Americans, in general, are idiots

My opponent has created a red herring that is not within the bounds of this debate topic. This debate is not about the mental state of Americans. That is an absolutely false conclusion drawn based on my premise of the arguments that I have presented. Perhaps I need to clarify my terms in order to set the discussion on the right track. What I mean with the word idiot is, as Thefreedictionary so eloquently puts it, "a foolish or stupid person." If I read more books and, thus, have amassed more knowledge than some random American school kid at the same age, then clearly the American school kid would be less knowledgeable - and hence "dumber" if I may use the term - even if I were to suffer from anxiety and depression and he or she were not. The mental state is, thus, not at stake here and is not the determining factor that decides whether or not someone has a predisposition to be an idiot, even though it might exert a varying degree of influence. Thus, what we are actually discussing are facts about the general knowledge among Americans that are based on facts. I am not, as my opponent put it, suggesting anything about a "perceived stupidity and ignorance of Americans". I have based my entire argument on facts that I have gotten from the most respected and reliable polling organisations in order to strengthen my assertion. What I have demonstrated is, that there are many Americans who have such a wide knowledge gap about science and about the world in general that it is justified to make the argument that Americans, in general, are idiots. We are not debating whether or not certain mental illnesses might make you "behave in ways that can be construed as "idiotic." We are discussing actual facts about what Americans actually know and don"t know and based on which we can deduce whether or not Americans are idiots. Furthermore, if my opponent is going to make such an extraordinary suggestion, that the economic affliction affecting the southern Mediterranean countries and Europe in general is greater than that experienced in the US due to the discrepancies between in terms of mental illnesses is a purely hypothetical argument about a supposed causality that is completely irrelevant to this debate if my opponent is not able to substantiate that claim further than he has done so far. Even if we were to accept this premise, that since a higher percentage of Europeans suffer from a wide range of mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, insomnia, and so forth - which would render them less functional than their US counterpart - that says nothing about whether or not that person is less knowledgeable in general than their American counterpart. However, If we are to delve into other economic reason as to why Europe is worse off in the wake of the United States and give it an alternate explanatory model than "its because they are mentally ill" ca be attributed to a number of causes that, and so far nothing of the sort has been presented by my opponent to promote that idea, is unrelated to the issue of mental illnesses. For instance, the euro is one such example. While US has been able to adopt a uniform monetary policy set by the FED, which includes three quantitative easing programs amounting to a total of two trillion dollars injected into the economy as well as the lowering of the home montage interest rate which has helped to boost a recovery in the housing market. Euro countries, on the other other hand, cannot pursue a money policy that injects money to boost demand in the national economy since the the euro is controlled by several nations with varying interests. Actually, I would argue that US has more structural problems than the euro zone do. Sure, Europe has a few bad states but so does US. If you look at Illinois, which is bigger than Greece, California and New York, these are big states with with fairly serious economic problems. If you compare the euro zone as a whole with US, the entity as a whole fares better than US in regards to debt-level and trade balance. http://wealthcycles.com... http://www.tradingeconomics.com... http://www.tradingeconomics.com... Next you criticized the polls I brought up for having a too small sample size in order to adequately reflect the opinion of "over 400 million people" (however, the government Census Bureau estimated the population size of the US to be around 318 million) in order to produce a trustworthy result. However, as with all studies done, a study that has been done offers an estimation on whatever you are studying. Studies can never be 100% accurate of course. No study alone can be sufficient to determine a certain thing about the thing you are studying. Thus, in statistical analysis, cross-reference with other studies studying the same issue or something similar must be done in order to ascertain an accurate result. The studies that I have presented are a few of many studies that have corroborated the same findings about a wide general knowledge gap among Americans. It is true that in a qualitative study the bigger the sample the smaller the margin of error that would differ from the average of the population. If we look at the formula for calculating the confidence interval in statistical analysis it is given by 1/W30;N, where N is the number of participants. If we included 10,000 people in our study, that would mean that we would have a margin of error of +-1. The Pew forum study that I cited, that measured the general knowledge among 35,000 random Americans, would have a margin of error of about 0,5%. In qualitative studies, 35,000 is quite a high number! The conspiracy study, however, surveyed 1,247 American voters, thus having a margin of error of +/-2.8%. When it comes to the notion that the sun revolves around the earth, 2200 respondents were asked that question, thus having a margin of error of about 2%. For all of these examples the sample sizes are quite normal and the margin of error is within the range of what is seen as "statistically sound". You say that Americans have a higher mathematics and scientific literacy than those of Japan and Europe. Ok, so where are your sources to substantiate that claim? I have my sources right here and my sources point to the exact opposite of what you are saying: that US adults lag behind most countries in science and math skills. An OECD study that used a sample of 5000 respondents between the age of 16 and 65 from 21 countries, including the US, showed that Americans scored behind the average and lag behind in numeracy, problem-solving skills and literacy. When it comes to numeracy, US trailed 18 countries and beat only two - Italy and Spain. When it comes to problem-solving skills, America trailed behind 14 of their counterparts. When it comes to literacy, USA trailed 12 countries and outperformed only 5. The top five countries were - no surprise - European countries, Sweden, Austria, Netherlands and Finland, and Japan. Even among those Americans with graduate and professional degrees, they scored higher than average in literacy but lower in math and problem-solving skills. What this suggests to me is that there is a general knowledge gap among, even to the point where I myself , quite frankly, feel quite insulting to actually bring it up. Again, US is a big country and there are many, many bright Americans that, as you pointed out, have contributed with much of the innovation that we take for granted today and that contribute a lot to science and education. However, in contrast to that there are, unfortunately many Americans who do not fare well in this respect and I do think that this serves as a serious wake-up call for Americans http://www.oecd.org... http://www.census.gov... http://www.sciencebuddies.org...