Why Is "The Real Meaning of MPH" Video Popular in the US?

This is a video of a young woman caught in her own confusion when trying to answer an excessively simple and straightforward question. The video is depressing in what it says about modern education in the US, and about the thinking styles that many young people may have adopted from marinating in popular culture for an excessive proportion of their time.

But the video opens an interesting window on different modes of human brain function. The young woman is stuck in a "derivational mode" of thinking in a situation where a "definitional mode" of thinking is more appropriate. In the case of the video, it appears that the woman cannot shift gear into a definitional mode of thinking. The definition of "miles per hour" involves the concept of "rate," which is difficult for some people to master. A lot of people have the same kind of problem understanding "per cent."

Perhaps she is tired, preoccupied with something else, or perhaps she has never learned to understand the concept of "rate." That is too bad, since one cannot understand the world very deeply without mental mastery of at least a few types of rates.

In attempting to answer the question, she begins to confabulate in a circular manner of thinking which is more than a little disturbing, considering that she is likely to be well above the IQ mean of likely voters in the November US elections.

Many people derive a sense of pleasure in feeling superior to another person, and such a person may enjoy watching the video -- assuming that he himself thinks he understands the rudimentary rate of miles per hour. Feeling superior because one knows the answer to a question that someone else may not know, is very often a tenuous and fleeting kind of superiority.

Thinking clearly is a skill that is not generally taught or learned in US schools. It is likely that a developmental window exists for many thinking skills, beyond which the skills become very difficult to teach.