what causes an epidemic of ignorance?

@Supercali
A conditioned response to social cognitive inference.

whaaaat??

@Supercali
Several factors.... a conditioned response is an outcome variable that is controlled or guided. Social cognitive inference is a term that describes how humans and animals learn. Think babies who have no syntax or grammer, learn how to communicate a language using syntax and grammer. They have to infer the contex of meaning.

willful ignorance sounds like a First World Problem, not necessarily global?

but how is willful ignorance quantified? to be an epidemic, there would have to be a sudden, unexpected increase or decrease of something, yes? so what increased/decreased drastically to lead to willful ignorance?

@Supercali -- I think in this case that simple observation should be adequate to indicate either a rise in willful ignorance or an increase in willingness for the willfully ignorant to come out of the closet.

That and the pro-corporate ant-worker legislation getting passed are literally killing people

That's what I was going to say

Extremely grim.

uggg

@Georgy303

?☹?

@Georgy303, @Supercali

?? slightly depressing..

@Beatnik In this day and age, it takes effort to be wilfully ignorant about food choices and obesity. There is a great thing called "the internet" where all information is available 24 hours a day. Also, there are literally gyms everywhere and TV commercials about those gyms. Our great great grandparents didn't need classes in nutrition and personal trainers....it's pretty obvious what is causing the obesity epidemic....and that's is sheer laziness and willful ignorance.

@Beatnik I see the picture clearly. I work in corporate health and wellness designing programs and I've been a chef for over 30 years. The surveys that people fill out for corporate health events clearly state that they "know they should eat better and exercise more"..but then they have a stream of excuses why they don't learn how to eat better, what to eat, and how much to exercise. It generally comes down to they just don't have the willpower to do it on their own ....or they get "bored".

@Beatnik riiiiiight....because it's only my profession. Could you "mansplain" it a little better for me? Please list your college degrees and job history in the Wellness industry...mmmm'kay?

@Beatnik I think you are on the right track with this. The US is a consumer culture. People are trained to buy the things they see on TV without question. People smoke because they see others do it and they think is cool, for example, even though many of those same smokers know it's bad for them. Many of the food products they sell to us they do so through the "sexualization" of these products and people just respond to that. At the supermarket checkout they plant crap and candy that is is horrible for you right there next the register so that you will "impulse buy" it. And like cigarettes, many of these food products are formulated so as to get people addicted to them through overuse of sugar or salt in them. Add to all of this the fact that healthy foods are much more expensive than the over-processed prepackaged crap that is devoid of any real nutrients then you get the obesity problems we have today. To expect people to have "will-power" when an entire economic system has been propped up around them and designed to psychologically work to overthrow that "will" is ridiculous. The system needs to change, from education, to the way people are allowed to make money off of their customers, to the customers' ability to pay for better products, and so on.

Then we have to look at the cause, and it's in large part a function of the horrible diet Americans eat. All the processed food, chemicals and additives that the FDA allows in our food.. and the proliferation of junk that masquerades as food. Have you noticed how much food is marked "Natural" these days? And there is no legal definition for that word as it pertains to food

@TheoryNumber3 You have to work really hard to be so stupid in this day and age not to know that all those processed foods and additives are detrimental to health. Likewise, only dingbats think that the word “natural” means something special. Personal responsibility means personal responsibility for learning all of these things and making smart choices based on educating yourself.

@SkotlandSkye That's kinda rough. There are poor people are barely at sustenance level who don't have access to , nor can they afford high quality food. They live in food desserts where the only thing available is fast food and crappy processed stuff. I don't think first and foremost on their mind is computing the saturated fat in a quarter pounder.

But I will grant there are people who just don't care.

@TheoryNumber3
*desert....not dessert...although living on "dessert food" might be half the problem.
Presumably, if there are fast food restaurants, then there are also grocery stores with a produce section...and other healthy options. Beans and rice are super-cheap and two of the best options...that's why every culture --- especially the poor --- have beans and rice dishes. Being poor doesn't mean eating poorly. It would be incredibly weird if I spent more than $50 on my food for a week and I generally spend about $30. But, honestly, it's generally about priorities. If someone is spending $40 to get their nails done, $100 for their hair a month, and paying a cell phone bill monthly, they can afford to eat well....they just choose not to do so.

@SkotlandSkye I stand autocorrected!

Some might say that Darwinism is simply thinning the herd there.

@exilesky I know a young lady who played basketball in high school. She shattered her wrist and she was put on pain pills. Just went through rehab but did spend a month in a hospital because she was so strung out. Is she the herd? People enjoyed watching her play basketball but I can not say, let's use her and throw her on the trash heap. She is clean now though.

@yamaha45701 The entire point of Darwinism is that the strong survive. Seeing as she is still alive and survived the experience, Darwinism would not apply to her. Other people may be prone to killing themselves with substances, whether it is opiods or something else. We can put warning labels on the whole world, and lock up all the substances and dole them out carefully, but some people will manage to kill themselves regardless.

... and the war on drugs, primarily usa.

So agree!!!!!! I'm not backward, I had an iPhone before either of my adult children. I was an early adopter. Now, I only turn it on when I have to. Back to listening to NPR and reading.