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Noted In Passing: “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

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  • Freddo April 29, 2021, 10:28 AM

    Next realize that the entertainment industry does not just target the top half of the population, they want to sell to the bottom half too. Ever wondered why most movies are just explosions or car chases linked together by attempts at romance and/or comedy? Everything must be dumbed down for Johnny Q Public.

  • talgus April 29, 2021, 10:31 AM

    so, the 10% take what jobs: thieves, thugs, and drugs. and shooting others.

    Question remains: what to do about them. So far, they have been ignored. Before modern day police and lawyers, these people got cared for by someone not in bottom 10% or they got dead. not now.

  • Gagdad Bob April 29, 2021, 10:46 AM

    Interesting hatefact I bumped into yesterday: there’s a simple reason why single individuals — say, Isaac Newton — have contributed more to science than have entire civilizations and continents.

  • James ONeil April 29, 2021, 11:19 AM

    Looking at Freddo’s comment and his, ‘Everything must be dumbed down for Johnny Q Public.’

    There was this guy, way back in the day, named Shakespeare that wrote plays that played well to the stalls and to the groundlings, to the nobility and the hoi poloi, to the quick witted and the rather slow. Way way way back in the day guys such as Euripides, Aristophanes, etc., did the same. Why yes, one can tell a good story, express complex concepts while including sex and gratuitous violence as well.

    IQ <83?
    I like and respect Peterson though he is a bit crazy (Hey he is a psychologist and crazy goes with the territory.), but having worked with and associated with folks who were intelligent as well as those below average on the IQ scale, I suggest you look at Cooijmans' IQ and life function before buying Jordan's pontification: https://paulcooijmans.com/intelligence/iq_ranges.html

  • Kevin in PA April 29, 2021, 12:33 PM

    I suspect that Dr. Peterson is on to something much larger.
    With the advance of technology that percentage of “useless” (perhaps maladaptive individuals would be a better term) people grows even larger.

    Gagdad raises a good point. It is only those individuals of higher intelligence that have contributed to the advancement of civilization. And yet, the West is in the process of dumbing down everything. From education to entertainment, it appears to be the cultural aspiration is toward idiocracy.

    I have followed Dr. Peterson for several years and been very impressed with his insights and his ability to speak on a wide variety of subjects with such depth of knowledge. I rate him as one of the premier intellectuals of the day.

  • ghostsniper April 29, 2021, 12:43 PM

    “…what to do about them.”
    =============
    Why does anyone need to do anything about them?
    Just leave them alone and mind your own business.
    It’s become stylish for certain people to mind other people’s business under the guise that what they really want is for the gov’t to step in and disperse some stolen money to the target. The more gov’t gets involved the worse things get.

  • mary April 29, 2021, 12:51 PM

    I often feel sorry for the really intelligent people who have to daily deal with the rest of us.

  • james wilson April 29, 2021, 1:04 PM

    What more precisely terrifies Peterson is left unsaid of course. There’s ten percent of all the people and then there’s fifty percent of some of the people, but as Lincoln said you can avoid saying so one hundred percent of the time. Or something.

  • EX-Californian Pete April 29, 2021, 2:15 PM

    The worst part is- low I.Q. types have been hyper-breeding over the last few decades, while higher I.Q. people are breeding less. Tragically, the government actually rewards low I.Q. breeders with welfare, housing, food stamps, etc., and even increases the financial benefits for those who breed even MORE stupid offspring. It also rewards ‘single parent households.’

    The biggest danger to society and civilization this brings is a sort of “reverse evolution,” meaning that “survival of the fittest” has been brought almost to extinction, while “lesser beings” overwhelmingly increase in number.

    What a shame that Nature hasn’t developed something that would cause sterilization of those in the I.Q. range below 110. If mankind could (or would) do that, it would be labeled as “racist” or “genocidal.”

  • Jack April 29, 2021, 3:18 PM

    I think Peterson is definitely on to something but I’ll suggest what to me is the first obvious error in his comment and that is that his IQ number, 83, is too low. I’d suggest that if an individual’s IQ is less than 90 (with average being 85-114 roughly a 30 point range), give or take a point, they’re pretty useless for anything that matters and among other things probably shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

    But Lord love us, as tax payers we are stuck with housing, providing medical care and feeding them and their limitless offspring and those that follow for as long as they know how to breed. Our health care offerings, our educational systems and all manner of insurance rates are all impacted by them and our government loves them because most of them vote as democrats so they are mos’def here to stay.

    Damn, I was wrong. They do have a valuable purpose after all.

  • Anonymous April 29, 2021, 4:11 PM

    Pete… Sadly, you are right. We need to stop subsidizing (or importing) low IQ people. After a few generations things will self-correct. But, of course, we will not do that. Need those low IQ Democrat voters to prevent another Trump.

  • Bruceph April 29, 2021, 6:06 PM

    IQ, methinks, is not the problem. Virtue is the problem. Or more precisely, the lack thereof. And the lack has no preference for IQ. What we (I, you) do about that is the question.

  • H (science denier) April 30, 2021, 2:46 AM

    I wonder how many here remember that rat-bastard Robert McNamara’s 100,000?

    Peterson’s take on the results of Mac’s little project would be interesting.

    Of course, plenty other reasons to despise Mac. The Living and the Dead; Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War is fascinating reading; I can’t off-hand remember the author’s name and too lazy to walk around the corner to have a look at the bookshelf.

  • Glenfilthie April 30, 2021, 4:22 AM

    I agree with Jack. The figure I heard is 93, not 83. But whatever – moving on:

    The average black IQ in America is 85 and falling as more subsaharan Africans are dumped into our communities – their IQ’s average around 65. Mohammed Ali had an IQ of 79, which is considered mild mental retardation in white people. Close to 30% of blacks are too stupid to hold a mundane job. Jordan shies away from race realism, but as our demographics change, ignoring realities is going to get harder and harder to do. When you discover that most of our most violent inmates in the prison system are as dumb as a post as well… it kinda sheds a light on why we will eventually have to do something about semi-functional retards and stupid people.

  • Annie Rose April 30, 2021, 6:31 AM

    I spent my career working with cognitively challenged people with IQs well below 83. Many are wonderful to be with and have taught me so much about what’s important in life.

    Peterson is mostly right. People with very low IQs cannot be taught higher thinking or analytical skills; skills that result in innovation and improvement for society. Some can learn to read and write and do very beginning math on a very basic level, but only after years of intense one-on-one instruction.

    Countries that have increasingly lower IQ populations are headed into the dust bin of history. Our public school curriculums are purposely designed to teach to the lowest common denominator. Employers are increasingly having to do remedial classes for employees, just so that they can then begin to learn the actual job. Those with the highest IQs are having fewer or no children, while those with the lowest IQs are having many children per family. We are going to pick up warp speed in about 10 years straight into that dust pan and it will be truly ugly. I increasingly see dumb workers who argue with customers when told that they made a mistake on an order or service. Even with direct proof before their eyes, they will insist that they did something correctly and then accuse the customer of being argumentative; just like my students in the local special education school. It’s scary what’s happening to our country.

  • Casey Klahn April 30, 2021, 6:46 AM

    JP isn’t fully correct but I give him his rhetorical moment. The army has never been about getting all of the recruits it can possibly get. In WW II, the US Army wanted a hundred divisions, and eventually mustered 91. Germany had several hundred divisions (the divisions of each nation are not equivalent, except in the applied sense, but my analogy is useful). The number was 315, according to Goo Gull.

    Much of the time you can tell an intelligent man by what he does not do, and inversely, a dumb man by what he does. IQ is a thing, but factors abound regarding what comes out of the man. Someone mentioned virtue (Bruce). Also consider character. Add stuff like condition, training, physique, talent…you see how IQ is one component?

    If you were never in the service, your education on people is wanting. Perhaps your football team, your school class, or your corporate environment has given you much with which to understand mankind. OLORDJebuss! I just realized that my kids are getting their understanding of men from TikTok and YouToobed. Facebookt.

    I have made it a habit, in my lifetime, to surround myself with smarter souls than myself. I still see them fukup and the smarter they are, the more ironic it is to see their goofs. We had this one officer candidate whose GT (type of IQ score and the numbers equivalent) was in the 140s – I think it was 146, in fact). I sat him in the TC hatch and placed him in charge of a mech. infantry assault. He was tied in knots, and, of course, I was delighted to watch this. I’ll never forget how he responded: “I thought infantry were stupid; not anymore!”

    I could take the whole corps of doctors in america right now, and light them in a barrel. Not much would be lost to society. Lawyers…

    Say, how dumb are our politicians these days? Just think about that for awhile. That thought just ruined my day.

  • PA Cat April 30, 2021, 9:48 AM

    Slow Joe has reportedly never taken an IQ test– anyone here care to hazard a guess what his score might have been if he had?

  • rabbit tobacco April 30, 2021, 11:15 AM

    You can be smart ,but not wise. Jimmy Carter
    was supposedly the smartest modern president, IQ 153
    and look at the mess he made.

  • EX-Californian Pete April 30, 2021, 11:43 AM

    PA Cat-

    All kidding aside, I’d say Joe’s would be in the low 70’s. He’s borderline clinically retarded, but seems to have enough functional brain tissue to speak and perform simple tasks without failing too miserably.
    Of course, that rate of failure obviously increases under stress, and occasionally subsides.
    He’s lost some of his motor skills, and is easily confused.

    Yeah, I’d say in the low 70’s for sure. And maybe the reason he hasn’t had an I.Q. test yet is because they can’t be filled out with crayons?

  • H (science denier) April 30, 2021, 1:11 PM

    How about a comparison of Slo Joe’s IQ to Corn Pop’s. I’d pay good money to see that show.

  • Dirk May 1, 2021, 9:12 AM

    Does common sense require a higher IQ?

    A lot of merit regarding the book “ Everything I leaned, I learned in Kindergarten.

    education is actually learned from our families. Values, Morals, Ethics, right from wrong, the difference between the truth and a lie,,,,,,,,,What else is there.

    Village idiot