Defending American Intelligence

Sometimes people get the impression I am anti American, but nothing could be farther from the truth. And just to prove it, I am going to devote this entire blog to a defence of Americans against the charge of stupidity. Recently, Bill Maher declared a new rule that smart president does not equal smart country. And he cited many facts to back up his new rule, including that 18% of Americans think the Sun goes around the Earth.

I felt there was something wrong with this, as I had recently been looking into beliefs of religious Christian fundamentalists (those who believe the Earth is 6000 years old, and Adam and Ever were the first humans). It turns out that, although they believe every word of the Bible to be literally true, there are a couple of words where they use their common sense. For example, where it is stated that God placed the Earth on the firmament and it shall not be moved.

So, unlike the religious debate on Evolution, there is no major religious group in the USA denying that the Earth goes around the Sun.

I was also thinking that 18% represent the kind of universal "Irreducible Stupidity Factor" that is found everywhere, even in this enlightened country of Canada. So I looked up the survey itself and found it was taken in 1999 by Gallup.

The poll was also done in Germany and Britain, with similar results. I think the only way you could get a poll result of significantly less than 18% is if you went to a third world country, where telephone lines are only available to a part of the population. (this was a random telephone poll).

I am not an expert in polling, but I think that if you are polling for general knowledge, you might need a set of control questions just to determine if you are talking to a Jaywalking All Star or not. First ask a series of questions like "What colour was Washington's grey mare?".

Getting back to this irreducible stupidity factor, unfortunately any kind of intelligence tests have become politically incorrect ever since Nazis used them to begin a euthanasia program. But anyway: I want to apply the Scientific Method to this test. I have never tried this experiment myself, even though I was a school teacher for ten years.

The experiment would be to give a control group of random people a classroom lesson on something that is new to all of them. Like what is the colour of Anthracite. Don't give out any clues like passing around a lump of Anthracite, and don't even tell them it is like coal. For some reason, mental aids like that will improve their scores. Then give a surprise test the next day, with a multiple choice A) Black B) White C) Don't know. Whatever percent you get that say it's white, that's your Irreducible Stupidity Factor.

Now getting back to the Evangelicals who believe (I want to say "Correctly") that the Earth orbits the Sun. The reason, in my opinion, that they got it right is simply because this debate was settled before their religion was founded. On the other hand, Charles Darwin came along after the Evangelical church was established, and they found themselves trapped in a position opposing evolution just by less than a hundred years.