The proliferation of stupidity

Pretty sure that article was satire.

Went back to replay it, died once because the controls were so unresponsive then beat the first world maps without getting hit again. Game was not as fun as I remember it being.

Yeah, compared to the controls and reaction times of today, that shit is like running in water.

fanaskin_sl said:

In order to learn in life you must fail, failure provides a proper mindset to be receptive for learning.

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This is the main problem. We have a whole generation of kids who grew up playing sports where no score was kept and everyone got a trophy just for participating, and a lot of the education system has been set up the same way. Did you show up and make an effort? Well, then you pass. Hooray for you. Oh, there's an assessment test at the end of the year with 50 questions? Well, we will teach you nothing but those 50 answers and consider you "educated".

This creates a sense of only doing the bare minimum to get by, and thinking you can get whatever you want as long as you try a little.

The harsh reality is that life isn't like this, and now we end up with people who are 30 years old and still living with their parents, with their college degree in liberal arts and they wonder why they aren't successful in life.

Forget the dumb thing a sec. What I have noticed is lack of social skills. I mean even my kids who I FORCE to get the hell out the house because I see what him sitting on the PC does to him socially are pretty bad outside of organized activities (sports school etc). If his cousins don't come over, he won't even bother to meet the kids across the street. Same with my neighbors kids.

The kids nowadays also seem to not know they are kids. They hold themselves as equals to adults until you have to put them in their place. I have to do this time and time again with OTHER peoples children it seems.

Dumb? Nah. My son is definitely scholastically ahead of me at his age (13 y.o on honor roll). But I had tons of common sense. He lacks that. He just doesn't get it for lack of a better term.

BUT, I can say this. My son can give you the answer to lets say a math question. It will be right, but he can't give me the base knowledge of how he got to the answer. The way they are teaching children in at least math is so much different than when I was growing up that I can't even help him half the time on his homework. It seems they teach results and not the path nowadays.

I think I'm about average but then I see how stupid most people can be it just makes me depressed. There is much to learn just from observation and it seems like MANY people don't do this.

I once had a friend whom didn't know how to operate a broom to sweep a floor at the age of 18, after close to 2 decades of seeing your parents do it how can you not figure this out on your own?

Interesting NPR show recently about how our schools have been setup for the past 400 years based on the British Imperial system, a far flung low-bandwidth empire that required a lot of skilled people who were interchangeable and had fundamental skills like reading, writing, math, geography, etc. So our schools churned out replaceable parts by the millions to be the little cogs of this machine.

But since the 1990s knowledge is no longer local, it doesn't matter what you know anymore because you can look everything up, instantly and with multiple sources. An Indian researcher placed internet PCs in the slums of india in the walls, and within a week kids who didn't know how to read or had ever touched a computer before were teaching themselves everything just by finding stuff online. There were other fascinating things the guy talked about, like how test schools without teachers in slums were outperforming rich private schools, the guy won the TED prize last year for his talks/research I believe. The NPR episode is athttp://www.npr.org/2013/06/21/179015...ach-themselves

Anyways the point is I think we are in a transitional period, we are still at the very early stages of demolishing the current educational system and moving to the next generation of learning. The old way provided more people more stable jobs and lives, the new way will reward fewer people with exceptional challenges and privileges, but also probably create a much vaster underclass that has all the "comforts" anyone may want, but perhaps is not intellectually stimulated. The question then becomes whether it will be easy to move from the underclass to the overclass (Star Trek) or whether the latter will use force and tyranny to dominate (every dystopian movie).

Tuco_sl said:

Stupid people have existed for the entirety of the human race. And from my experience there's an inverse relationship between the propensity of someone to bitch about stupidity and their own intelligence.

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While true, never at any time in history has it been easier for stupid people to survive, breed, and even thrive. If you're a dumbass doing stupid shit in the middle ages, you aren't living very far into adulthood. Nowadays with all the safety precautions and medical advancements, we can manage for an idiot to survive damn near any self-inflicted catastrophe.

joeboo_sl said:

While true, never at any time in history has it been easier for stupid people to survive, breed, and even thrive. If you're a dumbass doing stupid shit in the middle ages, you aren't living very far into adulthood. Nowadays with all the safety precautions and medical advancements, we can manage for an idiot to survive damn near any self-inflicted catastrophe.

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And pay to support him.

tad10_sl said:

link and stuff

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We explained that Mario could shoot fire balls with the Fire Flower power-up, but then they wanted Mario to start with more weapons like a sword or a gun.

Mario y u no Prototype!?

Haha that whole article is great. I was young when I played Mario for the first time so maybe my experience was like that but the study says they performed the test on gamers (Mario was one of my first video games ever, still remember getting my Nintendo with Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt for Christmas) so yeah. Ah the memories, putting the gun right next to the screen to get max points or spending 2 minutes trying to get a perfect flag jump at the end of a level.

tad10_sl said:

http://www.p4rgaming.com/majority-of...er-mario-bros/

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Every game developer should be forced to watch this video. (Seriously though, people should watch this...Especially starting at 7 minutes. Essentially he shows how even a massive fucking retard can be shown every mechanic without the lazy way developers do it now.)


The idiot in that interview saying "derp, lots of people died to the goomba"--guess what? Almosteveryone died to the god damn goomba on their play through at 8 years old. You know why? Becausenoneof us read the manual,exceptin the case of Zelda (And that's only because it came with the cool treasure map). However, luckily, the entire first level of Super Mario is set up to teach these mechanics. However, Super Mario was set up in a time when there was not a saturation of competitive stimuli (Competing games), so they had an expectation the gamer would hold on as he learned (How many of us stuck with shitty games like Dr Jekyl and Mr Hide, for hours trying to figure them out?)

The problem is,currentdevelopers do not expect that--and that'skindof rational, because a lot of snap judgements are made on games (Due the dearth of waiting games, and how complex modern games can be). However, rather than combat that with deeper, more intuitive and, most of all, gradual mechanic introductions (Like Mega Man X did), they instead assume the idiocy can't be conquered any other way than to make the game super easy and spell out the exact process by which you win (And not penalize you if you fail--just make it so you win,less. See: the new game about Rome for Xbox.)

Mega Man X is a perfect example of how deeper, more complex mechanicscouldhave been worked into games. The problem is, creating introductions like Mega Man X is difficult. It requires a lot of thought on the developers end, and careful examination ofeverythingfrom the level design, boss mechanics, and even the start screen (As shown). It's far cheaper just to shovel the intro in and get to a bland story, with huge guns that require very little thought on both the players end and the developers.

He can blame the player. But fuck him. Him and ilk are just as much at fault because they gave up wanting to make deeper games in exchange for assembly line capital.

There is no proliferation of stupidity. Every generation thinks the subsequent generation is stupid, and every generation is wrong.

While true, never at any time in history has it been easier for stupid people to survive, breed, and even thrive. If you're a dumbass doing stupid shit in the middle ages, you aren't living very far into adulthood. Nowadays with all the safety precautions and medical advancements, we can manage for an idiot to survive damn near any self-inflicted catastrophe.

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Which is a good thing. Stupid people are still useful to smart people and humanity as a whole. Furthermore, "stupidity" is relative to the era, and the middle ages managed to kill off a lot of intelligent yet weak people as well. Intelligence isn't the only factor when it comes to survival,especiallyin the middle ages.

Sebudai stole my post. Have some perspective. If every generation claims the younger one is dumb/lazy/the downfall of society, what is more likely: this time it is actually correct, or we are just the same as every generation that has ever existed and things will be fine?

OP has been re-iterated throughout history without fail. It never pans out.

Mist_sl said:

I remember finishing the first world of Super Mario Brothers and being like HOLY FUCK when I realized there was a second world.

The warp zone literally blew my fucking mind, I could not stop thinking about it for weeks.

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I remember getting to the minus world...then realizing it sucked. As far as game secrets in the 8 bit era went, nothing beats justin bailey.

Here you go. A recent study suggested westerners have lost 14 IQ points compared to the Victorians.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...60289613000470

Alex_sl said:

Everyone in this thread is probably over 35. Everyone things the younger generation is stupid.

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I am several years short of 35. I think my generation of peers are self-entitled, extremely ignorant, and prone to avoid personal social interaction if a digital device is remotely available.

I have met some of the best of my generation and look forward to what they'll accomplish in their lives, but I weep for the US as a whole due to the massive overpopulation of oxygen thieves in my generation alone. There are more than a few dregs in the generations fore or aft of mine, but being raised in mine has given me quite the disdain for it.

With the shift away from production to service, be very afraid of who is "defending" your shores and "saving" your lives.

John Taylor Gatto the drone maker himself. /search him up sometime and do some reading.