Breaking News: Crazy fucking Aussie is running around town setting fire to random people. There doesn't seem to be any correlation from person to person.

Oh angry aussie...don't let yourself be trolled so easily

...but at least I know what I'd sound like if I had an Australian accent

Here for once, is a public announcement openly encouraging ignorance and stupidity WITHOUT a weak-tea scriptural justification. Diesel Jeans, you've officially become a religion.

Been a long time viewer of the sift and finally decided to register and say I walk past that stupid billboard everyday (that exact billboard on that exact road!). "Fuck stupid people" was pretty much what I thought when I first saw it.

The clever thing about this billboard is that probably works on the stupid.

Meh, he isn't angry, that's just how us Aussies all sound, all the time

@EvilDeathBee, is it near St Kilda Rd in Melbourne? Looks like it.

Yep, right near St Kilda junction, on Punt road

Is he on a boat, or what's with the camera work?
Sir Digby Chicken Ceasar camera going on there.

oh yeah, fuck stupid people! (but make sure you use condoms, otherwise we'll have Idiocracy in a few hundred years)

Well said sir.

Theres one on Lygon st too that says "Smart Critiques, Stupid Creates, Be Stupid" And I have to say it fucking pissed me right off when I first saw it. Encouraging people to be stupid is the last thing this world needs unless they follow it up with a campaign telling people to kill themselves.

He looks like a character from Invader Zim.
..anyone else see this?

Smart creates technology to keep stupid distracted while smart lives in peace and harmony.

*quality

And while I worry about humanity's future in general, I'm happy to know that there is some dispute over the Idiocracy view that intelligent people breed less. See excerpt from following link: http://www.jstor.org/pss/1972320

"the literature exhibits an apparent consensus on the relationship between education/literacy and fertility. Critical review and comparison, however, reveal this widespread agreement to be superficial and illusory."

See! I have balls too bitches!!!

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by JiggaJonson.

Fucking great!

Well, it may not have been funny, but it is now He's helped make it work!

@JiggaJonson One article from 30 years ago doesn't seem that convincing when we can see differential fertility rates all around us.

I didn't know stupid was pronounced with 'ch'.

So this guy's in Melbourne? Is that where all the non-coked-up, non-nihilistic, interested, active and intelligent people are?

Or is it just this guy? Where the fuck are they all hiding?!

@chilaxe A quip on your part doesn't prove otherwise

@JiggaJonson

If there aren't more recent articles than a 30 year old article, it's probably not a major trend relative to majority scientific opinion.

I'll shed a tear when all the educated white liberals who have been fighting the human sciences for decades are no longer with us because of their low fertility and delayed reproduction relative to high fertility groups.

So please assume you're right.

So... is he for or against stupid people?...

@chilaxe I love when people who disagree with me offer up no proof of their position and continue to maintain that I am the one who is making assumptions.

But I digress, ask and you shall receive.

http://www.livescience.com/3199-smarter-men-sperm.html

To be fair though, I should mention that this source was probably the most compelling for me because I found many sources with different study results and wholly different implications that spanned a wide range. The most compelling writing for me was especially the following excerpt (again from this source):

"As reproductive decline likes root, fertility differentials by schooling initially tend to widen, because of the staggered process of change. Childbearing declines first among the best educated and last amongst the least well educated. In the later phase of fertility transition, these differential begin to narrow until convergence is reached at the end of transition. Thus the pronounced links between schooling and fertility are a transient phenomenon, arising and then disappearing over the course of a few decades."

In conclusion, I'd say we're both right in a way. I feel like the staggering of progress (or change as they put it) is an adequate explanation for the decline in fertility for the population as a whole. But feel free to refute me (with evidence please).

^can you tell i've been reading academic journals for the past hour or so?

@JiggaJonson

Yes, fair enough

Here are some examples of material on the other side of things:

"[In the US] Women with college degrees can be expected to complete their childbearing with 1.6-2.0 children each; 1.7 for non-Hispanic white, 1.6 for non-Hispanic black, and 2.0 for Hispanic women. For women with less education the total expected number of children are: 3.2 children for those with 0-8 years of education; 2.3 children for those with 9-11 years of education and 2.7 for high school graduates."

http://library.adoption.com/articles/mothers-educational-level-influences-birth-rate.html

"The relation between fertility and intelligence has been consistently negative for successive birth cohorts from to 1900 to 1979, indicating the presence of dysgenic fertility for all of the 20th century studied thus far."

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/...

@chilaxe I think there's good reason not to believe that. Take your skill level explanation for example. Right now, in CA it would be advantageous to have a high skill set, no? With the disappearance of factory jobs, higher skilled (and arguably more intelligent) individuals would be more likely to land a job than a non skilled person. And based on my extensive research in the following Gwen Guthrie video, "you gotta have a j-o-b" if you wanna get with the ladies:

This in itself is stupid.

I guess Diesel is just trying to appeal to all the people stupid enough to buy their overpriced jeans.

^ They know their target demographic.

Punt Road, St Kilda is just the place for that billboard.

i bartend. i agree.

@JiggaJonson

California dropped from the top of US states to #50 out of 50 in workers' skill level due to additions to the population from other societies, not fertility differentials within the population that was there when the state was at the top of the list.

@chilaxe if that's true, it's not what you were saying earlier: "As someone who has watched California go from one of the most-skilled states in the country to one of the least-skilled states (sometimes even coming in 50th place out of 50 states) purely due to changes in the population, I'd be surprised at any hypothesis that suggests there's no change in genetic frequencies occurring."

Then, you suggested it was due to "changes in population" and "change in genetic frequencies" (more specifically you implied that there was a change in genetic frequencies because you'd be surprised if that wasnt the case)

Now, you say the drop was due to "additions to the population from other societies"

Decide which is right in your own argument, then come talk to me.

@JiggaJonson

There was a lack of specificity in the original wording, not a change in the argument.

California's drop was due to migrations of people from the less-skilled sectors of other societies, expanding the less-skilled sectors of California's society. This is reflected in long-term trends like increased high school drop-out rates. The new expanded less-skilled sector continues to have an increased fertility rate and decreased length of generational iterations.

I think there's probably a tendency to employ magical thinking and pretend that there could be zero change in gene frequencies occurring in the above-described dynamic. But in the post Human Genome Project age, the story of genetics is becoming more and more interesting, rather than fading away.

@chilaxe I stand corrected, you are getting stupider.

@JiggaJonson

Impressive intellectualism. It's no wonder you're a Silicon Valley millionaire. Your precise mastery of debating and avoidance of magical thinking warrants great respect.

@chilaxe whoa, one of the few times i feel a "umadbro?" might be appropriate

What's the problem here exactly, you've been trying to convince me that the human population (with the example of CA) is getting stupider. By implication then, you, as well, are getting stupider. That's not to say that you are spontaneously losing IQ points. It's more like you're saying that California is on a lower track, and similar to what happens in education people in the same track (or state in this scenario) relate and socialize with those in their respective group. Therefore, if you think California's population is getting stupider and that proves true, then by implication, you are getting stupider as well.

"So please assume you're right." I am, which is why I'm not surprised that I have to explain this to you.

@JiggaJonson

People socialize assortatively and my environment, Silicon Valley, tends to brain drain the rest of the world. In that sense, individuals create their own environment regardless of what's happening elsewhere.

It's not uncommon here for people without college degrees to outperform people with advanced degrees from the best schools, and you can learn most things for free on the internet anyway, so people here aren't impressed with those who rely on educational or cultural determinism. (Personally, nothing gives me more satisfaction than outperforming kids from the lazy upper-class track who have had countless things I never had.)

The people in the comments of this video arestupid, too.