Do other people ever astonish you with their lack of general knowledge?

[Ohnotanothernamechange]

Just recently I've spoken to a few people who expressed amazement when they disocovered that Chernobyl is a real place. I know that we all have gaps in our knowledge but how the hell you can not know about the Chernobyl disaster? It's a bit like the simpleton on a twitter some years ago who was amazed to discover that the Titanic was a real ship and not figment of James Cameron's imagination....

I remember one time a work colleague was going to Rome and when I told them I'd been they asked me if there was lots of stuff to see and do there. I was like well of course, it's Rome. And they asked me what they were. I then had to list the coliseum, the Trevi Fountain, The Spanish Steps, The Vatican, the countless Roman Ruins etc not to mention the countless designer shops and fabulous restaurants. They genuinely had no idea what was in Rome. I was gobsmacked. This was someone I'd assumed was pretty intelligent as well.

I can't work out if I just know too much, or these people are just really ignorant?

I have met many people who have no knowledge about the country we live in, people who couldn't even place a pin showing where their hometown is on an empty map.

One of the teachers asked what titanium was. Us older ones (not teachers) couldn’t believe it

Followed by That’s what astounds me, it’s the not WANTING to find these things out for themselves

The trouble with you attitude *CurlyhairedAssassin, is that when a person honestly expresses theit interest in knowing the answer they are made to feel bad.

I much prefer people who honestly ask for something to be explained to them to people who bluff it out and remain in ignorance.

The ones who are brave enough to ask end up being the most knowledgeable.

General knowledge has very little to do with levels of intelligence. It's having knowledge of stereotypically 'popular' events or facts. Often regarding human history.

Though I do agree that some knowledge of current affairs is important.

When I hear intelligence bashing based on general knowledge it reminds of the old high school popular kids "I can't BELIEVE you haven't seen this movie... blah".

It does baffle me though how little people understand about things such as ecology, geography, geology and climate change. You know, the things that actually matter!

Understanding the complex processes that will shape the future of human history is important. Not a fictional play written by a popular man who's now long dead.

Though I would never judge anyone based on their knowledge of any particular subject. Most people will take an interest in particular subject areas, with gaps in others.

To say that somebody is unintelligent based on their knowledge of one subject area is very unintelligent!

It's not a popularity contest!! Or is it?

That used to be the case coyoacan. But now we’re all thirty seconds of surreptitious Googling away from the answer. Nobody need ever know that you’d never heard of VAT, or GBS, or FYROM.

The Chernobyl disaster isn't just of historical interest. Green issues are very complex and one of the factors to take into account when looking at nuclear power to replace fossil fuels is the possibility of accidents, which could have catastrophic effects. The reactor that exploded was in the Ukraine, which was at that time part of the USSR. This was before the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Bloc broke up, leading to Ukraine getting independence and becoming a sovereign nation in its own right. Russia is what's left of the old USSR (still absolutely massive).

The radiation that went into the atmosphere from the explosion was found as far away as the UK, as others have pointed out, and many other European countries found increased radiation levels. So far from a minor local issue that we can all happily forget about because it happened a long time ago.

Here's what Wikipedia says about the effect on the UK, for example. Restrictions on livestock movements until this decade.

The United Kingdom was forced to restrict the movement of sheep from upland areas when radioactive caesium-137 fell across parts of Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and northern England. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster in 1986, the movement of a total of 4,225,000 sheep was restricted across a total of 9,700 farms, to prevent contaminated meat entering the human food chain.[143] The number of sheep and the number of farms affected has decreased since 1986, Northern Ireland was released from all restrictions in 2000 and by 2009 369 farms containing around 190,000 sheep remained under the restrictions in Wales, Cumbria and northern Scotland.[143] The restrictions applying in Scotland were lifted in 2010, while those applying to Wales and Cumbria were lifted during 2012, meaning no farms in the UK remain restricted because of Chernobyl fallout.[144][145]

The legislation used to control sheep movement and compensate farmers (farmers were latterly compensated per animal to cover additional costs in holding animals prior to radiation monitoring) was revoked during October and November 2012 by the relevant authorities in the UK.[146]

In my opinion, the most important thing for us to know is that we don't know everything. We just know different things to other people. And we should know that we can learn something from each and every one of those people. Every day's a school day and all that....

when i was early 20s or so i played trivial pursuits and my dm called me obtuse.
i didnt know what she meant tbh

who is the prime minister?
Isnt that a question for the Memory Clinic, or something, I dont spose it is now, but it Used to be

That's why reading and travelling are so important. Obviously not everyone affords to travel, but everyone can read. They just don't want to.

i wonder if it is lack of books,
my dd has no idea of geography, where countries are, an atlas would help more than google i feel

i wonder if it is lack of books

I don't think my voracious appetite for science fiction/fantasy books has helped my general knowledge at all.

Some people just retain "useless" knowledge better than others. My brain seems to file away snippets of information with ease (but forgets useful day things like where my phone is!)

Yup, who is the Prime Minster is still a dementia question, google found that answer for me.

Perhaps it is too much easily accessible information, at our finger tips, we cannot retain all the facts? We dont need to retain the facts since google has all the answers

I’m in my early 40s and I remember the Chernobyl disaster being on the news (there was also a fascinating documentary some years later called something like “inside the Chernobyl sarcophagus” which I watched too - I was particularly fascinated by the new chemical computation had been found, IIRC one of them is called chernobylite). However, I couldn’t have told you that Chernobyl was in Ukraine. Because at the time of the disaster Ukraine wasn’t a separate country, it was part of the USSR.

I'm still amazed at the number of adult women who haven't heard of Emmeline Pankhurst and only have a vague idea about Suffrage.

my dd has no idea of geography, where countries are, an atlas would help more than google i feel

When I was 11 my parents bought me a huge world atlas. I spent hours poring over it. Consequently I have a very good idea of geography.

I've learnt a lot of interesting and previously unknown facts from Mumsnet actually I didn't know how closely Russia and America were physically located (had only seen a Mercator map) until last year much later in life. Thank you Mumsnet sure there is a lot more.

"who is the prime minister?
Isnt that a question for the Memory Clinic, or something, I dont spose it is now, but it Used to be"

Yes, I have been asked that, and I think they must have a way of discerning if you are politically ignorant or confused (eg I answered Tony Blair so knew my prime ministers but not which year I was in ) DH said they also asked me for my address prior to this (which I actually got wrong too ) so it's part of a clearer picture. I bet there is a MN expert who can explain this in more detail? See what I mean about MN being an excellent source of knowledge

I had an atlas too and loved it - and a globe, although it was my dad's globe from the 40's so it was more of a hindrance than a help. Lack of basic knowledge about where countries are in the world (not as in pin pointing them either) astounds me, my niece was going to the Maldives and thought it was near Florida and was talking about doing a couple of days in Miami on the way back.

Well that's a shaming cross post hoppity

Dds friend asked me if Jesus was born at Easter, I find things like that surprising

Yy everyone has gaps in their knowledge. I used to be a bookworm, am now a Googleworm, and contribute a lot to my pub quiz team. But I have never known what 'reactionary' means. Finally looked it up yesterday and the answer surprised me.
Am in my 40's so remember Tchernobyl happening.

Haha WeBuiltCisCItyOnSexistRoles! I love the Gall Peters map. Actually I just love a map. I love the real tube map of London too. I'm obsessed by the historic overlay maps where you can see what your town looked like over the decades - history and geography all in one!

maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=5&lat=56.0000&lon=-4.0000&layers=1&b=1

But the best map ever is the one where they plot all the seal and dolphin sightings on the Thames.

sites.zsl.org/inthethames/?&_ga=2.234942465.1059828945.1560680634-2141287478.1560680634#Public%20sightings

I'm such a feckin' nerd.

Coyoacan: “The trouble with you attitude *CurlyhairedAssassin, is that when a person honestly expresses theit interest in knowing the answer they are made to feel bad.”

Ah but you’re making assumptions. For that particular example, someone simply just explained what it was. There was no ridiculing, not even a raised eyebrow. So how was she made to feel bad? It only came up later when we some of us older support staff were discussing about pupils’ gaps in knowledge and a couple of us agreed that we were sometimes surprised by the younger teachers’ gaps in knowledge too, and a couple of us gave that example from a couple of days earlier.

There is no ridicule. We all have good manners and an urge to make others feel at ease, and frankly, picking someone up in something they don’t know, in front of a room full of others is downright nasty. It was an observation amongst a couple of us by ourselves later, , as is taking place on this thread. We didn’t then go and tell loads of other people who weren’t there “oh my god, you never guess what Miss X didn’t know!”

With regard to the Chernobyl accident or rather some techy's buggering around with something that they ought not have done!, Britian almost had her own nuclear disaster back in 1957 where a nuclear "pile" caught fire and burnt out of control. It was thought at the time to have lead to 240 cases of thyriod Cancer.

The "Cockcroft follies" I refered to eariler were high perfomace filters put in place on top of the chimney stacks at the insistance of Sir John Cockcroft in case a fire did happen, a lot of scienctists poh-poh'ed the idea and said it would never happen and when it did it saved a much wider area from being contaminated and if they hadn't been there it would have been around the same as the Chernobyl accient in terms of contamination!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

By the way anyone know what "Cockcrofts Follies" were without looking it up? It is Nuclear related and in England!

Without googling, they were on the top of the 'chimney' of the power station then called 'Calder Hall' they were a safety feature called 'follies' because the vast majority of engineers thought they were of no use.

But when there was a problem, I think it was a fire, they did their job and stopped the disaster being bigger than it was.

There was a radiation leak, of which I cannot remember details but that resulted in milk from Cumbria being poured down the drain.

It’s interesting how contextual general knowledge can be. I’m a lot older than my brother (13 years). There are news events I remember (e.g. the fall of the Berlin Wall) that he learnt about in history lessons (he was a baby when it happened). My knowledge about this event is very different to his knowledge.

Constantly shocked. Why, most people don't know the date of the Treaty of Westphalia. Astonishing!