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“Smart” Phones are Creating Dumb People Welcome to the Zombie Apocalyptic Moronocracy By JR, September 26, 2022 First, an admission; neither my wife nor I own a smart phone, purging ourselves of these superfluous addictive annoyances several years ago. We don’t even like our land line which disturbs our serenity every day with unsolicited calls. These infuriating calls are primarily from intrusive asshole advertisers, political hacks and financial scammers. It requires recycling the 30 call blocks permitted on our portable phones about once every six weeks and that’s just for two or more calls from the same typically anonymous number. It’s often necessary to disconnect the phone lines to allow for tranquility and privacy. Addiction to anything whether cocaine, gambling online, a cell phone or fetishes like tattoos or Skip the Dishes is not a good thing. Technology invariably involves downsides we cannot easily predict. The smart phone has been transforming people into dumb dead zone for at least two decades now as according to some cognitive scientists global IQ’s are in free fall. A group of German research psychologists have concluded from their research on the hypothesis of increasing stupidity that the average IQ has descended to 85 which is the borderline between incredibly dumb and mental retardation. As George Carlin remarked in one of his skits many years ago, “Imagine how stupid the average person is (median IQ likely still 100 at the time) and then realize that half of humanity is even dumber than that”. Rather than being a source of enlightenment by furthering intelligent dialogue with cell phone ease of contact it has instead become a huge detriment to intelligence and enlightened discourse - an albatross around the necks of many weak-minded and weak willed twits (like the semi-literates on twitter) that simply cannot put them down. Whatever they are doing, even when engaged in the wild thing they stare endlessly at the smart phone. You see people on TV at sporting events that have paid a small fortune to attend, endlessly gawking at their cell phones. People turn to these devices for all kinds of unneeded updates and junk food “apps” for Skip the Dishes, Door Dash or Uber Eats and even performing simple elementary school math problems that save them having to appeal to their incredible shrinking brains. The latest waste of time and money obsession is gambling on pro sports which can be implemented with some free cell phone or tablet “app” while pissing away what’s left of your brain cells, your time and minimum wage pay check. In a former world where ethics and decency were still alive these inane exercises in idiocy, along with lotteries, were illegal. I suppose it was an attempt by the government to protect people from their own stupidity and ignorance. There’s a sidewalk in front of our of our home with a steady stream of zombie solipsists who pass by oblivious to the external world while starring into their cell phones while typically pushing a kid in a pram with several dogs on a leash looking for a place to defecate and often one or more unsupervised un-parented toddlers. And parenting seems to have disappeared as kids run every which way including on peoples manicured properties. Moreover, most don’t clean up the slime, goo and goop from Fido. Many take their often large (yeah even Irish Wolfhounds) canines out for a poop at nightfall when no one can see them (except my surveillance camera) not cleaning up the mess. Bad behavior from neighbors has become an epidemic which has been the norm in politics and business for centuries but now even the notion of a good neighbor is rapidly disappearing. There’s a certified neighbor from hell who lives across the street from us.
“Dumbing down” was an expression apparently introduced in the early 1930s by the movie business, invoked primarily by screenplay writers, which was meant to appeal to the majority of viewers with a paucity of sophistication, literary skills, education and little intelligence? For those with little drive, will power or purpose and the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking mindless entertainment or engaging in fantasies such as gambling, trivia, and inanities such as social media (which seems to be anything but civilized, rational or “social”) find great comfort in the constant flow of the drivel, nonsense, misinformation, gossip, authoritarianism and intellectual rubbish a cell phone can provide. In short, dumbing down is the deliberate facile simplification of intellectual content in education, literature, cinema, news, video games, the mass media and culture. Most recently we have the fawning nauseating worship by the masses for the British monarchy, the quintessence of decadence and depravity. People in the UK have lined up for miles just to get a glimpse of the 96 year old carcass of Queen Elizabeth, now succeeded by the dim witted Prince Charles III. Is it any surprise that democracy has never existed, does not exist and never will? Many people it would seem don’t mind slavery at all. These royal family monarchist parasites have pillaged everything in sight for the past several centuries of racism, slavery, colonialism and imperialism. How many people were run down by the queen’s decadent funeral procession while taking a photo of their own impending carcass called a “selfie”? The United States Department of Transportation estimated that in 2014, the so-called year of the “selfie", 33,000 people were seriously injured or killed while driving and using a cell-phone in some fashion, which can include talking, listening, and manual control actuation. Many of these narcissists were killed while taking “selfies” in numerous distracted situations, merely mot paying attention to risks. Stupidity it seems is incurable.
Idiotic Distracted Drivers Interestingly while many people admit they are addicted to these “smart” phones that seem to offer a form of escapism from the real world, some users are moving back to dumb phones that have existed for over a century. A video by an anti-smart phone outfit called Cold Fusion can be viewed here: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02mIRnPJm6g). Cold Fusion is an Australian-based online media company; looks into its "Anti-Smart phone Revolution." It points out how the dumb phone or what is sometimes called a brick is far less intrusive in our lives. Surprisingly, it is those users between the ages of 25-35 that are apparently leading this charge in destroying their brain cells.
Toddlers Destroying Brain Cells
Future “D”, “E” and “F” Knuckle Draggers We should never underestimate the role of the smart phone in dumbing down the world, which was already plenty dumb enough. We can only hope people will begin to take a closer look at these society-changing devices and maybe try reading a book. When a phone will provide the answer to simple elementary school math problems (forget about advanced calculus or probability theory; remember that a calculator only as good as the conceptual and other understanding that the person has about mathematics and its philosophical and logical underpinnings) as many people no longer feel compelled to conceptualize, become literate, learn logic, critical thinking, science and understand real bottom up history. People need to understand the rational and conceptual roots of both math and science, not as recipes and rules, but modes of inquiry and understanding that can provide us perspective, insight and valuable knowledge with the objective of hopefully enabling us to comprehend the world around us. It has become apparent, that smart phones change more than society; they change people too, transforming them into unthinking uncurious numbskulls. Of course the internet is like any other media – 99% rubbish and 1% intellectual treasures – but you have to be willing to search out these unique web sites combined with the ability to separate real knowledge from gibberish, science from pseudoscience and religious nonsense and eliminate the propaganda, indoctrination, misinformation, deceit and prevarication. Cognitive traps and logical fallacies lurk in most brains brain. Any attempt to implement critical thinking programs in the public schools has been blocked by every conservative Neanderthal faction in the community from the Christian churches to The Chamber of Commerce. Just listen to the late George Carlin on that score: George Carlin - It's A BIG Club & You Ain't In It! - YouTube George Carlin - Stand Up About Religion - YouTube Religion certainly contributes to ignorance and stupidity but I recall reading a piece several years ago by a cognitive scientist concerned about diminishing intelligence, writing something like the following: Cell phones use by anyone literally trains your brain to wait for it to draw your attention and that this process causes that portion of your brain to concentrate and be aware of the world about you to physically shrink losing neurons over time that is measurable in response times and focus. It also has an even greater detrimental effect on the young. He wrote that recent test subjects of five to seven years old demonstrate serious decline in brain function to the point that they will likely be unable to read at all by age 30 without continued usage. He also said that there is a similar neurological response from advertising, the internet and TV and that the least damaging electronic media is two hour films of quality, without advertising, view as little as possible each week. He showed by statistics on so many shows advertisements and types of media that I was disgusted with and perhaps even laughed at when I saw how incredibly inane most of them they are. Don't watch too much TV, especially demeaning programs such as Oprah, Dragon’s Den, Wrestle Mania, UFC or the brain dead advertisements that portray adults as room temperature IQ dim wits and their children undisciplined chimps. Even programs you would think might be educational and enlightening like the history channel, features programs such as “Ancient Aliens”. Yes, I’m serious. Try reading a book on science, logic, critical thinking or mathematics beyond the banalities of balancing your budget (which requires about grade 2-3 arithmetic). It’s like literally thousands of books on fitness that through hundreds of pages try to explain how to avoid the widespread obesity which is a global epidemic. All you need is a small dose of common sense (sadly not too common these days in our global moronocracy) which I suggest can be reduced to four words: “eat less, exercise more”; full stop. Soon the only utterance by Homo sapiens will be “DUH” or Mad Magazine’s Alfred E Newman’s slogan “What; me worry?” Remember the movie “Idiocracy”; we’re rapidly approaching that scenario? But conditions of intelligence and intellectual competence throughout the world were dismal long before the so-called “smart” phone hooked people in, especially in the United States of Jesus. More than half of Americans are functionally illiterate while the impoverished socialist country of Cuba that they have been trying to destroy for six decades has a literacy rate of 95%. The Program for International Student Assessment scores from the 1990's corroborate that America ranks 38th in the world in math, 19th in science, and 13th in reading skills. It’s far worse today in the 21st century of the walking dead cell phone zombie. But it’s not only the USA that is being made dumber; the entire planet is being robotized, alienated and morphed into unthinking drones. Welcome to Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World where half of the people are unable to face life’s realities and need to take some mind altering drug often provided by multinational pharmaceutical behemoths. And we have been complicit in our own enslavement as we are happy to provide personal information online and be subjected to surveillance 24/7 by FAGMA (Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple).
I have squandered my resistance Lie Lie Lie, Lie Lie Lie Lie Lie Lie Lie …. etc, etc Simon and Garfunkle - The Boxer Links to Related Article(s): http://www.skeptic.ca/Dumb_and_Dumber_World.htm https://www.skeptic.ca/On_the_Stupidity_of_the_Strange_Species_Homo_Sapiens.htm https://www.skeptic.ca/Capitalist_Techno-Stupidity_v_Freedom_and_the_Intellect.htm https://www.skeptic.ca/Corporate_Hijack_of_Education.htm Addendum:
Smart Phones of course are not the only devices that have access to the internet and World Wide Web. There is of course much larger screen Windows and Apple tower computers with 35 inch screens or portable tablets with 12 inches when compared to the tiny 7” cell phone. I build my own computers and I’ll take the 35 inch screen every time. Cell phones are a superfluous annoyance I don’t need when I’m out for a walk trying to enjoy what’s left of Mother Nature. Sadly when it comes to the internet and WWW – even more mind-destroying is television –there’s been a slow but steady corporate takeover by tedious marketing and surveillance which has caused a disturbing deterioration and dumbing down that has spilled into the internet and WWW. Try to imagine a world where roughly 5-6 billion of the Earth’s 8 billion people have access to the World Wide Web of trivia, data but yet even valuable knowledge that would allow them to research and conduct studies on anatomy, advanced calculus, probability theory, anthropology, psychology, physics, chemical engineering, genetics, geography, anthropology, quantum mechanics, artificial intelligence, the biological sciences including evolutionary theory and genetics, logic, the philosophy of knowledge (epistemology), psychology, linguistics, agriculture, gardening and much more. That much more, it turns out, is mostly useless rubbish, gossip, celebrity worship and much worse mind numbing crap than can turn your brain to mush like the latest news from the pathetic parasitic British Royal Family. However, there are free online courses which allow you to learn high school geometry and algebra or just about any technical or non-technical subject matter on the planet, including conditional probability, Bayesian analysis and partial differential equations. Do you want to challenge what some demagogue politician just told you such as Sleepy Joe Biden’s bullshit declaration that “the pandemic is over”. You can perhaps refute this by your own critical thinking or searching our disconfirming sources on the internet. In most case the internet which has been inundated and contaminated with useless information, conspiracies, bullshit and misinformation, this may not happen. There’s a certain minimal intelligence and breadth of knowledge that’s required for anyone attempting to determine the truth or falsity of anything on the internet – or any other source. This is especially the case with corporate controlled social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and other web sites designed for people with the intelligence of a fence post. Yes, the internet has become more polluted - if that is possible - with distractions , cognitive traps and attention span killing programs like Tik Tok, and the aforementioned Twitter, Facebook, and thousands of reality bending nuanced disinformation sites that plague the bowels of the internet. What was supposed to have been a liberating influence for enlightenment, education and real knowledge is now a crass marketing, spy and propaganda disseminating corporate Godzilla. My advice is to first get a VPN (Virtual Private Network) which is hated by Amazon especially because it can no longer track your every mouse click and keystroke. But, perhaps the saddest thought is that it really doesn’t take an Einstein to tunnel through all the bullshit, useless gossip and hooey and find the facts buried in some obscure radical web site hidden behind the cognitive attention span killing piles of intellectual rubbish. There are reliable useful web sites out there but you need to be very selective and have some sense of what constitutes trustworthy knowledge sources such as long standing reliable university web sites. Prominent universities in the USA and Canada typically publish their rigorous research findings (UBC, McGill, U of T, MIT, Stanford, etc). The Web has become a partisan wasteland of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance with users looking to bounce their religious, left, right and center world views right back into their calcified brains after some sort of affirmation by the same religious, left, right and center. Rarely, if ever, do people cross over into the world views and ideas of other. As John Maynard Keynes once said, “When the facts change, I change my mind”. There is irrefutable evidence that fascism is clearly back in Europe, simply consider the recent Italian election where a new female Mussolini has been elected. In the Americas there are Trump and Bolsanaro and elsewhere it is arguably even worse neo-fascist ghouls that have merged with the Christian right, a phenomenon that has been ongoing for a long time. It only takes a minor ideological dance step to the right of conservatism to reach fascism. Then there are multiple global economic woes such as rampant inflation, tanking stock markets, the USA challenging China and Russia directly, elections of significance pending in Brazil and the United States, an increase in violence in America’s cities, contra Biden a pandemic that is far from over, global heating, species extinction, biodiversity loss, pollution of soils and waterways, wildfires, drought, rivers and lakes drying up, overpopulation, growing poverty combined with the rich getting richer, shifting international alliances, America’s global sanctions regime, Russia v Ukraine and its enabler NATO, exploding healthcare costs, food shortages, deeply corrupt finance gangster capitalism, etc, etc…. Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vucic, summed it all up in a recent speech to the United Nations in August 2022, “The seriousness of the present moment obliges me to share difficult but true words with you. Everything that we are doing today seems impotent and vague. Our words make a hollow and empty echo compared to the reality that we are facing. The reality is that no one listens to anyone, people don’t attempt to come to genuine real agreements and problem solving and almost everyone cares only about their own interests.” So what are the solutions? We didn’t heed the warnings about overpopulation and global warming in the 1 970s whew there was a chance, albeit miniscule, of saving life on the planet. There’s no planet B we can fly so…. Why prolong the inevitable collapse?
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