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
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.
It’s regular old religion, shit culture, and propaganda just like it always is.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Most Americans don’t even own guns. A minority of Americans own lots of guns.
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.
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.
Less than a few times a year also includes zero…
Only takes a minority to go off the rails and spread conspiracy theories. Squeaky wheel and all that.
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%.
Leftists woke up and realized we need to be armed.
I mean increasing numbers of Americans are being threatened by the government
%100 fact.
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.
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.
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 suffocating, however he danced around it. It’s called context. *I added quotation marks to match his quotation marks if that helps.
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.
Post reads like some violently uninformed person making a lot of… I don’t want to say racist cuz that’s not really right, but similar sentiments about Americans
Y’all are stupid cuz of your guns
Is about as stupid a thought as possible as you’re you’re claiming we are because of shooting guns and the fact that anyone in the comments is taking it seriously shows y’all have the exact same level of critical thinking skills as those you’re insulting
Y’all are stupid cuz of your guns
Yeah, in this case he’s got it completely backwards.
Y’all are guns cuz of your stupid
Personally, I’m a firework.
Katy Perry told me so.
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
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.
Ooh the “Idiocracy is about Eugenics!” crowd is here
hai!!
Eugenics but because a funny movie said it it’s suddenly acceptable to parrot. 🙄
Was the majority of the German voting public lead-poisoned in the 30s? I don’t think lead was even put in gas then. Those Germans almost certainly were not lead poisoned, and they put a monster into power.
I get wanting a good explanation, but in reality, it’s a simple but unsatisfying explanation. It applies to every country and every population in every era. People are fuckin’ stupid. Carlin said it best:
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
I dislike this saying because it’s always been assumed, never proven, that intelligence follows a normal distribution. That is if it can even be mapped to a single, consistent, comparable number.
But your point is valid. Though I’d add that it’s not universally true. Fascists thrive on fear and ignorance. Give people access to a good education, which includes political education, and they are far more resilient to these tactics.
Which is why it’s especially nefarious that conservatives love to undermine, vilify, and defund education.
I dislike this saying because it’s always been assumed, never proven, that intelligence follows a normal distribution.
Okay, think of the median instead lol
The German population went through serious economic troubles. Wheelbarrows of cash to buy stuff. Economically troubled people get angry and revolt, and in democratic systems that means firstly voting for the extreme candidates, the ones with a good story. Anger shuts down critical thinking and they don’t think about other consequences of their vote.
That’s how many elections went in a lot of counties in the last few years too.
Yeah, I get that saying people are fuckin stupid is dismissive and over simplified in a lot of cases… But it’s also still true and a factor, which adds to all the other factors you’re talking about. Ultimately I think if people were more educated and intelligent, they could overcome a lot of irrationality.
It’s deliberate. The right wing has been gradually whittling down the quality of our education system for more than a generation.
Right, but that’s where the analogy breaks down “wheelbarrows of cash”. You can try to reference that situation, you can try to talk about desperate people just wanting to lash out but no one is pushing around “wheelbarrows of cash”. Whatever desperate situation people think they are in pales before the reality. The huge difference in severity means they are hardly comparable at all. By pretty much any stat, we should be doing ok: there have been many times we’ve had it worse, so why is this the moment?
This is where the last couple decades of hatred and divisiveness come in. Politicians bringing forth blame, scapegoats, stoking outrage at our problems. The hatred is always there. The violence is always there. Were conditions to a constant state of anger so that’s where too many turn for even a minor downturn
I got curious; looks like leaded fuel was first introduced in the 1920s.
Interesting. Though I can’t say when Germany added it. I believe the 20s was when America started doing it, but according to a podcast I listened to recently, America was the first to start doing it. And also the effects of lead poisoning take decades to manifest.
The vast majority of Americans don’t own/shoot guns. There’s 300 million guns because some people own multiple.
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/
Also, the British literally voted to have a worse economy. We don’t have a monopoly on headassery.
Also, the British literally voted to have a worse economy. We don’t have a monopoly on headassery.
Our Brexit vote narrowly won for the same reason that Trump won again - the weaponisation of our stupid people via social media by right-wing shitbags.
It’s not like these people are getting 75% of the vote and the opposition is fractured. Is’s mostly pluralities or, at best, 52%ish percent of the vote. And 20% of people in any country are just change voters no matter what the change is.
There’s not really mandates in the U.S. Trump won’t even be able to control the House. We got a Belgium situation where there’s no government.
For those that don’t know, Belgium is the world’s most successful failed state. There’s enough chocolate and beer around so no one cares but they suck at forming governments. I think they beat Iraq’s record at just not forming a government.
Some of us were around when leaded gasoline was the norm, and every municipality had a crime rate drop that corellates to their unleaded gas mandate.
Then there’s lead in candy which was a problem until the FDA shut that down.
There still is lead in fuel, and so kids who play in urban playgrounds are supposed to wash their hands before eating anything.
So if our people have detectable elevated lead levels (it has a plenty-long bio half life), I’d question automotive exhaust and industry before worrying about guns at the range. Unless someone is squeezing off a hundred rounds a day.
haven’t shot a gun in at least 20 years and I’m retarded as shit. so…
Being self aware enough to think that probably means you’re not all that bad.
The damage has been done, probably 😂
I’m sure this will get rained with downvotes at some point but just know you gave me a good chuckle man, and I greatly needed it. Have a great night!
I only downvoted you for saying you’ll be downvoted. Didn’t want to disappoint you.
I think they meant the other guy for dropping the “retard” line without censoring
deleted by creator
I think there’s a much higher chance of slow-poisoning with heavy metals and other chemicals by food then shooting guns. Food quality standards in the US are poor. As well as nutrition wise. Malnutrition has a big effect on people their brain. The brain needs loads of stuff to function properly, not just corn syrup and fats. And with the poor US food safety regulations and poor tap water there’s more poison then nutricions coming into your body.
Then is not than.
Thenk you.
It is absolutely driving me bonkers. I think the two words will collapse into one over the next century if people don’t stop making this mistake. It’s so common and it irks me so!
Your absolutely correct, you’re judgement is sound.
All good. I appreciated your comment since I’m not a native English speaker. I had to read the comment twice to find the “then”, because my brain was on auto-correct. So I really wanted to thank you, but than my inner clown took over. Happens from time to time. Sorry about that.
Lol the funny thing is that I literally didn’t even notice the spelling of “thenk” until now!
I appreciate the responses on two levels haha
Curious – what is your native language?
You’re welcome. I’m German. And you probably missed the “than” in my previous comment. Isn’t it fun how our brian works? (I was soo tempted to write “your welcome” 😀)
Nah I caught your “then”. I’ve become hyper aware of that one. Your Greman Brian ist interresant
Great now i read thank as than-k. Lol
So I really wanted to thank you, but than my inner clown took over
Lol
It’s a known risk, and there are guidelines to lessen or prevent lead exposure at the range, but I’d wager most shooters aren’t aware.
For example:
Use jacketed or lead free bullets and primers.
Wash your face, arms and hands after using the range.
Change your clothes and shoes after using the range.
Wash your range clothes separately from your families.
Do not eat, drink, or smoke on the range.
Take the same precautions after cleaning your guns.
That being said, the folks at largest risk for this kind of exposure would be those who fire guns the most often, so that population would be the canary in the coal mine so to speak.
https://www.quora.com/How-often-do-police-officers-practice-at-ranges
"How often do police officers practice at ranges?
Most departments require re-qualification training once a year.
My department required shooting three times a year, once with our sidearm, once with our 12 gauge shotguns, and once with our AR 15 carbines.
As for my self, I go to the range 8 to 10 times a year. I am usually accompanied by 5 or 6 of my fellow officers. We are not for the fun, we are training by using the state required shooting plans and we add a little extra to it.
Most officers I know only go to range when required for re-qualification. Not because they don’t want to, shooting off a couple hundreds rounds is an expensive proposition."
Yeah… Might be a reason cops seem dumber than average, and they don’t hire the brightest to begin with.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
Thanks for being the first person in this thread to actually post some useful tips to get the lead out, so to speak.
Thanks for being the first person in this thread** to actually post some useful tips** to get the lead out, so to speak.
Sorry to contradict you here but, like I suggested in another comment, reading a book instead of playing with a gun is also a very efficient (and cheap) way to lessen lead exposure :p
Religion is the cause. You are not allowed to think outside the cult. There are a lot of idiot Americans who don’t own guns or are exposed to them, so the lead theory is not valid in that sense.
Look at this guy, he doesn’t know gun ownership is a cult. Praise firearm Jesus.
There is a venn diagram where Idiot is the center. Not everyone who is a xian owns a gun, not all gun owners are xians, and yes, there are xians who worship the NRA. National Russia Association
nOt EvErYOnE WhO iS rEiLiGiOuS iS a cUlTIsT.
The dumbest and most religious ones usually own the most weapons though, so it’s a persistent state of mutual amplification.
