Errr.... no. Whilst this is true it misses the salient point that the following symptoms have been hysterically conveyed to the population for a year.

Could almost write a song based on the chorus of: fever, body ache, dry cough, fatigue, chills, headache, sore throat, loss of appetite, ...

So which of those is/ are the major one/ones? The question is asked inherently wrongly.

I am not denying that there are or can be visible simptoms. But I deny that there are major ones. That word, "major", alone, destroyed any meaningfulness inherent in the question.

So which of those is/ are the major one/ones? — god must be atheist

Any of those. I hear what you are saying about 'major" but I don't think it needs a genius to throw out the symptoms they keep hearing about - surely they are major ones...

But are people getting more ignorant? Who the hell can tell?

Any of those. — Tom Storm

Cop out. A major symptom is a symptom that is dominant or more numerous than others. They all can't be major symptoms, but we agree that for what we are told, they are equally likely symptoms. So there you go, there are NO major symptoms. Not any of those. But none of those.

And truth to be told, the most major symptoms are no symptoms at all. Most Covid infected people display no symptoms. So if you go with the "most numerous" or with the "dominant" definition of major, the no symptom is the major symptom.

People are not ignorant. The news media is stupid. They are replete with idiotic journalists, who learn how to write well, but their gray cells are not employed in the process.

Errr.... no. Whilst this is true it misses the salient point that the following symptoms have been hysterically conveyed to the population for a year.

Could almost write a song based on the chorus of: fever, body ache, dry cough, fatigue, chills, headache, sore throat, loss of appetite, ... — Tom Storm

Well, the newspaper said, something to the effect, "what are the major symptoms." if they news paper said, "people could not name the symptoms repeatedly asked of them", then you would be right.

It's all in the wording. Journalists should be aware of the importance of the meaning of words.

Carry on. I am getting out; I had my say.

Carry on. I am getting out; I had my say. — god must be atheist

:ok:

It's a shame that many respondants are splitting hairs about the way I asked the question rather than taking up what was clearly my main point. Presumably they pass their whole lives refusing to see the wood for whatever tree is infront of their nose..

Given the prominence of Covid in the news over the past year, for 50% of people to say they don't know what symptoms to look for in their own health as indications of whether they have caught the virus is surely alarming. It shows that people are not only not taking in what the trustworthy news media say, but that they are so complacent about the virus that they aren't bothering to find out about it for themselves.

Another sign is that vaccine uptake is so low in some communities - even those mainstream populations of the largest EU countries, where I'd have thought education rates would be high. Many people still believe the scare stories and conspiracy theories, regardless of how many eminent scientists restate the facts.

I'm tempted contemptuously to throw them into my TSTL bucket. (Too stupid to live). But I suppose I should be more forgiving..

Anyway, chickens will clear an area of ground down to the dirt, ready for sewing seed. The only advantage that accrues to goats is that they will eat the more woody weeds. The disadvantages in terms of broken fences and chewed valuables outweigh their benefit. — Banno

My goats will be like my kids were and one day my grandchildren will be. They will have no utility, will destroy all sorts of things, will bear additional costs, but I'll be able to take pictures and videos of them to share with people who couldn't care any less but will tell me how cute they are.

Remember a goat is not just for Easter, Hanover; Or will Tater, Jasper, and Cornbread finish in a curried Christmas carnival? — Banno

I'm not planning on eating my pets, but the economy is unpredictable. In the event I do hold a disturbing backyard slaughter, I'll save you a leg. Come to think of it, maybe a roasted leg of goat has a place on the seder plate because, as you noted, they are not just for Easter.

Meanwhile, the wild goats have eaten all my tulips. They don't eat daffodils though. — unenlightened

Wild goats? Do you live on a cliff?

. All knowledge is superfluous. Knowledge as such is superfluous. And all knowledge creates only an illusion that we know - we don't know. You can live with a man your whole life, and you can think that you know him - and you don't know him. You can give birth to a child, and you can think you know him - and you don't know him.

. And whatsoever we think we know is very illusory.

. Somebody asks, 'What is water', and you say, 'H2O' - you are simply playing a game. It is not known what water is, nor what H is nor what O is.

. You are just labelling. Then somebody asks what this H is - this hydrogen - and you go to the molecules, to the atoms, to the electrons... but you are again giving names. The mystery is not finished - the mystery is only postponed. And at the last, there is tremendous ignorance. Nobody knows what the electron is.

. In the beginning we did not know what the water is - now we don't know what the electron is, so we have not come to any knowledge. We have played a game of naming things, labelling things, categorising, but life remains a mystery.

. Ignorance is so profound and so ultimate that it cannot be destroyed. And once you understand it, you can rest in it. It is so beautiful, it is so relaxing ... because then there is nowhere to go. There is nothing to be known, because nothing can be known. Ignorance is ultimate. It is tremendous and vast.

. All that we know is illusory. Somehow we manage the illusion that we know. Somebody introduces you to somebody else, tells them your name, your qualifications, your country, and it is thought that you have been introduced. You remain completely unintroduced, because your name is not you, neither is your country nor is your religion. You are that profound ignorance inside.

. But when I use the word ignorance, I don't use it in any negative sense - I don't mean absence of knowledge. By ignorance I mean something very fundamental, very present, very positive. It is how we are. It is the very nature of god to remain mysterious. It is the very nature of things to remain mysterious. Everything is illusive, and that's why it is so beautiful. If man succeeds in knowing everything one day, there will not be anything left except to commit suicide.

. We can go on knowing and knowing and knowing, and we never arrive - the ignorance remains untouched, undisturbed by it.

. To come to an understanding of this ignorance is to become enlightened. Hence the socratic dictum:

. 'I know only one thing - that I don't know.' That's what enlightenment is all about. If you can accept your ignorance - welcome it, cherish it, enjoy, delight in it, because this is how things are: nothing is known, nothing can be known and everything is mysterious your life will have a quality of magic.

. Logic will be gone, and your life will be more magical; a charm, a tremendous grace will be there, because now there are no boundaries - nothing is defined. This undefined is what god is. And I call this ignorance divine.

. The very urge to know is an egoistic urge, because by knowledge we want to become powerful. Yes, bacon is right when he says, 'Knowledge is power.' And our search is really for power. We go via knowledge. We want to know because by knowing we can manipulate.

. The word science means knowledge, and the word religion should really mean ignorance. It is the polar opposite.

. Science is an effort to know about things, and religion is not any effort to know - rather, it is an effort to live whatsoever is... to relax into it and to celebrate it.

. If one can rest in one's ignorance, there is no problem, no anxiety. The mind by and by disappears.

. It makes ripples no more.

. You must have heard the old proverb: Ignorance is bliss. It has some depth in it. And I always say, 'Blessed are the ignorant, for theirs is the kingdom of god.' And I don't say, 'Theirs will be the kingdom of god'; I say 'Theirs is the kingdom of god.'

. So just have a taste of ignorance, and you will have a taste of me. I am not a man of knowledge. In fact I don't know anything - because nothing can be known; that is not possible. If somebody claims that he knows something, he is claiming the impossible. I don't know anything. But this not knowing is so blissful, who bothers to know?

. So let this surround you more and more. Even your husband is not known to you - how can a mystery be known? If you live together, you love each other, you share each other's space, but the space is such that it can never be reduced to knowledge. The moment you feel that you know your husband or your child or your friend, your mother, your father, you have reduced them to things. A husband becomes a thing, a wife becomes a thing. Then they are no more persons, their glory is lost - and the agony begins.

. If you can remain in this ignorance of 'How can I know?' then life is very alive, flowing. You are never stuck, and there is always much to explore. In fact there is everything to explore, and every day is a new beginning of a new exploration. You never feel that you have known this man for so long. You are never fed up... you are never bored.

. Boredom comes out of knowledge. The fed-up feeling comes out of knowledge. The moment you say that you know this man, now the exploration has stopped. Now you are stuck together. Maybe you are together for some other reasons - security, finance, society, morality, religion, a thousand and one reasons - but now the exploration is no more there. And when there is no more exploration there is no more love.

. My definition of love is: when you are exploring the other, you are in love.

https://www.llandudno.com/the-great-orme-kashmiri-goats/

Very cool. In Georgia, all we have are feral pigs that roam the countryside. They're not as interesting as your goats, and they're very destructive and mean.

We live in a junk culture and food era... — javi2541997

I would argue we live in the "set it and forget it" age. No it started with just turkeys. Then it expanded to children (video games and TV/V-chip parenting). Then commerce (order nearly anything whilst sitting on your couch and get it delivered to your doorstep in no time at all). Then social interaction as a whole (social media, status updates, online dating, etc.). Now finally it may reach the last frontier, human anatomy and biology itself. I always knew that Ron Popeil was the Antichrist. I just never could prove it.

Why waste time learning anything? Just Google it bro. Why learn a skill or trade or how to do anything of use? Just call the guy, man. Etc., etc.

Ignorance? It's the illusion of knowledge that's getting L O U D E R thanks to social media and 24/7 non-stop cable / satellite / streaming "bread & circuses" infotainment. People are still just people – (ten) millennia of syphillisation notwithstanding. — 180 Proof

Yes. The resulting ubiquity of misinformation and the encouragement and availability of immediate, emotional and thoughtless response to it has the result that the ignorance that's always there is rendered invincible, to use Catholic terminology.

I saw in a UK poll yesterday that even a year after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic about 50% of respondants could not name the disease's major symptoms. I find this level of ignorance staggering. — Tim3003

Did the poll control for confounding factors like confidence, trust, or question misinterpretation? Did you check before concluding that it represented evidence that people were more ignorant? I ask because I find the general level of ignorance about what polls can and cannot be reliably used to demonstrate quite staggering.

I saw in a UK poll yesterday that even a year after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic about 50% of respondants could not name the disease's major symptoms. I find this level of ignorance staggering. I can only assume these people no longer access news media of any substance. Has the decline of newspapers and broadcast TV news, plus the rise of social media and the ability to choose among an ever wider selection of streaming or online 'news' providers resulted in people being more ignorant than say 10 or 20 years ago? — Tim3003

This would be the wrong way to assess knowledge levels of people. It's too narrow a window to get a clear view of how aware people are of facts. The way I see it, basing your conclusion on UK poll is like judging people's facts stockpile by asking them a question on Schrodinger's equation. Quantum physics is a highly specialized field and so is medicine and we can't expect laypeople to possess information on them. Plus, you're aware of course that this is the information age which to me translates as information explosion. There's just too much to grasp and real estate in our brain's memory centers seems not to have undergone any changes to accommodate that, meaning we have to be very selective as regards what we want to retain and perhaps COVID-19 symptoms simply fail to make it to the list of our priorities, explaining the dismal results of the UK poll.

I don't believe so. People were always very ignorant. Go look at the graffiti of Pompeii or the descriptions of the crowds by Greek and Roman historians.

The difference today is the democratization of mass communication technologies (i.e the internet, particularly social media), which has allowed people to broadcast their idiocy more effectively. The media, rapidly losing income due to increased competition (the internet has lowered barriers to entry), and the increased ability of people to get news for free has slashed reporting budgets. The result is endless articles that end up at the top of generic, incognito mode/cookie free Google News feeds that are literally reporting on screen captures of Twitter. This creates a feedback loop, as idiots are given a bigger microphone and more incentive for their idiocy. A small minority of people use Twitter and of its users a small minority account for a huge amount of the posts. People lie about their backgrounds and troll as outrageous members of opposing social camps. It's a terrible substitute for interviews, but it is cheap, so it thrives.

However, people in developed nations are getting dumber. The Flynn Effect is the general rise of IQ in nations across the 20th century. The increases are very substantial. As nutrition, medicine, and access to the stimulus of education got better, intelligence rose measurably by wide margins.

That has since reversed. Across the developed world, IQ is decreasing. This isn't due to migration as some might claim. Due to intergroup differences in IQ, IQ is necessarily mapped to demographic groups. The children of native Europeans and "native" Americans is decreasing.

No casual mechanism has fully been identified. TV and computers could play a role. So could enviornments toxins. Male testosterone and sperm count has been plummeting mostly due to plastics, so such an effect wouldn't be unprecedented.

Still, the main hypothesis is dysgenics. Intelligence is highly heritable. Higher intelligence is now correlated with less reproduction, particularly for women. There are plenty of plausible hypothesis for this, and the effect size when estimated could be substantial enough to push intelligence down. That said, people today are solidly more intelligent (as measured by the tests we've developed) than they were a century ago.

The trend of wealthier people to start reporducing less and less as civilizations' exit their expansive phase shows up way back in ancient Greek writers. It may very well be a cyclical force in history. It's an impossible hypothesis to truly prove out, but historical examples abound of falling birth rates as societies hit higher levels of development (vis-a-vis surrounding civilizations).

It's a shame that many respondants are splitting hairs about the way I asked the question rather than taking up what was clearly my main point. Presumably they pass their whole lives refusing to see the wood for whatever tree is infront of their nose.. — Tim3003

A major premise that OP is based on is that their knowledge is complete or at least complete enough. Thus if people do not know exactly what I know, then they are ignorant. This is a very arrogant and dangerous assumption, as we are all (probably) not medical experts but just crayon eating internet surfers that proclaim we are philosophers. There's an argument to be made that the evidence is overwhelming, but that evidence tends to be based on journalism, which we all know is trustworthy.

There may be an article that interests some people talking about a research paper that concluded that the US death rate has not changed at all in 2020 compared to previous years, among other things. Meaning the introduction of Covid was not significant in the US death toll. Most interestingly, this research was pulled a couple days after its release, as if there were people who did not want the word getting out

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/11/27/johns-hopkins-study-saying-covid-19-has-relatively-no-effect-on-deaths-in-u-s-deleted-after-publication-n1178930

It's a shame that many respondants are splitting hairs about the way I asked the question rather than taking up what was clearly my main point. — Tim3003

My sympathies. That's what some people think philosophy is; hair splitting for hair splitting's sake.

Has the decline of newspapers and broadcast TV news, plus the rise of social media and the ability to choose among an ever wider selection of streaming or online 'news' providers resulted in people being more ignorant than say 10 or 20 years ago? — Tim3003

Define "people"

lol

Potentially, people live in a far more information rich environment than they did, even 20 years ago - but there's a hidden distinction between knowledge and understanding I've been quietly grinding about. Being able to whip out your iphone and google the name of the King of Sweden in 1444, doesn't require you know the first thing about history. Most of the people I know are pretty damn smart and quite well informed - so I find that statistic difficult to believe. I suspect it's just the media - justifying playing to the lowest common denominator by portraying people as stupid - and so lowering the bar on their unimaginative, low brow, cheap formats. That said, 50% of people (minus one person) are, by definition - below average intelligence. Now there's a statistic to keep you up at night!

about 50% of respondants could not name the disease's major symptoms. — Tim3003

So what are they? And why do I need to know? More realistically, why do you know that I need to know?

That's a good question. It's not clear. I believe it depends on a topic for topic basis, and it depends on how far back you're willing to go. If you back to the 1950's or 60's, we still had countries that legally sanctioned racist laws and women were quite marginalized by today's standards. Cigarettes were still, I believe, advertised by doctors and animals rights were much more restrictive. So people have become more knowledgeable in these respects.

On the other hand, people took it for granted that the state played a crucial role in helping society out, and welfare benefits were much more proportionate and egalitarian. Even Eisenhower said that those who didn't think New Deal policies were necessary in society, had no business doing politics. This is of course, not mentioning Europe, where certain countries had extremely high living standards. Compare than now to "libertarians" or people who believe in Q and such madness. As you mentioned, the internet can be an excellent tool, if used properly. But since people can look anything up at any moment, no effort is made in learning things and people tend to look for info that reinforces beliefs.

If you go back further than this, by several hundred years, ignorance increases quite a lot. Though quackery has and will always be around in some form or another.

So, yes and no.

Given the prominence of Covid in the news over the past year, for 50% of people to say they don't know what symptoms to look for in their own health as indications of whether they have caught the virus is surely alarming. — Tim3003

How would you establish if this means people are more ignorant today than, say, 35 years ago? I wonder how we would work this out. Anecdotal I know, but the people I knew 35 years ago were certainly no better informed than the people I encounter today, Wisdom...? No idea. What I do see is people are more tribal these days and much quicker to get angry over culture wars issues. This plays a role in what people accept, read, follow, believe.

They're not as interesting as your goats, and they're very destructive and mean. — Hanover

Being very destructive and mean makes them quite interesting. The wild boars are so destructive that many states have open season on them, no laws whatsoever governing the killing of them. This makes them a prime target for people who want to test out their own home made weapons of mass destruction. The YouTube footage seems to get a lot of views so some people must be interested. And you think the backyard slaughter of a few goats is disturbing.