any substantive reporting from journalists abroad. For example; having to bear witness to the usual sublimated war coverage, showcasing the local heroes from Rockwell, Middle America and the like.

[MrFlaneur]

	Originally Posted by Qweevox To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Natural selection doesn't play a part in our human genome anymore. The unintelligent and ill-equipped don't die off before breeding and passing on their genes to a future generation of dependents. For the most part society's dependents are willing pawns to the fantasy that our world does not have limited resources and the successful will always provide.

a little harsh

how many of the greats come from dire poverty or illegitimacy

the problem is that is you deplete one aspect of the gene pool everyone suffers - no on knows how genetics works - if intelligence was a matter of switching off/on a few genes it would have been done by now

the matter is far more sophisticated for any one age - especially this one

[zibber]

If you can spend money in stores, who cares if you're literate?

[Undead Bonzi]

	Originally Posted by zibber To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	If you can spend money in stores, who cares if you're literate?

and even better if you can't read the sales signs or do basic math to figure out the best price.

[reb]

i do not know who 'fixed' the original glop i posted, but a thousand thanks to you. may the hope diamond drop from the heavens at your feet, with no one around to witness it.

'how many of the greats come from dire poverty or illegitimacy' answer? we cannot know. there are no paternity tests to prove...momma's baby, daddy's maybe up until jerry springer.....

the visually based=unintelligent? that does not necessarily follow...the problem lies deeper. the nexus is in critical thinking, and non-self serving actions. if we believe that there ARE no non-self serving actions, then how can a society be arranged that will 'entice' people to act for their self interest, while shoring up society? (obviously, this one has drifted more than a bit from its shore...). if we disagree on 'what is critical thinking' then we fall into the morass that is 'moral relativism', and we, again, have no rudder on this boat. who, therefore shall be the helmsman? is it simply 'the law of the jungle' where the adroit and amoral take what they wish from the stupid and confused?

i keep seeing that danged actor, robert whatever, advertising reverse mortgages-picking off the wounded-still! even with countrywide defunct... jackals...worse than jackals. buzzards-no, buzzards serve a useful purpose, these 'people' like robert wagner are involved in stealing 'computer pixels'...anyway, an engrossing discussion. glad i could spark something intelligent like this with my pitiful computer skills....

these things are omnipresent...if we wish any kind of society 'less than complete chaos', what do we do? watching bloomberg and the testimony of the 'car ceos' the other day, it almost appears it's too late to act on any large scale to save this society...mulally of ford couldn't even understand the questions directed to him....

[Sleeper88]

I don't think that intelligence has something to do directly with anything. In my humble opinion (as hard as this is going to be to get across my lips/type here) there aren't many truly dumb people just like there arent many true geniuses. The majority of the population(of this planet) has the capacity to comprehend what is going on if they wanted to.

Ignorance and culture is the problem. Education and especially a continous education through out life and the thirst for knowledge should be more engrained in every culture. That is the problem. Most kids dread going to school for the sake of learning, why is that? Why hasn't that changed yet? Why did most my teachers try to make me, and it seems most others, hate them? Why do people that lack ideas, don't care and are generally dull allowed to become teachers? I shouldnt be better than my 10th grade maths teacher at math, and then be discouraged because i am and get bad grades, just because she can't handle a 15 year old doing calculus. I was a year earlier in the highest maths class at my school (despite getting a C in 10th grade), then despite having one of the highest grades in the class, I was forced to take the same course again the year after becaues they couldnt offer me anything more advanced. How can an institution called school call itself in such a way if they cannot cater to their students needs, and most of all make clear to the students what their needs in life are, and will be. I can certainly promise that I am not going to leave my childrens' entire education up to any educational system as they currently stand.

This half-assed way of doing everything with the relentless mediocreness of the noncaring majority forms this wide-spread cultural trait called ignorance which depicts being educated as a negativ trait. Why did I get picked on in school for getting good grades? What the .... is wrong with parents and teachers nowadays?

I believe that most of us here have a responsibility to take part in changing the world if we don't want our children and their children to grow up in this shit. And I call it shit, cause it reeks to the heavens.

My thoughts flow faster than I can type at the moment, despite my 80wpm. So I'll have to regroup before continuing with a more structured arguement.

[Gekko]

I don't think the vote process is the problem but more to do with the weight of a vote. The only way to counter balance the problem of uninformed people voting whatever their media outlet tells them is to ratio tax to vote. When you look at numbers showing 46% of current voters pay no income tax and in some cases earn money from the government that needs to be changed.

Top Tax bracket people vote should be worth say 27 votes, and work down to the guy on welfare gets 1 vote.

After Mr X pays his taxes towards, public schools, public hospitals, welfare and all other help to the masses I don't think it unfair he or she should be rewarded with a more balanced vote, such as shareholders in business.

It will never happen, but i'll keep my fingers crossed!
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[Monte314]

An interesting read, but I don't think education is the "great divide". I believe we face a crisis of character, which allows the educated and uneducated alike to feel comfortable retreating from their responsibility to roll up their sleeves and do what they are able to do, be it great or small, to make the world a better place.

[Melaphaisar]

This article made me sad. Granted I don't take the numbers offered at face value, but even the idea that the majority of families don't buy at least 1 book in year is depressing. Hell, when I was a kid my parents wouldn't ground me, they'd just take away my books. And now I watch as my little brother (who is 12 years younger than I) grows up. I watch and I see frightening differences. The boy takes to slogans, commercial adverting like a fish to water. Now its not that he takes to them that bothers me, its that a year later you could ask him about a particular commercial that hasn't been aired in that year, and he might be able to quote it to you. This could just be how his mind works, but even then, it shows that branding has been thoroughly ingrained. But I digress.

When the article describes illiterate America, a lot of what he says applies to my father. He never graduated from high school, and is, at least in my view, illiterate. For example, when I go home this Thanksgiving I have refinance his mortgage. He just signed whatever terms were in front of him and now faces foreclosure. In 21 years of my life, I've never seen my father read anything, not even a bedtime story to his other kids. And on the rare occasion that he does vote, its for the candidate that has the more memorable slogan.

Now, before I write my father off as being an idiot. He does have a few paradoxical characteristics. [I'm the first person in my family to attend college and I'm studying nuclear engineering.] And my father has spent the last few years listening to increasingly complex physics lectures on tape because he wants to have an idea of what I'm studying. Granted, he's never looked at the math, but he's listened to, seen experimentation, and diagrams, of everything leading up to quantum mechanics. And now has a general understanding of ideas and principles of basic quantum mechanics. He called me a few months ago and asked about quantum tunneling. I nearly cried for joy.

This is where those of us who prefer the literary medium run headlong into a wall of our own arrogance. When we (the literate) think of intelligence, we primarily think of reading, writing, and math. Only in more recent years have different aspects of intelligence been given the credit that they deserve.

The vast majority of our testing is done paper and pencil. I think we need to develop different testing methods, and train our older teachers in different teaching methods. I'm not saying that we don't have a problem with illiteracy, we have a serious problem, I'm just saying that we can't write them off.

An interesting idea. Perhaps a re-organization of the public school system into classes based on the student's preferred learning methods. This way you have teachers that teach in a style that most suits them, and they are paired with the students most receptive to that style. This would be a radical solution to our public school problems, but the financial cost would be minimal. I'm sure its not a new idea, but I'm ranting, and thought it was interesting.

[Monte314]

	Originally Posted by Melaphaisar To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	An interesting idea. Perhaps a re-organization of the public school system into classes based on the student's preferred learning methods.

Interesting indeed. The teachers' unions will never allow it.

[reb]

Melaphaisar,

my Dad, pretty much the same. but he could pull a small motor apart blindfolded with thick gloves on, put it back together with the correct parts in it, and make it run. there are different kinds of intelligence. do some of them allow a person to parse 'who to vote for' and others not?

to change how the educational system works...i bet the 'new triumvirate' will not be able to do that...the educational system, for good or ill, is an albatross we are going to have until society collapses in the u.s.s. of a.

speaking of unions, the car companies have the same problem. their unions are bleeding them dry, specifically the agreements and the retirees (along with incompetent management). everyone is 'getting mine', with no thought to the companies that are going down the drain....is it possible the educational system is in the same fix? bureaucrats who won't fix what could be fixed, unions who are grasping what they can, and parents who are just glad to have their kids out of their hair for 8 hours? what does this say about 'gross' societal intelligence, if true (i'm sure it can be debated, but survival is really a type of intelligence, int it?).

[blueback]

	Originally Posted by Undead Bonzi To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	It is interesting to note the backlash against being well educated. Ironic that so many American citizens would rather have 'Joe Sixpack' running the country rather than 'Joseph Sixmasters'.

I don't think it's that people want an idiot running the country, I think it's that they want someone who shares their values. Beyond that, though, I don't think the "backlash" is real. I think the republican party is trying to drum up a backlash. They are having a harder and harder time making themselves look like the party that should be in power because when the country put them in power they screwed up big time. So the best they can really do is scrape the bottom of the barrel for things that might scare people so that they can try to make the democrats look bad. That way people will stick with the republicans out of shear inertia.

	Originally Posted by Thumper To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I don't think the article was saying anything that communicates ideas visually is bad, just that an overwhelming number of people ignore anything even remotely complex, whether it be visual, textual, aural or otherwise.

People who can't read very well generally can't listen very well or think very well. They don't have any labels inside their head for the concepts they aren't exposed to every day. Becaues they can't easily handle the concepts they are uncomfortable dealing with them. People naturally respond negatively to things that make them uncomfortable. This is even before the reaction to embarassement or task failure.

	Originally Posted by reb To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	... he could pull a small motor apart blindfolded with thick gloves on, put it back together with the correct parts in it, and make it run. there are different kinds of intelligence. do some of them allow a person to parse 'who to vote for' and others not?

That's not intelligence, that's mimicry. Anyone with a basic ability to remember things they've seen before can learn how to take something apart and put it back together again, even if they don't enjoy it.

Intelligence, at a minimum, is the ability to solve new problems. Messing around with an engine until you have memorized all the pieces, how they go together, and how they usually fail, is not intelligence. Seeing a problem with the engine and figuring out how to solve that problem, or improve some aspect of performance, is intelligence.

I think to a certain extent curiosity and the raw ability to interact with objects can look like intelligence. If a ferret pushes and pulls at their cage lock long enough they might accidentally open it. If they then remember what to do to open it they might look intelligent, but they never solved a problem. You never see ferrets take some of the yarn from their cage, weave it into a lasso, and use it to unlock another cage so that the freed ferret can let them out of their cage. That would be intelligence.

	Originally Posted by reb To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	speaking of unions, the car companies have the same problem. their unions are bleeding them dry,

True.
The last figure I saw was that the american auto makers effectively pay their workers 70$ per hour compared to the foreign auto makers who hire american workers and pay them 35$ per hour. The extra is all health and retirement benefits.

I figure it's unsustainable. They might drag it out for a bit longer but ultimately the model will fail. Hopefully we can do it deliberately and ease the transition as much as possible.

	Originally Posted by reb To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	what does this say about 'gross' societal intelligence, if true (i'm sure it can be debated, but survival is really a type of intelligence, int it?).

No such thing.
Humans act in their own self-interest. The trick is for some smart, responsible people to structure the environment so that individual self-interest is channelled into activities that help the group. That is what the founding fathers did when the country started. However, once the system gets rolling it's a lot harder to do something like that again.