Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future • Hacker News Board

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#141

Post by InspiredIdiot » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

InspiredIdiot wrote: post #113

gota wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By the way, I'm not arguing for artificially controlling the birth rate or eugenics or whatever else. We need a properly-funded education system that teaches critical thinking. There is both a nature and nurture component to intelligence and related traits but we can get plenty of mileage by focusing on the nurture part.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#142

Post by cblconfederate » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

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.

provided that we don't get so dumb in the meanwhile that we forget how to do genetics

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#143

Post by Apocryphon » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

I liked this previous comment thread with a minority detractor view on Idiocracy, which argues it’s a little more dated to it’s specific Bush-era cultural milieu than everyone remembers:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18489573

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#144

Post by jmount » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

mattkevan wrote: post #52

Idiocracy doesn’t actually go far enough to match current-day reality. In the film, people were smart enough to understand they weren’t all that intelligent. Even the president was willing to defer to someone who knew more than him. The last couple of years have proven that to be rather naive when it comes to our real leadership.

Idiocracy is in indeed the easy case. Notice there is no villain in the movie. Even the sports drink company isn't pressing hard.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#145

Post by ModernMech » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

fortyseven wrote: post #110

micromacrofoot wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idiocracy was satirical comedy, Don't Look Up is just satire.

DLU didn't know WHAT it wanted to be, so it tried to be both a comedy AND drama. Sucked at both, imo. Great cast. Lousy execution. Can't for the life of me figure out the appeal. I mean, sure, people are morons, but everyone everywhere had to be CARTOONISHLY stupid and incompetent in the flick to make the plot work. That worked for Idiocracy because that was the projected future. A warning. DLU needs that level of du…

It’s interesting that you call the characters cartoonishly stupid, but another poster in this thread characterized the film as “so grounded in reality that it took very little creativity to write or think about. Making 1-to-1 comparisons of things and people”. I have not seen the film yet, so I’m a little curious how opinions could differ so widely.

Can you give an example of something from the film you thought was so cartoonishly stupid?

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#146

Post by mattkevan » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

jspash wrote: post #122

mattkevan wrote: post #52

Idiocracy doesn’t actually go far enough to match current-day reality. In the film, people were smart enough to understand they weren’t all that intelligent. Even the president was willing to defer to someone who knew more than him. The last couple of years have proven that to be rather naive when it comes to our real leadership.

Please don't group the current administration with the previous one.

Hey I’m from the UK. I’m talking about our lot just as much as anyone else’s.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#147

Post by cblconfederate » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

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?

Art isnt meant to be reality. A lot of comments here seem to be reading its plot as if it was some kind of futuristic documentary.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#148

Post by mullingitover » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

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 know Don't Look Up was supposed to spur people into action, but I came away feeling hopeless, like the industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#149

Post by cblconfederate » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

hamiltonians wrote: post #108

wealthy, smart people tend to have more kids, not fewer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence

> There is evidence that, on a population level, intelligence is negatively correlated with fertility rate and positively correlated with survival rate of offspring.[1] It is postulated that, if the inverse correlation of IQ with fertility rate is stronger than the correlation of IQ with survival rate, and if the correlation between IQ and fertility can be linked to genetic factors, then the hereditary component of IQ will decrease with every new generation, eventually giving rise to a 'reversed Flynn effect', as has been observed in Norway, Denmark, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, France and German-speaking countries, where a slow decline in average IQ scores has been noted since the 1990s

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#150

Post by throwvirtever » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

Croftengea wrote: post #97

cbozeman wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm pretty sure Arnold would become a president at some point if he was born in the US.

For context:

- "Arnold" is Arnold Schwarzenegger, an Austrian-born American actor who served as Governor of California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schwarzenegger

- The US Constitution restricts eligibility for the Presidency to "natural-born citizens" of the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural-born-citizen_clause_(U...