Being proudly ignorant of everything is bad. I will respect people who know they don't know things though, you can't know everything about everything. It's why people generally specialize in a field in an industry.
Some people can be very well educated but choose not to follow reason. For example polititions appealing to a voting base. Point is these things certainly say "what a twat" but doesn't necessarily reflect poor education.
Everyone is below someone else somehow, since you use that word. I’m beneath my friend in film knowledge. I’m above my friend in gardening skill. In this sense, one can clearly be beneath someone else in education. Or height. Or travel experience.
You meant that regardless of education, we all have the same human worth. That’s true. But yeah you can absolutely be beneath me somehow
“That’s why cleaners exist right?”
“We are giving the cleaners something to do”
“This is not my public space”
The sort of thing people would say when you ask why do they do this.
I’ve seen all sorts of people. People who throw rubbish out from their Mercedes sedan. People who throw their plastic containers onto the sidewalk from the motorbike while waiting for the green light.
Funny true story. A colleague of mine was having a smoke with a Japanese guy who was visiting our country on a business trip.
My colleague threw the cigarette butt onto the floor after finishing. The Japanese guy went to pick up the cigarette butt that my colleague threw on the ground, and threw it into the dustbin nearby. My colleague never felt so embarrassed seeing him do that.
Not being able to entertain ideas. "What would the world be like with 100% renewable energy?"
"Would basic healthcare for every person help our country?"
I tried to explain the 4 day work week to someone that gets paid by the hour. You make the same money but work 4 days a week instead of 5. Insisted he got paid less. Had to explain like a Bingo card with a Free Space, 1 day he is paid even if he stays home.
I don't know if that's necessarily wrong of them. There isn't any precedent for hourly workers to be paid when they're not working. The "four day workweek" as described simply means that any time over 32 hours a week is overtime. Hourly workers in general don't really have a "workweek" anyway because they will often have multiple jobs or will work whatever shift they can pick up that works with their schedule.
They understood how the 4-day workweek works based on how the 5-day workweek works. I think maybe you need to listen more to them and try to understand your own proposition better.
When companies voluntarily implement 4-day workweeks, they are literally either cutting 8 hours or doing 10-hour shifts. They do not pay for hours not worked.
If you can't understand that 40 hours a week can be accomplished in 4 days instead of 5 days, than you are an idiot. It has nothing to do with your life experience. Its simple math.
I think it's good to note that while some of this is a failure to develop critical thinking, failure to entertain hypotheticals is OFTEN a trait for people with differing cognition. So don't assume they're poorly educated just from this, take it as a sign that the person thinks differently.
I've met and am friends with people who struggle with hypotheticals and education isn't the problem, just how their brain works.
Also, some hypotheticals don't consider the inherent problem of a situation or ignores context, and therefor aren't worth entertaining. Not all, just some. When that happens it's best to explain why the hypothetical doesn't work, which I suppose is entertaining it.
I like the idea of the 4 day workweek and would absolutely advocate for it, but I'm not sure how I personally would be affected by it. I do rotating 12 hour shift work to operate a power plant. I flip between 36 and 48 scheduled hours, 5 to 5 flipping between days and nights with a few days off between to flip my sleep schedule.
Would my OT start after 32 hours instead of 40? Would my company hire more people to schedule me between 24 and 36 hour weeks as a result? Because I'm not sure they'd be down with paying 4 hours OT on the cheapest weeks of my labor, and 16 hours OT every other week. So they probably have me work less, but does this result in a one time 25% raise and then fall off over time as no further raises come?
Idk, I would be fine either way because of how I budget, but I think these are valid questions that most hourly workers should be concerned about. I don't think it's such a simple concept, and companies will almost certainly find loopholes to exploit to fuck us like they did for the ACA.
Since we are rating if a person is racist or not based on the actions/words of the person they voted for, isn't everyone who voted for Biden racist as well?
Edit: Since there are many comments, I would like to clarify my statement. I meant that you should rather trust scientists, that the earth is round / that there is a human-made climate change, etc. and not listen to some random internet guy, that claims these things are false although he has made no scientific tests or he has no scientific background. I know that there are paradigm shifts in science and sometimes old ideas are proven to be wrong. But those shifts happen through other scientific experiments/thoughts. As long as > 99 % of all scientists think that something is true, you should rather trust them then any conspiracy theorist...
i mean i get the impulse, but if we were to blindly trust any sort of knowledge system, science is the one to trust, right? like, any downsides of trusting scientific consensus are necessarily larger when trusting information sources that aren't scientific, and if you follow through with trusting science blindly, you might ignorantly begin to believe that empirical testing and intellectual honesty is necessary for determining the truth of your beliefs!
What do you mean by "trusting in science"? Science isn't meant to be trusted, it's meant to be verified.
Given the reproducibility crisis occurring right now, nobody should be "trusting" in science as a matter of course- we should be verifying the decades of unverified research and dismissing the unverifiable research.
We fucked up the entire field of Alzheimer's research for nearly a quarter century by "trusting in science". We still bias towards publishing new research in academia over reproducing existing research. Science has a big problem with credibility right now and saying "oh just trust in science" isn't the solution.
Ok, but I do not have access to labratories or ways to run my proper experiments. Am I supposed to just stay on the fence about everything that I can't personally test, or should I trust in the consensus from the scientific community regarding stuff like climate change, virology, etc.?
unfortunately my dad who has a diploma in engineering and is working in that field for probably 30y now is still prone to it.
Whoever spread those conspiracies should die a slow and painful death to experience a fraction of what they brought on to a lot of families and friends.
Scientists don't have opposing views on thats specific thing*. It's an example used right up there with thinking the earth is flat.
Onecompletely discredited study linked the combined MMR vaccine to a new, made up gastrointestinal disorder. That disorder was supposedly linked to autism. The guy who ran the study had financial ties to a company that manufactured a measles vaccine separate from MMR. He had a financial motive. He paid children for blood samples at his kid's party and bragged about it. He's a monster responsible for every death caused by the measles since his evil, fake, completely made up study came out.
You want to know what makes a person seem ignorant? Being anti-vax or buying into the abject nonsense that ASD is caused by vaccines.
One thing that few people seem to accept when saying that they believe in Ayn Rand's philosophy is that you are supposed to pay people what they are worth, not what you can negotiate with them.
For instance, in Atlas Shrugged, it is made explicit that Rearden pays his mill workers far above typical salaries because it is worth it to him to have the best staff working in his mills. Rearden is also the kind of person who isn't going to make racist or sexist jokes because he wants the best person regardless of sex or color.
That's actually the root of all social philosophies: they require decent people.
No matter which system you take, capitalism, communism, anarchism, monarchy, democracy, etc. they all would work perfectly fine, if people wouldn't be stupid, selfish and about 1% downright psychopaths. And I'm not even talking about real crimes. In your example it would be perfectly legal, to pay the workers the absolute minimum possible, but it would be a dick move.
At the end of the day, a system always has to answer the question: How do you reign in assholes? That's it. Designing a system based on Jesuses is trivial.
And to get rid of the craving for a bit. I say this while smoking a fag (glad I can say this without risk of admins banning me). I should probably quit l.
I see so many educated people not realising this. The maths involved is something we learnt in ~ 5th grade, and I distinctly remember doing exercises on marginal rates in primary school in maths class. It's even simpler than compound interest - which is a staple of maths class later on.
Yet so many people say there's a problem with the education system that it doesn't teach practical skills like these. It clearly does, kids just don't remember it. Maybe it's because they don't need to use this knowledge until almost a decade later.
I don't remember ever having done this in school. In any case, the math is easy, yes. The hard part is knowing the rule that the government put in place for taxing you, and that's something you just have to know. You can't logic your way to it.
It's "Kampf" ... I have tried to read a few pages... It's unreadable drivel.
Fun fact: The book wasn't available in Germany for decades, because upon Hitler's suicide the copyright fell to the State of Bavaria. That recently expired and now you can find some heavily annotated versions.
Thinking everything is gray is also an uneducated response to this kind of thinking. Too many people refuse to stand up for a point because they think that 'all sides are bad' or 'well the good side isn't perfect'.
Understanding that things are nuanced is not the same thing as not having opinions.
You can acknowledge that drinking alcohol can cause addiction, act as a social lubricant, and decide if you want to drink. You can even have an opinion on what you think alcohol's role in society should be and what should be done to prevent drunk driving.
Yeah, everything is nuanced, that just doesn't mean that there are no right options.
Intelligence and maturity is holding a view while also recognizing that there are flaws in that viewpoint.
No matter what subject you're talking about, there are flaws in every stance. That doesn't mean you shouldn't take a stance, but too many people act like they have to be 100% behind their stance in order for it to be valid
Being a republican. Sure there are some educated grifters who decide to label themselves as republican, but your average republican voter is a mouth-breathing fucking idiot.
While I don't always agree, I can see how people can justify fiscally conservative policies. I tend to swing left, but arguing for small government isn't without merit. The problem is with socially conservative policies. The republican party is no longer the party of small government, but is instead the party of bigotry and hatred for their fellow Americans. I wish I had the option of voting for multiple parties, but unless I suddenly decide that I want to regress to 1920s social policies, Democrat is the only semi-sane option.
Being a republican first-party voter. Sure there are some educated grifters who decide to label themselves as republican or democrat, but your average republican first-party voter is a mouth-breathing fucking idiot. terribly misinformed.
To be honest, I disagree. It'd be logical if that was true, because that's what you'd expect, but I've met plenty of counterexamples. People who were well educated in some subject and therefore assumed that they know everything better. I've found that for a certain group of people, having a bachelor's or master's degree makes them overestimate their ability massively. Some of them you could at least partially convince with facts, but I've also met a few of them who has gone completely off the deep end. Well educated doesn't always mean intelligent
Yeah I think a lot of people equate education with overall intelligence, and that’s just not how it works.
I’ve personally known an anti-vaxxer with a PhD, MDs who wrote at a middling grade 8 level, and a literal rocket scientist who never could figure out his email lol
Highly educated people can be brilliant in their specific fields of study, while being absolute morons in other areas. They just had all the right opportunities, money, and the time/skills/ability to study, memorize, and pass tests.
I actually know at least a couple high school grads whom I’d consider more broadly intelligent than some of the MD & PhD holders I’ve worked with over the years.
Not being curious. Education should never stop. You should constantly be seeking intriguing books, new ideas, different perspectives. Once you've lost your curiosity or pridefully believe in one opinion and one way of thinking, no matter your schooling, you have at that moment become poorly educated.
"Whataboutism", or if you are unfamiliar with the term:
"The act or practice of responding to an accusation of wrongdoing by claiming that an offense committed by another is similar or worse"
People that use this mechanism are "poorly educated" and unable to hold a conversation and they should just be mocked by whatabouting even harder, so they can maybe understand that they're dumb and that's not how you should debate.
Example of the last argument I had recently with my dumb c*nt father:
Me: You shouldn't idolize that politician, he evaded literally billions in taxes and that befalls on citizens like you
Dumb c*nt father: Yeah? And what about that other politician?
Honestly, in your example, you sound like, as you put it, a dumb cunt. The purpose of "whataboutism" is to point out hypocrisy in your debate opponent's position. Your dad pointed out that a politician on your side did something equally deplorable to the one you'd called out on his side. Rather than respond to that and have a reasonable conversation about the nuance and differences between your chosen politicians, perhaps coming to better understand each other, you chose to devolve to nonsense, intentionally killing the conversation.
That screams poorly educated (but possibly with an expensive education that makes you feel superior enough that you don't bother to question yourself and your ideals).
The purpose of "whataboutism" is to point out hypocrisy in your debate opponent's position.
No, it is not. It would be if the argument was, for example, "which candidate is better" or "who should I vote for". But that wouldn't be "whataboutism" either, it would be just "point out hypocrisy".
If we are talking about just that single person (not even in a political way) and you bring up someone else just to deviate the attention, that is whataboutism and it's poison for the mind.
Rather than respond to that and have a reasonable conversation...
People that use this mechanism don't whant to have a "reasonable conversation", they just want to be right at all cost, even by sabotaging the debate. If you want to engage with them feel free to waste your time. I value mine more than that.
Plus keeping the argument going will make relationships worse: I voluntarely crash arguments like that with my father because yes, I do think that he's a dumb cunt, but at the end of the day I still want to say him "I love you nonetheless".
Whataboutism as an argument is about chasing the lowest possible ethical standard. You'll always find someone worse. That doesn't mean it's ok.
Even worse, they're always exaggerated comparisons, such as "zomg, hunter Biden was using drugs". Well, did you vote for hunter? And almost consistently, the sources being used aren't reliable sources. And once those claims are fully rebuked, they move on to the latest nonsense (there are a lot of scared whistleblowers out there who the allegedly mentally weak "sleepy Joe" Biden is apparently threatening lol).
Ironically, defending arguments using scientific studies and experiments, but not being able to think critically about the methodology used or what the results mean. Too often people will cite scientific literature based off the title and MAYBE skim it. Trying to have a discussion with them will usually result in them calling you anti-science.
A good example is the pseudo-scientific belief common within incel circles that women can store and absorb dna from past sexual partners and that their children can then have more than one genetic father (an excuse to shame sexually active women while fear mongering about cuckoldry). If you track down the source the study actually explicitly explains exactly why this isn't the case.
Any reference to "common sense", which really means "what I believe". Violating it is used as a universal rebuttal for any intellectually sophisticated argument.
conspiracy theories i agree with, but religion? organized religion, definitely. joining a religion with a hierarchy signals that you want someone else to give you all the answers, which is very much a mark of poor education. but religious beliefs are not an automatic marker of poor education, as long as they're sincerely held, don't supersede science, and are frequently revisited and revised based on personal experience and knowledge. even basic, broad frameworks like animism or some parts of Buddhism can help you make sense of the world when science can't help you
When science has not yet provided an answer, the solution is to keep searching. The answer is not, “oh, God, must’ve done it!” Beliefs, regardless of how sincerely held, are not knowledge, but merely how one may wish things to be. Wishes are not truths.
Being poor or lower middle class and voting for right wing/conservatives. You essentially give away your hard earned money and give it to ultra rich and worsen the quality of your life.. usually because the right wing scares people to be afraid of other people and new phenomena.
I didn't say that. I just said poor and lower middle class. If you are millionaire or billionaire and want to maximize your wealth, you definitely should vote for the conservatives as they transfer money from the poor majority to you.
Your summary is correct. However, most people use the Dunning-Kruger effect to describe individuals with low intelligence as arrogant. Another issue is that most people as soon as they learn about the effect think that they’ve become immune to it.
Eh its a meme at this point. Everyone knows to what you're referring and recognises the shared experience of overconfident stupid people. Everyone educated on the topic understands that it's a pop psychological misrepresentation of some very interesting work.
I notice it's prevalent in populations that have had an excess of a certain type of "executive" education. Whether they are poorly educated or not... I leave to the reader.
Everyone educated on the topic understands that it’s a pop psychological misrepresentation of some very interesting work.
The irony of this is that those who aren’t “educated on the topic” do not realize that by describing the Dunning-Kruger effect as the law of “overconfident stupid people”, they themselves have become subjects of the effect.
What I was trying to say is that the Dunning-Kruger effect being misrepresented as something that only applies to “stupid people” is often done by people who are themselves undereducated on its topic. The DK effect applies to everybody.
This is why intelligent people can be so fucking stupid.
That has more to do with the fact that "smart" in a general sense doesn't really exist. Having a PhD in Chemistry doesn't give you any authority in Psychology. Similarly, someone can be widely considered genius but also someone who shouldn't make any political decisions.
I disagree. A lot of people are getting caught up in the MAGA cult that are just looking for a team that speaks to their ideals (generally more conservative). Calling them dumb by choice and not trying to understand their underlying reasons for subscribing to this particular ideology is really harmful at a societal level.
It seems hard for people to overcome this. It's basically built in: reducing, minimizing, and/or generalizing others into stereotypes. Great for conserving memory for all those other incredibly system-intensive tasks the average person is putting their mind through, not so great for open communication between individuals. And yeah, I'm being snarky because most people probably aren't doing much more than scrolling a media stream, but those darn <insert favorite group to bash here>s, they just need to <insert projection of own inadequacies here.> shakes closed fist in the air
I saw some very distressing things leading up to the 2016 election. In CANADA, I saw a bleeding heart leftist become a MAGA cultist, and I still don't understand what happened. I know other people whose families were torn apart over this. In frigging CANADA.
I know this sounds a bit out there but I actually suspect some new psyops technology was deployed against the public in the mid 2010s. Could be something as small as a nation state comprehensively assessing and very slightly moving ahead their understanding of the psychology of advertising or social media. Could be as large as a dark AI technology the public does not know about. I think the public are being intentionally psychologically destabilized by people who benefit when the public acts more randomly. But when you step back from it, it doesn't really require a conspiracy or intention. These systems have a habit of arising naturally under the exploitation of people by capital and in times of growing fear and fascism.
Sure, makes sense people can know the difference and make these mistakes because of muscle memory or whatever. The problem I have with it is it's clear many, many people either just don't know or care which one they're supposed to use.
People who think their dialect or language style is grammatically correct and others are wrong, because they don't personally known the grammar rules of any other dialect or language. They don't understand that language is alive and evolving and that the purpose of language is communication.
I would add to this people who aren't able to use their own native language properly. I receive IMs at work all the time that sound like a 16-year-old is sending a text message. Maybe I'm just getting old, but half the time I honestly can't decipher what they're asking me.
Personal use of proprietary software in the 2020s.
Or running a company to be completely dependand on dozens of unreliable and expensive proprietary software vendors.
This isn't poorly educated, it's just a mistake in our education system where software isn't treated as well as it should be considering our day and age.
Even so, there are valid reasons to use some forms of proprietary software. Not every program has a good FOSS alternative. I would encourage people to look into FOSS alternatives but I wouldnt call someone poorly educated because they play games other than SuperTuxKart and Kmines.
I agree with you that the problem is in our educational system: for the most use cases, LibreOffice is just as good as MS office, meaning that they're both equally crappy. But since the former is free (as in freedom and as in beer) that should be the standard in schools and universities.
The good thing is that movements to bring FOSS in public administration and schools are starting to battle, and already had some victories, most notably in Germany and France
It depends on how you interpret "educated". If including things that aren't learned on school: I think that fallacies, rushed certainties and decontextualisation scream "this individual was so poorly educated that they never learned how to think."
I think that everything else can be derived from the above, shitty moral premises, or a mix of both.
regurgitating talking points from a third party and the inability to distinguish between divisive issues and issues of difference. I
am a college professor and pastor and when I teach theology there is a crazy high instance of people who just spit out exactly what their favorite celebrity pastor says and immediate decide that it trumps whatever you are saying. Then they are unwilling to yield any bit of their position and get offended that you disagree.
disagreements do not need to be so divisive. The constant need for affirmation shows that you actually have no idea what you are talking about
Doesn't this depend on the stylistic environment of the text? Personally, I'd consider it alright given that the sender and the receiver are in a casual relationship. It only makes one seem uneducated if they are using it in a more formal, or perhaps a public context.
"You slip into a suit for an interview and you dress your language up, too. You can wear what you like linguistically or sartorially when you're at home or with friends, but most people accept the need to smarten up under some circumstances." - Stephen Fry, 5:00.
It made a lot of sense back when you had to type texts by pushing the same buttons multiple times. Now that smart phones have swipe to type and autocorrect, it is not a good excuse.
Nah it didn't even make sense back then. I could type full sentences with T9 easily, to the point that I wouldn't even need to look at the phone except to double check what I wrote before sending a text.
I tend to agree. But even though I have a degree in English literature and creative writing, and have worked as a journalist and editor, I still have a few things that I routinely mess up. My thing is: sometimes a word gets double letters in certain forms. Run / running. Got / gotten. But this doesn’t always happen. Walk / walking. There are however some forms of some words where I can’t remember what is correct to do. I’ve gotten it wrong and been corrected. I’ve gotten it right and second guessed myself. Both of those have happened so many times that I can no longer keep it all straight.
So I have some compassion perhaps for people who screw up to/too because they’re caught in a false mneumonic dilemma. (There’s a good example of my trouble with double letters, by the way - I always type “dilemma”).
I swear in some cases it’s more of a pathology and less just mere ignorance.
Huh. I have this issue too. I think the difference is that you (it seems) and I do stop, check, and try to get it right. I have looked up words know how to spell just to make sure I spell them correctly.
Pressing send on anything longer than a tweet without checking for some basic grammar and spelling seems crazy to me.
It's not a culture fair observation to be sure. Your Nobel prize winners I guess we're old (hence part of a generation when smoking was more widespread). There are also countries where smoking is more or less universal.
Addiction is everywhere, but cigarettes are unique. It’s no secret that cigarette companies deliberately get people addicted, and then let them die, simply because it’s profitable.
You KNOW you’re being used. Voluntarily paying to make it happen is stupid.
I’m sympathetic towards older folks who got hooked when the companies were still lying to the public, but anyone who started smoking in the last few decades is a moron.
Might not be a popular take but having an undefendable position like creationism does not necessarily mean "poorly educated." There are apologists who have learned proper reasoning skills and use their education to bend reality as much towards their will. I think most people would consider Jesuits and the like to be very educated but also very wrong.
As far as signs that someone is poorly educated, there are people who make up "big words" to give the impression of having a better education to other poorly educated people. Which backfires when someone with an actual large vocabulary walks into the room.
Your so discriminatory! just because someone do'snot have perfect gramner not means their stupid or pourly educated! you're altitude is disgusting. could of said nothing but you like to disrispect other's on the internet. I could care less but pls get lost on the specific ocean!
It does not mean they are stupid, but it does indicate a poor education, or that they are ESL. Either way, not a value judgement on that individual, but there isn't really a good way to differentiate if someone is dumb or ignorant when they send you something that looks like it was written by a 5th grader.
Went on a trip a while back with a relative, here are some of the things that they belived/behaved like(sorry for the long text):Needless gossiping and thinking that other people's achivements threaten your credibility. Anger/apathy/being dismissive as default, snarky useless remarks, belittling other people any chance possible, trying to seem superior through "presenting intelectual", playing "the devil's advocate" just to look edgy and be unnerving, beliving propaganda over science, not apologising when needed, lacking self awareness and being selfish constantly, not going to therapy&health check ups, making poor spirited jokes about other people, not respecting people's space, touching them without permission,being disrespectful on purpose to other people(and to yourself), and the phobias(homophobic, biphobic, transphobic, xenophobic),misoginistic,misandrist, ableist, rascist,antisemitic,heavily nationalist attitude, thinking the world revolves only around you and that other people are just tools&objects, not cleaning after yourself, expecting other people to take care of things for/accompaning you as if they have an obligation, thinking violence settles things, refusing to pay people because "it's for exposure" and "they should do it for the experience/self fuffilment", loud music in public spaces(please use headphones), dismissing people's religious practice just because it isn't exactly how you would do it, pressing other people to live the life you want to but not living the life you want to live yourself, being needlessy pessimistic and cynical about the future(guilty), not being bewildered about earth and not wanting to learn or practice random things(who has time to be hateful when you see a beautiful leaf that has just sprouted?), lack of wanderlust.
This is one of those grammatical errors that is so common that it is almost not a grammatical error anymore. It is so pervasive in podcasts, movies, TV shows, etc. that I just gloss over it nowadays
Sounds werid as hell, right? That's what's wrong with that sentence. I is a subjective pronoun, not an objective pronoun. Adding "my friend and" in front of it doesn't change that.
I understand that it doesn't matter to a lot of people, and it doesn't matter for sentence clarity, but it sound weird AF to some folks.
Because of all the 'um actually' corrections from people whenever they'd say "Tom and me bought drinks." And not just to the point one starts thinking it's always "Tom and I" - I've had people 'correct' my 'to Tom and me', as well, because they think "Tom and me" is always incorrect.
This is also why I don't make a big deal about correcting others' grammar; it's often a tool people use to feel smarter (and thus superior) to other people. Language is a communication tool; if I know what you mean and there's limited ambiguity then I don't much care if you said 'would of' instead of 'would've'; and certainly not enough to interrupt a conversation to correct it.
Besides, between autocorrect, typos, and the brain's weird word-association tricks, a linguistics professor is capable of making significant grammar mistakes and not even notice, even if they'd know they were wrong if pointed out. So swooping in to tell them "hey you did this thing slightly wrong" in lieu of engaging with their intended point is not meaningful contribution.
Insisting things like tax returns or household maintenance should be taught in school.
The goal of Education is not to train you to fit into the system you happen to grow up in, but should provide the foundation (litaracy, STEM, art …) and awaken the curiosity in yourself to become lifelong learner.
That will develop society, and not a bunch of drones doing their tax returns and changing tires every season.
The most important thing you can learn, is how to learn. One of the things that most upsets me is when I hear someone say they can't do something "because no one ever taught me how". It's not your teachers/parents job to teach you how to do everything under the sun.
Ignorance is nigh-inexcusable in today's society, with so many sources of information at our fingertips. That's where the "poorly educated" part comes in for me - folks who don't know how to search for and evaluate information.
At minimum; school should give you the tools to be able to figure out how to do taxes/basic house maintenance/etc. But also, sometimes people need a little extra help; and we should have some sort of system to help people learn those things.
I mean it would also help if we had a functional tax system in the US that wasn't deliberately made overly complicated to encourage people to pay for tax filing services.
Damn, I overenunciate (compared to my local accent) some sounds because otherwise people have a harder time understanding my speech. Not that I have a speech impediment, I just talk fast, mumble through some words out of hurry and I'm kinda quiet. People have noted that I do that but it's only to make sure people understand what I'm saying, having to repeat myself makes it uncomfortable for both of us.
Yea sorry to say, but this is one of my signs of being poorly educated. Really don’t want to be harsh, and I’m all with you on being accurate and correct with language and expression. But language changes and always has trade offs and with accuracy and comprehension. There’s strictly no reason for a language to distinguish quantitative and qualitative amounts at this level.
And at some point, requiring compliance with rules like this, against the grain of the language’s evolution, becomes pedantry, which, I’m sorry to say, is often the signalling of being educated by those desperate to appear so.
I really hope this doesn’t come off as harsh and rude. It’s definitely useful to have this in the language, if you’re completely on top of it. But from what I’ve seen, even the most educated and smart people can trip on this because it’s just awkwardly unnecessary enough that it doesn’t really matter unless you’re keen to ensure you’re using “proper English”.
Especially in English, which is incredibly idiosyncratic.
I have an English degree so obviously I care about this shit. But I’ve spent enough time in the world to understand that there is more than one kind of education. I know brilliant sofrware programmers who might fuck up less/fewer. They’re not stupid. They have lots of education. I’m an idiot compared to them when it comes to logic and math. I have a friend who’s a master gardener, accomplished photographer, welder, electronics teacher, small business owner, IT technician, and a really good cook. He probably screws up a word here and there. He’s vastly more educated and intelligent than me.
So yeah… we should all just back off on being pedants about grammar and vocabulary rules, just a little bit.
Good example. Honestly “fewer” is just falling out of use. Slowly, but it’s happening. Businesses never use a 5 letter word when a 4 letter word will do. This has an influence over time.
Thinking about different languages in the terms of "useful" or "useless" according to the number of speakers they have.
Edit: What I mean specifically is not for someone to want or not to personally learn a language, but if the existance in itself of a language is more or less valuable according to how many people speak it (per example and as I explained below, believing that Occitan's existance is useless because there's already French to talk to Occitan people with, who already understand it). Yes, this happens.
Why does this show lack of education over lack of interest in linguistics? I’ve studied linguistics, and I don’t categorize languages that way, but I could see how a pragmatist wouldn’t see value in learning Esperanto or Papiamento.
I think you misunderstand what I am referring to. I am not talking about a wish to learn a language, but to consider languages as useful or useless in regards to their entire existence.
This is unfortunately not very uncommon in people of European countries who look down upon regional languages, stating that their existence or that learning them is useless (not for them only, but for anyone) just because you can already do the task of communicating with others through the national language (per example, considering the existance of the Occitan language useless because the people of everywhere where it is spoken can already understand French). This is done by people who not understand (or even worse, who don't care about) the value that exists in language from a cultural perspective.
If we’re talking about Hungary 56 or the Prague spring then anyone using the word as a pejorative doesn’t know the history and/or what’s going on now. They could just be wildly reactionary I guess.
If we aren’t talking about those specific events then using it as a pejorative outs the speaker as someone with a bad case of brainworms. I guess it’s less lack of education in that case and more being so propagandized you can’t tell up from down but whatever.