Sadly, nope, if you can read at a high school level, there’s roughly a 75% chance you are smarter than any rando you meet.
For the last 5 or 10 years, more and more kids graduate highschool with middleschool or worse reading / writing abilities.
People even make tiktoks about going off to college and admitting they literally cannot understand the words in their assigned texts, start going through some kind of literacy crash course…
Some people even make videos like that explaining that even after a Bachelor’s or Associates degree, nope, still can barely read.
I am starting to notice this in the slop youtube throws at me that I am sometimes dumb enough to click on.
Somebody reading some article to give commentary on it, and you can just tell they are reading one word at a time, misunderstanding what 15% of them mean, have to actually stop on 5% of the words because those ones they’ve never read before, and then they start complaining that the author must have just been using a thesaurus… because a few of the vocab words in the article are 8th grade or above.
… I picked up reading quickly, so quickly that when I was in 2nd grade, I was assigned to go out into the hall when I was done with my classwork (I always finished rapidly) and then go help a 4th or 5th grader who was behind in reading skills, go sit with them and have them or me read aloud, help them with words they didn’t know, etc.
Everyday, even on the net, I encounter more people who… are beyond graduating high school age, who barely read better than 5th graders with dyslexia.
I love how today actual literacy isn’t even a thing. No one talks about teaching readimg and writing (in the EU, at least). It’s all about financial literacy, digital literacy, social media literacy, hell, even (and bear with me here) AI literacy. Yes, really. There’s probably 800 of these fake literacies floating around.
Whoever thought of this is an idiot. The word literacy means one thing: the ability to read and write (and perhaps understand what you read/wrote). Nothing more, nothing less.
It isn’t just stupid, it’s also malicious. Kids all over the globe are suffering from poor literacy, and instead of fixing the problem you quite literally shift the goalposts.
Why be able to read and consult a dictionary when I can just consult AI or social media to explain it to my borderline-illiterate brain?
When AI services enshittify by raising their price barriers, or when just… infrastructure generally collapses to a serious degree such that many people just literally cannot use them…
Much of Gen Z and A, either reliant on or just totally raised on using AI to do their thinking and work for them…
They will basically go feral, they won’t be able to get their fix, a part of their ‘brain’ will have been ‘removed’, and they will literally be dysfunctional.
And I shouldn’t just single out younger people, though its more prevalent and severe with them, there are certainly many millenials and older who’ve also just given up good chunks of their thinking abilities to AI, which is largely a proprietary service that go undergo a price hike just like Xbox or Netflix.
… I used to think the ending to DX Human Revolution was a tropey cop out, that broke from basically the rest of the game’s narrative and gameplay themes, just a zombie apocalypse at the end of your spy thriller.
Now I realize that was the point, maybe still a bit hamfisted or over the top, but… yep, yep, people become reliant on things they aren’t actually 8n control of for just basic day to day living, and then you actually break that, take it away from them?
Yep, zombie apocalypse is not too far off from what would actually play out.
As an American, this is accurate. I had a conversation with my wife not too long ago about how until I met her, I felt like I was always surrounded by idiots. I don’t mean that in a hyperbolic way. I did not know one person who continued any sort of self education in adulthood. Once they were out of school, that was it. It blew my mind. Life should be a daily striving to learn more. They seriously would not pick up a book, or research any topic outside of headlines.
12 year olds are on average a lot smarter than your usual GOP congresscritter. In fact howler monkeys are smarter than your average GOP congresscritter.
Ya, that struck me as real truth. It’s a nice summary, gets quickly to the root of the problem. If you are facing yet another moron, this elucidates what’s going on. People do not aspire to mature beyond 5th grade anymore. Adjust your strategies accordingly.
My point was more about what you need to do in response, rather than the exact level of lack of maturity you are facing. I think modeling the moron as if they were a child gives good predictive power and suggests management strategies one may employ.
Sure, I’ve tried it a little bit, but some of them are insufferably immature to the point of them basically responding with: “I know you ware but what am I?”, or plugging their ears and yelling lalalala until you give up or leave.
Reverse psychology come close until they realize the outcome. Some never realize it though.
The average American is as literate as a 5th to 6th grader.
https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-literacy-statistics
5th to 6th graders are 10 to 12 years old, normally.
So uh… yep, mhm, the average American is about as stupid as a 12 year old, that’s a bit on the optimistic side though.
Dude’s theory isn’t really wrong, Americans are dumb and immature as fuck, and yes the statistics exist to back that up.
So US was a 3rd-world country all along?
Honestly it terrifies me when I think about this.
I’m too stupid to be smarter than this many people.
Sadly, nope, if you can read at a high school level, there’s roughly a 75% chance you are smarter than any rando you meet.
For the last 5 or 10 years, more and more kids graduate highschool with middleschool or worse reading / writing abilities.
People even make tiktoks about going off to college and admitting they literally cannot understand the words in their assigned texts, start going through some kind of literacy crash course…
Some people even make videos like that explaining that even after a Bachelor’s or Associates degree, nope, still can barely read.
I am starting to notice this in the slop youtube throws at me that I am sometimes dumb enough to click on.
Somebody reading some article to give commentary on it, and you can just tell they are reading one word at a time, misunderstanding what 15% of them mean, have to actually stop on 5% of the words because those ones they’ve never read before, and then they start complaining that the author must have just been using a thesaurus… because a few of the vocab words in the article are 8th grade or above.
… I picked up reading quickly, so quickly that when I was in 2nd grade, I was assigned to go out into the hall when I was done with my classwork (I always finished rapidly) and then go help a 4th or 5th grader who was behind in reading skills, go sit with them and have them or me read aloud, help them with words they didn’t know, etc.
Everyday, even on the net, I encounter more people who… are beyond graduating high school age, who barely read better than 5th graders with dyslexia.
I love how today actual literacy isn’t even a thing. No one talks about teaching readimg and writing (in the EU, at least). It’s all about financial literacy, digital literacy, social media literacy, hell, even (and bear with me here) AI literacy. Yes, really. There’s probably 800 of these fake literacies floating around.
Whoever thought of this is an idiot. The word literacy means one thing: the ability to read and write (and perhaps understand what you read/wrote). Nothing more, nothing less.
It isn’t just stupid, it’s also malicious. Kids all over the globe are suffering from poor literacy, and instead of fixing the problem you quite literally shift the goalposts.
Why be able to read and consult a dictionary when I can just consult AI or social media to explain it to my borderline-illiterate brain?
DON'T LOOK
Obligatory /s for the final paragraph
When AI services enshittify by raising their price barriers, or when just… infrastructure generally collapses to a serious degree such that many people just literally cannot use them…
Much of Gen Z and A, either reliant on or just totally raised on using AI to do their thinking and work for them…
They will basically go feral, they won’t be able to get their fix, a part of their ‘brain’ will have been ‘removed’, and they will literally be dysfunctional.
And I shouldn’t just single out younger people, though its more prevalent and severe with them, there are certainly many millenials and older who’ve also just given up good chunks of their thinking abilities to AI, which is largely a proprietary service that go undergo a price hike just like Xbox or Netflix.
… I used to think the ending to DX Human Revolution was a tropey cop out, that broke from basically the rest of the game’s narrative and gameplay themes, just a zombie apocalypse at the end of your spy thriller.
Now I realize that was the point, maybe still a bit hamfisted or over the top, but… yep, yep, people become reliant on things they aren’t actually 8n control of for just basic day to day living, and then you actually break that, take it away from them?
Yep, zombie apocalypse is not too far off from what would actually play out.
As an American, this is accurate. I had a conversation with my wife not too long ago about how until I met her, I felt like I was always surrounded by idiots. I don’t mean that in a hyperbolic way. I did not know one person who continued any sort of self education in adulthood. Once they were out of school, that was it. It blew my mind. Life should be a daily striving to learn more. They seriously would not pick up a book, or research any topic outside of headlines.
Curiosity is as important as raw intelligence, and curiosity can be encouraged. Mostly it’s discouraged.
12 year olds are on average a lot smarter than your usual GOP congresscritter. In fact howler monkeys are smarter than your average GOP congresscritter.
Ya, that struck me as real truth. It’s a nice summary, gets quickly to the root of the problem. If you are facing yet another moron, this elucidates what’s going on. People do not aspire to mature beyond 5th grade anymore. Adjust your strategies accordingly.
I honestly would take a fifth grader over most seventh graders most of the time.
Middle school was just a series of brutal fights where I grew up. Physically for the boys and psychology for the girls.
I’m just saying we should be careful what we wish for, though we really do need much better reading programs in schools.
My point was more about what you need to do in response, rather than the exact level of lack of maturity you are facing. I think modeling the moron as if they were a child gives good predictive power and suggests management strategies one may employ.
Sure, I’ve tried it a little bit, but some of them are insufferably immature to the point of them basically responding with: “I know you ware but what am I?”, or plugging their ears and yelling lalalala until you give up or leave.
Reverse psychology come close until they realize the outcome. Some never realize it though.