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Are We Idiocracy Yet?

idiocracy.wtf

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Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#411

Post by jgwil2 »

bko wrote: post #335
ern_ave wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 agree, most of the arguments have been basically "do anything" hysterics that are divorced from reality. For instance, much focus is given on rifles, specifically big black scary looking rifles. In reality if you look at murder rates by weapon type Handguns: ~45–50% Firearm (type unknown): ~20–25% Rifles: ~2–3% Shotguns: ~1–2% Knives / cutting instruments: ~10–12% Blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.): ~3–5% Hands,…

Plenty of people worked to ban handguns only to have it shut down by SCOTUS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#412

Post by ern_ave »

dgroshev wrote: post #386
ern_ave wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 except those that work everywhere because that'd require big changes" The answer is trivial and well-known: federal-level gun controls (because anything state-level is a joke without hard borders between states), coupled with a buy-back program, amnesties, and real enforcement. There are no school shootings in the UK or Australia. Unfortunately, there are too many people who'd r…

> "I'd love to hear any additional ideas except those that work everywhere because that'd require big changes"

When you pretend to quote someone, but you alter the quote, you're being dishonest. What you just did suggests that you don't really have any good arguments on your side - that you don't have any arguments that would stand on their own, without requiring a lie.

So, if we were having a debate, I'd say that you lost.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#413

Post by Fnoord »

Zigurd wrote: post #381
IAmBroom wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions of people find The Onion funny; you do not. Do you see the difference?

TBF millions of people are going to demand that you respect their claim that they are not "political."

Demanding to respect a claim is a political act by itself.

Something being 'political' or not is a red herring. Politics is deeply ingrained in our society. How much is it ingrained? It is a spectrum, not a binary proposition. Trying to portrait it as a proposition is trying to oversimplify, removing nuance.

All it does is it wants people to ignore issues and let different political wings try to live in 'harmony' with each other by pretending the other side doesn't exist. This strategy doesn't work, and will hit in the face like a boomerang.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#414

Post by FrustratedMonky »

ern_ave wrote: post #363
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

Sure. Everyone is biased some. Going all the way back to the "1951 Princeton–Dartmouth football game"

The Right, just happens to be in a bit in a slump right now with its anti-science religious activism. "Doing worse"

Garrett & Bond (2021), Conservatives’ susceptibility to political misperceptions, Science Advances. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abf1234?utm_sourc...

Sultan et al. (2024), Susceptibility to online misinformation: A systematic meta-analysis, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2409329121?utm_source=...

Rathje et al. (2023), Accuracy and social motivations shape judgements of (mis)information, Nature Human Behaviour. This one emphasizes that misinformation judgments are shaped by both accuracy motives and social/identity motives, which helps explain why partisan gaps are not simply about intelligence or total inability to separate truth from fiction. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01540-w?utm_sourc...

Lyons et al. (2021), Overconfidence in news judgments is associated with false news susceptibility, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2019527118?utm_source=...

Pennycook et al. (2022), Accuracy prompts are a replicable and generalizable approach for reducing online misinformation, Nature Communications. This paper discusses baseline sharing discernment and notes worse baseline discernment among conservatives in the samples they studied, while also showing that simple accuracy prompts can help. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30073-5?utm_sourc...

summary is: there are studies showing conservatives, on average, perform worse on certain misinformation/truth-discernment tasks, but the strongest scholarly version of the claim is narrower and more conditional than the popular retelling https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abf1234?utm_sourc...

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#415

Post by belorn »

wombat-man wrote: post #226
jfengel wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be curious to know the average IQ of, say, climate deniers. I suspect it's still a perfect 100. I don't think it's about general intelligence. In some ways just the opposite: very smart people have a talent for convincing themselves that they are right. Unfortunately I fear it's more like EQ than IQ. The driver is more about the people. They do not like the kind of people who are trying to prevent climate change,…

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.

Climate change and climate change denial is not just about the scientific facts about what is happening to the climate, it is also the political opinion about what actions should be done. Those actions involve contested subjects like economical aspects (both national and global), fairness among population demographics, historical fairness (such as indigenous populations), border politics and wars, as well as what methods and technology is scientifically proven to be effective measures. Denialism in this aspect is very broad concept, and if we define it that anyone who disagree with the politician actions are idiots, and everyone who agree with them are intelligent, then a large portion of people will be idiots even if a large number of them are very intelligent in other areas.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#416

Post by justin66 »

speedster217 wrote: post #288
bko wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people don't like Onion stories because they're not funny, they're just pretentious and political. For instance, their famous 'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens article they post all over their page whenever there is some high profile gun related crime. It's all over their page and no doubt they get a bump in traffic from smug people who feel it's clever. It's just so exha…

Americans are so used to school shootings they complain about the Onion's reaction to it rather than the failure of politics that led them here.

Which is part of why the reuse of the headline still works as grim comedy.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#417

Post by dgroshev »

ern_ave wrote: post #412
dgroshev wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'd love to hear any additional ideas except those that work everywhere because that'd require big changes" The answer is trivial and well-known: federal-level gun controls (because anything state-level is a joke without hard borders between states), coupled with a buy-back program, amnesties, and real enforcement. There are no school shootings in the UK or Australia. Unfortunately, there are too many people who'd r…

> "I'd love to hear any additional ideas except those that work everywhere because that'd require big changes" When you pretend to quote someone, but you alter the quote, you're being dishonest. What you just did suggests that you don't really have any good arguments on your side - that you don't have any arguments that would stand on their own, without requiring a lie. So, if we were having a debate, I'd say that yo…

I'm not being dishonest, I'm being sarcastic. Although I can see that you ignored everything else that I said.

I couldn't care less about "winning".

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#418

Post by pixl97 »

afavour wrote: post #366
pixl97 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you may misunderstand what the term "not a serious person" means. Just because someone is an ego driven performer doesn't mean their actions don't have consequences, it means you've fucked up if you follow them and take them for face value.

There has been a ton of analysis for why said stupid people vote for stupid people, but very little of it can prevent said behaviors.

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