Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Are We Idiocracy Yet?

idiocracy.wtf

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 582 posts

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#341

Post by malfist »

bko wrote: post #304
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #259

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.

First and foremost you should attempt to be funny or original. This is neither. It's political. I would love headlines like: > Illegal Immigrant Finally Caught After 20 Years of Successfully Contributing to Society but instead you get non joke headlines like: > ICE Agents Hurl Pregnant Immigrant Over Mexican Border To Prevent Birth On U.S. Soil It's just cringe.

> First and foremost you should attempt to be funny or original.

Who are you to declare what satire and and cannot criticize?

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#342

Post by AntiDyatlov »

ben_w wrote: post #161
everdrive wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not claiming that Idiocracy is accurate, however IQ scores have been declining. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/3283/

After a while of going up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect While genes must play a part in this (if they didn't, all non-humans would also share our IQ*), genetics shift on a much slower timescale than the entire history of IQ tests. * This pattern matches to the Motte-and-Bailey rhetorical technique, ergo I am suspicious of people who try to tie genetics and IQ until they're clear they're not making a rac…

How can human races not be a meaningful genetic category? Aside from the phentoypical differences, the prevalence of some diseases varies by race.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#343

Post by aristofun »

qsera wrote: post #190
aristofun wrote: post #121

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.

>majority of population has always been dumb But idiocracy is not about that majority. It is about the thought leaders becoming dumb. Internet, instead of elevating the majority to the level of intellectuals, dragged the intellectuals to the level of the dumb majority. If you mix poison in milk, milk becomes poison and not the other way. Pretty obvious in hindsight..

> It is about the thought leaders becoming dumb

As i said “they are getting power”. Through exposure, normalization, through all the dumb people getting vote rights (and voting guess how) etc.

Nothing is poisoned in tge human nature. It just plays out differently in this age.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#344

Post by catapart »

semiquaver wrote: post #277
wombat-man wrote: post #226

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…

you don't have to be a scientist to directly engage with the literature. from mathematical proofs to directly observed phenomena to statistical certainties - it's all out there for you to engage with and feel secure in your findings just by having an internet connection. there's a qualitative difference in that evidence from the "sides" and therefore there is a qualitative and practical difference in the "more intelligent" side. "truth" is not incidental to the situation, it's the entire point of making claims at all. So a side that is making claims that turn out to not be true - whether you personally verify that or not - is a worse side, intellectually, than another.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#345

Post by vintermann »

names_are_hard wrote: post #207
soblemprolver wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think there's so much ill-founded assumptions in eugenics BS that it's hard to know where to start, but as a genealogist, I can personally verify that upper or middle class, wealthier people, presumably the sort eugenicists identify with, clearly had at least a 2-3 generations head start on the demographic transition where I come from.

There are other trends, there's always some groups of people who started having fewer kids earlier or later for reasons not obviously related to class - but class is the big one.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#346

Post by shinjitsu »

Intermernet wrote: post #252
bsenftner wrote: post #87

I attended an audience testing screener for Idiocracy before the film's final edit. I could not believe my eyes and ears, I loved it unlike anything I'd seen before, it was the hardest US culture satire I'd seen up to that point. Then the lights came up and the audience started giving their reviews, in an open mike fashion. They all identified with the "idiots" and were indignant insulted, and angry. I remember makin…

Many US citizens didn't get that Starship Troopers was a black comedy. There are serious video reviews taking it seriously as an action movie where the characters are true US heroes. I have a feeling these people are the same as the ones you're talking about.

As a fan of Heinlein's book, the movie flattened the exploration of the political themes from the book and turned it into said black comedy. It would be like turning Animal House or Lord of the Flies into a black comedy.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#347

Post by yodsanklai »

j-kent wrote: post #284
bsenftner wrote: post #87

I attended an audience testing screener for Idiocracy before the film's final edit. I could not believe my eyes and ears, I loved it unlike anything I'd seen before, it was the hardest US culture satire I'd seen up to that point. Then the lights came up and the audience started giving their reviews, in an open mike fashion. They all identified with the "idiots" and were indignant insulted, and angry. I remember makin…

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

I watched this movie as a teenager and I did miss the satire (although I could see something was off and there was a message beyond the action).

It's a bit the opposite of "don't look up" in that sense that the message isn't in your face. But in the current times, this movie really resonates.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#348

Post by JKCalhoun »

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,…

"…much focus is given on rifles, specifically big black scary looking rifles"

Military-style rifles designed primarily for killing humans? That's called a low hanging fruit. If the U.S. can't even restrict those I expect everything else to be a wasted effort.

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#349

Post by malfist »

everdrive wrote: post #96
davemp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not claiming that Idiocracy is accurate, however IQ scores have been declining. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/3283/

IQ is a poor yard stick to measure intelligence with

Re: Are We Idiocracy Yet?

#350

Post by throw0101d »

bko wrote: post #314
Goronmon wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have a message and point of view, but don't put activism over comedy. The "joke" in this case is people's reactions to school shootings. And people's reactions haven't changed, so I don't see why the article should change. It's just so exhausting. This has some real "The worst thing about school shootings is knowing that The Onion is going to repost that article I personally am tired of seeing" energy to it.

It's not a joke if you repeat it 100 times. That article has some real "The best thing about school shootings is we get to have literally every article on our website be this clever headline we wrote 10 years" energy to it.

> It's not a joke if you repeat it 100 times.

The fact that it's been repeated so often kind of makes it a tragedy at this point.

Post reply on HN