Yup. More Proof Idiocracy Was a Documentary

Not that we needed any. Presidential speeches have gone from the level of a Phd to that of a 7th grader.

USA! USA! USA!

Playing Devil's advocate for a moment, but in today's times more people have better access to Presidential speeches than they did in the 1800s. So it may not be the best idea to have the language so flowery and long winded that it goes over most of the populace's heads.

It's because Obama is President.

Naw, not really. I remember Bush getting blasted about his speeches being at around an 8th grade level, too.

This country really is going to hell and I am tired of right wing idiots like Palin getting cheers when she calls people "elitists" simply because they read books and try to learn what the facts are.

Except that when this country was founded, we probably had a 25% literacy rate, and currently, depending upon what metrics you use, the US has a literacy rate between 75 - 99%, so the common people not only have greater access to the Presidential speeches, they should be better able to understand it.

Additionally, one of the most common form of entertainment enjoyed by ordinary folks up until about the late 1800s were to attend Shakespearean plays. Nor were these plays simple presentations which followed the text, but adaptations which changed the dialog, settings, and characters to match contemporary events, so they were also a type of news service for many people. This didn't happen just in the major cities, but all over America (at a time when every church used the King James Bible with its flowery text for church services, as well). When the head of (I think) the New York Shakespeare Theater Company said that they'd no longer permit performances which didn't follow the text of Shakespeare's plays to be performed, there were riots! (Seriously, the director of the company had to be rescued by police because the mob was going to lynch him.)

That'd be like people rioting over nuTrek or nuBSG.

Back in the late '70s, on the last episode of the TV series Connections, James Burke projected that by the 21st century, what would make a politician electable, would have less to do with substance, and more to do with style, because they would likely not be able to understand our world. They would all have experts who would tell them "what buttons to push, and what happens when you push them."

No, I think that confuses access to written words with the kind of command of language that used to be typical of the minority that used to have access to written words.

Think of it as the rise of casual gaming, now that everyone has a smartphone. Everyone plays, but they're not playing with a PS2 controller.

But those games on smartphones are more sophisticated than the arcade games I was feeding quarters into as a kid 30 years ago. They're not up to the level of something on an XBox or Playstation in terms of storyline, but they're still a bit more than following the same stupid pattern over and over in a maze to avoid ghosts.

Or to put it another way, in terms of plot, storyline, character development, etc. the Batman cartoons of today, are way more sophisticated than the Adam West Batman TV series, which was in prime time and aimed at adults. Hell, the Nolan Batman movies were more sophisticated than the Burton Batman movies a decade or so earlier. What's sad is that our political speech seems to be reversing that trend. And what our politicians do is far more important than what some costumed freak in a movie does, so it should be the other way around.

It was a joke. I think your thought that an expanded audience requires less complex speeches hits the nail on the head.

But many of those people who use those computers without knowing how to code, do far more sophisticated things with them than what the early programmers were doing. Things like medical research.

There were roughly 18 colleges in the US at the time of the Revolution, there are now over 7K. 88% of Americans graduate high school (something many of the Founding Fathers failed to do), nearly 60% of all Americans have some kind of college experience, 41% have a 2 year degree, 31%, have a 4 year degree, 11% have a masters, and 1% have a PhD.

This. I forgot if it was my cousin or another lawyer that told me this, but a lot of the big words and confusing language in contracts are purposely written like that to throw of the other party. In the age of soundbites and slogans, politicians don't want to do that.

I'm not saying I agree with it, but I understand why it is.

Precisely! In exactly the same way, intelligible language can allow citizens to truly participate in serious political debates and decisions, with a far greater and more sophisticated understanding of the issues than they were allowed before.

I don't think I have to convince anyone here that I would love for public political debate to be a lot smarter, much more precise, and far more nuanced than it is. But reducing lingual intelligibility -- which is what the OP study measures -- isn't required to achieve lucidity; in fact, it hinders transparency.

Standards and modes for communication change over time, this is no big deal, really.

Most Americans are dumb.

And therein lies the problem: We've entered a world where a politician is only known by soundbites. How can you educate a populace about a complex issue, or even have a discussion about it, if you have to squeeze into two seconds? How can you explain that Iraq poses no threat to us, if you've trained your audience to tune out after five words? Can you get people to understand what's happening in Ukraine if your vocabulary is at the same level of sophistication as Adam West's Batman?

Nearly everybody here has complained about the politicians dumbing down an issue or saying things which indicate that they're worried an island is going to tip over because of all the military people on it or that they equate animal husbandry with bestiality or some other nonsense. If one of the press' jobs is explaining things that politicians have said in simple English for everyone to understand, and the politicians are already starting out at a 7th grade level, what direction is there for the press to go? Far better, IMHO, for politicians to continue to speak at a level of someone with a college education, and have the press bring it down to a lower level. That way we have a better chance of having a more reasoned discussion on the matter, and not just shouting matches between talking heads who think that insults are "reasoned discourse."

Agreed completely up to this point.

But it's false to assume that using a more sophisticated diction will force the press to broadcast or quote longer soundbites. They'll truncate into even further unintelligibility, stick to the less wordy opponent's words, or simply make shit up. The soundbite is an evil, but more intricate speech doesn't solve it; it only exacerbates its ill effects.

But people will have access to the original statement, so even if the news dumbs it down, they can find the intelligible comments on the subject without much effort. When even the politicians are saying the dumbest shit imaginable, where can you go?

Most Americans are average. Dumb is a reflection of something outside of the norm, just as smart is.

But politicians are afraid, or hopeful, that they won't, and often they're right. Some politicians buck that trend, and I have some hope that an increase of digital communication will help here as well. But the OP's distinction is still about something else: Complicated syntax and obscure vocabulary, not nuanced content.

I'll agree with that.

There's no mention that the study looked at either how complicated the syntax was or the obscurity of the vocabulary.

Those can potentially indicate a complicated syntax or obscure vocabulary, but aren't guaranteed markers for such things.

Yeah.......because the left wing doesn't have any idiots who don't care about facts.

BTW that graph - a human blood trail and an alien one too? I'd like to know the whole story behind that incident!

I'm tired of people celebrating mediocrity. In an age where a whole world of information is literally at your fingertips, being only vaguely aware of the most basic facts is inexcusable. I think there is a large contingency of people who like to be lead around by the nose. Maybe it's because, as humans, we're herd animals. We like to be a part of the group, even if that group is horribly mismanaged and being fleeced by its leaders. I know in the U.S., we have this mentality that says "it could be worse" and that thinking mitigates the terrible destruction levied against us by those who are supposed to be in charge, and it's even moreso when we like or support those people.

Dow Jones Industrial drops by 500 points? Could have been worse!
5,000 people died because a company didn't follow regulatory procedures? Could have been worse!

We hem and haw, and we defend actions which should not be defended. That doesn't mean we should automatically disregard explanations into why something happened, but too often, I think, we're too quick to forgive and forget when we shouldn't be forgiving or forgetting. At the very least, we shouldn't be forgetting. That right there is why complete and utter assholes get into office and stay there for 30 years. People forget the shit they pulled six decades, six years, six months prior. That has to stop.

TL;DR soundbite: "The lesser of two evils is still evil."

Oh, I agree there are some people on the left who don't care about facts but virtually the ENTIRE right wing alternative media echo chamber is, by design, a fact free alternative reality. We're talking the vast majority of them not only indulge in it but actively seek it out and reject facts and reality when it is pointed out to them. See claims bout death panels, climate change, modern biology, trickle down economicnos, he'll the whole subject of economics really, or a huge swath of other topics.

Yes, a small minority on the left reject factual reality and they get bitch slapped and corrected by other leftists while the MAJORITY of the right in America rejects factual reality and the few who try to point out facts to them get labeled as RINOs and austrocised. There is simply a massive difference between those two positions and it is fundamentally dishonest to try to claim they're the same.

With over half of Republics STILL admitting they're birthers, believe in death panels, believe ENDs were found in Iraq, and that science is a hoax... Well show me similar numbers of democrats who believe factually and provably untrue things and then we can talk. Until then you're making a false equivalency. One side really is much worse on this issue.

^ That's comedy gold.

The left should jump on their members who reject factual deity, and notch slap them, or maybe austrocise them like they were Austrians. While it's true that half the republics in the UN might be birthers, even some of the people's republics, the are right to believe that ENDs were found in Iraq. Lots of ENDs.

All of this. It's a big reason I just can't even with the military anymore and I am constantly bashing my head against the wall when i tell my family that this isn't about me when they tell me "But what has anyone done to YOU?" and "You should just focus on you and getting your job done and not care what other people do." It's a good thing Malcolm X and MLK Jr didn't have the same idea.

Well, I just turned off the Kindle's auto correct since it kept changing stuff all the time even if they were spelled correctly but not in the limited dictionary of the Kindle. Hopefully this makes things better.

I still think touch screen keyboards are an abomination.