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

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#261

Post by BrandoElFollito » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 9:30 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 started to watch that movie but had to stop (for a moment) because it described precisely a fear I had for some time: that we would not able to work together even in case of a deadly event that would be within our lifetime.

If we had a meteor expected to hit Earth in 10 years I am sure we would not start to work on a plan to protect ourselves as THE only thing to care about.

There would always be discussions about budget, China/Russia/US/[pick your country] being the villains, etc.

Covid hit us very mildly and it was (and still is) a shitshow. A global disaster coming in x years (within our lifetime but not tomorrow either) wild be the end of humanity.

We know that climate changes will be terrible and we simply do not care at all, as a species.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#262

Post by stevenhuang » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 9:45 PM UTC

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.

Sounds like you've lost the plot on what the movie was actually about.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#263

Post by dennis_jeeves » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#264

Post by Emma_Goldman » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 9:54 PM UTC

chrsig wrote: post #208

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #201

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. Collec…

> 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…

>Trump new about the severity of covid and downplayed it for quite some time

Trump neither tried to hide the existence of COVID from the public nor thought it would topple civilization and kill him personally. He downplayed it and the risk it posed, but that is a different order of lying. Trump said exactly as much as he thought he could get away with, and no more.

>There absolutely can be some fanatical base that will construct shared delusional propaganda to avoid the realization that they've been conned.

Sure, but COVID-deniers are a fringe and any political calculus that depends on denying COVID is therefore bound to fail. It is equally clear that denying the existence of an earth-shattering asteroid makes no political sense.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#265

Post by nyolfen » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

mwattsun wrote: post #260

nyolfen wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

these things are absolutely important but they are at most half of the picture.

intelligence is broadly heritable: https://www.nature.com/articles/mp201185

and a representative piece of a very large body of evidence that intelligence is the strongest predictor of achievement: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#266

Post by caffeine » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 10:26 PM UTC

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #23

caffeine wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This movie is ripe for a remake where the world is stupid-Left instead of stupid-Right. Starbucks offers gender reassignment surgeries and Costco employees say “Welcome to Costco, I apologise”, and the world-ending crisis is that nobody can actually reproduce any more.

> This movie is ripe for a remake where the world is stupid-Left instead of stupid-Right. What makes you think it isn’t currently both?

Not sure which “it” you mean.

The movie is clearly a caricature of the stupid-Right.

The world is indeed currently both stupid-Right and stupid-Left.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#267

Post by chrsig » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 10:33 PM UTC

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #264

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…

>Trump new about the severity of covid and downplayed it for quite some time Trump neither tried to hide the existence of COVID from the public nor thought it would topple civilization and kill him personally. He downplayed it and the risk it posed, but that is a different order of lying. Trump said exactly as much as he thought he could get away with, and no more. >There absolutely can be some fanatical base that wi…

You're right, it doesn't make sense. People do things that don't make sense.

The president in Don't Look Up didn't think it would topple civilization and kill her personally. They thought the plan to break it up and mine it would work. They took a greedy gamble on the fate of the world and lost.

In so doing, they took for granted all of the amazing technology that we have and disregarded expert opinions.

Likewise with trump, who had worked to dismantle the existing pandemic playbook[0] took for granted how well our medical response would be. He regularly disregarded expert opinions, or simply did not speak with them[1]. He even worked to make it difficult for states to get help, because he lost the vote there[2].

In my opinion, these actions do not make sense, yet they were taken by an actual POTUS.

With that in mind, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that a POTUS would try to leverage the event for political gain, and use it opportunity for personal profit, and that a sizable amount of the population would support it.

And you're right. It makes no sense. It's mind mindbogglingly dumb. Still plausible.

[0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/obama-team-left-pandemic...

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/23/fauci-says-trump-hasnt-atten...

[2] https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/494807-trump-ask...

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#268

Post by mwattsun » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 10:43 PM UTC

nyolfen wrote: post #265

mwattsun wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

these things are absolutely important but they are at most half of the picture. intelligence is broadly heritable: https://www.nature.com/articles/mp201185 and a representative piece of a very large body of evidence that intelligence is the strongest predictor of achievement: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...

Gladwell is making the case in his talk that Asians aren't better at math or are more intelligent. He speaks directly to your point: Westerners believe that you are born with math skills or you're not. Asians believe you can be good at anything if you work at it. Gladwell says it's because Asians had to work harder than Westerners to feed themselves, since rice is a very labor intensive crop. I'm not supporting or disputing Gladwell - I'm still pondering it.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#269

Post by chrsig » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 10:52 PM UTC

carapace wrote: post #258

chrsig wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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" tha…

> A quality called "intelligence" that does not engender impulse control isn't actually intelligence, eh?

I mean, that's pretty dependent on the definition of intelligence.

Going off a dictionary definition:

> the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.

versus wisdom:

> the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment; the quality of being wise.

That to me sounds like every place you're saying intelligence, you mean wisdom. Redefining intelligence to wisdom isn't a thing, because words have meaning.

The relationship being that intelligence makes acquiring wisdom faster. There isn't a strict requirement between the two.

> What's the point of "intelligence" that gives no "leverage"

Self enrichment/gratification/entertainment.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#270

Post by sangnoir » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 11:17 PM UTC

chrsig wrote: post #184

999900000999 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't look up falls flat, in my opinion because you have too many superstars in a movie that should not be about star power. Netflix has this weird habit where it's like they can't budget well. I imagine they spent so much money hiring Leonardo DiCaprio they didn't have enough to write good scriptwriters. I really wanted to like the movie, but why would you cram so many high power celebrities in one film. Film. Idioc…

> Idiocracy is amazing because outside of Booker T, and Scareface's cameo I had no idea who these actors were I can understand where you're coming from. I'm a marvel fan and I'm disappointed that they went with so many celbreties for Eternals -- I haven't seen it yet, but they were really more distracting than anything in the trailers. I didn't mind the actors in Don't Look Up though, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, a…

> HN would probably react to some of it's hivemind's idols like Jobs or PG in that situation.

Or Elon Musk. I can almost imagine the following comment on HN: "The asteroid has enough lithium to make batteries for everyone alive for the next 200 years! Anyone who supports diverting it supports government dysfunction and unmitigated destruction of wealth. This is our one shot to jumpstart space manufacturing - humans have a chance of becoming a Type II civilization, the risk is negligible and well worth it"