131–140 of 582 posts
Wisdom is looking back at how much you liked Idiocracy and cringing at the fact that you gleefully and uncritically swallowed a eugenics tract.
Oops!
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tweeted 100 years ago?
What is so special about tweets as though we don't have copious other writings to reference?
They might have been stupid but did they do anything truly bad/evil like the current US regime?
People keep saying this is the US as if anything about this regime is in any way legitimate, let alone abides by the Constitution, regardless of whether you like that or not. The founders of America tried to set up a system that would prevent the very thing that this thing still called America has become. Washington warned about foreign entanglements, now that’s basically all America is. It’s an extremely complicated…
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I'd like to bring your attention to the fact that society had deteriorated to the point of imminent famine before Camacho thought to try and listen to the smartest person around in an attempt to avert disaster. We are not quite there yet.
I'd argue that as soon as Camacho became aware of Not Sure's IQ test, he reached out. He didn't call on him before because he didn't know he existed (and/or he wasn't around), so he couldn't have helped prior. If Trump spots a mentally capable person that is also stupid enough to eat his slop (or evil enough), he gets a job.
Isn't that a bit like a wooly mammoth? In theory it could exist but in practice you're not going to find anybody that is both mentally capable and at the same time stupid enough to eat his slop.
That leaves evil enough and there are plenty of those...
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imagine how it would hit today. I'd guess a vast majority would feel insulted by it...
How many felt insulted by Don't Look Up--I'm guessing that Venn is a circle.
like that?
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I always have a problem when folks bring up idiocracy because the of the eugenics angle. It’s extremely unlikely that people are getting inherently stupider, just less educated. The former is some sort of prophecy of doom and the latter is actually actionable.
Why stop at eugenics? Spoil your environment enough and it will definitely have an effect on the individuals in that environment.
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Fair point, but why jump to genetics instead of culture (upbringing)?
Because the film itself implies that the idiocracy is due to stupid people breeding more, a classic tenet of Nazism and eugenics alike
It is curious that there's no reported disgenic effect though - that seems counter to evolutionary theory? Perhaps it's only limiting the rate of growth of IQ/intelligence.
There's a classic sci-fi story in which we rely on computers, the population gets dumber to the point noone knows how to make/fix the computers. I think in that there's a computer glitch that then wipes out humanity; but it's from the time when there were monolithic computers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence - it says 'fertility' but I think it means fecundity/actual reproduction
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What is so special about tweets as though we don't have copious other writings to reference?
Tweets are low effort and short, you can even do it while taking a dump, there is a lot more friction to being unhinged when you are writing a book or taking an interview, for reference trumps most unhinged stuff is tweets, not interviews and not books. Not all forms of writing are equal.
I seem to remember Homer Simpson thinking something to that effect (“Boy, everyone is stupid except me”).
I can imagine that happening today, esp politically.
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Not claiming that Idiocracy is accurate, however IQ scores have been declining. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/3283/
Imho IQ scores aren’t a sufficient measure of intelligence, it’s very shaky science at best
What do you propose as a replacement metric to determine if humans are getting dumber or not?