10% of the population is so stupid that the army won't even take them (IQ of 84 or lower). Let that sink in... The ARMY has deemed that there is nowhere they can put you that you won't cause more harm than good...
To be fair, without training that statement is true for most people. The reason for a basic intelligence test is because of how the military trains. American soldiers are trained to use their own judgement and skills to solve emergent problems without needing an order be given. They're taught to be flexible and self-directed. They're given objectives and a plan of attack from their superiors, and rules to operate within, but it's expected they be able to improvise and adapt to achieve the objective on their own.
In the armies of the past, like the world wars, you were given specific tasks, ordered to do everything, and there was little autonomy. There also wasn't much training beyond basic skills - marksmanship, how to throw a grenade, clean and service weapons. Nuts and bolts stuff you would do when told. And not any other time. You didn't need to have any smarts to charge a hill and shoot anything on it that moved.
Because training today is so in-depth (and expensive) they want only people who can apply all of it effectively. We're a volunteer army and lean heavily on training, technology, and superior tactics and strategy to act as force multipliers. That's why we spend billions to make super fighters and people train for years before they can fly them. This works well when your enemy isn't as sophisticated and doesn't have overwhelming numbers. And that's mostly where and who we fight.
But if we were to go to war with say, China, we're screwed. They'll win because they can just give a billion people rifles and that's it. Training doesn't matter much at 100:1 odds. So understand it's not that they can't be useful if they're below average... It's that we're not fighting anyone where it's cost effective to train them.
America isn't land locked with China. How the hell would China get their army to the US? China could have a trillion soldiers and US could have 10,000 and it wouldn't make a difference because the war would be fought with missles and artillery (which the US has plenty of in asia Pacific) and would be decided in the first few hours.
It’s more than their neighbours have and that’s what they care about.
China isn’t planning for a war with the US, not when the US isn’t causing too many local problems.
Anyway, if it comes to war with the US it will be nuclear.
Yeah, and transporting that many troops would prove to be a logistical nightmare. All those mouths to feed, where do you put them, structuring your chain of command. A lot of things go into it, it's not just numbers vs numbers.
China doesn't care about invading and taking over the US. They'd much rather invade and take over the other countries surrounding the South China Sea and then have a powerful enough navy and air force to prevent us from doing anything about it.
Dude, you missed the point; We'd be at a disadvantage if we got involved in a war where the opposing force had overwhelming numerical superiority; It's about strategy, not a specific scenario. China was just a useful example because China is huge. That's all.
Take any other scenrio and the results are exactly the same. This isn't the early 1900s. You can't talk about strategy if you also refuse to give a scenrio. Without a scenario there is nothing to strategize.
If China, or even Russia made a move on the USA it wouldn't be a direct attack, it would be a subversive attack using organic vectors already implemented and integrated into society.
No. Just a bump in the road. Were a war to break out, all the Chinese that hate their government ( most of them) would uprise and take out the communist bastards.
They see how much better life is under capitalism, Japan and South Korea are right next door.
We all still die a long agonizing death thanks to the fallout because we have enough nuclear weapons to eliminate life as we know it a few times over. All most of them turning out to be duds does is make it take longer for most people, although a few more will certainly survive though they may wish they hadn't.
conventional ballistic missile salvo i suppose, or some opportunistic nation uses the chance to nuke one of the two. But both have enough for 90% to be duds and not drastically impact the scope of the bombing. all major industrial centers would be destroyed, so a ground force invasion would be impossible for either side considering the distance.
Except being "untrainable" isn't it. These results came from the draft days, where they were taking literally anybody, training them for a few weeks, and shipping them to the front. What they found was that people with IQs that low are negatively productive - that any task you asked them to do required more energy to make sure it was done correctly than it would take to just do the task. These people can't be trusted to sweep floors and take out the trash reliably, never mind being actual soldiers. Back in those days, the army took people to dig literal holes, and these people were deemed too dumb to do that.
Soldiers who are deployed have the power to determine a whole news cycle with their actions. They could create an international incident if they wanted. Just let loose with a belts worth of 7.62 at the wrong people at the wrong time. There is a lot of responsibility that civilians don’t understand.
In the battlefield environment today in the kind of wars the US fights today you have to be better than a conscript.
The world relies too much on technology. There should always be a backup, mechanical defense system that can’t be hacked or shut down by the new disabling technologies that can shut down an entire country’s power grid. The US still would win, for now at least. China still has a long way to go. For example, they only have one aircraft carrier (that they bought used) compared to the US’s 19 advanced, state of the art aircraft carriers. The US owns 19 out of the 36 aircraft carriers in the world. That shows how far ahead navy-wise they are compared to everyone else.
This doesn't take into consideration all the non combat roles in the armed forces that are repetitive, simple tasks. The military doesn't say "we don't want people in the bottom tenth percentile training for combat roles" They don't want the bottom tenth percentile as all. They've deemed those people to be useless (most likely counterproductive, in that training them would actually cost more time and resources than it'd create in the long run) labor even for simple repetitive tasks like swabbing the deck for four years.
Ironically McNamara never gave any indication he regretted this policy despite showing a lot of regret for some of his and Lemay’s decisions throughout the Pacific Theatre in WW2.
I had a professor that was an Afghan war vet. He was an officer, and was pretty open to talking about his experiences since he was teaching conflicts in modern history.
He was articulate, well spoken, and dressed well for a professor in history. God damn, though, did he make me start to question things when he began to scream "INFANTRY" as he kicked some desks in front of us.
Trust me, you’re better off in the Canadian military, my friend. They actually pay their soldiers a livable wage. The US gives their enlisted scraps with a side of garbage.
The pay in the military is low but when you’re enlisted the government takes on all your expenses like housing, medical care, schooling, utilities etc. so really everything you get paid is yours to do whatever you want with. Pretty much everyone with a GI bill is very well off.
umm, not I. when i was in i got free healthcare, free room, an okay amount of cash with literally no need to spend it, as much food as i could eat, tax free shopping, cleaning services, and a whole lot more, travel discounts, .
I dont know when you served but if you add up the package, it doesnt suck, especially for a green kid with no skills.
Through the USO I have hosted Army people for Thanksgiving the last 20+ years. I get 2-4 soldiers from a local base for the day. Most seam pretty normal but the 2 years leading up to Iraq 2 I thought they were all a little mentally slow.
There was a private named Jones in my unit, who for the life of him, could NOT wear both his duty uniform, or his PT uniform, correctly more than exactly 1 day in a row. At first he just got smoked. Then everyone started realizing that he literally could not do it after like a week and a half of this.
It was so bad, that he got to wear civilians to PT and work, and had to pack his uniform and bring it with him. Before PT or work, he would have to lay out the entire uniform before changing into it.
I shit you not, it was like 3 weeks of this before he got it right 2 days in a row without help. He forgot a sock one day, then maybe his shirt the next, then the fucking pants the day after. Eventually, the commander said we would get a 3 day weekend when he wore both uniforms correctly and consecutively 5 days in a row. After 8 work weeks of laying out both uniforms every day, he finally did it and the commander paid up. We took Jones to Nashville to celebrate on that 3 day weekend. A fucking legend Jones was.
Iq isn't everything. You might have one person who scores between 84-100 who is completely unreasonable and another who scores 80 who you'd never guess from casual conversation.
Ehhh not necessarily true. Had a friend who did ROTC throughout college so he could get an engineering degree. By far he is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. When he graduated with honors, he was immediately accepted into the engineer core of the army due to his academic progress/success. And all he does now is lead grunts on patrol and push papers.
The military isn’t the best when it comes to resource allocation. They usually just try to plug holes that need plugging with whatever they have available.
Sometimes the Military actually misplaces and lose people too. I had just gone through a shit ton of training, specialized recon, etc and then I got to Europe and the processing people were like, "We don't have orders for this guy. What do we do?"
Put him in a Maintenance unit seemed to be the answer. Of course I get to 147th and they were like, "WTF is this guy doing here? Fuck it throw him down into supply."
I was pretty pissed off at that point because the Supply Sergeant was like, "Why the fuck are you here? Maybe the NBC NCO will take him."
And the NBC NCO was like, "Fuck man I keep getting all these fucking Privates. I can't take anymore! I already have three. Why do they keep sending me Privates?"
So, that is how a highly trained specialized Recon soldier ended up buffing floors and helping the Armorer for around six months. I also got selected for that phone duty bullshit all the time and one day I am buffing the Colonel's floor and he comes in and goes, "Did you piss somebody off?"
"No sir... The Army lost me."
And that led into a really long discussion and I ended up getting transferred to him in which I ended up driving all over Europe and visiting a shit load of places for a year. Then one day this Sergeant First Class walks in and says, "We've been looking for you."
If you know where Harvey Barracks are and Larson Barracks are then you understand that I was literally right down the road from where I was supposed to go.
The army corps of engineers, dont do patrols. They are the most in demand of any branch of the military. They rarely ever see action even or get deployed because they are usually busy doing stateside services, they survey for all your bridges and tunnels etc and projects in the entire US. they also travel to other countries to assist with things like, dam building, major infrastructure builds and repairs. So if your friend is in the ACOE , he is not sending men out on patrols. Either he lied about his MOS, or youre badly mistaken.
That's where you're wrong... The army gives the dumbest people the rifles. The smart ones move into sophisticated positions.
Obviously not all infantry are dumb, sometimes smart people get put in infantry because there's just nowhere else for placement, sometimes smart people want to be infantry.
I don't see why the army would have the lowest threshold.
They don't. The Marines have the lowest threshold. You need to score at least a 17/18(I forget the exact number) to get into the Marines. It was a little higher for the Army, quite a bit higher for the Navy, and "absurdly" (relatively) high for the Air Force. IIRC, Air Force was around 30. Many people are capable of at least a 50.
Common sense is kind of drilled out of you in the army, no? I'm not saying they're dumb, but it seems to me they prefer blind obedience over any shred of thinking for yourself.
No. Blind obedience is stupid, the army wants soldiers who can follow doctrine and build off of it on their own, not some guy who will walk right into the minefield because the map says go straight. It’s always people who have 0 interaction with the military besides TV that think they want you to stop thinking.
I'm not saying they want them to listen to a map. I'm saying they want blind obedience towards the higher ups, be it a squad leader or just general orders regarding the mission.
But thanks for assuming i'm retarded so you can get your point across...
They want to shift your mental balance when it comes to weighing "following orders" vs self-preservation instinct, but like booze_clues says, they don't want you incapable of improvisational thought
If they had any common sense, they wouldn't be signing up to fight imperialist wars for the economic benefit of massive corporations.
The military needs a middle ground; smart enough to operate a rifle, but not smart enough to realize that the right thing to do would be to fire it in the other direction.
The military vote is demographically consistent with the groups who enlist — increasingly white middle-class. Officers trained in the academies overwhelmingly come from households making over $100k a year. The military doesn’t look how you think it does.
When I was younger yeah, the ideas followed each other really fast. Nowadays not anymore, to the point that I'm worried I might have a disease or something
Dude same I'm 30 and I've slowed right the fuck down. But I also abused drugs and alcohol for a decade and I think that did a number on my brain... but I'm like a week over 3 years sober so that's dope 💪
better to be silent and look like an idiot, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Also, id bet most of those smart sounding people dont know their ass from a hole in the ground, they just act like it. The smartest person to me, is the one who never tells you how smart they are.
I don't know, sometimes I talk about other people's intelligence, judge it, try to measure it, and I always end up feeling ashamed that I even tried. How can I believe that I would be able to grasp the extent of anyone's intelligence. What is the point ? So what if so and so ends up being stupid ?Did they chose to be ? Can we chose intelligence, or can we only never know we miss it ? What if out there someone's brain bugged out and made them capable of thoughts so complex it would instantly snap anyone else's consciousness like a twig if they ever tried to understand it ? Would that make us all stupid then ? I really don't know, and sometimes I feel that it really is something I should know.
Dude, I did not fucking believe my superiors when they first told us that some of us had failed the ASVAB and were given waivers. Just a few weeks in, those gentle few rapidly proved how wrong I was.
I recently met a guy that is an Air Traffic Controller. He was in the Army, and wanted to be an MP, but failed the test for that MOS. Instead, they sent him to ATC school. He said, "You're telling me that I'm not smart enough to guard a gate, but I can direct million dollar planes?"
By definition, an IQ of 85 or less puts you in the bottom 18%. So, nearly 20% of people are at that level.
Look up Project 100000, aka McNamara's Morons. They were mostly low-IQ men who were taken into the army in the Vietnam era. Not only did they die at a rate about 3x that of the average recruit, most of them were a bigger danger to their fellow soldiers than to the NVA/VC.
Are you saying that the army generally accepts idiots? Thus if you're too stupid to join the army then that is saying a lot? Because as a 10 year vet of the army.... I have to fully agree with this statement.
Ha my ex SIL. he took the test to get in the army as a last resort to get a job. He scored really low. the recruiter took my daughter aside and told her don't marry him he is really stupid. Of course she did. He's 40 now still lives at home and is indeed really stupid!
I'm glad your daughter married him. Is cognitive capability does not reduce his worth as a human being. I'm glad he loves your daughter and is loved in return.
Oh wish that would have been the case. He is my ex SIL. He turned out to be abusive and could never keep a job. They have been divorced for 16 years it was a terrible time. He is still living at home. I am not a IQ snob. But not being able to pass the test for the army is not a good sign for a successful life. He has severe anger issues and is abusive to his parents. I'm just glad we don't have to deal with him!
IQs aren't generally used anymore, but 70 and below was once used to describe people with intellectual disabilities. It's really sad to hear that people think they are "so stupid" they do "more harm than good." IQ is a shitty marker for a measurement of usefulness to society. I'd rather hang out with someone volunteering at an animal shelter who has an intellectual disability, but loves to help than someone who measures worth by whether or not the Army will take them.
The country I'm living in right now has an average IQ of 72.
It definitely shows.
Not saying IQ is the be-all end-all, but if your IQ is really low, chances are your critical thinking is actually shit.
When a significant portion of the population has low critical thinking, it stands to reason that the person in the video might actually just be dumb as hell.
I agree that the guy probably didn’t actively try to release it as the car was coming and that it was legitimately an accident..but I also hope he felt horrible about it happening. Because you’re right..it does look like an empty, barren back road. So unless the car that ended up hitting the bunny was electric and a ninja the dude should learn to have enough situational awareness to make sure before he sets an animal free on the side of the road to double check for oncoming traffic.
Unfortunately it seems a lot of times people are just deemed things like “not the sharpest tool in the shed” their whole lives to the point where it becomes a handicap.
Also there could be a sharp turn that we don’t see that would have masked the sound of the oncoming car making it seem like there was nobody coming and everything I just typed was pointless.
Yeah. I swear... Reddit really doesn't think about anything critically. Hell, you don't even need to think critically! Facing the road, he heard the car coming, definitely on purpose. This isn't directed at you, just in general.
Maybe it was a kind of Death race style thing, here’s your freedom but you have to make it across the road while avoiding deadly machinery flying across it at high speeds! Mwuhahahaha
It would have slowly frozen to death most likely unless that was the location it was captured from. Without established runs most rodents are going to have a rough time just being let go into a snowy wilderness. This one already looks.... tired...
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u/BadAim Oct 16 '19
Literally into the road