this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2024
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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

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[–] Zier@fedia.io 13 points 5 days ago (4 children)

Religion is the cause. You are not allowed to think outside the cult. There are a lot of idiot Americans who don't own guns or are exposed to them, so the lead theory is not valid in that sense.

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[–] BlackLaZoR@fedia.io 15 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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

Garbage education system.

[–] Manifish_Destiny@lemmy.world 10 points 6 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.

[–] MissJinx@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago (11 children)

It's really the idiocracy theory. Dumb people have more and more kids while smart people tend to have 0 to 2 kids. It's exponetially growing the amount of dumb people. Besides some people that had potential dumbed themselfs down by joining organized religion. very sad

[–] Denjin@lemmings.world 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It's not smart vs dumb though, it's educated vs uneducated. I seemingly small distinction but a critical one.

There's a distinct inverse correlation with the mean education level of a population and their birth rate (the better educated a group is the fewer babies they have) especially when you look at the women in that population.

Uneducated parents don't value education in their children and so on and so on. Educated parents very much do value education in their children and actively participate in the schooling.

These two factors together mean that there's a increasing number of people who do not value educating themselves or their children and also tend to identify with those politicians who present as uneducated (while actually being highly educated and highly intelligent but lacking in any empathy or morality). This is one factor in why populist parties are gaining traction again in western democracies.

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[–] sploosh@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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

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[–] AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml 8 points 6 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

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

Leaded gas wasn't fully stopped until 1996. Still in some aviation used (piston plane engines).

But yes I wonder about shooting ranges too. I think a couple times a year at an indoor range isn't insignificant.

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[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

You're half right, they're are brain damaged.

But bullets?

I don't know man. Seems unlikely. Leaded fuel and lead paint tho..?

#Lead Exposure in Last Century Shrank IQ Scores of Half of Americans

Leaded gasoline calculation to have stolen over 800 million cumulative IQ points since 1940s

A new study calculates that exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas during childhood stole a collective 824 million IQ points from more than 170 million Americans alive today, about half the population of the United States.

https://today.duke.edu/2022/03/lead-exposure-last-century-shrunk-iq-scores-half-americans

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