I have been thinking a lot since the election about what could explain the incredibly high numbers of Americans who seem incapable of critical thinking, or really any kind of high level rational thought or analysis.
Then I stumbled on this post https://old.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/16ires5/lead_exposure_from_shooting_is_a_much_more/
Which essentially explains that “Shooting lead bullets at firing ranges results in elevated BLLs at concentrations that are associated with a variety of adverse health outcome"
I looked at the pubmed abstract in that Reddit post and also this one https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5289032/
Which states, among other things, “Workers exposed to lead often show impaired performance on neurobehavioral test involving attention, processing, speed, visuospatial abilities, working memory and motor function. It has also been suggested that lead can adversely affect general intellectual performance.”
Now, given that there are well in excess of 300 million guns in the United States, is it possible lead exposure at least partially explains how brain dead many Americans seem to be?
This is a genuine question not a troll and id love to read some evidence to the contrary if any is available
Yeah but you oughta see the other guy
What a fucking retarded post
EXCUSE ME, but compared to the drinking water it’s basically a rounding error for lead exposure.
I have literally fired a machine gun until liquid carbon is running down the gun and spraying on my face and I’ve likely had more lead from pipes and paint chips than anything else.
No.
No that’s kind of stupid.
The amount of lead exposure from shooting is not particularly high and would be concentrated in a very small number of people who are doing things like firing uncoated bullets A LOT ie. reloaders. Most Americans don’t own guns and even the ones that do don’t fire them indoors extremely regularly and most indoor ranges have soap intended for lead. The lead exposure we’re talking about is pretty tiny especially considering lead effects cognition the most during brain DEVELOPMENT and the amount of leaded gas and lead paint are going to be much, much more significant. People who occupationally encounter lead in things like bullets, such as range workers, armorers, etc, monitor their lead exposure and if they are within safe levels the average guy who goes to an indoor range a handful of times a year certainly is. Also, shooting is expensive, most people aren’t shooting thousands of rounds a year, so countries with mandatory service where every 18 year old learns to shoot a rifle, likely using thousands of rounds of rifle ammo for every boy as an early adult would still be a much more statistically significant thing, as anyone who has ever received military training has, simply due to cost, shot more rounds than a very large chunk of any population
At first glance I thought this post was a bit facetious, but after thinking about it and reviewing some research around people manufacturing the bullets and how it affects them and understanding that detonating them in confined spaces probably is just as if not more problematic. And if you have a job that requires you to do it often, say a cop, does that create even more of an effect? Lead exposure causes a loss of impulse control as well as intelligence effects. Could that be one reason why cops are so much more violent than the average person? I’d love to see a study on lead content of blood in cops, especially ones who murder people they capture, but unfortunately, the NRA is probably too powerful to allow that to happen. And conservatives hate masks, so I doubt it would be easy to convince cops to wear them while practicing.
Most Americans don’t shoot very often, even if they own a bunch of guns.
Part of it is that ammo is just expensive. A trip to the range can burn hundreds of dollars in ammo in just a few minutes.
Equating votes for a particular candidate to an incapability of critical thinking is probably where your hypothesis breaks down the most
Yes, this shit is so obvious. I have been calling this out for a decade now.
Yes, but not because of guns. While the adverse effects of leaded gasoline were known in the 60s and leaded gasoline got banned in most countries, the US only phased it out in 1996. Which means that millions of people alive today are exposed as a child. This has a huge impact on IQ:
The average lead-linked loss in cognitive ability was 2.6 IQ points per person as of 2015. This amounted to a total loss of 824,097,690 IQ points, disproportionately endured by those born between 1951 and 1980.
This amounted to a total loss of 824,097,690 IQ points
What a useless figure compared to the 2.6 per capita given earlier
IQ is a useless data point anyway as even IQ point values have shifted over the past 100-ish years. An average IQ now used to be genius level IQ in the past and it mostly comes down to basic education and not starving.
Adding all the points together feels useless as a metric. But 2.6 per individual doesn’t sound as drastic as I was expecting leaded gas to impact. Still bad, just not what I’d call a huge impact.
The lowering of emotional self-regulation and impulse control on the other hand swings wildly with just a few percents over a population with a much more dangerous extreme on the bell curve
I doubt that there are enough people shooting enough guns often enough for it to be more than just trace exposures, it likely must be something else.
Yes it’s actually a pretty ignorant idea. Lead exposure is more likely from car exhaust from leaded gas, which has been severely limited since the 80s.
Lead paint in every house probably didn’t help
Most old lead paint just gets painted over, further sealing it in. It doesn’t do anything to you unless you chew on peeling paint or release it into the air by sanding it.
It’s regular old religion, shit culture, and propaganda just like it always is.
Don’t forget the deliberate effort by Republicans to nerf the public education system
Nerf is too nice a way to say it. They want to abolish the Department of Education. Their goal is that only the children of the rich will get anything close to a good education.
It’s by design. Keep people stupid, and use religion for its intended use, a tool for control.
We the masses are the foundation for their wealth and power.
Nailed it! Religion, shit culture and propaganda are all major sources of stupidity!
Plus, Gen-X and Boomers were exposed to a lot of lead.
Gasoline types used to be “Regular or Unleaded” and Regular, I think, and required a"special" engine.
Leaded (“regular”) gas will destroy a catalytic converter. A car without a cat could usually run leaded or unleaded. Some may knock running unleaded if they’re super old or broken in some way. I believe leaded was usually cheaper.
I wouldn’t try running leaded in a modern engine even if you removed the cats. God knows what else it would screw up.
Also fungicides/pesticides can cause dementia. One of the first signs of early onset dementia is loss of empathy. So not very surprising many old rural folks have become jaded people
Small aircraft still use 100LL fuel…(LL is low lead)
There is an episode of Mind Field on youtube, it’s their halloween episode that explored the source of fear in humans. It had a campy feel to it but also contained a lot of good information.
The conclusion made in the video is that there are very few “universal fears”, things that cause fear in every human test subject regardless of race, culture, age, etc.
They were able to find one though: humans universally do not like the feeling of suffocation, specifically we are pretty sensitive to the ratio of oxygen and CO2 we are inhaling.
The brain interprets an increase in the CO2 concentration in the blood as “suffocation” and activates the fear response to try to protect us.
What have been dumping absolute metric fuck loads into the atmosphere in the past centuries? Countless amounts of CO2. And the concentration is only going up and up and up.
All of us are experiencing elevated amounts of CO2 in the blood, and all of us are universally feeling some level of the fear response because of it. Might explain what seems to be a lot of really bad decision making across all of society, people are scared, don’t know where it’s coming from, and are seeking anyone and anything that can help fix it immediately, whether or not it’s actually helping.
Fear is the mind killer.
Get a CO2 sensor, and you will see CO2 levels spike massively in occupied rooms with poor ventilation. Indoor CO2 levels can easily exceed 4x the normal outdoor level. Because of this, and critical thinking, I don’t believe for a second that a global rise in CO2 has any direct effect on our behavior. I could be convinced that increasing time spent indoors (and online) does, though
Typical CO2 concentrations:
- Outdoors (2024): ~430ppm
- Outdoors (2000): ~370ppm
- Indoors (depends on ventilation): 800ppm ~ 2000ppm+
I really can’t imagine CO2 concentrations in the air is suffocating us. Air is mostly nitrogen, then oxygen, CO2 is a tiny sliver (which yes traps heat, different problem.)
The other commenter didnt say it’s suffocating us, just that CO2 levels are used by the body to figure out whether we are suffocating, and that the elevated levels might cause a subconscious reaction. We nearly doubled the CO2 compared to before industrialization.
Seriously? I used the word suffocating to reference what he said about subconscious suffocating or however he danced around it.
First off, no need to be so condescending.
Next, what do you mean by dancing around it? The original comment just said that we might have some adverse effects, not that it is suffocating us. The word suffocation was originally only mentioned to explain that our body is capable of noticing differences in CO2 concentration.
I matched the energy you gave.
Whatever their attitude, the poster is right. They added valuable information that disproved the OPs hypothesis.
I still dont see how it disproves anything. Yeah, we have little amounts of co2 in our air, why should that mean that we can’t detect a change?
Because it’s 0.3%. Our body is not sensitive enough to notice this. Causing climate change through the greenhouse effect, destroying the planet, absolutely. But it’s not suffocating anyone.
It’s really the idiocracy theory. Dumb people have more and more kids while smart people tend to have 0 to 2 kids. It’s exponetially growing the amount of dumb people. Besides some people that had potential dumbed themselfs down by joining organized religion. very sad
Eugenics but because a funny movie said it it’s suddenly acceptable to parrot. 🙄
It’s not eugenics. Nobody was forced to have more or less children and none of it was based on ethnicity. It’s an uncomfortable thing to talk about, but it’s real. Unlike eugenics.
I think you may have misunderstood me. I’m not saying Idiocracy is a movie about eugenics. I’m saying that believing the world is getting dumber because dumb people have more babies and smart people don’t is eugenics adjacent.
I think we’re operating on slightly different definitions of eugenics. I looked it up to see if I was mistaken. Eugenics, by definition, involves State power to arrange. Whether by policy, law, or even forced sterilization and outright murder.
I just learned that there’s an idea called new eugenics or liberal eugenics. It strips out the use of State power, leaving the decisions up to the parents.
That’s why I said eugenics adjacent.
Yes it it it at least spreads harmful ideas about genetic and biological essentialism.
And no its not because of “stupid people” that the election turned out the way it did.
The subject is more complex and saying it was due to stupidity is a very easy answer that ignores the role power and wealth and a broken system play into the victory of trump.
I’m not saying stupid people pass on stupid genes and I don’t think the movie did either. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it. It’s a fact that uneducated people have more children. It’s more that stupid people raise stupid kids and the school system is continually getting worse. So the kids just don’t have much of a chance.
It’s not smart vs dumb though, it’s educated vs uneducated. I seemingly small distinction but a critical one.
There’s a distinct inverse correlation with the mean education level of a population and their birth rate (the better educated a group is the fewer babies they have) especially when you look at the women in that population.
Uneducated parents don’t value education in their children and so on and so on. Educated parents very much do value education in their children and actively participate in the schooling.
These two factors together mean that there’s a increasing number of people who do not value educating themselves or their children and also tend to identify with those politicians who present as uneducated (while actually being highly educated and highly intelligent but lacking in any empathy or morality). This is one factor in why populist parties are gaining traction again in western democracies.
Don’t forget the gutting of the school system over the past 40 years. Now we’re at “Let’s abolish the Department of Education”. It’s so sick.
Ooh the “Idiocracy is about Eugenics!” crowd is here
hai!!
I see where you are going, but you probably should focus less on the guns. Most Americans don’t regularly shoot guns, even those that have them. A whole lot also don’t own any. But lead is all over in shit like water pipes. Other heavy metals and chemicals are present in higher levels than allowed elsewhere. Also full metal jacket is much more common than it used to be which reduces the lead particles when shooting.
As far as lead water pipes go, they’re not nearly as dangerous as they’re made out to be. The lead quickly bonds to things in the water creating a layer of corrosion which means the lead doesn’t really get in the water.
Don’t get me wrong, they should still all be replaced.
My aunt spent a long time working in education in the USA, much of it in leadership roles. When she incorporated lessons on critical thinking into the curriculum, it resulted in a lot of pushback from parents who did not appreciate their kids applying the lessons at home.
People who actively resist the use of critical thinking will seem cognitively impaired because they are, in fact intentionally impairing their cognition. My intuition here is to blame religious fundamentalism, but that’s not a well-researched position.
A lot of parental pushback comes from frustration over the Dunning-Kruger effect, where somebody who learns a little about a subject feels like an expert. This is often where kids are at. If you keep studying the same material you realize how much you don’t know, which tends to make you feel ignorant, but as you continue you get better at gauging what level you’re at. A lot of it is a matter of maturity. Some parents don’t mind that the kids are learning new things, they just aren’t very good at parenting it. Highly religious people are more likely to see outside information and analyticals skills as a threat, because yeah they are - for good reason lol.
Religion is a major component I’m sure but overall parents probably don’t want their ideals and norms challenged in their own house. This is probably why people (on the right) say that college liberalized their kids. No, college teaches you how to think and pursue answers to your own questions. Not our fault your ideals are based on tradition and ignorance.
This is from the Texas GOP 2012 education platform.
“We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
They backtracked on critical thinking after the outrage it caused with this
- Munisteri told KVUE, "The platform plank is against a specific type of teaching called ‘outcome-based education.’
"The reason why critical thinking is mentioned is some places try to disguise the program of outcome-based education and just re-label it as ‘critical thinking.’ "
“Good Christian kids need fear-based learning, like we had!”
Fundamentalism is certainly a contributing factor, but there are others. Conservatives have been working to cut back on education since the early 80’s. Removing critical thinking training was one of the objectives… Conservative policies are unpopular and are often supported with misrepresentations and outright lies. To succeed, they need a public without the knowledge or skills to realize their arguments are invalid. Unfortunately, they have gone a long way toward accomplishing that.
Yeah man. When that kid starts asking questions and challenging the family norms, that’s the teacher’s fault for making their life harder. It isn’t a sign that the parent needs to adapt.
Adapting IS a pain in the ass. Some parents don’t have the faculties to do it. Some do, but don’t after getting done with work. It is truely a generational trauma that the parent has to head off in themselves for it to carry to early aged kids.
100%
“We are already providing all the answers you will ever need.” -religion
Organized religion is, fundamentally — at its very core — based on rejecting critical thought; to “just have faith” in the unknown/unknowable.
It is in no way surprising that it’s incompatible with advanced science/evidence-based civilization.
Most Americans don’t even own guns. A minority of Americans own lots of guns.
According to Gallup, 44% of American households have guns. This is survey based. If fact, the actual number is unknown. A good guess is somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3.
Gun ranges where I live (California) require employees to wear an exposure monitor for a week or so each year. I talked to a range officer about it, and he said that they had never had the monitors indicate anything that is remotely a problem. Nevertheless, careful gun owners are aware of the problem and ranges that I’ve been to post notices and have hand cleaning stuff ready at hand.
And using those guns make them a little dumber every time.
Only takes a minority to go off the rails and spread conspiracy theories. Squeaky wheel and all that.
Yeah, but I read something on reddit that says Americans all have guns and live shooting them. So they must all have brain damage
I can’t remember where I read it, but I’ve heard that Americans all have guns and love shooting them, so they must have brain damage
I appreciate you all for the anecdotes and source materials, some well researched things to ponder!
Here’s my take on it:
I can’t remember where I read it, but I’ve heard that Americans all have guns and love shooting them, so they must have brain damage.
American here: I may all have guns and love brain, therefore I must have shooting damage to my lead.
Before trump, I’d have agreed with this. After trump, it’s now increasing at an incredible rate. It was like 32% owned a firearm. Latest pew from this year is 40%. Now with trump back in power, I’m betting you will see us hit 50% or nearly 50%.
latest pew
Heh. Pew go pew pew.
Leftists woke up and realized we need to be armed.
Mama mia!
Truth
I mean increasing numbers of Americans are being threatened by the government
And like 9 out of 10 people who own guns go to the range less than a few times a year.
More than half of gun owners have never gone to a range beyond what might have been part of a state’s pistol permitting process.
9 out of 10 go to the range
More than half have never gone to the range
Math isn’t checking out here buddy.
…never gone to a range beyond what might have been part of a state’s pistol permitting process.
If you can, read the whole sentence. If you can’t, please get checked for lead poisoning.
If I can’t what? Sorry I’m actually functionally illiterate.
Seems accurate.
If you can, read
Bruh I can read.
Less than a few times a year also includes zero… so all of the 50% are part of the 90%
Fair enough.
