Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 302 posts

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#111

Post by dagw »

ss108 wrote: post #93
cbozeman wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ronald Reagan. Donald Trump. Shit... why not Dwayne Johnson?

I don't think grouping Reagan and The Rock with Trump is fair at all.

Reagan at least accured some political experience and held lower elected office before running for president. Trump used his celebrity status to compensate for his lack of experience and went straight for the presidency. Time will tell which path, if any, The Rock will follow. Although judging by the current political mood, my money is on the Trump path.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#112

Post by fairity »

InspiredIdiot wrote: post #102
fairity wrote: post #85

This prophecy is flat out wrong because it ignores the future impact of genetic engineering. The rise of genetic engineering is going to allow humans to solely give birth to geniuses. This will more than counteract this idiocracy effect.

I don't know why you would assume that. If the things most people value like social acceptance and popularity don't value intelligence why would the parents select for it even if they could? It will simply become a cheaper route to everyone being a supermodel than plastic surgery.

Well, there's no reason to believe attractiveness and intelligence are mutually exclusive. Are you saying parents would choose to forego intelligent traits in their children when all else is equal?

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#113

Post by InspiredIdiot »

gota wrote: post #53
ALittleLight wrote: post #29

Many people like to say "Idiocracy is a documentary" or some similar thing implying they think it's realistic. I've never seen anybody take the premise of the movie seriously though. If idiots are reproducing out of control and that will lead to a bad result, doesn't that mean we should reduce the reproduction of idiots and increase the reproduction of the intelligent? To avert Idiocracy we need eugenics, no?

Idiocracy mixed being educated with being intelligent. Being educated is not hereditary and does not (I think) affect intelligence of your children* Satisfactory nutrition and exposure to positive and engaging environments during childhood affect your intelligence no matter who your parents were * other than that educated parents are more likely to provide the positive and engaging environment, maybe? Not in the leas…

You're right but who cares if the route isn't genetic? If parents or society at large have essentially the same negative characteristics highlighted in the film and a higher birth rate it is functionally the same outcome.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#114

Post by actually_a_dog »

racl101 wrote: post #82

At this point I'd pray for a Demolition Man kind of future. I could live with the notion of a high falutin Taco Bell.

Seriously. Like, I still don't know how to use the 3 seashells, but, more and more it's looking like Idiocracy is actually more of a best case scenario for the next several decades. We're probably going to self destruct before the end of this century.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#115

Post by foobiekr »

vorpalhex wrote: post #64
zarkov99 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reality is much darker than this: cognitive elites have fewer children than the rest so the average population IQ drops over time (once you fix the low hanging fruits of nutrition/health care of course) . I do not see any solution to this that is not straight out of Brave New World.

While a great plot point that is entirely fantasy and fiction. The average IQ rate of every generation tends to be a few points higher, though there may be a cap. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

You should actually read that page. It has slowed, stopped and possibly reversed since as early as the 1970s.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#116

Post by minitoar »

edoceo wrote: post #86
seanhandley wrote: post #56

The irony for me here is that the author adds no additional intelligence or insight of their own - this is a simple retelling of the story of the Idiocracy film - framed as a prophecy coming true - simply to add eyeballs to the content machine that pays their salary.

I like money.

- Dr. Lexus

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#117

Post by chrsig »

huijzer wrote: post #74

> 'Observing that “evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence”, the narrator explains that “with no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most – and left the intelligent to become an endangered species”.' As a counterexample, there are the people in the top 1 000 or so of the Forbes ranking. All pretty clever and not really endangered at all. The article reads…

How does clever people in being in the forbes ranking relate to the darwinian appraisal?

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#118

Post by Emma_Goldman »

chrsig wrote: post #78

I encourage everyone to watch Don't Look Up . In many ways it struck me as the spiritual successor to Idiocracy. I needed to watch it in chunks, because of how viscerally real it is. It is funny, in that it's ostensibly comedy, and the actors all have great comedic timing...but it's also a very very honest appraisal of where we're at as a society.

I have to disagree. It attempts to satirise today's mass media by exaggerating its influence on politics to the point at which it revolves around little else, succumbing to what it is supposed to be objecting to: the idea of politics and politicians as trivial. The plotline was so wildly implausible that it ended up saying little about the real world.

Also, the asteroid threat is not a good analogy for climate change, as it is supposed to be. Climate change is so difficult to deal with because its effects are uncertain, long-term and unevenly felt. None of those issues hold for an asteroid that will, per the plot, destroy the whole of human civilization in 6 months with 99.9% certainty absent intervention.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#119

Post by walrus01 »

scotty79 wrote: post #4

First time I had a revelation that we are close to Idiocracy was when I saw the movie Crank which came out the same year. It a had vibe so close to "Ow my b*lls" movie featured in Idiocracy. And I was entertained.

there's now dozens of "fail army" youtube channels with many millions of subscribers that are basically "ow, my balls!" in real life.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#120

Post by jeffreyrogers »

netcan wrote: post #103

Idiocracy is fun, but the instinctive "OMG so true" is, IMO, wrong. The film riffs on a common fallacy more so than it's actually insightful. Statements like "people these days are so stupid/lazy/immoral" tend get an instinctive thumbs up. The slang, pop culture & consumerism of the future are the main way the film "demonstrates" that people got dumber. The premise of Idiocracy is that dumb people reproduce more and…

> Eugenics aside, the reality is that IQ has been rising

The Flynn effect has probably reversed recently for the developed world[0]. It's probably still occurring in the developing world due to better access to nutrition (among other things, but nutrition is probably most important).

[0]: https://www.pnas.org/content/115/26/6674

Post reply on HN