Bespoke translation by yours truly. Original article [A] by Danisch
First I wanted to write "the Germans" - but that seems to be untrue. "People who are Germaning" apparently doesn't fit either.
Just heard about it on the radio, but you find it online as well: According to a PISA study for adults, the "Germans" (or rather, whoever happens to be around in Germany) are getting ever worse at reading and writing.
BR24:
DER SPIEGEL, however, is attempting to frame the situation a bit more positively and simply doesn't mention the fact with the simple sentence (maybe it's too difficult for SPIEGEL readers). They say that Germany is no longer in the midfield like before, but managed to become "above average" - which, however, is not because anything in Germany has improved, but because the other countries have deteriorated significantly and we only improved relative to the others (just like the leading investigative magazine, the BILD, did compared to the other newspapers).
What unfortunately isn't mentioned: Whether they are Germans, "Germans", or migrants - as in, whether these people, who fail to read a simple sentence correctly, have the right to vote. Because, what does it mean for "our" democracy when up to 20% of voters are so dumb that they cannot comprehend a simple sentence?
And what unfortunately isn't mentioned either: How many of these morons who fail to understand simple sentences have managed to graduate, get a PhD, and become professors at German universities (I wrote about an astoundingly high number of German professors being functional illiterates), and how many of them got into benefit positions or became top level government officials by means of the political parties.
From a current poll:
So the morons of Germany would easily suffice to prop up Green or SPD voters. It is curious that the AfD with 19.5 is "closer to it", but it is also a known fact that, at the AfD, not just the politicians but also the voters have higher educational achievements than, for instance, at the SPD, and graduate from university much more often than Greens do [who drop out], and who usually have proper jobs.
It is an interesting question what becomes of a democracy when up to 20% of voters (like I said, I don't know how many of the morons have the right to vote) are too dumb for simple sentences and neither understand what they're doing nor are intellectually capable of becoming informed.
Another question is how people who are so dumb that they can't comprehend simple sentences are supposed to make a living or be able to do so. Another topic I write about constantly: Minimum wages ensure that somebody who cannot earn the minimum wage with their labor, that is, is financially unprofitable for an employer, certainly will never get a job.
That means: 20% of the population are thus with almost perfect certainty a lifelong case for the dole, because there are ever fewer jobs "for morons". There's hardly any job remaining in which you don't need to do, read, write something on a computer.
Now that I think about it: It doesn't say how many illiterates we've got, whether this fifth that can't comprehend a sentence is a superset or subset of illiterates (which is implied, but not necessarily the case), because it doesn't specify whether the people who hardly understood the sentence had to read it or had it read out to them. There are certainly intelligent and reasonable people who cannot read. A few time ago, in public broadcasting, there was a farcical show in which they accompanied a few people who somehow missed out on learning to read - among whom was a Schlager singer. Those were people who did not seem like morons.
They blame it on digital consumption.
Could it be the other way around, that the digital realm is booming because it appeals better to morons?
That too is something I frequently write about, that written language is disappearing and communication keeps moving towards images and videos. I especially notice this on Twitter: Plaintext tweets are on the decline. Everybody must have something with a photo or spastic video. On the other hand, the attention span is decreasing to maybe 20 or 30 seconds.
Do we prefer such media because we become too dumb, or are we becoming too dumb because we no longer read?
Or is it something completely different, is it simply the case that a "digital realm" - contrary to expectations - makes life easier for illiterates or morons and therefore takes away the psychological strain from not learning to read or think?
I expected something different. Because, when I think back to the 70s and 80s, there was much less everyday reading than nowadays. When we as kids played outside or sat in front of the TV in the evening, there was nothing to read. You had to actively go and read a newspaper or a book to obtain longer texts. Nowadays, I get to read all day long on websites and e-mails, so I read much more every day than I used to - even though I hardly read books anymore. But: They are much shorter texts, websites or tweets.
Or could it be other environmental influences? Environmental poisons? Diets?
Or are we maybe degenerating? Back then, we had an evolutionary selection, the morons were eaten by the sabertooth tiger or fell off a cliff. Today, we have a moron-compatible society, everybody gets protected from all hardships and can get any job. The Greens recently said that you don't need to be able to read in order to be a functioning member of the federal parliament.
I am getting this nasty, but algorithmically grounded, suspicion that the genetic process of permanent mutation is only advantageous as long as a strict selection of the fittest is happening, because continued development through random permutation by itself isn't sufficient. If you just mutate and trial-and-error randomly, given the current complexity, the overwhelming majority of cases will result in being worse off. Only rarely is there an improvement. And that improvement can only come out on top if it offers survival and reproductive advantages, so if it is effectively "better" in some way, while turns for the worse would die out. "Survival of the fittest".
But we created a society in which there is no more disadvantage in being a moron - not in terms of health, nor in reproduction, not in career building. We don't have a selection of the best anymore. It's the opposite: The smarter you are, the less children you have, while the morons reproduce flawlessly. Like in the movie Idiocracy:
So, the question is whether a society with its development isn't destined to lead to degeneration and stupidity,
Two entities A and B that influence each other, but A has a positive effect on B while B has a negative effect on A, each with a delay, creating not a stable situation, but an oscillation - not equal to, but astoundingly similar to the analog oscillator switching of two transistors (which influence each other negatively, but compensate it alternatingly using condensers and thus get a time element).
It would explain why the peak of education and intelligence is behind us (approx. 50s to 60s) and are on the down and down of idiocy. Only with the problem that we are now globalized and therefore no longer have local, independent oscillations, but a global world idiocy?
Is the world idiocy unstoppable by this point? Or, more precisely, only through an event of ruthless selection such as a big natural disaster?
Or is the onset of the cycle phase of idiocy in connection to globalization so stable that we get such a long and stable phase of idiocy that it destroys all knowledge and we start again at the stone age?
The inhabitants of Germany are too dumb - too dumb for democracy?
First I wanted to write "the Germans" - but that seems to be untrue. "People who are Germaning" apparently doesn't fit either.
Just heard about it on the radio, but you find it online as well: According to a PISA study for adults, the "Germans" (or rather, whoever happens to be around in Germany) are getting ever worse at reading and writing.
BR24:
[emphasis added by Danisch]
DER SPIEGEL, however, is attempting to frame the situation a bit more positively and simply doesn't mention the fact with the simple sentence (maybe it's too difficult for SPIEGEL readers). They say that Germany is no longer in the midfield like before, but managed to become "above average" - which, however, is not because anything in Germany has improved, but because the other countries have deteriorated significantly and we only improved relative to the others (just like the leading investigative magazine, the BILD, did compared to the other newspapers).
Democracy
What unfortunately isn't mentioned: Whether they are Germans, "Germans", or migrants - as in, whether these people, who fail to read a simple sentence correctly, have the right to vote. Because, what does it mean for "our" democracy when up to 20% of voters are so dumb that they cannot comprehend a simple sentence?
And what unfortunately isn't mentioned either: How many of these morons who fail to understand simple sentences have managed to graduate, get a PhD, and become professors at German universities (I wrote about an astoundingly high number of German professors being functional illiterates), and how many of them got into benefit positions or became top level government officials by means of the political parties.
From a current poll:
So the morons of Germany would easily suffice to prop up Green or SPD voters. It is curious that the AfD with 19.5 is "closer to it", but it is also a known fact that, at the AfD, not just the politicians but also the voters have higher educational achievements than, for instance, at the SPD, and graduate from university much more often than Greens do [who drop out], and who usually have proper jobs.
It is an interesting question what becomes of a democracy when up to 20% of voters (like I said, I don't know how many of the morons have the right to vote) are too dumb for simple sentences and neither understand what they're doing nor are intellectually capable of becoming informed.
The labor market
Another question is how people who are so dumb that they can't comprehend simple sentences are supposed to make a living or be able to do so. Another topic I write about constantly: Minimum wages ensure that somebody who cannot earn the minimum wage with their labor, that is, is financially unprofitable for an employer, certainly will never get a job.
That means: 20% of the population are thus with almost perfect certainty a lifelong case for the dole, because there are ever fewer jobs "for morons". There's hardly any job remaining in which you don't need to do, read, write something on a computer.
Illiterates
Now that I think about it: It doesn't say how many illiterates we've got, whether this fifth that can't comprehend a sentence is a superset or subset of illiterates (which is implied, but not necessarily the case), because it doesn't specify whether the people who hardly understood the sentence had to read it or had it read out to them. There are certainly intelligent and reasonable people who cannot read. A few time ago, in public broadcasting, there was a farcical show in which they accompanied a few people who somehow missed out on learning to read - among whom was a Schlager singer. Those were people who did not seem like morons.
Correlation and causality
They blame it on digital consumption.
Could it be the other way around, that the digital realm is booming because it appeals better to morons?
That too is something I frequently write about, that written language is disappearing and communication keeps moving towards images and videos. I especially notice this on Twitter: Plaintext tweets are on the decline. Everybody must have something with a photo or spastic video. On the other hand, the attention span is decreasing to maybe 20 or 30 seconds.
Do we prefer such media because we become too dumb, or are we becoming too dumb because we no longer read?
Or is it something completely different, is it simply the case that a "digital realm" - contrary to expectations - makes life easier for illiterates or morons and therefore takes away the psychological strain from not learning to read or think?
I expected something different. Because, when I think back to the 70s and 80s, there was much less everyday reading than nowadays. When we as kids played outside or sat in front of the TV in the evening, there was nothing to read. You had to actively go and read a newspaper or a book to obtain longer texts. Nowadays, I get to read all day long on websites and e-mails, so I read much more every day than I used to - even though I hardly read books anymore. But: They are much shorter texts, websites or tweets.
Genetics and algorithms
Or could it be other environmental influences? Environmental poisons? Diets?
Or are we maybe degenerating? Back then, we had an evolutionary selection, the morons were eaten by the sabertooth tiger or fell off a cliff. Today, we have a moron-compatible society, everybody gets protected from all hardships and can get any job. The Greens recently said that you don't need to be able to read in order to be a functioning member of the federal parliament.
I am getting this nasty, but algorithmically grounded, suspicion that the genetic process of permanent mutation is only advantageous as long as a strict selection of the fittest is happening, because continued development through random permutation by itself isn't sufficient. If you just mutate and trial-and-error randomly, given the current complexity, the overwhelming majority of cases will result in being worse off. Only rarely is there an improvement. And that improvement can only come out on top if it offers survival and reproductive advantages, so if it is effectively "better" in some way, while turns for the worse would die out. "Survival of the fittest".
But we created a society in which there is no more disadvantage in being a moron - not in terms of health, nor in reproduction, not in career building. We don't have a selection of the best anymore. It's the opposite: The smarter you are, the less children you have, while the morons reproduce flawlessly. Like in the movie Idiocracy:
So, the question is whether a society with its development isn't destined to lead to degeneration and stupidity,
- because intelligence leads to technological progress,
- technological progress leads to better sustenance,
- better sustenance leads to a lack of selection of the best,
- a lack of selection of the best leads to idiocy.
Two entities A and B that influence each other, but A has a positive effect on B while B has a negative effect on A, each with a delay, creating not a stable situation, but an oscillation - not equal to, but astoundingly similar to the analog oscillator switching of two transistors (which influence each other negatively, but compensate it alternatingly using condensers and thus get a time element).
It would explain why the peak of education and intelligence is behind us (approx. 50s to 60s) and are on the down and down of idiocy. Only with the problem that we are now globalized and therefore no longer have local, independent oscillations, but a global world idiocy?
Is the world idiocy unstoppable by this point? Or, more precisely, only through an event of ruthless selection such as a big natural disaster?
Or is the onset of the cycle phase of idiocy in connection to globalization so stable that we get such a long and stable phase of idiocy that it destroys all knowledge and we start again at the stone age?
