Interesting post. I think you could replace the "Americans are Stupid" meme with "Blondes are Stupid" and end up with the same reason for the meme stickiness.

*Jealousy*

I believe the current research demonstrates the real blondes have higher IQs as a population than other hair colors.

So, people copy those of whom they are jealous and then they bad mouth them on top of it.

The Ego needs to be different.

Pick any topic - education, country, sect, race, etc. The human species has a mind that is sick from the ego. If they are not different then the ego dies and we all become one.

Awake to a new earth.

Paleo

The results of this survey sound unlikely enough that I'd like to wait until it's been replicated before believing it.

"Our first reaction was that 70% of people must not know what nanotechnology is . . ."

I don't think anyone knows what "nanotechnology" is. The term has been so widely and egregiously misused that it has ceased to mean anything specific.

Or the concept most Americans understand about Nanotech is the grey goo scenario and they don't find it morally acceptable to risk that until we have a way to shut the things off. We don't know, because they didn't ask (or at least tell us) the real question: why? If you got a study that said 70% of the French were morally opposed to oranges, you'd want to know why.

Incidentally, since that "science" writer doesn't bother to give us the title or the authors of that study its hard to go look it up ourselves. I want to know what the questions were, how they were asked, and what EXACTLY the answers given were before I come to a conclusion. That's science, Mr. Worthen.

"The sun revolves around the earth" isn't necessarily wrong either. Relative to the earth, the sun does indeed follow a path revolving around the earth. Relative to the sun, the earth revolves around the sun. Relative to an imaginary fixed point in space, the sun is following a trajectory and the earth sort of weaving around it.

For most earthbound purposes, taking the sun as revolving around the earth is actually a better answer.

phil, %religious in pop by country has a negative correlate with median IQ...except in america.
i wonder if the hidden variable might be nutrition.....or i suppose it could be partly brain drain, from 3rd world countries to america.
even as we are universaly despised we are still the destination of choice.

What I see in my fellow Americans that always gets my goat is an ignorance of our country's history and the principles on which it was founded. This has little to do with stupidity except with regard to having an understanding about how life should be lived.

Comments from peoples of other nations and continents reflect their ignorance and unexamined preference for their collectivism. They probably will never understand what makes us different. Whenever this issue comes up I remember the passages from De Toqueville where he goes at some length to describe how he saw such a difference in the concept of honor among the elite between Europe and America. In Europe, it was not honorable for an aristocrat to 'work' whereas in America it made no difference what wealth one had attained (we had no aristocrats) it would still be dishonorable to shirk honest work.

Now we obviously have quite a mix of people in the United States, but we still have a core that knows where we came from and considers that heritage worthy.

@ MikeTheLibrarian:

Relative motion and apparent motion are not the same. The claim that the sun revolves around the earth is objectively false and is a case of apparent motion. Relative motion implies a consistent inertial frame.

I spend a good deal of time abroad, and I'm struck by the paradox of the standard critiques of America -- often presented by the same person in the same conversation.

That is, we are uncultured buffoons who -- by luck or chicanery, I guess -- became a malign collosus bestriding the planet.

Go figure.

Elite educated Europeans are leaving Europe in droves for less cultured, more buffoonish lands such as Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. And the US too. Why? Why indeed.

I suspect this has also become current because there's a new book out called The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby. She had an essay in maybe the NYT or the Washington Post a couple weeks ago that summarized her thesis, which says that not only are Americans stupid, they're proud of it. A review copy fell into my hands a month ago, but after 15 minutes with it I put it aside, disappointed. Her own smugness, stridency and leftism were tiresome.

Check out this article in The Times, in which she describes the origin of the book--supposedly she heard two guys discussing 9/11: “This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said. The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?” “That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.
She decides to write the book.

Maybe those guys were genuinely stupid; but I have to wonder if Jacoby is simply too arrogant to hear one guy teasing another for saying something obvious, and the other trying to recover his dignity by adding to the absurdity; or one guy trying to crack a joke and lighten things up, and the other guy going along with it. You wouldn't expect a smug elitest to approach the guys and actually find out what they believe, and apparently that is consistent with what occurred.

Good, honest post. Now I would suggest an attack on the other irritating meme "We are much fairer and wiser than past generations"

@Cpl Punishment

That's... true, but what does it have to do with the price of oranges in France?

The Corporal and the Librarian are having an interesting argument. We go around the sun: how do you know that? Can you, yourself, prove it? We 'know' it because we 'learned' it in 'science' class. It's revealed knowledge. Most people in Europe and Asia (and them other places I learnt about in 'geography' class) aren't scientific thinkers, just apt prattlers. Americans (particularly, I'm told Missourians) once had the reputation of being both skeptical and being able to reason from observation. Nowadays, we, like everyone else, tend to adopt a position and then go shopping for someone else's 'science' to back it up. I put this down to the ascendancy of the biggest 'science' of all: Political Science.

One interesting aspect to the survey is that the percentage of people in different countries who get the earth/sun question wrong is roughly the same. The difference is in the number who 'don't know' or 'don't answer'. Maybe the correct meme is 'Americans are arrogant', since we are sure we know the answer and will not admit to not knowing. :)

I am a blond American and I know what nanotechnology is. It is what makes Glenn Reynolds trousers stain resistant.

I also teach English in China and will use this article my Culture class this term if you don't mind.

Thanks.

TheLibrarian is not having that argument. Yahonza is having that argument. TheLibrarian accepts that we travel around the sun in a slightly wonky elliptical orbit.

If you haven't had a look at Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, please do so, and love all the humans. I don't have any confidence in intelligence measuring test. Has anyone seen that quick recall monkey in the news? I am impressed, but I noticed those long fingers give him (or her?) an advantage.