“Average joe”. Humanity evolves slowly over long periods. The average joe today is far more educated than one from 200 years ago.

Far more educated. But certainly not smarter.

And it's not at all clear if that education does anything other than magnify their intellectual predispositions. The smart people can make great strides, but the stupid will be stupid louder and harder. And the average may well just be... more average.

IQ levels has risen on average because of nutrients, not using lead and education.

An increase in blood lead from 10 to 20 micrograms/dl was associated with a decrease of 2.6 IQ

Risen by a few points. Statistically significant but not really meaningful.

> Q levels has risen on average because of...

...nobody really knows why

…and to still believe that IQ levels measure something meaningful is pretty average Joe anyway. Could be the rise of videogames for all we know.

IQ score rises (Flynn effect) are most likely spurious and do not reflect any increase in actual on-the-spot problem-solving ability.

IQ scores were never intended to be used to compare across cohorts. To do so is invalid.

This is a weird take, assuming the average researcher cannot be an average Joe, and also that average people aren't also worried about their livelihood...you might want to revisit your view of the world.

No, it's not. A researcher might an average Joe, but that doesn't mean that the average researcher is the same as the average Joe.

The initial comment makes the 2 mutually exclusive. You reframing it doesn't change what the original comment said. You also blew past the more important of the 2 points: that regular people care about their livelihoods as well.

We do achieve some things, though usually not by spending time pondering questions like,

> lol, what are the chances?

Average Joe does not care about politics…

If one only cares about democrats vs dems (or left vs "far right" in Europe) one also doesn't REALLY care about politics.

Caring = caring to understand how the system works and how the incentives work for participants in it.

If I'm super generous I would guess maybe 0,1 percent of the population cares by that definition.

I think you're a little too harsh in that judgement. I'd say it's at least 1%. Possibly even 5%.

It still means that they are massively, massively outweighed by loud tribalism.

There's a problem that if you care, as an average person, it's hard to do much with it. Every few years you can vote left or right, which unless you happen to live in a marginal constituency or swing state, has no effect.

>Every few years you can vote left or right,

If you're talking about the US, you can vote center-right (Democratic) or far right (Republican). There is no viable left wing party in the US.

These posts are tiresome. They all boil down to "my view should be the middle".

You could just as well claim the Democrats are far left and the republicans center left.

This is often done by contrasting the US with Europe, as if Europe is a political gold standard.

The political "spectrum" is not a range of subjective opinions, it's a range of objectively documented ideas.

I don't know how well they can fit in a unidimensional scale though.

>These posts are tiresome. They all boil down to "my view should be the middle".

I don't claim that my views are, or should be, "the middle".

In fact, I didn't share my views at all.

Rather, I contrasted the US Republican Party with the US Democratic Party through the lens of the political spectrum.

Perhaps you think your views are "middle-of-the-road" and maybe they are. I have no idea what you think or believe.

But making the claim you did added absolutely nothing to the discussion, nor did it address anything I wrote. And more's the pity.

This can't be said often enough. We have two right wing parties in the US. That's it.

From whose perspective and what are we considering right and left? The Democratic party is left of center on social issues, even compared to Europe.

No, it is not. Example: Both parties support the extermination of Palestinians.

I guess by the votes, so does HN.

>he Democratic party is left of center on social issues, even compared to Europe.

Actually, the Democratic Party is mostly libertarian (or classically liberal, if you like, which is, inherently right wing) on social issues -- preferring to allow people to make their own choices WRT their bodies rather than seeking government control of reproductive health and other forms of bodily autonomy.

Individual rights and personal agency are not "left wing," except in the eyes of the authoritarian far right (or far left) who seek control over all else.

So no. The Democratic Party has a solidly center-right agenda/ideology -- no collectivism, individual rights not curtailed by the state, freedom of thought and religion, etc.

Despite what some folks may say, there are no Marxists in the US Democratic Party.

That's not to say that the Democratic Party is the ideal. Far from it. But to place them on the absolute "left" is ridiculous on its face.

It's only "left wing" as compared with the far right (read: evangelical christians, white nationalists, xenophobes, etc.) Republican Party who want to limit women's reproductive choices, force the religious doctrines of the Christian church down everyone's throats and spout xenophobic and long debunked genetic tropes related to melanin content.