The dumbest people smoke the most

[coyote]

Originally posted by philbo_Tangent:

What do you base this opinion on?

I know many, many highly educated fools.

It's simple to generalize, difficult to back up those generalizations...

To mollify the insecure, let me rephrase the exact same words...

 

**Those who don't graduate highschool likely have less intelligence than those who do graduate college. ** Get it now? The key word is likely; nowhere did I say it applied in every case. I even included a disclaimer acknowledging your point - somehow, you missed it entirely.

 

And on what do I base this opinion? This:

"An interesting thing about smoking statistics, 42 percent of those who don't graduate from high school smoke, but only 12 percent of college graduates smoke. People with graduate degrees smoke least of all -- 7 percent of them. In other words, if I can say this without offending anyone, the dumbest people smoke the most."

[phaeton]

how about those that didn't graduate highschool, but graduated college?

 

Or...

 

what does completion of school have to do with one's intelligence?

 

[Brittanylips]

Originally posted by coyote:

**Those who don't graduate highschool likely have less intelligence than those who do graduate college. ** Get it now? The key word is likely

Just wondering - how do you define "intelligence?"

 

-Peace, Love, and Brittanylips

[Lee Flier]

Hmm, well, I didn't finish high school, and I've never smoked.

[Tedly Nightshade]

Originally posted by Lee Flier:

Hmm, well, I didn't finish high school, and I've never smoked.

Here's a living example of how much better a person can be educated without excessive schooling. God damn, I wish I had dropped outta high school and pursued music full time as straightforwardly as Lee here. I can't tell you how much I regret staying in school.

 

Well maybe I'll be pretty sharp too when I've done as much unlearning as Lee.

 

As for smoking, other than the funny stuff I refuse politely saying "no thanks, I haven't smoked since 4th grade" which is indeed the case.

[phaeton]

what does completion of school have to do with one's intelligence?

 

I was specifically speaking of Lee in that case, (and unspecifically speaking of several other, really sharp dropouts i know), but i was going to let her speak for herself directly

[Brittanylips]

Originally posted by Tedly Nightshade:

Originally posted by Lee Flier:

Hmm, well, I didn't finish high school, and I've never smoked.

Here's a living example of how much better a person can be educated without excessive schooling. God damn, I wish I had dropped outta high school and pursued music full time as straightforwardly as Lee here. I can't tell you how much I regret staying in school.

But we'll never know. We'll never know what her life would have been like had she stayed in school; we'll never know what your life would have been like if you dropped out (or pursued additional education).

 

In general, people's lives tend to be better if they stay in school. It's as uncontroversial as "smoking is bad for you." People will always argue, but the data is pretty clear.

 

And obviously, there's always a number of people who don't fit into "in general" categories and conventional wisdom. The 114 year old lady who smokes a pack a day, the high school dropout who changes the world.

 

-Peace, Love, and Brittanylips

[phaeton]

Nope. We'll never know how she would have turned out otherwise...

 

But I like Lee just the way she is.

 

I know i'm not alone, either.

[FoxTick]

Originally posted by Prague:

I think Zappa had colon cancer. If you look closely at the photo, he has the cigarette in his mouth. Besides, was Zappa stupid?

Zappa did die of colon cancer. That's why I posted that pic, probably one of the most intelligent minds of that generation smoked like a chimeny.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v155/mkawabe/mythbuster_titlarge1.jpg

 

Myth Busted!

[Tedly Nightshade]

Originally posted by Brittanylips:

The 114 year old lady who smokes a pack a day, the high school dropout who changes the world.

 

-Peace, Love, and Brittanylips

Not a matter of changing the world or not, or of having life turn out well. I just wish I had spent the crucial developmental years of my life becoming something worth being- there was plenty of time for that after all that schooling, but I was as thick as a brick compared to how I could learn as a kid.

 

School teaches you to sit down shut up and do what you're told. If you can manage that much, you'll muddle through OK. But short of that kind of obedience, you don't stay in school.

 

What does any of this have to do with smoking cigarettes? The kind of intelligence that keeps people from doing self-destructive things is not the same kind of intelligence that lets a person exceed in academics, that's for sure! If there's one thing you learn from hanging around the most intelligent students, it's that are liable to do some pretty silly things! Sometimes with very sad results.

[phaeton]

Zappa did die of colon cancer. That's why I posted that pic, probably one of the most intelligent minds of that generation smoked like a chimeny.

 

He may have still developed colon cancer even if he didn't smoke, of course...

 

I still say the whole premise of this thread is flawed, tho..

[coyote]

Here's one of many possible intelligence metrics.

Originally posted by Brittanylips:

Just wondering - how do you define "intelligence?"

-Peace, Love, and Brittanylips

The average 1st-grader takes an entire semester to understand basic addition & subtraction.

 

The average 7th-grader takes an entire semester to grasp basic algebra.

 

The average HS dropout hits his/her comprehension ceiling at trigonometry (arctangents, anyone?), and would have no chance at grasping the calculus taught to college freshmen.

 

Again, I acknowledge there are exceptions. And I've acknowledged those exceptions repeatedly! Of course if you (generic you, not you specifically) flunked out of HS due to poor reading comprehension, you might not have understood that.

[FoxTick]

Originally posted by phaeton:

I still say the whole premise of this thread is flawed, tho..

agreed.

[Prague]

Originally posted by LiveMusic:

...Crap, you'd be rich by retirement age if you saved in an interest bearing account what smoking costs monthly.

And drinking, and instruments, and autombiles, and pornography, and sports spectating, etc., etc.

[deanmass]

Man, from what I have heard of Lee, she smokes constantly...on guitar...

[Brittanylips]

Originally posted by coyote:

Here's one of many possible intelligence metrics.

Originally posted by Brittanylips:

Just wondering - how do you define "intelligence?"

The average 1st-grader takes an entire semester to understand basic addition & subtraction.

 

The average 7th-grader takes an entire semester to grasp basic algebra.

 

The average HS dropout hits his/her comprehension ceiling at trigonometry (arctangents, anyone?), and would have no chance at grasping the calculus taught to college freshmen.

so you're saying intelligence is a function of age - the older a person is, the more intelligent they are?

 

-Peace, Love and Brittanylips

[coyote]

Not really, if you read the context in which I posted. Else the hypothetical HS dropout would be just as intelligent as the college grad. Yet if one 20yo grasps calculus and the other doesn't, can't we say the one who does has more mathematical intelligence?

Originally posted by Brittanylips:

so you're saying intelligence is a function of age - the older a person is, the more intelligent they are?

-Peace, Love and Brittanylips

Because the average first-grader does not understand calculus, we could also say that the person who does understand it has more mathematical intelligence if we want to. But that's really a meaningless comparison; the 20yo is also likely to be stronger physically, yet putting them in a boxing ring together would be absurd (tho it was hilarious when MontyPython did it).

[DC Ross]

I don't know, I smoked up three times a day for 5 or 6 years (can't remember now), and dint get no stupider. Wait, what was the question? Oh you guys are talkin about cigarettes...

 

Seriously, I agree that the more intelligent of us are apt to either avoid smoking, or at least realize that quitting is going to have only positive effects on our bodies and our lives.

[Brittanylips]

Originally posted by coyote:

Not really, if you read the context in which I posted. Else the hypothetical HS dropout would be just as intelligent as the college grad. Yet if one 20yo grasps calculus and the other doesn't, can't we say the one who does has more mathematical intelligence?

I don't think so. I think you can have, say, a 5th grader who has not yet learned calculus exhibit greater mathematical intelligence than a college senior who has learned calculus but may not be that intelligent. Or, you can have a college dropout who hasn't learned calculus but is more intelligent than a dopey college senior who has taken calculus.

 

I think you're mixing up educational achievement with intelligence, and I just don't think educational measures neccessarily indicate intelligence.

 

-Peace, love, and Blips

[coyote]

I don't think I am. Nowhere am I claiming that the straight-A student is neccessarily more intelligent than the B-minus guy. But my point about likelihood stands in fact, and stands to reason. It's more likely*** that a 20yo on the verge of graduating college has more intelligence than a 20yo HS dropout.

Originally posted by Brittanylips:

I think you're mixing up educational achievement with intelligence, and I just don't think educational measures neccessarily indicate intelligence.

-Peace, love, and Blips

***Of course I need to point out yet again for the reading-comprehensionally-challenged that this is not a RULE, but a statistical indicator. The stats about quitting smoking listed at the beginning of this thread certainly bear it out.

[Brittanylips]

Originally posted by coyote:

***Of course I need to point out yet again for the reading-comprehensionally-challenged that this is not a RULE, but a statistical indicator. The stats about quitting smoking listed at the beginning of this thread certainly bear it out.

Of course I don't need to point out for the reading-comprehensionally-astute that the issue is not rule vs. exception, but underlying measures of intelligence.

 

There are so many variables, from social and economic background, school system, family support, and others, that I don't know how you can conclude that people who are educated are intelligent (as a rule), and people who are not educated are not intelligent (as a rule).

 

When you say in response to my question of how you define intelligence:

 

"The average 1st-grader takes an entire semester to understand basic addition & subtraction.

 

The average 7th-grader takes an entire semester to grasp basic algebra.

 

The average HS dropout hits his/her comprehension ceiling at trigonometry (arctangents, anyone?), and would have no chance at grasping the calculus taught to college freshmen"

 

that sounds more to me like age-appropriate skils rather than a definition of intelligence. What I'm wondering is if you take educational achievement out of the equation, how would you define intelligence? Or do you see intelligence as no more than the mastery of a particular skill set at a particular level?

 

-Peace, Love, and Brittanylips

[coyote]

That's a far better question.

Originally posted by Brittanylips:

What I'm wondering is if you take educational achievement out of the equation, how would you define intelligence? Or do you see intelligence as no more than the mastery of a particular skill set at a particular level?

-Peace, Love, and Brittanylips

I don't see intelligence as mastery of a skillset, but as the ability to master skillsets which are highly dependent upon thought processes. The ability to solve problems, to come up with useful alternatives in unforeseen or unusual circumstances. The ability to follow a logic train. The ability to see from multiple perspectives. And mostly, the ability to learn from past experience - one's own, AND that of others.

 

To bring it back on-topic: If you truly enjoy smoking, then enjoy! If instead you're hooked, then consider:

- they cost a bloody fortune

- they kill hundreds of thousands of people each year

- they make you smell bad

- etc. A whole series of problems.

 

Given those circumstances, it would seem that the more intelligent smokers would either not start, or find a way to quit. By some strange coincidence, the people who have done that are typically college grads....

[Brittanylips]

Well, you link intelligence with education at the end again. If were being logical, Im not sure we can do that.

 

Based on the study, we can conclude that education prevents smoking, that college graduates smoke less than high school dropouts. But thats not the same thing as saying greater intelligence leads to reduced levels of smoking. Measuring levels of education, and measuring intelligence, are not the same thing.

 

For example, its possible that highly educated less intelligent people are more apt to follow health-related government warnings, whereas highly intelligent less educated people are more apt to read with a grain of salt.

 

I agree though, smoking is dumb.

 

-Peace, Love, and Brittanylips

[saucyjack]

No that it matters much at this pint, but Frank Zappa died of Metastatic Prostate Cancer,not Colon Cancer.

[the stranger]

All this talk about second hand smoke and nobody seems to mention that overal pollutions levels are completely unsafe.

The air outside is just as dangerous as the inside of some bar.

And all these deaths attributed to second hand smoke are nothing but junk science and scapegoatism.

Any scientist who puts any faith in scientific principles will tell you that the multitude of environmental variables make it imposible to determine that second hand smoke killed anybody.

 

Everybody is jumping on the anti-smoking bandwagon and are failing to realize that cigarette smoke is the least of our environmental worries.

 

Want to guess how many people have worked at Scott's in Marysville that have died from lung problems? Want to guess how many of these people smoked? Want to guess what the death was attributed to?

I can tell you it wasn't attributed to the exposure to all form of toxin's working in that environment.

 

Somebody dies and the first thing they ask is if they smoked or were around second hand smoke. They don't ask what level of environmental pollution people lived around. They don't ask what these people did for a living (I'm sure they do, but they don't seem to give it any weight in determining the cause of death). They just look for any connection to tobacco.

 

Anybody ever thought of cross referencing data concerning lung related disease and industrial pollution?

I would be willing to bet that lung cancer rates and industrial pollution coincide.

[the stranger]

I mean less people are claimed to be smoking, but more and more people are dying of lung cancer. What gives?

Eliminate tobacco smoking all together and I bet that lung cancer rates still go up.

[the stranger]

And I worked at a major mutil-national R&D facility for over 8 years. And the stupidest people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting had the highest levels of education.

 

And the first post of mine (a few up) might as well be the words of one of the most esteemed molecular scientists in the world. (He is an exception to the above comments.)

He gave me an education in statistics and the scientific method. And his opinion is that it's all bullshit.

[Lee Flier]

Originally posted by coyote:

I don't see intelligence as mastery of a skillset, but as the ability to master skillsets which are highly dependent upon thought processes.

Yeah I agree. The problem is that those abilities manifest themselves in different ways and at different ages, which may or may not coincide with what they education system thinks they "should" be. This can result in someone's school performance not at all reflecting their intelligence. Performance in school depends a lot more on how close someone is to "average" or "normal" than how intelligent they are.

 

I'm not sure what the source of the study was that Andy Rooney mentioned, but I do remember seeing a pretty good study a few years ago of what makes people start smoking. Since smoking is addictive and it's hard to quit once you start, however intelligent or educated you might be , it makes sense to try to figure out what actually attracts kids to it. What the study found (and this shouldn't really surprise anybody) is that the kids who start smoking are not "the smart kids" or "the dumb kids" but "the non conformist/rebellious kids." In other words, they see a role model smoking a cigarette and think it contributes to the "badass" or "hip" image, and it's an unconscious message to try smoking. If somebody joins what they consider to be a rebel or outcast "clique" (whether that's stoners or truants or gangs or what have you), chances are the leaders of the clique are going to be smokers and so will the rest.

 

Most high school dropouts doubtless consider themselves rebellious and non conformist, both the smart ones and the not so smart ones. A lot of highly intelligent but not necessarily educated folks like musicians and artists and writers smoke. Again, non conformist. People who go to college, while they may or may not be the best students or the smartest, are usually to some degree following the "normal" social path so they would be less likely to smoke. Sure there are some people who go to college to be "troublemakers" of one sort or another, but most go to college with the idea that it will help them be more successful in a "establishment" career (liberal arts majors notwithstanding ).

 

So basically what the study found is that the decision to smoke is not usually based on logic but on unconscious messages that are triggered by the person's self image - how they perceive themselves in the social order of things. That makes sense to me.

[Gator Wing]

Originally posted by Prague:

I think Zappa had colon cancer.

I think he died of prostate cancer.

[Slowly]

My friends say I'm smart. I smoke. I hate cigarettes. Please shoot me! Slowly