Ask Lemmy

The brain follows the same patterns as muscles: use it or lose it. The general population in America is very much not educated at all. So their brains lose the ability to think rapidly.

iirc most spectacular form of neurotoxic damage really only shows years later if lead exposure happened during childhood which also means that little effect will be seen immediately after cleaning up lead but will show up 20 years later or so. that's still leaded gasoline and maybe paint and water pipes to some degree

As an outsider (most people in my country don't shoot guns for fun, but we still have our fair share of morons) I think not educating oneself/not being educated may be a more important cause.

My personal opinion is that it's more related to the way people spend (waste) their time. All of us, I mean. The way we (do not) educate ourselves, the way we do (not) value intelligence and knowledge.

• How many people shoot guns? vs How many don't ever read a book (a difficult one, I mean, say one essay a year)? or How many students reach university level without having read a single book? FFS, if that doesn't ring an alarm bell...
• How many people are (not) being taught how to have heated but articulated discussions, in the literal sense of debating against someone, having a dispute with someone, while still being able to not want to kill one another?
• How many people are willing to be told (and willing to admit that) they were wrong... when they were?

That lack of education and an overall cheerful ignorance of all facts that dare not fit their viewpoint, no matter which one it is, seems to me a much more likely cause to explain why more and more people around the world (not just Americans) 'seem cognitively impaired'. And that's because, well, they are. Sadly.

We don't value knowledge anymore, we value money and success. Once again, suffice to ask people: how many essays did you read in the last 12 months? Or to look at kids, how many of them want to be, say, a doctor, a scientist of some sort or, even funnier, a writer? And how many want to become 'an influencer' on YT (or TikTok, or whatever) or to become some star singer or sport star?

Kids have not suddenly become allergic to smartness. They're only the mirror of what our real values as a society are (not the ones we pretend to have). Which are not being smart, not even talented as a matter of fact. They are: easy money and success.

imho, this is the main cause of dumbification going on everywhere. Obviously, I may be wrong and maybe I should stop eating lead bars as a snack?

what could explain the incredibly high numbers of Americans who seem incapable of critical thinking

Garbage education system.

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.

You’d have to shoot thousands of rounds in an unventilated room to get even close to one day of leaded gasoline exposure

I figured copper jackets would greatly reduce lead exposure, which is all I used when I used to shoot.

Leaded gas wasn't fully stopped until 1996. Still in some aviation used (piston plane engines).

But yes I wonder about shooting ranges too. I think a couple times a year at an indoor range isn't insignificant.

You're half right, they're are brain damaged.

But bullets?

I don't know man. Seems unlikely. Leaded fuel and lead paint tho..?

#Lead Exposure in Last Century Shrank IQ Scores of Half of Americans

Leaded gasoline calculation to have stolen over 800 million cumulative IQ points since 1940s

A new study calculates that exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas during childhood stole a collective 824 million IQ points from more than 170 million Americans alive today, about half the population of the United States.

https://today.duke.edu/2022/03/lead-exposure-last-century-shrunk-iq-scores-half-americans