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Harold and George Destroy the World

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Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#121

Post by jeremyjh »

marxisttemp wrote: post #24
alecco wrote: post #16

The effects of Idiocracy are much worse than we appreciate. I believe it's hidden in part by technology (as a cognitive crutch) and part by top skilled immigration (people previously suppressed in their undeveloped countries). And education is much, much worse almost everywhere by leaning more to memorization and catering to the lowest common denominator. Student A is bad at math and good at language, student B is th…

Idiocracy really seems to appeal to eugenicists. Is “stupid people breed too much” really an issue we think is worth propagating?

Casually tossing about an accusation like that is not at all in keeping with the guidelines for this website.

That movie can be understood in several different ways.

Also, I'd like to point out that the core problems with eugenics isn't an assertion that intelligence is hereditary, but that:

- Race is not a scientifically grounded concept

- Complex traits do not have Mendelian inheritance

- Measurement of intelligence is problematic

- Even measures that strongly correlate with success are confounded by environmental, cultural and economic factors

Thus, the conclusions drawn by eugenicists are based on their racism and prejudice, not by any scientific conclusions. It is a pseudo-scientific framework to justify (at the limit) ethnic cleansing.

The opening of the movie could also be read as a commentary or satire about a certain type of reality TV show or talk show that was popular at that time, but it was also a really cheap shot at a specific class of people and demonstrated a level of contempt that cannot really be defended.

But the rest of the movie was focused more on anti-intellectual and shallow culture and corporate greed - the heritability of intelligence never got another mention.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#122

Post by Forgeties79 »

DangitBobby wrote: post #59
Forgeties79 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They capitalized “Idiocracy” so it seems pretty likely they’re unfortunately, whether they know it or not, endorsing the eugenics-based thesis of the movie.

We don't have to support Eugenics to understand there's probably a real effect.

You can’t disentangle “smart people have few kids, dumb people have lots of kids, ergo we are gradually getting dumber” from eugenics (or class for that matter). It’s inherent in the argument. It’s also not how genes work.

It’s a very classist, flawed argument. In some way it’s emblematic of what the right calls “East Coast elitism” yet I find people from across the political spectrum have no issue embracing the argument (because they all assume they’re part of the “smart” group). “Wow look at all these dumb hicks having kids while the smart, responsible, educated people aren’t.“ You really don’t see the issue with that?

There’s even an XKCD for it: https://xkcd.com/603/

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#123

Post by thundergolfer »

raincole wrote: post #75
alecco wrote: post #16

The effects of Idiocracy are much worse than we appreciate. I believe it's hidden in part by technology (as a cognitive crutch) and part by top skilled immigration (people previously suppressed in their undeveloped countries). And education is much, much worse almost everywhere by leaning more to memorization and catering to the lowest common denominator. Student A is bad at math and good at language, student B is th…

> by top skilled immigration who are mostly from countries where education is > leaning more to memorization

There’s a potential irony here that a commenter lamenting the decline of education in the West is leaning on the “critical thinking over memorization” trope in contemporary Western education, when that trope has contributed to a decline in educational effectiveness.

The massive success of information retrieval allowed people to trick themselves that they no longer needed to remember things, and remember them easily. They should instead turn focus on critical thinking.

But critical thinking is knowledge based. At least, I buy E. D Hirch’s argument that it is.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#124

Post by jeremyjh »

dgsii wrote: post #108
rayiner wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also true that IQ is both real and highly heritable. The military uses what’s essentially an IQ test to screen out the bottom 15% or so of the population: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/after-service/201801... . The military has found that people with aptitude test scores below the cutoff can’t be trained to competently perform any job in the military. IQ is also highly heritable: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.n…

Ah, yes, the IQ test; the universal, unbiased gauge of intellect across all cultures.

It isn't that, but it is one of the strongest predictors of success in the US military.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#125

Post by lucianbr »

seer wrote: post #97
donatj wrote: post #13

I have genuinely put a lot of thought into this lately. I have the sensation like older media was more expressive and thoughtful, there's at least more... interesting flavors there generally... I am happy to ponder and willingly accept this is probably just my perception. I have a couple of theories. The creators of the media are becoming more and more my age. Do they have nothing interesting to say to me as our expe…

I remember reading the letters of Cicero about Gaias Julius (Later known as Cesar) how he complains how the he and his gang is acting all amoral and wearing ridiculous scandalous clothes, waring the togas in provocative feminine fashion. There are accounts from all over history of how "the times were more thoughtful and moral in the good old days" But here we are, thousands of years later, still complaining about the…

> But here we are, thousands of years later,

Not like there was a general lack of tragedy, pain, suffering, war, chaos in the intervening thousands of years.

Seems so superficial to ignore everything and just say if we're here, we exist, then the claim that things will go bad is proven false. The only thing proven false is if anyone ever claimed humanity will be extinct. But think of all the suffering in all the wars between the roman empire and now. Is that nothing? Does that not qualify as very bad stuff? Did humanity advance continuosly, or was it a chaotic path, with ups and downs? Don't the downs qualify as what the complainers predicted?

To me it seems history teaches us we will survive as a species. But there is definitely a lot of room for very bad stuff to happen. It has happened before.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#126

Post by embedding-shape »

ACCount37 wrote: post #58
econ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education is a weird field with perhaps a few thousand years of very good unimplemented ideas. Imagine training an llm by putting it in a room with other untrained LLMs? All that knowledge is sure to rubb of!

A big part of the problem education systems are solving is not "how do we get knowledge to children", but "how do we get masses of children to learn without coercion of the ugliest kind". Some children are innately motivated to learn. Some are motivated so strongly you could give them a smartphone and watch them learn all they need to learn in life. But those children aren't the norm - they're the freaky 1 in 1000 ou…

> Some children are innately motivated to learn

I don't think I've met a single child in my life that isn't excited about learning about new stuff, but it really depends on what it is, it differs a lot! And they're all different as well, someone who's really into math might hate history, or vice-versa. But they all want to learn something, in my experience.

The problem occurs when you place them all in one school, and force them to learn everything, even things they don't want to learn about, and that kind ruins the other parts they actually find fun and engaging.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#127

Post by nephihaha »

tadfisher wrote: post #23
nephihaha wrote: post #11

[flagged]

Absolutely nothing wrong with a coordinated, rapid response to a global pandemic. This was a bright spot in humanity's record, IMO. The corruption of public perception of the response by a handful of individuals is something we should regret.

Quite a bit wrong with it. From the beginning the threat level was exaggerated, especially considering the lack of threat to younger people.

We are still paying the social and economic costs (including sky high cost of living, directly connected to it).

It was also coincidentally very similar to the Event 201 table top exercise a mere six months before between Johns Hopkins, the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organisation (all unelected and unaccountable organisations which this "global" advice came from).

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#128

Post by SoftTalker »

throw310822 wrote: post #92
randallsquared wrote: post #66

The "silver dollar" change isn't -- it's the dime. The design was in the works before the current administration [1], and is only intended to be for the 250th anniversary [2]. The Dept of Defense was only created in the late 1940s. Before that the US had the Dept of War, the Dept of the Navy, and other organizations. The point of calling it "defense" was not because "everyone has the right to defense", but because th…

> the US was promoting the United Nations and waging a Cold War, and wanted to pretend that it would never do anything proactive or aggressive. That is, it was propaganda Many other countries similarly changed the name of their respective ministries, reflecting the ideal (if not the fact) that war should not be pursued for gain or used to resolve international controversies. Actions trail behind ideals; ideals are se…

The millions of deaths are still happening, they just aren't our boys so we were all cool with it.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#129

Post by cyberge99 »

randallsquared wrote: post #66

The "silver dollar" change isn't -- it's the dime. The design was in the works before the current administration [1], and is only intended to be for the 250th anniversary [2]. The Dept of Defense was only created in the late 1940s. Before that the US had the Dept of War, the Dept of the Navy, and other organizations. The point of calling it "defense" was not because "everyone has the right to defense", but because th…

The current preferred name is Department of Defense. Ask anyone who isn’t incompetence aligned.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#130

Post by embedding-shape »

ffsm8 wrote: post #65
alecco wrote: post #16

The effects of Idiocracy are much worse than we appreciate. I believe it's hidden in part by technology (as a cognitive crutch) and part by top skilled immigration (people previously suppressed in their undeveloped countries). And education is much, much worse almost everywhere by leaning more to memorization and catering to the lowest common denominator. Student A is bad at math and good at language, student B is th…

Memorization is pretty much the single largest undervalued thing in the west which has a gigantic impact on the mental capabilities of people. I mean I get that rote memorization of eg. The multiplication table (7x7=49 etc pp) feels pointless, but it is training your brain. And a growing person whose brain is still developing who continuously memorizes new things will be smarter by the time they're 20 then the same p…

> And a growing person whose brain is still developing who continuously memorizes new things will be smarter by the time they're 20 then the same person that didn't,

I dunno, I guess it depends on what we mean by "smart" but I've definitively met (and been friends) with people who weren't able to live on their own by their 20s, although they were very "smart" in school and highly intelligent in general. I've also seen the reverse, dumb people being "better at life in general". I don't think it's as black and white as you're trying to make it out to be.

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