Have you ever known someone who did not know or comprehend something which you consider pretty BASIC and FUNDAMENTAL?

By the way, the question itself isn’t currently showing for some stupid reason. Before you say “what is the question”—what I asked (and not showing) was:

: Have you ever known someone who did not know or comprehend something which you consider pretty BASIC and FUNDAMENTAL?

Your question is there now. No worries.

I spent my formative years in the southern part of the States. I went to Catholic schools, good ones, and throughout my youth confronted many Southern Baptists and other protestant sects with beliefs you describe above. I stopped arguing with them early in life.

In Latin Ameirca, there are many people who believe in the mysticism of the Church. I have seen the bloodied steps of cathedrals where old women dressed in black climb those granite steps on their bare knees while praying the rosary every Sunday and arrive standing at the front doors of their god’s house bleeding into their shoes. Then, after the masses are over and everyone has retreated to their homes, I’ve seen a novice priest hose down those steps without ceremony so the cathedral will appear pristine for the tourists on Monday.

These women are suffering for their deceased family members in hopes of relieving some of their suffering as they burn in Purgatory. They see this as one of their many duties as the elder females, the grande dames of their families—to care and nurture the individuals in their families both while living and dead.

You don’t fuck with beliefs like that. If you are beleived, it only serves to crush them and throw them into confusion. Why would you want ot do that? If you are foolish enough to argue with these people, things can get violent. It is their way of life and the basis on which they have lived it.

There are still remnants of what is called voodoo here in the Carbbean. It is a cultural thing, a marriage of African and Catholic rituals and beliefs used at one time by a slave culture with no access to education to explain natural phenomena. Almost every native here has some trace of it in their consciousness although they aren’t supersticious and most are well educated. But they know the stories and can give you examples of as yet unexplained instances of what appears to be magical events. I enjoy the stories and understand where they come from, but never, ever dig deeper than that. That would be disrespectful.

But none of these people and their superstitions influence the politics of my country and it’s secular laws. That is a whole other bag of crazy and when stateside, I take a whole other intolerant attitude toward it.

It isn’t unusual to find otherwise intelligent people who have a very rudimentary or incorrect model of the universe in which our world exists. I don’t think they consider it important. It is outwith their experience and so they dismiss it. On the other hand I find it fascinating and I like to read articles about cosmology and the latest observations and theories.

To each his (or her) own and there are many areas of life in which my knowledge is lacking. What is important is that knowledge is disseminated and made available so people can pursue what they find interesting in life and satisfy their curiosity once their formal education is over. I am not comfortable with any authority pre judging what we should learn.

I knew an adult (a graduate of a Catholic school by the way) who did not know that water froze at 32F. Forget discussing 0 Celsius. It was out of the question. She thought water froze at different temperatures.
I was shocked.

Come to think of it, Luckyguy—I have often heard people say, (once, when someone fell in the water) “I’ll bet that water is below freezing”

Flutherother: I find mostly that it is indeed facts about outer space are what are not understood. Especially things like the size of the stars (which they believe are tiny) in relation to the sun (which, they believe, is an absolutely HUGE star). I’ve often heard people say that the planets, even Earth, are stars.

Even science and sci-fi buffs rarely comprehend the distance between planets, much less the stars, Its common to see science fiction where people buzz from star to star, system to system, to individual planets, in just a few hours or maybe weeks at the most,

The freezing point of water also depends on pressure

My highschool classmate couldn’t find Russia on a map. An eighteen years old fart managed to reach fourth grade of highschool without knowing where Russia is. Russia. Of course, we didn’t miss the chance to mock him for it.

Many people on the ‘net seem to be firmly convinced Catholics are not Christians.

A friend of mine and her idiot classmate were afraid to go to the gynecologist because someone told them the doctor sticks all kinds of instruments in there and they’re gonna bleed and whatnot. There were even more afraid because they’re virgins, (as if that matters). She also got in a fight with a doctor once because she refused to lift her shirt a bit so the doctor could examine her. He (or she, I forgot) told her she should see a psychologist. I kind of agreed.
I myself had my brain fart, when I firmly believed women can’t walk for some time after giving birth. When my sister got a child, I saw her a few days later, and got real surprised she could walk. When I told her about it, she gave me the “are you stupid?” look and said she could walk almost immediately.

A journalist friend of mine didn’t know The main language in Brazil is Portuguese, she thought it was Spanish. Probably a lot of people get that wrong, but she was a journalist!

A lot of people think Iran is an Arab country.

More than one person I have encountered thinks 14:30 is 4:30pm, they just can’t figure out the 24 hour clock.

Way too many Americans think there are 52 states. Sometimes I hear 54. It’s shocking to me.

I met someone when I was in college who was shocked I was Jewish, because I had blue eyes. He thought all Jews had dark eyes and dark hair.

Growing up in a sorta southern-ish, very evangelical area I’ve known far too many people who did not comprehend evolution at all and/or who believe the Earth is flat.

I was at a high school looking for the front doors. I had already driven all the way around the school and there was no sign on any of the doors to indicate which ones were the main entrance. I finally found a student who is leaving one of the doors to go to her car. I asked her where the entrance was.

She said, “Oh, it’s around front!” That answer made me wonder if she was truly capable of driving a car safely, let alone being able to find it in an almost empty lot.

@snowberry

Wait, how does your inability to locate the entrance indicate an intellectual failing on her part?

@Darth_Algar Because there were at least 3 driveway entrances to the high school, and the school was located on a corner, with no signs indicating where the “front” of the school was, let alone the main entrance. It turns out the front was actually aimed toward the back of some homes, not facing the street like you might expect.

And this is a pet peeve of mine. When I ask for directions sometimes the person will say something really irrational, such as, “You know where that church is that burned down five years ago? Turn there!”

If I was so familiar with an area that I would know where a church was that burned down five years ago, I wouldn’t be asking for directions in the first place!

The Earth is flat?!

My roomate doesn’t know that Russia and Germany are two different places. Well she does now because I explained it to her, but at first she thought they were the same people. I’m like wut.

One of my peeves is poor spelling and grammar, hard to imagine anyone could have graduated 4th grade english given some of the insane mistakes you come across.
My daughter has a sweet, but extremely ditzy friend that constantly uses ridiculous wrong words in place of the correct word. She once said, when on a diet, that she needed to pick up some “Albuquerque” tuna for a recipe and another time kept talking bout some “Cameo” shoes she found. She meant ‘Camo”, the abbreviation for “Camouflage.”

She went on and on about these cool “Cameo” shoes and it took me a few minutes to figure out what she really meant. I also had a friend once that did the same thing, told me one day that she and her husband just bought a ” Self compelling lawnmower. LMAO!

@Berserker…wut

The misprounounciations people come up with are so interesting. When we had the shop, two of my customers, a man and another woman, not related, called Cub Cadet lawn mowers “Club” Cadet.
One of my first jobs in this new town was with a wireless provider. This was the pre-digital era. My boss always pronounced “analogue” as “antalogue.” It was strange because you know we saw it in memos and stuff all the time.
Then spell check came out. Her emails were rife with misspellings. With spell check it looked like someone bled all over her email. I watched her re-read everything, then say, “Oh, those words are spelled right!” and ignore the suggestions and send it.

I came across someone once who thought you would weigh less on the moon because you would be further from the centre of the earth.

@Coloma it took me a moment to realize that your daughter’s friend is an adult, not a child, making her pronunciation transgressions all the funnier.

@flutherother, wait, I’m confused. Since weight is a measure of the gravitational pull between two objects, isn’t that more or less correct?

No, it’s because the gravity on the moon is 1/6th of the gravity on earth, therefore you weigh only 1/6th of what you weigh on earth. Between the moon and the earth there is ZERO gravity and you don’t weigh anything.

I think we both have the right idea. The force of gravity (the attraction between two objects) diminishes as the distance between their centers increases, which is why objects weigh less at the top of Mount Everest than they do at sea level.

But the moon is also less massive than the earth, so that explains why the gravitational attraction between an object on the moon and the moon is less than that between the same object on the earth and the earth.

But it’s been a while since I got my physics degree so…

What @Dutchess_III said. The moon is a much smaller body than the Earth so the force of gravity on its surface is that much less. There is gravitational attraction between the Earth and the moon, that’s what gives us tides, but you wouldn’t notice it personally on the moon any more than you are aware of it on Earth.

yup. i confused myself.

I still don’t know the difference between there and their. I can’t tie my shoes the right handed way. I can’t p park properly.

@cinnamonk Yes, she is in her 20’s. Another great spelling atrocity I read awhile back was someone who had written ” Winter is apond us.” lol

OK, @RedDeerGuy1 “Their” refers to people. It has an I in it. ‘I’ refers to people, specifically, yourself. “It is their book.”

“There” refers to a place. “The book isn’t here, it is t here.”

“Their book is there.”

@Dutchess_III Thanks. I hope I can remember.

I knew a full grown man who didn’t realize that the days actually get shorter in the winter time. He thought the changes were due to daylight savings.

My mother-in-law has a third grade education and is a little, old Italian lady who is very superstitious and very catholic but has never read the Bible.

The list is endless.

^^What’s wrong with that? She is a product of her environment. It’s worse when someone has a high school degree and is ignorant about things most 7th graders know.

I know preachers that can’t pronounce the books in the Bible.

High school diploma. I just realized I wrote degree in error.

@snowberry “Because there were at least 3 driveway entrances to the high school, and the school was located on a corner, with no signs indicating where the “front” of the school was, let alone the main entrance. It turns out the front was actually aimed toward the back of some homes, not facing the street like you might expect.”

Ok, but still not really an indicator of any intellectual failing on her part.

@Darth_Algar OF COURSE the entrance was in the “front” of the school, wherever that was. And I indicated in my question to her that I had already driven all the way around the school looking for it. And that I could see no signs anywhere indicating where the entrance (or the “front”) would be.

She was an airhead.

I worked with a girl that thought that there were no more Jewish people on the planet because she sincerely (and sadly) thought Hitler killed them all. In that same office, ‘Debbie’ thought it was hilarious to drive blind drunk and often regaled us with her anecdotes, ‘Yeah, I came to and realised I had been driving along the RAIL ROAD TRACKS!’ Then there was this gem from US shopping TV that went viral: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQKgpm1SJmQ
When I attended classes for my travel and tourism degree, we were given a blank map of the US and asked to fill in the name of the States. I was the ONLY one in the class to fill it in correctly. That shocked me.
The 77minute ramblings of the 45th president on the 17th of February 2017 is certainly on the list as well, and most all he says. He sounded like he had just found out what Uranium was and he quoted a fake news article about Hilary Clinton giving Russia a share of US Uranium. He didn’t know what the Black Caucus was and expected the reporter had the power to set up a meeting between him and the Black Caucus. But I really like it when he speaks. I’ve always been a staunch proponent of giving a fool enough rope to do the job themselves. Free speech often exposes the hypocrite, the bigot, the racist and the robber baron.

@snowberry

Or perhaps she just gave you a dismissive answer. Perhaps she thought you to be the airhead.

…..

@JLeslie: I completely understand the situation. Trust me. She is not unintelligent. Despite her lack of formal education, she is very adept at math, learned to operate a four color press machine, speaks three languages, and can grow tomatoes like nobody’s business. She has proven she can learn.

Despite this, she clings to ideas such as:
• Electricity is actual fire in the walls.
• You can get pneumonia from sleeping under a ceiling fan.
• Everybody believes in god.

And so on. It’s willfull. She is not unteachable.

@cookieman That is very typical. I call it old world thinking. There are tons of people out there who read and write and are very smart about many things, but who are also religious and superstitious and have pockets in their knowledge that are frustrating for us. I experience this with my inlaws. I see it among people all the time with very limited education.

@JLeslie: Absolutely “old world thinking.”

But still, she is someone I know who does not know or comprehend something which I consider pretty BASIC and FUNDAMENTAL?

^^Fair enough. I guess I see it so often it’s just normal to me, but I see your point that it’s surprising she can be smart about many things, and still believe in some things that most would call ignorant.

^^^ Well, that is the crux of this question.

I know. I still see it as different than a 35 year old adult born and raised in America with a minimum high school education

Oh, another thing that is baffling are people who hold crazy beliefs about microwave ovens.

Nope. I know a woman who is 40, graduated high school in Kansas, and she’d never heard of the holocaust. Plenty of ignorant, stupid people in this country. Someone on FB just posted an outraged meme that said Lady Gaga had a little white fox skinned alive so she could make a fashion statement. Basic and fundamental intelligence should tell them that there is NO advantage to skinning any animal alive.

Love your Trump Troll @cazzie!

Or crazy beliefs about radio transmitters.

And cell phones.

@Dutchess_III The minks raised here in Norway are electrocuted before skinned. I couldn’t find anything about the fox farms in Finland. I’ve heard some animals are gassed. They are not alive when they are skinned. I can’t attest to the practices in China.

…..and chem trails, tin foil hates and conspiracy theories.
Elvis is still alive, the Holocost never happened and 9–11 was an inside job.

Of course they aren’t still alive @cazzie. Do you know how hard it would be to skin a live animal? It’s not only cruel but doesn’t make sense. Just the fact that a full grown adult (also a Trump supporter) would believe it is within the boundaries of this question.

…I hate to be the bearer of bad news, @Dutchess_III, but, yes, in some places, animals are skinned alive for their fur. It is possible to find videos online of raccoon dogs getting skinned alive in China, for example. I won’t provide any links for obvious reasons.

Chinchillas are skinned alive because their fur is softer that way. Or so I’ve heard.

Geese are live plucked in many European countries, hideous cruelty.

How in the world would skinning it alive make its fur softer than skinning within minutes of it’s dying, @Sneki95?

Why do they pluck geese @Coloma?

It doesn’t, but that’s what some people believe, or rather, it is the excuse they offer for their acts of cruelty and sadism toward animals.

People are scum.

This question really isn’t about conspiracy theories or opinions about political pundents you hate.

Here is an example of what it should be: My girlfriend always wants me to wash my hands BEFORE I handle the meat I’m about to grill. She is concerned about germs, I tell her that the entire POINT of grilling is to kill the germs and parasites in the meat, That the germs on my hands before cooking don’t matter, She doesn’t get it,

I wash my hands before handling food I’m about to cook, and I would hope that when I eat out, the person who prepares my food for me does the same. I’m with your girlfriend on this one.

@Dutchess_III – because the feathers would char in the oven?

LOL! Well, you can pluck a dead goose a lot easier than a live one!

I’m with your girlfriend too, @Yellowdog, but I do understand your logic. I still always wash my hands before preparing food, especially for other people.

@Dutchess_III For down and feather products. Comforters, jackets, pillows.
Totally archaic and cruel as we no longer need to stuff our mattresses with feathers or straw or use goose quill pens.

:(

I used to know someone who wouldn’t wash a potato before she baked it because she felt that baking it killed the germs. It was like yeah, baking it might kill the germs but potatoes are grown in dirt so I’d like that dirt to be washed off, thank you.

I encounter at least 10 trainees a year who struggle with basic arithmetic facts. For example, understanding that having 100, $5 bills means you have $500. Even when I say something like, “Take the denomination of the bill and put two zeroes on the end,” they still look at me like I am speaking Icelandic.

@tedibear Haha, reminds of a 3 year old that thinks 10 pennies are “more” than a dime. What’s really fun is to tease cashiers sometimes, just for the hell of it, and say, matter of factly, ” Can you make change for a $100.00 ? Just give me 10 $20’s.”
It takes some of them a few seconds to catch on. haha

There’s more than one way to skin a cat.

But I only know one way. Can anybody tell me how they do it?

My business partners could not figure out basic things like how the collective connection router worked. They thought that our 4G and blue tooth connections were making it disconnect. One recently didn’t understand that you could make a percentage from numbers that didn’t total 100. Maddening.

When these types of things have monetary consequences, it is particularly maddening. I am discovering that my girlfriend thinks you must wash clothes in near scalding temperatures to get them clean.

This is partially my fault. I told her that those clothes would have to be washed at 190 degrees or boiled at 212 to be free of germs. And that all you are really doing when you wash your hands is washing bacteria-infested particles OFF your hands, not killing them with soap and hot water.

This hot, scalding water can be quite costly.

@Yellowdog What ever you do, don’t tell her how many bacteria and microorganisms are on her skin. lol

…And in her gut @Yellowdog!

Well..a tiny splash of bleach in a white wash kills all germs.

I told her about bleach and that it works well in even cold water.

Her response was, “I’ll bet my whites are whiter than yours.”

^ Sounds like she could a commercial for ring around the collar. lol

I always soak my food in bleach before cooking it in order to make sure all germs have been eradicated from my dinner plate.

^^^ LOL!

When I was in my early 20’s a friend of mine called and asked me how to bake a potato. I thought that was very odd.

Even I might ask for temperatures and timing, however. Not so odd.

Have you never baked a potato or helped your mom?

Not during the days since microwaves. I’ve microwaved potatoes. But the oven-baked kind WERE a lot better.

Well, this was the pre-microwave era.

When he married my mother, my dad didn’t know how to boil water. By the time she died 45 years later, he had learned how to make his oatmeal every morning.

Not knowing how to bake a potato is not a sign of stupidity. In his case, he worked very long hours, my mother didn’t work (she was disabled) and was a gourmet cook. Dad never felt the need to learn how to cook while she was alive.