“I feel that the show "Jeopardy" is a conspiracy.”
It is managed, but not a ‘conspiracy.’
“I consider myself to be semi intelligent and at least somewhat competant in a broad range of knowledge.”
Just, not how to spell competent.
But, yeah, right there with you. People of a certain intelligence watch the show and think, “If I was lucky in the topics, I could do well.”
And it’s not about the level of intelligence, but a certain TYPE of intelligence, the kind that stores stray bits of info the way a squirrel stores nuts.
My wife and I both attended a recruitment drive in Orlando. Every couple of hours they run about 50 people through a trivia test.
About four make it to the second level.
See, they don’t want three people looking at each other and saying, “Fuck, man, I don’t know.” Boring. So they give you this outrageous test. Then they grade the test while you watch an episode of celebrity jeopardy. And those questions are DUMB! And they still miss them.
Fucking annoying.
Then they come out and interview, like I said, about four out of our group. The rest of us can go spend the day in Disney. I think about 2 of our group were invited to come out to LA for a taping.
“I beleive Jeopardy is a psycholigcal operation to make the United States look superior.”
Then one has to ask why it’s played in the US?
And why is Mastermind so much harder in the UK?
“People normally have specialized knowledge, not a mastery in such a broad range of topics.”
It’s the type of intelligence, not the amount. Different brains work differently.
There’s an episode of NewsRadio where the Lisa Miller character decides she’s going to master the word jumble in today’s paper. She can’t make heads or tails of it.
Every character, though, walks by, looks over her shoulder, says “Number one is ‘turgid’.” and walks on. Next character, “Number two is ‘upsell’.” and so on.
You’re not dumb if you can’t play Jeopardy, you’re just not equipped with that sort of brain.
