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Comment on Unified Theory of American Reality

The average American is as literate as a 5th to 6th grader.

thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-litera…

5th to 6th graders are 10 to 12 years old, normally.

So uh… yep, mhm, the average American is about as stupid as a 12 year old, that’s a bit on the optimistic side though.

Dude’s theory isn’t really wrong, Americans are dumb and immature as fuck, and yes the statistics exist to back that up.

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ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Honestly it terrifies me when I think about this.

I’m too stupid to be smarter than this many people.

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- sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Sadly, nope, if you can read at a high school level, there’s roughly a 75% chance you are smarter than any rando you meet.
  
  I am starting to notice this in the slop youtube throws at me that I am sometimes dumb enough to click on.
  
  Somebody reading some article to give commentary on it, and you can just tell they are reading one word at a time, misunderstanding what 15% of them mean, have to actually stop on 5% of the words because those ones they’ve never read before, and then they start complaining that the author must have just been using a thesaurus… because a few of the vocab words in the article are 8th grade or above.
  
  … I picked up reading quickly, so quickly that when I was in 2nd grade, I was assigned to go out into the hall when I was done with my classwork (I always finished rapidly) and then go help a 4th or 5th grader who was behind in reading skills, go sit with them and have them or me read aloud, help them with words they didn’t know, etc.
  
  Everyday, even on the net, I encounter more people who… are beyond graduating high school age, who barely read better than 5th graders with dyslexia.
  
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dbtng@eviltoast.org ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Ya, that struck me as real truth. It’s a nice summary, gets quickly to the root of the problem. If you are facing yet another moron, this elucidates what’s going. People do not aspire to mature beyond 5th grade anymore. Adjust your strategies accordingly.

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- anomnom@sh.itjust.works ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I honestly would take a fifth grader over most seventh graders most of the time.
  
  Middle school was just a series of brutal fights where I grew up. Physically for the boys and psychology for the girls.
  
  I’m just saying we should be careful what we wish for, though we really do need much better reading programs in schools.
  
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  - dbtng@eviltoast.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    My point was more about what you need to do in response, rather than the exact level of lack of maturity you are facing. I think modeling the moron as if they were a child gives good predictive power and suggests management strategies one may employ.
    
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Captainautism@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
As an American, this is accurate. I had a conversation with my wife not too long ago about how until I met her, I felt like I was always surrounded by idiots. I don’t mean that in a hyperbolic way. I did not know one person who continued any sort of self education in adulthood. Once they were out of school, that was it. It blew my mind. Life should be a daily striving to learn more. They seriously would not pick up a book, or research any topic outside of headlines.

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Jumpingspiderman@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
12 year olds are on average a lot smarter than your usual GOP congresscritter. In fact howler monkeys are smarter than your average GOP congresscritter.

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