I have been thinking a lot since the election about what could explain the incredibly high numbers of Americans who seem incapable of critical thinking, or really any kind of high level rational thought or analysis.

Then I stumbled on this post https://old.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/16ires5/lead_exposure_from_shooting_is_a_much_more/

Which essentially explains that “Shooting lead bullets at firing ranges results in elevated BLLs at concentrations that are associated with a variety of adverse health outcome"

I looked at the pubmed abstract in that Reddit post and also this one https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5289032/

Which states, among other things, “Workers exposed to lead often show impaired performance on neurobehavioral test involving attention, processing, speed, visuospatial abilities, working memory and motor function. It has also been suggested that lead can adversely affect general intellectual performance.”

Now, given that there are well in excess of 300 million guns in the United States, is it possible lead exposure at least partially explains how brain dead many Americans seem to be?

This is a genuine question not a troll and id love to read some evidence to the contrary if any is available

  • qantravon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    681·
    3 days ago

    Or, you know, the lead that we put into the air for decades burning leaded gasoline…

    Even though we’ve (mostly) stopped doing that, the effects are cumulative, and there are still plenty of people alive who were around when that was still a thing.

    • hangman@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      152·
      3 days ago

      Somebody else in the comments said something very similar, I’lll paraphrase what I responded which is that I hadn’t really thought of that, and I’m starting now to come around to the notion that maybe even if there is some percentage of the population suffering the cognitive impairments associated with the adverse effects of lead, it’s probably more likely that they were exposed many years or decades ago vs recently

      • lad@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        Well, I’m in awe of their commitment to transparency now. Not sure if it is the sole reason, but still impressive

    • hangman@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      11·
      3 days ago

      I find this comment super compelling, especially in combination with some of the other good points in the comments here. thank you

    • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world
      371·
      3 days ago

      The average ACT score in Florida among college-bound seniors is about 18. To be clear, that is only slightly higher than my cat can score by guessing. It’s an astonishing result. They are actually illiterate. And again, that’s the average for the state (nationally it’s around 22), and half of them do worse.

      If you’ve ever tried to have a conversation with an average person… well, you can’t. There’s nothing to discuss except sports, since everything else is way too complicated. So now imagine a standard deviation lower.

      • Dharma Curious (he/him)@slrpnk.net
        18·
        3 days ago

        If you’ve ever tried to have a conversation with an average person… well, you can’t.

        I grew up in Virginia Beach/Hampton roads, and moved to Tennessee in 09 at 18. I’ve never really wanted to admit that outloud, to be honest, but I feel like the only normal person in this state sometimes. I’ve been here for over 15 years and I have met a grand total of 7 people I could have a decent conversation with, one of which is an Episcopal priest from another state, and 2 I met specifically through left wing organizing, so a group with membership that’s already higher than likely to be biased to education and intelligence. I knew people back home that were smart. I don’t mean educated, or some High Potential/Sheldon Cooper shit, I mean they were rational, intelligent human beings capable of common sense and able to hold a conversation. And remember, I was a teenager when I left. At 17 my peers in Hampton Roads were more capable at humaning than are my peers here at 33.

        That makes me deeply sad, and I feel like such an elitist shit saying it out loud.

        • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          2 days ago

          The first time I traveled to America, my first thought after a day meeting southerners was “man, these people are dumb as rocks”. It was a major tourist destination so I met many Americans of normal intelligence from elsewhere, and the southerners were friendly, but man… the things they chose to talk about, and questions they chose to ask, really solidified how dangerous promoting religion over education is. A democracy can only survive when the average is informed, and conservatisms overall anti-intellectualism — its multi-decade attacks on education — is the #2 predictive variable destroying western democracies (the #1 being religion itself).

          Let’s just say I’ve been expecting fascist dictatorship for America for over 2 decades, so Trump/MAGA was expected… Though, even with that expectation, I didn’t expect it to be this fucking stupid.

    • otter@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      5·
      3 days ago

      To be clear, the “Floridaman” thing certainly benefits from the “sunshine state” bullshit, but yeah, the rest of your points are sound. 🤌🏽

  • BlackLaZoR@fedia.io
    15·
    3 days ago

    what could explain the incredibly high numbers of Americans who seem incapable of critical thinking

    Garbage education system.

    • Manifish_Destiny@lemmy.world
      111·
      3 days ago

      100%. It’s been intentionally neutered to keep people ignorant and stupid in their decisions.

      It’s ‘razing of the library of Alexandria’ bad for our near future. The only thing worse I can think of is plastic pollution.

  • sploosh@lemmy.world
    9·
    3 days ago

    I figured copper jackets would greatly reduce lead exposure, which is all I used when I used to shoot.

    • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
      3·
      3 days ago

      hunted meat

      Makes it sound like yous are running about in the woods shooting at packets of mince

  • nomad@infosec.pub
    192·
    3 days ago

    The brain follows the same patterns as muscles: use it or lose it. The general population in America is very much not educated at all. So their brains lose the ability to think rapidly.

    • Gray@lemmy.ca
      9·
      3 days ago

      Smartphones (and the Internet more generally) have led to a major decline in reading books among the American public. I think this plays such a huge role in the absolutely batshit crazy cultural shift we’ve seen.

      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        3 days ago

        There’s a whole lot of stupid books to read too but one difference is that at least they’re supposed to be grammatically correct.

        People also watched a ton of bad TV instead of reading.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
          1·
          3 days ago

          People watch a ton of bad streaming instead of watching tv. The news used to have some standards that clearly don’t exist anymore

    • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world
      51·
      3 days ago

      The cognitive decline among older populations (50+) is absolutely appalling. It’s safe to say that the average 5th grader has better critical thinking skills than the average septuagenarian.

      So… why the latter can vote but not the former is a mystery to me.

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
        2·
        3 days ago

        The first paragraph I agree with. The last sentence… That is some naivity. People do shit because it’s been done before and that is all they need, they don’t even question it. Have you really not noticed how strong and consistent a factor it is that people don’t like change? It might take 100 years for public perception to align with what you’re saying even if every single study for that 100 years agreed that older adults are severely cognitively compared.

  • BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    301·
    3 days ago

    Is it possible? Yes

    Could it at least in part explain some behaviour? Yes.

    But the missing question really is how much, and the answer is probably infitessimally small even if Real.

    For lead exposure there are far easier and more common ways to get exposed such as lead pipes (which the US has a lot of).

    But also you’d have to establish that the underlying problem is brain damage, and that is probably not true and instead reflects cultural bias.

    There are many other reasons to explain American culture and behaviour which does not default to brain damage (or at least provable brain damage).

    I would look at social and cultural issues first: an extremely weak political system, a poor quality general education system, high levels of religion, poor quality general health care, high levels of inequality including shocking levels of poverty.

    The problem with the US is the extremes - if you have money you have the best the world can offer; if you don’t then the state provision is shockingly poor. But alot of the crazies are also rich, and that comes down to the culture and society.

    Lead poisoning is the least likely explanation, and is almost wishful thinking to try and explain things as a disease rather than normal human nature.

    • YarHarSuperstar@lemmy.world
      81·
      3 days ago

      COVID causes brain damage too. We largely don’t mask anymore like even in doctor’s offices, or worse hospitals. I think COVID has done a large amount of damage in a short time.

  • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
    20·
    3 days ago

    iirc most spectacular form of neurotoxic damage really only shows years later if lead exposure happened during childhood which also means that little effect will be seen immediately after cleaning up lead but will show up 20 years later or so. that’s still leaded gasoline and maybe paint and water pipes to some degree

  • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.eeEnglish
    4·
    3 days ago

    Lead, namely in its poor infrastructure and in old recipes that have survived to the present day, was also cited for the peoples’ issues in the Roman Empire, discussed in contexts as wide as the common medical deformities and the madness of emperors like Caligula (spoiler alert, he wasn’t actually mad, just creatively spiteful, e.g. his declaring war on Poseidon was to humiliate undisciplined soldiers). So this is not lead’s first rodeo. I would give the research more time.

  • AlexWIWA@lemmy.mlEnglish
    102·
    3 days ago

    You’d have to shoot thousands of rounds in an unventilated room to get even close to one day of leaded gasoline exposure