Due to anti-vaccine hype from 1998 to 2021 which then flipped to the other major US political party, there is recurring rending of garments about science literacy. Add in a 9% difference between the left and right in acceptance of evolution and beliefs that fructose in honey is health food while fructose in corn syrup is poison, PFAS, and that GMOs cause lower grades in school, it's easy to see that US adult science literacy is only about 30%.

What most don't realize is that American adult science literacy at ~30% is the highest in the world. France leads the entire planet in anti-vaccine sentiment(1), for example, while nearly all of Asia believes in ghosts and that acupuncture and alternatives to medicine work.

There is some good news about critical thinking, though. People aren't as fooled by AI as critics worry. Yes, people are fine with it in video games and memes, though it was only intellectual bottom-feeders fooled by George Washington with a Chinese flag.(2) Basically, half of the people who fill out stuff for the Eureka survey system.



Not everyone will know that the communist flag didn't exist by then but more obvious things were easy to spot, like the difference between the image of an actor playing a comic book character in a film and an AI reworking of the comic book character. Would they know the difference between AI and actual comic book art, though?

 I am not spending money on that survey and neither is anyone else, but it's good that 89% of people see through these things. 


Pretty obvious, and 89% of people got it, but even believing any of them were fooled when it is in the statistical noise range, because surveys, is a mistake. That AI image is just as 'real' as the one above. Both are a fictional character.

I mostly look forward to Republicans and Democrats insisting that it's the other side who are the dumb ones, when those of us in the middle know most people believe anything if their political leaders tell them they should. Nothing else can explain why some believe socialism is viable or that Bobby Kennedy II wants to help anyone except his rich, white friends.

(1) It's really no close, as you can see graphically here. They hate science, and that is why they are the perfect country to host the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which also hates science and exists to claim useful products are secretly giving us cancer while officially denying they determine risk or make claims about cancer.



(2) The same level of people who believe weedkillers cause human cancer; perfect for a San Francisco jury against science, but don't let them do anything important.