this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024

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Percentages - Pearls Before Swine (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 months ago by FlyingSquid to c/comicstrips

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[–] Allonzee 67 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

60% of the time, our pillaged, underfunded public education system works every time.

Also, on a serious note, it's against the capitalist's interests to have a well informed society capable of critical thinking and true understanding of how badly they're being fucked by big capital. An ignorant populace is a compliant, controllable, easy fo manipulate populace.

That's why the owners never send their kids to their livestock's schools that they spent years defunding into today's ruins. Well, that and they don't want their kids to inadvertently develop... barf...empathy or comradery with their future cattle herd.

[–] Alteon 20 points 5 months ago

In conjunction with this, I fully believe that Big Capital are the ones that are absolutely pushing the abortion bans, by proxy of "religion". Sure, there's niche groups that support it, but that money is coming from SIGNIFICANTLY RICH people pushing that shit through.

They want uneducated people. They absolutely want an uneducated labor class as people are cheap.

[–] retrospectology 33 points 5 months ago (1 children)

And about 26% of voting age adults voted for Donald Trump in 2016/2020.

Almost like there's an intelligence threshold that keeps manifesting that ~30% number...

[–] rsuri 25 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Honestly it's kinda impressive that more than half of Americans have read a book in the last 12 months. I mean I read a book, but that's just so I have an answer in case anyone asks if I've read any books lately.

[–] bisby 19 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I also hate "reading a book" as a proxy metric for intelligence. I know plenty of cultured smart people who watch documentaries but don't read. And I know some dense, not that bright people who read a lot of Twilight style books.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Reading Twilight demonstrates the ability to focus on a task for a long time, which is more that can be said for people watching documentaries (I watch a lot of them).

[–] bisby 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Sure. but there are plenty of reasons to not read other than "uneducated". And associating ability to focus with intelligence and education isn't fair either.

If an American couldn't tell me how many states there are, I would question their intelligence or education.

If an American told me that they don't read books, I would just assume they find books boring.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife 19 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This will be an incredibly dated reference, but back in the '80s there was a comic who would ask the crowd who the black girl in The Facts of Life (TV show) was and there'd be a chorus of people yelling "Tudy! Tudy! Tudy!" Then he'd ask who the secretary of defense was.

[–] samus12345 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

*Tootie

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

OK. Now who's the secretary of defense?

[–] samus12345 11 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Not a damn clue. And I would argue that it's not a terribly important thing for your average American to know, either. Just because I'm curious, I'll look it up...

Lloyd Austin. Never heard of him.

[–] Anticorp 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

When I enlisted in the US Army they made us memorize our chain of command all the way up to the Commander in Chief (POTAS). I still remember who was in charge back then, but I didn't know who the current Secretary of Defense was until you told me just now. It's weird, because that used to be something most of us citizens knew, but over the last 6 years everything has gone so fucky that we can't seem to keep track of everything any more. I blame it on the very intentional firehose of falsehood that is aimed directly at each of us every single day now.

[–] samus12345 5 points 5 months ago

I looked at the list of past Secretaries of Defense and aside from Caspar Weinberger, who I mentioned in another comment, I only recognize Robert McNamara (from the infamy of Vietnam), Donald Rumsfeld (from the infamy of Dubya), and Dick Cheney - surprisingly, I remember his name from before he was VP.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I didn't know either lol. I've also never heard of Lloyd Austin. For that matter, I'm not sure who was secretary of defense during Facts of Life's run - "Casper Weinberger" comes to mind for some reason.

[–] samus12345 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Very good, he was '81 to '87! And I've actually heard of him, although only because his name was in Bloom County. The others that it could conceivably have been are Harold Brown and Frank Carlucci, but it was probably Weinberger when this question was asked.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Bloom County was so good. I can only hope that Berkeley Breathed hasn't become a rightwing crackpot cunt like so many of the other cartoonists from his era. I'm genuinely afraid to look it up.

[–] samus12345 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

He hasn't. In fact, he brought the strip back for a while so he could mock Trump some more.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife 2 points 5 months ago

Faith in humanity: restored. Breathed's humanity, anyways.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Robert Macnamara

Do I care that was forever ago and he's dead?

[–] ggppjj 17 points 5 months ago

Yeah, but 35% of all statistics are made up.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (2 children)

At first I laughed. Then I just got kinda sad. Are we doomed to be collectively held back by a significant portion of the population with a poor education or is it possible to lift everyone?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

Historically, there have been moments of very rapid literacy, so just to answer the question - is it possible?, yes. The question is more of when does literacy become relevant o everyday life, if the literature is made relevant then people will learn. This is even true on a smaller scale in the classroom, even with all the challenges of education

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The smarter you are, the less likely you are to want kids or have "accidents", and even if you do, you won't have many.

Spot the bad trend.

Exception: Rich people have kids regardless of how smart they are.

This is another bad trend.

We're not quite at Eloi and Morlocks yet, but given how things are at the moment, I think we'll be there sooner than H.G.Wells thought.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I really don't think genetics have much to do with the current populations' intelligence compared to many generations prior. There's simply not been enough time evolutionarily speaking to make a difference I would say. Basically all of recorded history is a blip when considering evolution on a longer time scale.

Education and a stable, fruitful upbringing is what makes smart people if you ask me.

But I'm mostly basing this on a gut feeling or a hunch, not really anything rigorous.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Democracy works if the populace have a baseline level of education and basic knowledge.

If a majority don't, it doesn't work so well.

[–] Anticorp 1 points 5 months ago

That's kind of why the founding fathers of the United States decided to go with a representative republic and not an outright democracy. That's also why only land owners could vote for a period of time. They had no faith in the commoners, and we're seeing more every day that their lack of faith was well founded. Back then your chances of being educated were much higher if you were a rich land owner, so they put their faith in that, rather than giving the uneducated masses collaborative control over the government.

[–] AnUnusualRelic 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

"Learn me that"

I mean, really?

[–] FlyingSquid 12 points 5 months ago

Pig is known for not having the highest IQ.

[–] pyre 8 points 5 months ago

using "learn" to mean "teach" isn't standard, but it is valid in some dialects. you may hear people say "that'll learn ya!" from time to time.

[–] d00ery 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

I'm British, but it's hard not to be aware of American stuff due to Reddit / Lemmy, movies, books, games, etc.

Are the 3 branches of govt.:

House of representatives, Senate, and judiciary?

We have house of commons, house of lords, and judiciary. First is elected, second is a mix of hereditary and nominated by govt I believe. Third is appointed by govt I guess.

Edit: looks like I got the branches wrong, see next reply.

[–] FlyingSquid 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

3 branches are executive, legislative and judicial. The president is the head of the executive branch, congress legislative.

[–] d00ery 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Thanks for the explanation.

Well gosh, I've had to go and read up on it too 😀

Looks like we both have the same 3 branches, but I was wrong in thinking the house of commons and lords were 2 of those branches.

In a perhaps slightly simplistic overview:

Legislative - debates and decides the laws.
Executive - executes or implements these laws in policy decisions (assigning funds to public bodies etc, setting mission statements)
Judicial - interprets the implementation of laws when needed (e.g. edge cases)

Executive, Legislature and Judiciary. In the UK, the executive comprises the Crown and the Government, including the Prime Minister and Cabinet ministers. The legislature; Parliament, comprises the Crown, the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

Also seems like the UK independence of legislature and executive branch is up to debate -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers_in_the_United_Kingdom

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[–] uebquauntbez 3 points 5 months ago

So 5 out of 10 people do not understand percentages? That's over 80%!

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