191–200 of 302 posts
I know the premise of this book is different, but they do touch on the fact that siblings usually have the same level of intelligence.
This is a very controversial book. Any thoughts anyone would like to share?
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…
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…
Agreed, but after watching Idiocracy a few days ago, I saw that the background imagery of the the year 2505 in Idiocracy is dystopian: there is desertification, food scarcity, decaying buildings, traffic accidents, garbage heap collapses, lack of sanitation, poor medical care, etc. it doesn't actually look anything like a risk-free environment that rewards witlessness.
I'm sure we can think of the current situation that endangers the survival chances practitioners of stupid behaviour as well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Learning Channel (TLC) once aired documentaries but is now a heartbeat away from "Ow, My Balls!" Is TLC making people more stupid or are they just giving an already foolish population what they want?
Hey, I remember when the "L" meant "learning" too (I think they changed it to "Life" now). I don't think consuming "stupid" entertainment makes us stupid or is even a solid indicator of intelligence (if you can settle on a definition of it). TLC just saw a market and pivoted, imo.
Collectively, however, I think it's a bad sign.
TLC isn't the only one who saw a market and pivoted. Sticking with TV examples, the History channel has shows about monsters and aliens now. Discovery's content is almost as bad.
It's not just that there's a market for stupid entertainment. It's that the market for non-stupid entertainment seems like it's shrinking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a really good example of not liking a solution and resolving that conflict by denying the problem. Was there a single point in your life where your worldview crystalized or was it an evolving process? I'm genuinely interested in how people arrive at the place your at.
Your comment is patronizing, but I'll do my best. Pollution is still a problem for me. I'd say I evolved as I matured as an individual. There was only so much fearful propaganda I could consume before my curiosity led me to examine the premises. The repeated invocation of apocalypse to scare people has direct historical parallels to other religious financial schemes. What is an ideal climate, and how would fallible m…
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…
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.
I am suspicious of the literacy rates in [0] and [1]. It seems that someone who immigrates from a foreign country would be considered illiterate if they did not speak English, but had high proficiency in reading and writing in their native language. Not knowing one specific language is very different from being generally uneducated.
[0] https://mblc.state.ma.us/programs-and-support/adult-literacy...
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/us-literacy...
Friends and colleagues who had children were sometimes offended (I think that really put a lot of people off), but the movie implicates us all as idiots drawn to spectacle. There's a marvelous scene in which Frito, Not Sure, and Rita peer around a corner as police surround Frito's car. The police open fire on the vehicle and as the fusillade intensifies, Frito is increasingly enthralled and delighted by the destruction until the car explodes under rocket fire and Frito exclaims in joy. And then the realization of what happened sets in, and as a viewer I became aware of how I was sucked into that bizarre scene. The joke was on me ;-)
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.