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Are We Idiocracy Yet?

idiocracy.wtf

361–370 of 582 posts

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#361

I don’t share any of the pessimism. If you are at least tiny bit curious about looking beyond your IT bubble you know that the majority of population has always been dumb. It’s just biological fact of life. For better or worse hundreds years ago they didn’t get any power. Today they got internet, got exposure and got power. Nothing is changing on a fundamental human nature or statistical level.

I feel this won't necessarily be a popular take here but I really don't like things like Idiocracy. To me it comes across as deeply misanthropic, and kind of ignorant of what human nature actually looks like outside of our very specific cultural window. It's the same deep misanthropy that makes me really dislike most post-apocalyptic fiction, look at actual how actual humanity behaves in disaster conditions for five minutes and you'd see most of it is just misanthropic nonsense. We haven't let go of this Victorian idea all that separates man (particularly working-class man) and beast is a thin veneer of civilisation that can collapse at any minute. To me Idiocracy is a product of that mentality, it's a satire of Western consumer culture but this idea is not presented satirically, Idiocracy seems to believe this earnestly.

You can look at skeletons of prehistoric man and see bone healing which can only have occurred if the group decided to look after someone who couldn't work at that point. Humans are inherently stupid and selfish, but they're also inherently clever and cooperative; it's all so dependent on material and cultural context. It's true in my view that the general culture of late capitalism makes people inclined towards stupid and selfish ideas, but the idea this could actually do serious long-term damage to humanity's actual nature until everyone is a bumbling moron is absurd. Not just absurd either, but fundamentally insulting to all of us in my view.

Culture is often a product of material conditions, if Idiocracy's premise that it's possible to make humanity dumber on a lasting basis had the slightest merit then it would have happened already a hundred times over. Not least from the amount of lead we were pouring into the environment from the 1930s onwards! In reality if humanity did get dumber for cultural reasons, the material conditions associated with that culture would soon collapse and there'd be a new selection pressure to avoid the same kind of stupidity.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#362
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same goes with Starship Troopers - Clearly biting satire, but at the time was considered to be a dumb action movie by most.

it was a dumb action movie, with a bit of satire and some non-trivial nudity. the book is a political science treatise about the role of the citizen in government and draws heavily from Thomas Hobbes and Max Weber, basically invented the "space marine" concept that we see in 40k or Starcraft or Doom, and touched on things like haptic feedback and non-traditional UI and how it could be C2.

It's primarily a movie about fascism and propaganda. The fact that most viewers missed it is actually concerning.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#363
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It breaks my heart when I hear people outraged about Onion stories, not because that they fall for them, but because they know they have a hard time telling truth from fiction.

There have been studies on Right/Left ability to differentiate fact/fiction. The Right is in a bad place. On the Right they really could not differentiate Fact/Fiction.. The Right has grown up on Religion and Fake news, they are living in a completely different world view that doesn't have any internal coherence. If you live in a fantasy land, anything can happen.

I'm interested to see any studies you can find on this topic. Here are some studies that I have:

Equalitarianism: A Source of Liberal Bias [1] - in study 6, liberals were shown to be ...pretty racist.

You claimed the Right believes fake news. I wont dispute that. I'll just reply that there's a lot of that going around. Here are some examples that debunk fake news you yourself might fervently believe:

Girls Who Code: A Randomized Field Experiment on Gender-Based Hiring Discrimination [2] - leftists tend to believe that women are discriminated against in STEM.

An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force [3] - debunks the common belief, on the Left, that police are more likely to shoot people of color. Quote: "we find, after controlling for suspect demographics, ocer demographics, encounter characteristics, suspect weapon and year fixed effects, that blacks are 27.4 percent less likely to be shot at by police relative to non-black, non-Hispanics"

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325033477_Equalitar...

[2] https://economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/marley_finley...

[3] https://fryer.scholars.harvard.edu/publications/empirical-an...

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not in the USA, but I think the issue is not so much the joke getting tiresome, but the repeat school shootings. Maybe if there was work done to stop the shootings, then the joke wouldn't keep getting repeated.

> Maybe if there was work done to stop the shootings It's odd that you seem to believe no work has been done. Lots of work has been done. Lots more work is blocked by people who steadfastly refuse to punish criminals - claiming instead that it's not their fault that they're violent. I'd love to hear any additional ideas you have other than violating the rights of citizens.

> I'd love to hear any additional ideas you have other than violating the rights of citizens.

That's a strange take. There's citizens' rights involved in not being shot at and also the right to own guns, but when people are being killed, I would think that the right to life would take precedence over introducing some rule over gun ownership.

Here in the UK, we have strict rules on gun ownership (which I'm not particularly familiar with) which involve some kind of assessment (to prevent unstable people from owning them) and the guns have to be kept in a suitable locked cabinet. It's entirely possible for people to own guns for sport or for culling animals etc. and yet we have a very small amount of gun crime.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#366
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It’s cited so often on Reddit by people who want to establish their superiority over the masses. “It’s a documentary!!” is a meme unto itself. It’s also got a kind of weird eugenics-y vibe to it (like establishing “stupid people breeding makes stupid people” as incontrovertible fact) when you step back and examine it as a movie that’s making Serious Statements. But it isn’t. It’s not a bad movie. But it’s a c…

It's kind of funny when you say the movie isn't making serious statements when the highest of our publicly elected officials isn't a serious person. We elect people that are actively harmful to our well being. These people say things so incredibly stupid it can be painful. And then you wonder why people look at the movie like it's a documentary?

He might not present as a serious person but he is. The nativist impulses, the gutter racism, the “F you I’ve got mine” attitude, the party establishment that enabled him despite all that… these are all serious things worth serious analysis.

“Stupid people vote for stupid guy” is exactly the kind of analysis I’m critical of Idiocracy for.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's hard for some to believe, but there are people in my family who are otherwise very intelligent but will not change their opinions on some things. Like climate change.

Unless you are a scientist directly engaging with the literature, you and your relative are both doing the same thing: trusting the opinion of peers and high-status people in your political clan about what is happening in the world. It just happens that people in your clan are telling the truth while the other one is lying. Neither side’s behavior can be considered “more intelligent” when you consider the vast majori…

I think choosing reliable authority requires a little intelligence. I don’t know how to build a robust house, but I can understand that should be on the solid base (scientific method) upon stable field, instead of mysterious objects from thousand years ago.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

No idea. Why do we need to determine if humans are getting dumber or not?

> No idea. Why do we need to determine if humans are getting dumber or not?

It seems to me, then, that your primary objection is not that IQ scores are inaccurate, but that intelligence shouldn't be measured in the first place?

Which makes me think that you don't want anyone doing research into whether human intelligence is changing at all.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#370
post #195

We've had this discourse happen again and again over the last... Christ, 20 years fuck me. At some point people have to start realizing "oh wait, maybe the current situation isn't unique and people have felt like this since forever".

I don't think so. Trump is exceptional compared to political tradition for a very long time, as evidenced currently by most developed world leaders shunning his illegal war campaign. In fact, who else can be comparable?

Today it's Trump, yesterday it was something else. Tomorrow it'll be a third thing.
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