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Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

theguardian.com

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Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#151

Post by vorpalhex »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #128
vorpalhex wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The Flynn Effect is actually no longer observed. [0] There is a multi-decade IQ drop in multiple European countries with otherwise world-leading Education systems. More interestingly the drop is also happening intra-family which defeats the initial theory of a dumbing down of the gene pool. Currently the best theory is that there is an environmental cause. If I'm allowed to speculate my money is on diesel engine NO2…

This meta-analysis from 2014 disagrees: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4152423/

The study underlying that CNN article only used three decades of data and only for Norwegian males. Also note that their cohort IQ delta is < 2 points across a decade which is well within error margin.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#152

Post by autokad »

neuronic wrote: post #91
battles wrote: post #40

One of the best predictions from Idiocracy is our reliance on AI that no one understands anymore. They made all of these systems that did everything for them and decades later, after barely even needing to think for themselves for so long, they’re dumb as rocks and have no idea how anything works.

AI doesn't exist. There is nothing inherently intelligent about deep NNs which are merely very good pattern matching algorithms, statistics really... The term AI suggests something is thinking which is false marketing at best, abused by thousands of consulting companies for a decade now. Unless of course your opinion is that thinking is just statistics which makes for an interesting metaphysical discussion.

some of the new techniques in natural language processing that uses transformers is getting closer to understanding. Understanding may be an illusion though.

I wrote a game in 2002 for a class I was in, you have a space ship and you shoot alien ships. To make the game challenging, when the user was far away from the alien ships they would move randomly, if you moved in on them they moved away in a random direction, and once you got too close they would vector strait for the ship in a kamakaze attack. I also needed to figure out when the alien ships would fire back, so I just made them randomly fire when the user also fired. Given that your ship's firing range was limited, this created a dangerous scenario where you tried to chase down a ship, and at the last moment it would come right at you and fire. the point of all of this was that when people played the game, they stated "wow, the AI of this game is really good". People believed the AI was thinking when it was just a few rules.

I dont suppose its impossible to be tricked into thinking something had understanding even if that something is itself. if something is complicated enough and good enough at making decisions, it seems possible its not understanding but just a sufficiently complicated process, or maybe a sufficiently complicated process is understanding

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#153

Post by alphabettsy »

chrsig wrote: post #104
alphabettsy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, but while accurate it was terrible. Idiocracy is funny, Don’t Look Up was not to me.

Can you describe how you felt it was terrible?

Sure, I guess I was expecting satirical comedy and it was just satire. It wasn’t funny to me and it wasn’t particularly entertaining.

I wasn’t engaged or entertained so I thought it was terrible.

I think Idiocracy was great because it was funny and used the future to allow you to see and imagine how it came to be that way. Don’t Look Up exaggerates the present in a way that feels familiar but misses the mark somehow.

I’m likely the target audience for the movie based on my left of center politics, but I suspect some will say it’s a great movie because of political tribalism and never watch it again because they know it’s actually not very good.

Just my opinion.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#154

Post by vorpalhex »

titzer wrote: post #73
vorpalhex wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a meta-analysis of 281 studies that found very strong support for the Flynn Effect: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4152423/

I am not disputing the numbers. Read my comment again.

> There are plenty of reasons to question whether the Flynn effect (rise in IQ test scores) actually reflects increases in general intelligence rather than testing skills.

The Flynn effect appears to reflect increases in general intelligence unless you believe world wide testing scores all have the same bias, across different tests.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#155

Post by quacked »

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…

IQ is not rising; literacy rates are falling in the developed world. As an example, fewer people are literate in Massachusetts now than when it was founded.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#156

Post by im3w1l »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #128
vorpalhex wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The Flynn Effect is actually no longer observed. [0] There is a multi-decade IQ drop in multiple European countries with otherwise world-leading Education systems. More interestingly the drop is also happening intra-family which defeats the initial theory of a dumbing down of the gene pool. Currently the best theory is that there is an environmental cause. If I'm allowed to speculate my money is on diesel engine NO2…

Random mutations means that children are on average a little less fit than their parents.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#157

Post by chrsig »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #118
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…

We do indeed disagree!

I don't think it was saying that politics and politicians as trivial -- I think it was saying that they're not necessarily smart people, and they're certainly not necessarily acting in the best interests of the people they serve.

I think they were also saying that the media serves to reinforce denial in the general population.

The asteroid is just a plot device -- the message is that in the face of mortal danger, huge chunks of the population refuse to even acknowledge the danger so that any intervention can be made. And those in power will exploit that for their own enrichment.

We don't just see this with climate change -- we've observed it with the previous administration...some hits:

- "Lock her up" -- yes, let's just start imprisoning political rivals and see what that does for us as a society)

- "Covid will go away by april" - I suppose they didn't say which april.

- Hydroxychloroquine/Ivermectin/Vitamin C

- Vaccines have microchips

- Masks don't do anything

The list goes on -- We've seen that the population is perfectly willing to disregard any science that threatens their way of life. It's easier to dismiss than to adjust.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#158

Post by Apocryphon »

chrsig wrote: post #134
carapace wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never seen anybody take the premise of the movie seriously though. Where have you looked? People have been talking about this for awhile now. > If idiots are reproducing out of control and that will lead to a bad result Yeah... > doesn't that mean we should reduce the reproduction of idiots and increase the reproduction of the intelligent? Who's "we" in that sentence? Intelligent people are unlikely to adopt f…

> Who's "we" in that sentence? Intelligent people are unlikely to adopt foolish plans, by definition. You're confusing intelligence with wisdom. Intelligent people are likely to recognize a plan as foolish. They may or may not have the wisdom to avoid adopting it. Knowledge doesn't necessarily change behavior -- there are many many smart people who've gotten addicted to harmful substances, for example.

Not to mention many of the systemic problems in the world today have been caused by smart people letting their avarice, greed, and other base desires get the better of them.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#159

Post by cxr »

chrsig wrote: post #101
cxr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that bothers me about most contemporary praise for Idiocracy is the failure to view it through the appropriate historical lens, and so most of the praise ends up being shallow in the retconned context. Idiocracy was created in a specific time period—the same one that American Dad! was born in. (NB: "born" being the crucial word in the previous sentence.) It's possible in 2021—or 2011, even—to have watched a…

I mean...I can see why it'd be called smug...but to be honest, I don't think it was targeted to people that would be bothered by the smugness. That is, it seemed like it was genuinely an expression of frustration/dismay/astonishment by it's creators to give it's audience a bit of...not quite catharsis...solidarity perhaps?

Well, yeah. And that's exactly what's wrong with it. That's _all_ it is. As a result, the sense of smugness is undeserved. It's a way for everyone who sits in the second panel of the glowing brain meme to shit on people in the first panel and feel good about it, instead of focusing on the fact they're still in #2. It's an out-and-out display of the word "sophomoric".

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#160

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

autokad wrote: post #123
champagnois wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is important people feel accepted and such, but reality requires everyone participate in the meritocracy of struggling through the economy. A company that can afford to do identity-politics based hiring initiatives is a company that has more money than they know what to do with. Companies in the earlier stages that will go on to be successful are going to be lean and meritocratic. FWIW, I really like how the Coinb…

> FWIW, I really like how the Coinbase CEO handled the toxic woke employees they got burdoned with." I haven't heard of this, is there a good source I can read up on it?

I believe it's a reference to this open letter:

https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-is-a-mission-focused-comp...

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