Are people getting dumber?

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Xerin

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I am increasingly finding myself thinking more and more people are idiots. From driving around town, selling a customer an item, and even just seeing the news, all I see is more times I ask myself this.

First large sign I saw was with a product that has not changed in 10 years, exact same product from the same company. Wireless headphones to be exact. Sold many over the years, with very very few returns. Then after last Christmas all three that were sold came back. Why? All the same problem, which I found weird since I never had trouble with it before. Tested all three and I had no trouble getting them to work. if interference on one of the 3 bands, switch to the next and tune in headset, repeat. Took me a minute and never really used them before, just sold them. So I resold one and again it comes back?? Is there really more interference then we have with multiple wireless systems at work, I highly doubt that.

So I ask how can a product that almost no one has had problems for years suddenly be returned every time and then tested again with no issue.

i believe part of it is the lack of effort of the person to read the manual, and understand the product. Everyone is too impatient and expect everything to be as easy as doing nothing. I still get many people struggling with "in" and "out" and color coded connection cables.

So are people getting increasingly more dumb or am I just becoming less tolerant?
 
I think people are getting used to technology being intuitive just working right out of the box without having to screw around with it much. You said yourself this is a 10 year old product that possibly requires someone to read a manual to get it working. Your average consumer is not looking for that. I guarantee there are better versions of the same headphone that just work the way people want.

Basically, technology is making people lazy and for good reason. Bad design should be punished.
 
kamya said:
I think people are getting used to technology being intuitive just working right out of the box without having to screw around with it much. You said yourself this is a 10 year old product that possibly requires someone to read a manual to get it working. Your average consumer is not looking for that. I guarantee there are better versions of the same headphone that just work the way people want.

Basically, technology is making people lazy and for good reason. Bad design should be punished.

I think so too. I mean you just need to looik on the internet for anything nd you will find it. No need to use your brain to think anymore... Our brains are slowly starting to decaayy
 
Yup.... durh

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diamondintherough said:
I mean you just need to looik on the internet for anything nd you will find it. No need to use your brain to think anymore... Our brains are slowly starting to decaayy

I disagree 180% its turning us back into having a hunter-gatherer mindset. The problem is you need to know what to look for. The truth is out there. People need to wake up.
 
I read in an article not too long ago that, on average, IQ scores go up by about 10 points with ever new generation. And it's been doing this for a very long time. Now take it with a grain of salt, because no matter how high of an IQ you have, you can still make very dumb mistakes. Imo, IQ doesn't always measure true intelligence, but I thought it's still an interesting point to bring up.
 
I think people are dividing. There are people who're becoming super smart and people who're not changing at all. They're not stupid but they're not keeping up with the times. It's basically natural selection doing it's thing.
 
I believe that people are getting smarter on average, but some groups are advancing much faster, so the disparity increases.
 
WTF...an item that hasnt changed or been upgraded in 10 years?
Not even Rev. changes to improve the product or cut production cost?
There's a shelf life for all technology or product. My space...your space aint even around..No more.lol

Poeple want thier honeysuckle to go easy and smoothly...
You want your bussiness to run smoothly without any glitches or problems.
Imagine that? lmao

Hell...i dont even bother with CDs, dvd, or pluging my gadgets into a dock anymore.
A 32G SD card stores plenty of music. 32G SD cards are fairly cheap now.
Id be winning the races with the Jones next door if i had a LP with a 32G harddrive
10 years ago.lol

There's ear bugg types head phones with built in mp3 players and radio.
Ear Bugg type head phones are rediculous...dude.
You get narley bass response just like having a 2000watt stereo system.
it's cordless anywhere you wanna go..when you're on the go.
No plugging in. No messing with bands....
Maybe some people knows there's better products after they made the purchase or recieved it
as a gift. So they returned your honeysuckle....
 
This reminds me of a song...

It's not the right time to be sober
Now the idiots have taken over
Spreading like a social cancer, is there an answer?

Mensa membership conceding
Tell me why and how are all the stupid people breeding
Watson, it's really elementary
The industrial revolution
Has flipped the ***** on evolution
The benevolent and wise are being thwarted, ostracized, what a bummer
The world keeps getting dumber
Insensitivity is standard and faith is being fancied over reason

Darwin's rolling over in his coffin
The fittest are surviving much less often
Now everything seems to be reversing, and it's worsening
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool
Now angry mob mentality's no longer the exception, it's the rule
And I'm starting to feel a lot like Charlton Heston
Stranded on a primate planet
Apes and orangutans that ran it to the ground
With generals and the armies that obeyed them
Followers following fables
Philosophies that enable them to rule without regard

There's no point for democracy when ignorance is celebrated
Political scientists get the same one vote as some Arkansas inbred
Majority rule, don't work in mental institutions
Sometimes the smallest softest voice carries the grand biggest solutions

What are we left with?
A nation of god-fearing pregnant nationalists
Who feel it's their duty to populate the homeland
Pass on traditions
How to get ahead religions
And prosperity via simpleton culture
 
Interesting mix of replies. Yes they should improve this item, make it more apparent or have it automatically change band and auto-tune.

Am I becoming more aware of others intelligence level. No, I don't believe I am becoming more aware, just less tolerant. There is nothing, especially standard electronics like VCR, TV, and other basic media electronics that you cannot figure out with a little practice and common sense.

People refuse to even try anymore and it is starting to frustrate me. Though I do have those awesome people that they have a problem the come in or phone and I am able to mention a few things they might be doing wrong and it works. I love being able to help them out that way.
 
well....
My fiance isnt too familar with mechanical stuff and some of the electronics gadgets.
Just the variety of cell phones we had within a couple of years we gone through.
So i dont expect her to check the oil dip stick and the many many other maintenance
require to maintain an automobile....
I myself still dont use many of my electronics gadgets to it's maximum protential.
Tons of applications a person has to learn or understand to navigate.
To be honest with you...I didnt read the instructions for the last couple PC I purhased
within the last year.
I pluged it in...turn it on and wanted it to run perfectly without any glitches.

At the sametime...I'll simply throw away certain items when it dosnt work out of the box...
depending how expensive it is...Time is money, Plus my peace of mind is worth more than money.
For a $50 item...depending how bussied i am...I'll simply cut my lost. Rather than fight it.


At the sametime there's alot coming at us at a faster rate.
I dont believe people are less smarter...we're just more gear to instant gradifications
becuase so much technology is coming at us.

I worked in the electronics manufacturing industry for decades.
Im more familar with electronics than an average person so I'll simply look into it more.
 
Technology is advancing at a quick rate, if this spacific product hasn't changed for 10 years then I'm guessing people may be dissapointed by it's performance relating to the current standard, taking it back and just explaining that it doesen't work. Either that or other wireless devices (New ones coming out all the time) could be interfering on both bands since wifi technology is very common nowadays.

But I completely get you on the whole 'Are people getting dumber?' question, I must admit, it raised a smile on my face when I read that because I have asked myself that question often. Like a month ago or whenever (in the UK) there was some row between the fuelling companies and the truck drivers (As there often are here, rip off price an all that stuff) and some politician appeared on the news being questioned about it, and one of the questions was 'So what should people do while this is going on?' and he said something along the lines of 'Remember to keep your cars topped up, there could be a strike', I think that was the stupidest thing he could have said to a stupid nation, next thing is that there's madness an most of the country is ran dry an he's back on the news "retracting their last statement", basically saying; 'Whoops sorry to cause a bit of a panic there, but I didn't think you were all stupid enough to think there would be no fuel tomorrow'.
 
Xerin said:
I am increasingly finding myself thinking more and more people are idiots. From driving around town, selling a customer an item, and even just seeing the news, all I see is more times I ask myself this.

So are people getting increasingly more dumb or am I just becoming less tolerant?

Yes and yes. People are becoming more is dumb, I can feel it happening to me as I write this.
 
there is no such thing as common sense. everything has to be learned.
the problem is, with our knowledge and society getting more and more complicated, alot of people are trained for sepcific roles and they tend to ignore alot of other things that we generally think of as common sense.

for instance, I work for a hotel and incharge of setting up conference rooms. i cannot count how many times companies rent our rooms to host training seminaires, alot of times training for using specific software a company may use. they bring in there laptops with a powerpoint presentation that they may have spent weeks creating... yet they have NO clue how to connect their own laptop to a projector or lcd tv, No idea how to bypass the vpn to connect to a public network and many other windows functions like dual screen.
so they call me to do it for them. THEY are the trained university graduates who make maybe 5x more money then me, expeirienced and schooled in public speaking and conducting presentations.. yet no one has ever thought to teach them the basics of windows and how to connect the necessary peripherals to be able to conduct the presentation?
when I go to do a job, I have all the tools, materials and knowledge to get the job done no matter what hurdle gets in my way. but it seems I am among the minority, because most people seem to rely on everyone else to do the real work for them.
and sadly, the more money someone makes, the less they seem to know!
 
If you believe current IQ research, yes.

"They estimate that there has been a dysgenic decline in the world's genotypic IQ (masked by the Flynn effect for the phenotype) of 0.86 IQ points per decade for the years 1950–2000." (They being Flynn and collegues, responsible for the aptly named discovery of the "Flynn effect").

However, that ascertains that I.Q. is an accurate medium to quantify intelligence. I do believe that to not necessarily be the case.
However, while tests show there was an increase during years as scolarisation was systematic, people were becoming "stupider" since the 50's. Probably more so now as technology evolves, make us dependent on it and makes us, while I wouldn't say "stupider", I would say "more socially akward".

Anyone's guess is as good as mine, but I get the feeling that while in the last century we've worked a lot on acquiring new knowledge, we have not been training people on HOW to think. Which makes all the difference. This is visible notably in media, where the recent trend of movies, series and even video games are re-imaginings and remakes of the past, for the most part, as if all new ideas had somehow been depleted.
Just because someone knows a lot of things doesn't make him intelligent. Or wise. And since now, in many many MANY education fields, when the scores of the majority are too low, they actually raise percentages so that school people have nice graphs to show their superiors. Which makes me think we've trained a few generations of people who think they're a lot brighter (diploma in hand) than they think they are.
Which is very cruel to them, I feel. Which they wouldn't contemplate anyway.

Anyways, yes, but no. That's my answer. :)
 

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