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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

#251

Post by squarefoot »

frabbit wrote: post #233
mwattsun wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with Idiocracy is the assumption that working class and poor breed only more dumb people. This is untrue, as many of our brightest people came from humble backgrounds. The quote evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould is most know for is “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fi…

To me Idiocracy is a disgusting classist assault on the poor. Whenever I hear someone praise it my opinion of them drops like an aeroplane with a broken wing.

The movie isn't making the assumption that poor=idiot anywhere (one of the dumbest characters in the movie is a lawyer, the other works for the POTUS) but especially at the beginning, that if you have the resources to raise, cure and send to school say two kids, and you make 8, in today's society you just made six or more potential homeless or criminals, assuming they don't die sooner for starvation and absence of cures. Making more kids than usual for poor people isn't unnatural as in nature it is very normal to fight weakness with numbers, but that shouldn't be the case for humans. Insects are among the weakest species out there, a moderate storm can kill them by the millions (billions?) but their number is so large that they're not going to be extinct anytime soon. But again, they aren't people and live in their world in which you just have to reach the closest flower to make the day.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#252

Post by 8note »

champagnois wrote: post #242
autokad wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Summarizing the event from memory, it seemed during the BLM virtue signalling craze -- he told his staff, "Coinbase exists to make money and not to be political. If you are unhappy about the lack of political expression and you need to leave because of discomfort over this -- the employer will apologize with a parting gift of a large sum of money." Essentially, he bribed the toxic political radicals to leave and take…

It's kinda strange that coin base would choose such a political sphere to make money in if they don't want to be political.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#253

Post by champagnois »

8note wrote: post #252
champagnois wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Summarizing the event from memory, it seemed during the BLM virtue signalling craze -- he told his staff, "Coinbase exists to make money and not to be political. If you are unhappy about the lack of political expression and you need to leave because of discomfort over this -- the employer will apologize with a parting gift of a large sum of money." Essentially, he bribed the toxic political radicals to leave and take…

It's kinda strange that coin base would choose such a political sphere to make money in if they don't want to be political.

They walk a very fine line. It seems like a difficult balancing act of compliance with regulators while appealing to users who expect hyper inflation and envision a libertarian utopian future.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#254

Post by blamestross »

Idiocracy is hilariously optimistic.

The people of the future:

1) Noticed that a guy they sent to jail was competent

2) Promptly assigned him a role with responsibility appropriate to the competency

3) Didn't understand but at least TRIED to listen to what he had to say

4) When he bypassed the bureaucracy to demonstrate ways to solve problems they noticed, listened, and rewarded him for it.

I don't think our current government is that mindful and self-aware.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#255

Post by nyolfen »

mwattsun wrote: post #192
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…

My problem with Idiocracy is the assumption that working class and poor breed only more dumb people. This is untrue, as many of our brightest people came from humble backgrounds. The quote evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould is most know for is “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fi…

it is true however that in the west, education is inversely correlated with fertility, that education is closely linked to intelligence, statistically, and that intelligence is at least 50% accounted for by heritability, as shown by many large studies.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#257

Post by squarefoot »

seanhandley wrote: post #202
neuronic wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If more people watch the film and become aware of the state of our "society" maybe such a blog post still served a purpose.

For sure! I'm not saying it has no purpose, but I wish it had a bit more intellectual weight to it.

If it had any, it would probably be ignored. Outrage could be the price to pay to see some of our faults thrown straight at our face.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#258

Post by carapace »

chrsig wrote: post #247
carapace wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Is that not describing hyper-intelligence? Leaders so smart and wise that they achieve their goals without anyone noticing them? Do you have a definition for hyper-intelligence? > I disagree, I think that knowledge (by definition) is that information that makes us capable of changing our behavior at will. Intelligence is operational. Smart people that become addicts and can't stop are obviously less intelligent tha…

> Do you have a definition for hyper-intelligence?

Trivially, anyone much much smarter than me. :)

Hypothetically, take the top N% of the high end of the bell curve, where N is 0.1 or 0.001 or 0.000001 or whatever. But then you have the question of how to survey intelligence?

Which brings me to my answer to your second point,

> intelligence and impulse control are separable things.

A quality called "intelligence" that does not engender impulse control isn't actually intelligence, eh? In other words I would define intelligence precisely as the ability of self-control combined with the ability to effect desired changes in the world. What's the point of "intelligence" that gives no "leverage", especially in the context of some "we" who are supposedly effective enough to institute a world-wide eugenics program?

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#259

Post by quacked »

loteck wrote: post #188
quacked wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

fewer people are literate in Massachusetts now than when it was founded I'm also sensing we may be having some trouble in the math department.

You're right. I can barely identify a number on sight.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#260

Post by mwattsun »

nyolfen wrote: post #255
mwattsun wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with Idiocracy is the assumption that working class and poor breed only more dumb people. This is untrue, as many of our brightest people came from humble backgrounds. The quote evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould is most know for is “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fi…

it is true however that in the west, education is inversely correlated with fertility, that education is closely linked to intelligence, statistically, and that intelligence is at least 50% accounted for by heritability, as shown by many large studies.

Malcolm Gladwell says it's often an accident of birth, circumstances and a system that provide fertile ground for achievement, a cultural belief system that encourages intellectual achievement or at least does not discourage it and most of all -- hard work

Malcolm Gladwell at Microsoft Research: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don't

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcMKLwVlpJk

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