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

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#221

Post by Manuel_D » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 6:59 PM UTC

fnimick wrote: post #129

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…

"Meritocracy" in the workplace is a myth perpetuated by those in power to justify their position. The Coinbase CEO got raked over the coals for his handling, and rightly so.

That was not my impression at all of the reception. An extremely small segment of the workforce left, despite generous exit packages. The impression I got from my coworkers and peers was mostly a sigh of relief and wishing their own companies would follow suit. The opinions of a vocal minority on Twitter are often not the opinions of the workforce.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#222

Post by gota » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 7:00 PM UTC

mateomorris wrote: post #65

gota wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's more Wall-e than Idiocracy, I think. Was there any talk of AI in Idiocracy?

Automation, at least. When they started spraying the crops with water (like from the toilet) instead of Brawndo, half the population got automatically laid off.

Good point. I was recalling the movie here and also noticed that the doctor's appointment consisted of the doctor plugging the patient into a machine, too.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#223

Post by GeoAtreides » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 7:04 PM UTC

aseerdbnarng wrote: post #181

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Its not good satire because its very heavy handed (similar to Idiocracy) but its criticisms seemed spot on to me. The characters were all there from the jingoist politicians, a media focused on trivial distractions, techno utopianists, a fragmented society that cant agree on common truths and ultimately a disastrous ending that could have been avoided. Its not a cheerful movie

>Its not good satire because its very heavy handed

ah, yes, such blunt and heavy handed satire compared with old, subtle satire, like that one, modest, pamphlet advocating for eating poor children.

not sure why satire needs to be subtle to be good. It can go from crass to oscar-wilde-subtle, as long as it's funny and based on reality I would call it good.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#224

Post by carapace » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

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.

> 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.

Well, to a first approximation wisdom is second-order intelligence, intelligence-about-intelligence, eh? Put another way, I see a continuum from mere cunning to intelligence to self-referential intelligence to sublime wisdom.

E.g. the Tao Te Ching is (IMO) one of the clearest and greatest written expositions of wisdom, consider chapter seventeen on leaders:

    With the best kind of leader
    when the work is complete
    the people all say
    "We did it ourselves."

Is that not describing hyper-intelligence? Leaders so smart and wise that they achieve their goals without anyone noticing them?

In the context we're talking about, the "we" is (again by definition) the smartest (or, if you will, the wisest) minority, at the far end of the bell curve. The idea that idiocracy should be fought with eugenics is itself a layer of the idiocracy, not something that these very intelligent people would credit.

> Knowledge doesn't necessarily change behavior -- there are many many smart people who've gotten addicted to harmful substances, for example.

I disagree, I think that knowledge (by definition) is that information that makes us capable of changing our behaviour at will. Intelligence is operational. Smart people that become addicts and can't stop are obviously less intelligent than those who avoid it in the first place or who find ways to stop, surely?

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#225

Post by giantg2 » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

fairity wrote: post #125

giantg2 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because someone posses intelligence does not mean they use it, or use it appropriately. Curiosity and becoming auto didactic are likely nurture vs nature. If you do have a societal shift in intelligence, then it will just change the baseline. IQ scores are relative to the mean. People will question what the point of the intelligence arms race is. Will it make life any better? Will it present more threats (more i…

Agreed that it's unclear how future intelligence will be used. My only claim is that future generations will possess far greater intelligence than current generations.

In theory, but we don't have any object way to measure it, right?

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#226

Post by scollet » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #148

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.

I don't know that it's a disaster necessarily. I think people aren't prepared or don't want to pay the debt we took.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#227

Post by millzlane » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

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…

I always thought the asteroid threat was the pandemic.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#228

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #120

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

[deleted]

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#229

Post by mixedCase » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 7:26 PM UTC

brnt wrote: post #176

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…

People are getting smarter on ever narrower domains. This is convenient for industrial and commercial processes, because how to break them down is again one such specialization and thus increasingly well understood. We are however not encouraged, and often discouraged, from transposing skills of discernation and thinking. "I'm an engineer, not a politician" and such. "IANAL". In an ever more complex human world, we a…

> People are getting smarter on ever narrower domains

Sorry to border on nitpicking, but since it gets to the very heart of the discussion:

Idiocracy and the discussion at large is about people getting dumber, AKA less smart/intelligent, over time due to one or more compounding dysgenic effects. This concept is also what most people believe IQ tests to measure.

What I believe you meant to say is "people are focusing their knowledge on ever narrower domains", which is also a very important discussion to have, but a different one.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#230

Post by millzlane » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 7:29 PM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #219

chrsig wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let me take a couple of specific examples. Upon being told that an asteroid large enough to destroy human civilization was on course to hit the earth in 6 months, the President decided that it would make strategic sense to delay announcing or acting on the threat until after the midterms - a month or so later. This was conspicuous for the fact no reason was given, which had to be the case as it makes no sense. Coun…

> Counter example: Trump new about the severity of covid and downplayed it for quite some time instead of trying to rally the country. The irony is that the pandemic was such a slam-dunk easy win politically. Handled with the minimum level of political savvy, this was a dead simple way to send his approval ratings into the van allen belt, just like Bush post-9/11. I think his personal financial stake in the hospitali…

I remember when asked about what to say to the American people about the pandemic who are scared. His response was to lash out. It was such a easy slam dunk question, I was almost inspired to create a you tube video asking people to remix it and answer the question like a president.