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Are We Idiocracy Yet?

idiocracy.wtf

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Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#201

Post by palata »

mc32 wrote: post #98
clejack wrote: post #22

I watched this movie really late. Let's say within the past 2 years or so. After watching it, all I could think was, "This isn't a comedy, it's a tragedy." It felt way too close to home.

It’s what happens when you let people get what they want. Like children, adults need guidance. Kids would eat candy and drink OJ till their baby teeth rot off and they are riddled with onset of many diseases if left to their own devices. Adults have similar tendencies and if you remove the guardrails (perhaps to distract from other dysfunction), you get adults who seek short term pleasure whether that be food, perver…

I like to say "adults are children without teachers". It feels like this in many contexts, but I started to say it during covid. When people looked at statistics, made wrong conclusions (because they don't know how to read statistics), and genuinely believed they were right. When children do that, they have a figure of authority (the teacher) who can tell them that they actually did not understand it at all.

I was in highschool with a guy who absolutely sucked at maths. Everybody knew it, he knew it, nobody could deny it because he was clearly struggling in class. I have no problem with that and I was actually trying to help when I could. But years later when covid hit, he was one of those very vocal people claiming complete nonsense based on "the numbers". He did not have a teacher at this point to give him bad grades and telling him that he was completely wrong. Being an adult, he felt like he was right.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#202

Post by coldtea »

rob74 wrote: post #153
marxisttemp wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the film itself implies that the idiocracy is due to stupid people breeding more, a classic tenet of Nazism and eugenics alike

That's ironic seeing that nazis (or the far right in general) usually need stupid people to vote for them so they get into a position where they can undermine a democratic system...

All kinds of people voted for the Nazi party, including very intelligent and respectable professors, and there was no special split in intelligence between either side voters (or measure of that).

What's ironic is using nazi-like thinking (the idiot masses who vote far right vs the enlightened people who vote left), instead of treating it as a complex political matter, and accepting that perfectly intelligent people can just as well fall for that shit.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#203

Post by phtrivier »

permalac wrote: post #158
FlufferTheGreat wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every scrotum on this forum has microplastics and phthalates in them, things shown to have effects on the endocrine and reproductive systems.

Hold on. Turns out some scientists found out the amount of plastic was over measured because it included the plastic of their own gloves. I've read it last week, can not found the source now. Sorry

https://theconversation.com/scientists-may-be-overestimating...

> It’s important to note that even if the microplastic abundance in the environment is lower than researchers originally thought, any amount of microplastics can be troublesome, given their negative effects on human health and ecosystems.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#204

Post by dTal »

dspillett wrote: post #169
netcan wrote: post #33

Idiocracy hit a lot of superficial/thematic nails on the head with its silliness. "Don't Look Up" captures a lot more of the actual dynamics. Instead of anti-eugenics making brains feeble, the people are just normal humans made stupid by their cultural environment, incentives and suchlike.

> Instead of anti-eugenics making brains feeble, I didn't read Idiocracy as eugenics/anti-eugenics. It wasn't saying that stupid people breeding made the population stupid, it was saying that the less educated breeding resulted in the more educated being pushed to the periphery and eventually fading out. The people of the film's future were not stupid, just massively uninformed and misinformed. They were able to gras…

I'm afraid you are misremembering. The movie is explicitly eugenicist. The people of the future are explicitly biologically stupid. The opening transcript is unambiguous:

[Man Narrating] As the 21st century began… human evolution was at a turning point.

Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest… the fastest reproduced in greater numbers than the rest… a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man… now began to favor different traits.

[Reporter] The Joey Buttafuoco case-

Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized… and more intelligent.

But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction.

A dumbing down.

How did this happen?

Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence.

With no natural predators to thin the herd… it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most… and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#205

Post by coldtea »

thousand_nights wrote: post #86
netcan wrote: post #33

Idiocracy hit a lot of superficial/thematic nails on the head with its silliness. "Don't Look Up" captures a lot more of the actual dynamics. Instead of anti-eugenics making brains feeble, the people are just normal humans made stupid by their cultural environment, incentives and suchlike.

i couldn't finish "Don't Look Up", it felt like sitting through a political lecture. all i wanted from a comedy was some laughs.

Then you need to watch comedies made decades ago.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#206

Post by arnorhs »

soblemprolver wrote: post #151
thousand_nights wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i couldn't finish "Don't Look Up", it felt like sitting through a political lecture. all i wanted from a comedy was some laughs.

I couldn't finish "Idiocracy" because the underlying eugenics nonsense made me angry enough not to enjoy the comedy anymore. It made me angry because makes the point that natural selection has become ineffective on humans and thus intelligence declines unironically. There is no joke in that - all jokes build upon the assumption of this being true. If it were true, then decline wouldn't have begun in the 19th or 20th…

> It made me angry because makes the point that natural selection has become ineffective on humans and thus intelligence declines unironically. There is no joke in that - all jokes build upon the assumption of this being true.

you seem pretty convinced that intelligence plays an important role in natural selection. I'd argue that decisiveness, confidence, looks, social skills all play a more important role. (I'm not saying that's a good thing)

I'm interested in understanding your point of view, can you elaborate on what you mean by "There is no joke in that"?

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#207

Post by names_are_hard »

soblemprolver wrote: post #151
thousand_nights wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i couldn't finish "Don't Look Up", it felt like sitting through a political lecture. all i wanted from a comedy was some laughs.

I couldn't finish "Idiocracy" because the underlying eugenics nonsense made me angry enough not to enjoy the comedy anymore. It made me angry because makes the point that natural selection has become ineffective on humans and thus intelligence declines unironically. There is no joke in that - all jokes build upon the assumption of this being true. If it were true, then decline wouldn't have begun in the 19th or 20th…

> If it were true, then decline wouldn't have begun in the 19th or 20th century but around the time that property and currencies emerged.

Why? Can you elaborate on that? Did the emergence of property and currency cause a negative correlation between intelligence and number of offspring?

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#208

Post by seydor »

einpoklum wrote: post #3

In Idiocracy, president Camacho actually had the decent idea of trying listen to (somewhat) reasonable people with relevant abilities or skills rather than insisting that his failures are actually successes and just trying to force it until that worked. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

and he hired the smartest of the smart

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#209

Post by numitus »

Froztnova wrote: post #131

Intelligence is watching Idiocracy and identifying with it profoundly when you're younger. 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!

[flagged]

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#210

Post by HexPhantom »

netcan wrote: post #33

Idiocracy hit a lot of superficial/thematic nails on the head with its silliness. "Don't Look Up" captures a lot more of the actual dynamics. Instead of anti-eugenics making brains feeble, the people are just normal humans made stupid by their cultural environment, incentives and suchlike.

Don't Look Up feels closer to how things actually break in practice
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