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Suppose, a litre of cola costs US$3.15. If you buy one third of a litre of cola, how much would you pay?
The above may seem like a rather basic question. Something that you would perhaps expect the vast majority of adults to be able to answer? Particularly if they are allowed to use a calculator.
Unfortunately, the reality is that a large number of adults across the world struggle with even such basic financial tasks (the correct answer is US$1.05, by the way).
[...] In many other countries, the situation is even worse. Four in every ten adults in places like England, Canada, Spain and the US can't make this straightforward calculation – even when they had a calculator to hand. Similarly, less than half of adults in places like Chile, Turkey and South Korea can get the right answer.
-- submitted from IRC
High number of adults unable to do basic mathematical tasks
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday March 16 2018, @02:09AM (5 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Touché) by dry on Friday March 16 2018, @04:56AM (1 child)
Funny enough, so are smart people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @02:15PM
https://xkcd.com/356/ [xkcd.com]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday March 16 2018, @05:57AM (1 child)
Do you believe that intelligence is entirely innate and fixed? All nature and no nurture? A person's IQ can vary by at least 20 points due to all kinds of factors. Poisoning, illness, old age, imprisonment, stress, low economic status, poor nutrition, and bad or no education are all things that reduce intelligence. The opposite of most of those, plus stuff like listening to classical music, practicing on puzzles, reading, and such like mental activities raise intelligence. As should be obvious, it's much easier to lower intelligence than raise it.
Then there's the various challenges of life that raise the average intelligence of the population through the myriad fatal mistakes that stupid people are more prone to make, the whole Darwin Award idea. War is an especially severe challenge, very high risk, yet millions of idiots are willing to follow demagogues anywhere, even into unwinnable wars, and even when they aren't driven by the desperation of a famine. It may be a great pity that we invented nuclear weapons when we did, while we are still somewhat undomesticated, so to speak, though the talk of "end all war" is encouraging.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday March 16 2018, @02:36PM
Such a claim rests on the assumption of an all-volunteer army, which is a relatively new concept in the US, and even more uncommon abroad. The Vietnam War ended only 42 years ago, and I guarantee you that most of the boys killed over there weren't volunteers. When your number comes up in the draft you get to choose - you can "fight" for "your" country (probably actually work logistics - I think there's a ~10 support crew for every soldier carrying a gun), flee the country, or spend up to 5 years in prison and/or pay a fine of up to $250,000.
Also, just as in days of yore, joining the military is one of the very few ways for someone born into poverty to make it into the middle class. Even organized crime doesn't offer that, and while scholarships can help, they're really only useful for the academically inclined, which doesn't necessarily correlate with IQ or any other measure of social worth.
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday March 16 2018, @05:17PM
Actually, the easiest to trap are con man. That's because whoever has the highest confidence is the easiest target hence the name "con game".
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.