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People are not more stupid than before. They are just more ignorant, bigoted, lazy, and scared. And this is not an accidental outcome.
Nooo! It’s because stupid people have too much sex and smart people don’t breed enough! Probably part of the gay agenda! /s
Pleeeeaase don’t think about the fact that this movie is kind of basically supporting pushing eugenics… It’s totally a political commentary about how bad Republicans are, and definitely not actually propagating hardcore Randian Libertarian ideals in its insistence that certain types of people are just inherently, genetically, more suited to rule over others.
It isn’t supporting any sort of selective breeding program at all, in fact it’s the exact opposite: it’s saying that all people should be raising kids to avoid a situation where the culture nosedives to the lowest common denominator. The supporting characters start coming around towards the end of the movie because they are not inherently stupid, just brainwashed.
Just because it doesn’t support an explicit breeding program, doesn’t mean it can’t dabble in negative eugenics.
For someone that says he isn’t pro-eugenics, Mike Judge certainly made a very pro-eugenics movie. It’s simply undeniable, whatever his intentions.
A common criticism of Idiocracy is that it’s most appreciated by some of the people it purports to mock, faux intellectuals. I don’t think it’s a coincidence how many of its most fervent online supporters lack the intellectual honesty to admit such an obvious fact.
A common criticism of Idiocracy is that it’s most appreciated by some of the people it purports to mock, faux intellectuals.
Given how much on the movie is spent dunking on stupid people (i.e. stand-ins for republicans), I don’t think that’s surprising at all.
It does have one anti-capitalist theme (the megacorp buying the FDA), so, I don’t know, if it’s exactly Randian, per se.
I mean, the movie doesn’t actually know what it’s trying to be. It’s a dystopia where everyone is too stupid to function, but a megacorp has zero difficulty arranging the infrastructure and logistics needed to water crops with sports drinks, while also engaging in massive regulatory capture to make this happen. It’s a world where intelligence has disappeared but they somehow have super advanced scifi tech everywhere that hasn’t broken down even though logically no one should have a clue how to maintain it. Oh, and despite being apparently the worst possible future, as soon as someone comparitively smart shows up they immediately put him in charge of the country instead of, say, handing it over to said megacorp.
Idiocracy is an incoherent mess masquerading as satire, while it’s only cogent point is “I hate anyone who has ever shopped at Walmart.”
Each one of these things is it’s own commentary, that is all. Judge obviously wasn’t doing cohesive world building; he was just squeezing together all the commentary he has on why people are hypocritical idiots. All the way down the the eugenics bit.
Since that’s where the conversation started, let’s go to eugenics first. I would wager the writer has expienced the ‘cautious successful people with no kids’ trope a million times in real life and in his very successful career. He made it his own when he contrasted it with the Jerry Springer types; which was very culturally dominant at that time. Yes, we look at it today and only see the problematic eugenics message; but I imagine the writers regret when he sees the most intelligent, affectionate, people he knows never being able to do what the dummy’s on Springer find all to easy.
The writers world is one on the brink of collapse. All because technology was so advance it was self sustaining, at least for a time. The excess it provided made society’s need for education, social structure, and governance evaporate. The time leading up to when Not Sure showed up could have been a cultural revolution of art and space exploration but instead was plagued with reality TV, fart humor, and fast food. All things that were dominating the culture when the writer wrote the script. Taken to the most extreme, focus on making more Gatorade then could ever be consumed would be in line with societies priorities at the time.
Finally, Not Sure becoming president was a simple, funny, way to advance the story. It would be unkind for the author to make all this commentary without giving the audience a polite instruction that could help circumvent our tragic future. That comment being, just feed the plants water. Meaning stop with the idiocy. You don’t have to listen to the, “smartest man in the world” because Not Sure was just an ordinary 20th century guy and even he knew that plants need water.
I’ve always found it funny how I’ve seen folks from both ideological sides point to this film as a satire of what’s wrong with the other. It’s a simple satire, but that’s what makes it effective.
Judge is master at this type of commentary. Beavis and butthead was making fun of how stupid the MTV audience was. The same audience that adopted and Beavis and Butthead just as fast as it was incepted.
King of the hill is the ultimate “Steven Colbert is a sincere conservative show.” In king of the hill Hank is a nieve Texan that buys into every bullshit “American exceptionalism” type idealogy there is. He then humanizes him and shows how every single time Hank is returning to “American values” he’s just being nieve and if he were born anywhere else he would be just as liberal as he is a “conservative.”
As a counter to you comment: Quiet you. No one cares what the anti fun police think.
You are indeed proving you point here 😂
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People are definitely not more bigoted and ignorant. They just feel it’s now safer to express their bigotry.
Possible.
They just feel it’s now safer to express their bigotry.
Which has a memetic effect on the population. The more bigotry ideas are expressed, the more new people feel that those ideas have value. Andrew Tate is an example of a super spreader.
Between the lead fuel, plastics, and possibly other issues not yet proven to be an issue like food colorings and preservatives, we may actually be dumber today than 150 years ago.
We just have access to more platforms to share our opinions and people have access to more sources of information to reinforce their bad opinions.
During the Spanish flu people were fighting against preventive measures, the anti Vax movement existed in the late 1800s (example for those who read French https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/634164/la-grogne-contre-les-vaccins-et-les-mesures-sanitaires-des-le-xixe-siecle ), there’s always been people supporting fascists and so on…
Doctors used to refuse to wash their hands before performing surgery.
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You vastly underestimate the amount of smoke (both pollution and intentional) and lead and toxic dyes and alcohol and cocaine and heroin that people consumed 150 years ago. Not to mention the rampant disease.
That didn’t effect nearly the entire population as leaded gasoline.
Idiocracy is propaganda for eugenics.
Edit: woah, I guess I overestimated some people’s media literacy. Here’s a video explaining what I’m talking about
Everyone always jumps to eugenics to explain Idiocracy, but I don’t ever remember hearing genetics mentioned in the movie. The movie merely states that dumb adults raise dumb children. I don’t know about you, but I see that everyday. This doesn’t need to be explained by genetics. Children mimic the ways the adults in their lives act to model themselves on as they mature. You can counter this with things like public education or community involvement, but if the parents are involved and interact with their child, they’re going to mimic them. If you know a smart person who was raised by dumb people, chances are the parents weren’t really involved with the kid as they grew up.
This isn’t even a obscure fact. What do you think those Jesus Camps are for? Why do you think rich people send their kids to elite schools?
It’s eugenistic because the movie argues idiot parents have idiot children while smart parents have smart children. For every example you can find of this being true you can find another of it being false.
eugenistic because the movie argues idiot parents have idiot children while smart parents have smart children.
This still comes down to a nature vs nurture argument, and the movie tends to fall back on things like education being the primary issue.
Idiots raising idiots isn’t necessarily an argument based in eugenics. Parents who never learned are not going to be able to teach their children. If there isn’t something like a decent public education system, then what chance do the children of idiots really have?
the movie tends to fall back on things like education being the primary issue.
Are we talking about the same movie?
The movie’s “happy ending” is literally that the “smartest person” becomes the boss of all the stupid people. I think y’all don’t really know too much about eugenics.
Yes, everyone knows about this scene. This still isn’t claiming that intellect is a genetic trait that can only be inherited. It’s claiming that intellect is no longer a valued societal trait that people find necessary to procreate.
I think the problem with your interpretation is it is focusing on biological evolution, when in reality the satire is based on societal evolution. Idiocracy is only set like 500 years in the future, not exactly enough time to see humans biologically adapt in any significant way.
I don’t know what I can say. The movie literally focuses on the biology. It’s literally in the text and you claim otherwise.
Edit: I noticed that my timestamp didn’t work. It’s pretty open at 1m58s
At 1m58sec they are talking about medical advancements…not genetics. Again, I think you are jumping to conclusions. Medical advancements that allow people to procreate at a faster rate is not biology, it’s sociology.
It kinda seems you are dismissing the possibility of nurture attributing to the equation at all, which in and of itself is a eugenics based argument.
Does the movie touch on an “intelligence gene” that’s passed down?
I don’t believe it does, in which case, is it eugenics if no genes are involved?
I thought the movie was more nuanced than that—the “smart parents” of Idiocracy did not have smart children—they had zero children. The smart couple in fact were the ones doing “self-eugenics” to their own detriment.
Eugenics or not, evolution favors the population that produces the fittest offspring for the environment–not the smartest.
So the movie isn’t eugenic because it showed people doing eugenics wrong?
It’s more “tragedy of the commons” eugenics than “evil corporate-governmental-white supremacy” eugenics.
So the movie isn’t prophetic, and people constantly harping about how it’s coming true are fucking morons?
The majority of comedy works because there is truth in it. Sure, Idiocracy is prophetic, or we wouldn’t be discussing it today. Nobody discusses South Park’s “Bigger Longer Uncut” like Idiocracy because it doesn’t really engage this kind of truth.
What I cannot tell is if people have always been this moronic and we’re only more aware of it because of ubiquitous cell phone camera technology and the Internet’s capability to rapidly distribute awareness of dumbness that would have otherwise stayed regionally isolated.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”—George Carlin
Did you read my whole comment? Smart kids come from dumb parents when the parent isn’t involved as much in the child’s upbringing. The movie is simplify the concept because it’s a movie, not a lecture.
Ok, but what you are saying translates to if the parents are not smart enough they should better not be involved in their own children’s upbringing for their sake. That’s an awful take.
It’s not an awful take, it’s reality. Being dumb is not genetic and this has nothing to do with eugenics.
Also, they didn’t say parents don’t need to be involved at all. I think the idea is that the children get exposed to other people and ways of thinking and not JUST the things their parents decide for them. Otherwise it’ll be indoctrination -better or worse- but the kids won’t think for themselves.
For example, I think homeschooling is especially awful because parents just can’t teach all the things that being in a classroom will. I don’t know why it is legal in the USA, they should just have separate classes for kids with special needs imo, like in Europe.
I see where you come from and I agree - things like homeschooling should not be legal. A society should absolutely be involved in raising children and help to fulfill everyone’s potential.
I think the idea is that the children get exposed to other people and ways of thinking and not JUST the things their parents decide for them. Otherwise it’ll be indoctrination -better or worse- but the kids won’t think for themselves.
Well said, but in that case it doesn’t matter whether your parents are smart or dumb. You should always be exposed to other people and encouraged to get out of your small oyster. Especially in a social sense; I live in Germany and after 4th grade we get separated in different high schools (for low, middle, and high achievers). I can tell you that we as teenagers very often start living in our bubble where we only meet people with somewhat of the same education. I am very grateful to have kept my best friend from elementary because she exposes me to her friends who are from a very different social class than me. Their lives, problem solving approaches, and ways of thinking are so vastly different from what I am used to that I always feel like a fish out of the water.
But to be clear:
Smart kids come from dumb parents when the parent isn’t involved as much in the child’s upbringing.
To me this does read like dumb parents can only raise smart kids if they keep out of their lives. And while I see why the conclusion “dumb parent raises dumb child” comes about, this is a very dangerous oversimplification. Yes, it has nothing (or little) to do with eugenics. But with language like this the way is paved to shame people that we perceive as dumb to be unfit parents. And while social programs as you mentioned would be the obvious way to tackle such nuanced issues, that kind of reasoning can quickly lead to a perception that only smart people (the “right people”) should be having kids. Because it seems like the easier, more straightforward solution (which it obviously isn’t, but that is how populist speech works).
As for the movie - the problem with the dude in the opening sequence is not that he is low class or dumb. The problem is that he is an inconsiderate asshole (who is, btw, not too present in his children’s lives).
How exactly do you want to define dumbness to begin with? A low IQ? So at what IQ should people have children, where is the cutoff? Are people who are street smart but bad in school and IQ tests dumb? Are these who have no street smarts at all but ace in school dumb? Are people who do not agree with your political reasoning dumb? (Like, I hate Trump with all my passion, but I would not say he is dumb. He is an awful and troubled human being but he is definitely not dumb in an IQ kind of sense.)
I don’t like to take Forest Gump as an example as he is not real (and since I don’t really like that movie) but it might fit here; would he be a dumb or a smart person? Is he fit to be a parent?
I think it is obvious that a good parent is a caring, loving, open person, not necessarily one that is smart or can teach their child how to live. This is what society should be for. But arguments like “dumb people raise dumb children unless they aren’t involved” are really just a step away from treating anyone who is not in the right 50% of the bell curve as an idiot who is undeserving of procreation. Which is why I found the statement above problematic.
Only if to take it to the most extreme possibility. For all the issues I have with how I was raised, I’m thankful my parents were too busy much of the time and left me to watch PBS or play in the woods. As an adult, when I heard one of my 5 year old relatives chant “No Thanks Obama, You Can Keep The Change!” and get praised for it, I wretched inside.
I’m not advocating for child abduction. There are already plenty of real world examples of how terrible that is. But that we should be 1) investing in public education more and 2) discrediting private/home schools. Also, we need better Publicly run and funded Homeschool options for kids who CAN’T be in a classroom, including livestreamed classrooms and/or a virtual space.
Also, what we’re calling “intelligence” is really social behavior. IQ tests are only really useful for comparing different groups within the same culture or the same group across time. Other then that, you can’t directly measure intelligence as different groups of people will need and value different traits and skills. The only real qualifier for intelligence is basic tool use and that’s so universal, are ape relatives have it.
Yes, and I simply disagree. If what you are saying was true, humanity as whole would still be farmers, hunter and gatherers.
Stupid, ignorant people raise stupid, ignorant children.
The movie never adresses systemic failures in the educational system. It literally starts with “stupid people fuck too much”.
Yeah, because it’s an 85 minute long comedy. The people who think it’s about eugenics are reading more into it than is there.
It’s the literal premise at the beginning. That’s like claiming that the people who claim the Empire is evil read too much into Star Wars.
It’s a funny film about “what if stupid people ruled the world” with a 2 minute sequence at the beginning to get the audience up to speed, during which Judge manages to poke fun at both rednecks and middle class wasps.
If it was some polemic against modern society and how purging the undesirable from society through eugenics, don’t you think it would be a bit more obvious?
And yet the movie ends on a hopeful note. I’m not entirely sure they were committed to the genetic explanation.
This movie came out when social media was in its infancy. Just replace eugenics with manipulation from social media and we’re headed down the same highway of doom! Toot toot
I don’t think the movie wqs intended as eugenic propaganda, but sure looks like it. Also all the memes and jokes about our future being this movie sure as heck don’t seem to care about the ending.
“natural selection” doesn’t have to be explained by the genome.
Neither does eugenics.
Right. The solution to ignorance is education. Not selective breeding programs.
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The whole notion of intelligence being inheritable and letting the “stupid” (or rather: the poor) reproduce indiscriminately is basically the original idea of eugenics.
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Intelligence is inheritable
Intelligence doesn’t even have a proper definition in the biological domain. If you have any scientific proof that intelligence is inheritable, do show!
You can juggle words all you want: you’re describing eugenicist principles. Those aren’t only morally unjustyfiable: they’re simply wrong with an oversimplified understanding of evolution and intelligence.
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I don’t know how else to phrase it: the claim that intelligence is breedable is a eugenicist foundation.
Evolution is a process, you’re confusing evolution with evolutionary science.
Your definition of intelligence is incredibly oversimplified. Intelligence is not an inheritable trait (as in: the difference in intelligence of human population does not significantly stem from genetic differences).
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Genes make a substantial difference, but they are not the whole story. They account for about half of all differences in intelligence among people, so half is not caused by genetic differences, which provides strong support for the importance of environmental factors. This estimate of 50 percent reflects the results of twin, adoption and DNA studies. From them, we know, for example, that later in life, children adopted away from their biological parents at birth are just as similar to their biological parents as are children reared by their biological parents. Similarly, we know that adoptive parents and their adopted children do not typically resemble one another in intelligence.
I mean, it’s not nice to joke with eugenics but I think it was no more than that and besides the movie explicitly mentions that research of important topics halted in favour of projects with a more promising outpay and that education became worse and worse by the year, which are both very real threats.
We’re talking about that movie where a man of below average intelligence goes to the future and saves the world by teaching them the value of education, right?
No, a man who is average in every measure
Well, watching the world burn and 8 billion people contributing to that, I can get behind some eugenics.
Yeah!
Poordumb people should have been banned from reproducing ages ago! It’s not like there’s a economic-political system continuing to knowingly destroy the planet in service of number go up!It’s the
poordumb people!/s
See, now I didn’t say anything about eugenics for the poor or dumb. I just said I supported the idea of eugenics. I would be very happy to start with the wealthy and powerful first. (Although one might make a good argument that there is a significant overlap between the rich and the dumb)
When you realize that Idiocracy is way better than where we’re headed.
They had to make the future people somewhat likable and sympathetic for a comedy movie. In reality, they’d be much more short tempered, racist, sexist, and violent.
Than neofeudalism/technofeudalism? Sure.
The pseudoscience behind it is straight from eugenics.
Despite that, its depiction of an ignorant society unaware of the technology supporting it was incredibly prophetic. If we ignore the “dumb people reproducing” bit, we can see it as a warning about how an uneducated society is detrimental for everyone.
I mean, we have flat earthers, for fuck’s sake.
The problem is it’s also a society without users and abusers. It’s just a story about dumb people.
But the reason society seems to be trending stupider isn’t because we’re naturally focusing on shunning intelligence… it’s because the rich and powerful are using their influence to put that idea in our heads. They want a stupider, and more malleable, society to manipulate.
That is the biggest problem we’re facing right now. And ignoring the root cause basically means you’re pushing a boulder up a steep hill, just for it to roll back down again.
We always had village idiots. Social Media just allowed them to find each other.
I’m not worried with flat earthers as much as theocrats amd other form of politically motivated extremism.
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Eugenics (by some definitions) doesn’t even have to be unethical if you turn left off of “state-enforced sterilization highway” and on to “provide the opportunity to let people optimise their children’s genome street”. It is basically transhumanism at that point. Probably still some problems there, but at least its not coercive, and its also already possible today. Equality of access to polygenetic screening I say!
That is the thing.
Idiocracy is a universe where intelligence is shunned. Being smart is a bad thing and reading books can get you beaten up. It is basically anti-intelligence.
While in our universe we have more of a pseudoscience problem. People who want to be smart, it is revered. But they fall for pseudo-intelligence. (Flatearthers, anti-vaxxers, climate deniers, …)
If there was a movies circlejerk community on lemmy, this would be the top of all time post.
on the internet*.
And then you have people jumping in saying IDIOCRACY EUGENICS only to eventually get curbstomped again despite arguing against one of the most tongue-in-cheek movies ever made…
The anti-circle jerk has finally come back around though so that’s nice.
only to eventually get curbstomped again
No circlejerking going on here, no siree!
We are now in the Handmaid’s Tale
I don’t like idiocracy bc irl the opposition is not actually stupid, they know exactly what they are doing. Also the eugenics is not fantastic
But those who are voting for them apparently are…
And constantly just calling them stupid will totally fix things. It totally won’t puff up their stubbornness where they oppose your ideas out of spite.
No, I didn’t assume it does fix things. But it seems to be the truth, or they’re sadomasochistic (which doesn’t look like it).
Would you rather like them to be called egoistic, anxious, brain-insufficient (okay that’s another way to call them stupid ^^) and illiterate? I just can’t fathom to vote for these guys, they just say things, which they won’t do to get power, and then try to hold onto it in any way they can, and in the meantime destroy what previous systemic democracy has build up over a long time.
Fixing this, would require more education, but those guys try to vote for guys who are against education…
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I’d much prefer Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho as president tbf
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Yeah no maybe do some introspection if the misanthropic eugenics movie seems relatable.
It’s not relatable, it’s prophetic…
Only if you assume there’s no bad actors behind the decline in intelligent discourse in the world.
How the world gets into that state isn’t the part of the movie that’s prophetic…
We also don’t have working cryogenics etc…
idiocracy is a stupid movie that promote eugenics. I’m so tired of seeing people hailing it as some sort of genius movie when the only thing it has is “aren’t other people stoopid? durr” wow easy there you’re making my brain hurt with all this brilliant analysis. fuck idiocracy.
I’m pretty sure the eugenics portion of the film is done more as a gag than a Literal endorsement of eugenics.
Watching the film as a whole illustrates the way in which corporations are not only in positions of power, but are also taking the role of the arbiter of truth. It builds on this by showing how that leads to anti-intellectualism among the masses as they no longer form their own opinions, but defer to those of corporations.
This is just my interpretation.
i don’t understand why the premise is set up that way. maybe I’m remembering it wrong but i don’t remember the premise being a red herring or anything; they played it pretty straight.
the movie could have been totally valid if it actually looked into real causes of intellectual decline, which is about education first and foremost, but instead they go with the breeder mentality, and not only give credence to IQ which is bs in and of itself, but suggest that it’s inherited.
someone else in these comments says oh it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s genetic but ignorant people are likely to raise their children to be ignorant or whatever… but that’s just steelmanning the movie’s premise. it’s how not the movie plays it. they straight up suggest it’s intelligence rather than education and tie it directly to breeding rather than socioeconomic conditions and political manipulation.
It’s a funny movie. But I get what you’re saying, people use it as an example of why the real world is going downhill, and those people are unknowingly promoting eugenics.
The movie itself doesn’t promote anything. Don’t blame Mike Judge for stupid fandoms.
Are you claiming that the movie doesn’t have a political message?
I’ll bite. Besides the 5 minute plot device intro that is never referenced again in the entire movie, what message does it have? I could see maybe a vague anti corporate message, but all of the movie seems tongue in cheek, including the intro.
And if eugenics is the only political message you can think of, at least we can both be glad it failed and that this comedy movie has only been taken as a joke.
Well said
i don’t subscribe to that idea. if it didn’t promote anything it wouldn’t be brought up constantly.
Brother it’s not “promoting” anything, it’s a fucking satirical comedy
“Satirical comedies” are famous for not having a political message. /s
The political message is certainly not “eugenics is good”, it’s “corporatocracy is bad”. The movie doesn’t “promote” eugenics.
That bit about the corporation is just a relatively minor plot point. The corporation didn’t make the people stupid. Even the CEO didn’t know what he was doing (which is a horrible satire of a corporation, too).
The whole premise of the movie, the whole conflict and the thing the title is referencing is: Stupid people outbreed smart people.
That’s a eugenicist viewpoint. It just is.
too bad they didn’t call the movie corporatocracy then, isn’t it. almost like that wasn’t the main point for them.
even if corporate power was the central point, which it isn’t because it’s a liberal movie and not a leftist one, it ties the corporate power to people being stupid (due to dysgenics and not the education system btw) rather than a very deliberate and systematic takeover by people who very well knew what they were doing. because that’s how it is in real life, but the movie completely blunders that.
what do you think satire means? are you a cinemasins fan or something? those sentences do not follow each other.
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
As far as I understand this, this isn’t something like an actual degree, it’s something like a diploma, you get if you finish what we in europe call a technical/specialized high school (the 3 year, not the 4 year one (where you can seek higher education)).
You’re exactly right. It’s just a timely coincidence, given a bit of creative leeway on my part.
He’s required to say that. Sadly, he doesn’t actually love you.
He does and nothing you say can change my mind. We will get married and have hundreds of babies.
Idioctacy isn’t about how stupid society has become, it’s literally justifying Eugenics.
It’s a 90 minute film. You are taking issue with the first 2 minutes.
Also, eugenics involves unnatural control and sterilisation. It sounds like you have a problem with intelligence being inherited.
You are taking issue with the first 2 minutes.
It’s the friggin setup to the movie.
sounds like you have a problem with intelligence being inherited.
… which is a eugenisist idea.
As far as I’m aware there’s little doubt genetics play a role in intelligence though? Of course it would not have as extreme of an effect as in the movie for a multitude of reasons.
We don’t have to pretend that genetics don’t matter, we can just agree that eugenics are morally wrong because all people should have the right to reproduce.
As far as I’m aware there’s little doubt genetics play a role in intelligence though?
Yes, there is, at least when you’re talking about human intelligence (i.e. in one species), since intelligence isn’t even a scientifcally proven concept.
we can just agree that eugenics are morally wrong because all people should have the right to reproduce.
It also doesn’t work.
Basically any study like that that seriously considers IQ as a scientifically measurable value isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
IQ hasn’t been proven to predict anything real.
It may not be accurate as an absolute meaure, but it does successfully measure relative intelligence across groups.
Or maybe it’s just a knee jerk reaction to trash evidence that goes against your existing opinion.
The whole premise of the film in the first two minutes states “smart people aren’t having kids while dumb people are” and the result of that in the film is a society of morons (who, also, somehow have automation and high technology, which requires, you know, some amount of intelligence). There’s not really any other way one can take the film other than “we need to make smart people have lots of babies and prevent dumb people from not having kids lest we end up with a society full of morons” which is, by definition, “unnatural control and sterilization” (eugenics).
I mean saying “you take issue with the first two minutes” is a little like when a racist makes a racist claim and then you say “ok, what do you think should be done about it” they just say “I’m just sayin’” because they don’t want to actually say the thing out loud. If you make a satire which uses as the premise that “smart people don’t have kids, while dumb people have lots of kids” and then depicts a future that is degenerate, full of stupid people doing stupid things for stupid reasons, it’s hard not to take that as advocating for eugenics on some level by saying “we need to make smart people have lots of kids and prevent dumb people from having too many kids.”
Literally, from the wikipedia page, here’s the ending: "Joe discovers the time machine was an amusement ride, a detail Frito was aware of. Joe becomes president and marries Rita, with whom he has three children. Frito becomes vice president and has 32 children, all stated to be “the dumbest kids ever to walk the earth” in contrast to Joe and Rita’s children, who are “the three smartest kids in the world.”
The two people from “the before times when everyone was smarter” have three of the smartest kids around and the dumb guy has 32 of the dumbest kids around. It’s not being subtle, this isn’t even something you would find in high school English for close reading. It’s literally saying "smart people have few kids and dumb people have lots of kids and this is bad and will result in a degenerate society that we must avoid. Hell, for a film making this claim, it’s not even written that well. It’s more “what if Cleetus from the Simpsons ruled the world” than “what if the global IQ dropped because smart people didn’t have four kids a piece”. Does make fun of Anti-intellectualism? Sure. Does it do it in a way that actually points to the problem? No! It blames breeding rather than the actual reason for all the anti intellectualism.
The reason for all the anti-intellectualism and stupid bullshit in the world right now isn’t because smart people aren’t shitting out kids at a rate of knots. It’s because of right wing authoritarian people, who themselves have at least some brains, manipulating the public discourse for their own selfish aims. Cases in point:
- Climate change denial: Climate change deniers are literally claiming Scientists don’t understand what weather is and it’s being parroted and pushed by right wing publications who, I might add, aren’t being run by morons, but people who will benefit monetarily from us fucking the planet.
- Campaigns to ban abortion and contraception: We literally have several countries that are showing why banning contraception and abortion are bad ideas (Ireland and Romania and the people who are campaigning to ban them are making claims like “Condoms don’t stop AIDS” and “the moment the sperm hits the egg, the zygote is fully aware”. All of this is being promoted by people who aren’t morons, but by people who will benefit monetarily from banning contraception and abortion from all the cheap labour.
- Campaigns against transgender rights: TERFs are literally developing a fake history around transgender people, saying that it was both due to the Nazis and only invented in the 1980s, which their own propaganda (The Transsexual Empire, a book that advocated for the complete elimination of transgender people from the population, was published in 1979) disputes. The people who promote this aren’t morons, they are just extremely hateful and benefit from using violence to enforce strict gender norms and the culture war that distracts people from the real problems of this age.
- Campaigns for child marriage: Yes. In the USA, the country that is the sole focus of Idiocracy, people are advocating for CHILD MARRIAGE. And they’re not merely doing this because their fucking pedophiles, they’re doing this because they benefit from girls not getting a proper education, and people having kids when they can’t afford so they become beholden to low paid, long hour jobs to pay for their kids, which you know, benefits organisations like Dollar Tree and WalMart and Amazon who rely on cheap labour who can’t afford to say no. All of this is not even bringing up that having a child at 12-14 is often times deadly.
- Campaigns to abolish the Department of Education: This is a part of Project 2025, the reason is very simple, and it’s not because people are stupid: They want quality education to be only available to the rich while out of reach of the poor because a quality education allows people to make more money and be politically active and be harder to manipulate. The people advocating for this aren’t dumb, quite the opposite, they’re smart and are going to benefit financially from this.
If I were to summarize the it all, it’s not that stupid people are in charge, it’s smart evil people using anti-intelectualism to get their way. To drive it home, during the Brexit campaign, the former Education secretary, Michael Gove, when someone someone was interviewing him and challenging him on brexit, stating that every single economist was saying Brexit was a bad idea, Michael Gove said “people are sick and tired of experts”. That’s the issue here: we’re being told not to actually listen to people who know what they are saying and listen to right wing ideologues who are either benefiting from this or being paid by people who are. And again, Michael Gove isn’t a dumb person, he’s an Oxford graduate, he’s just a really fucking horrible person who, amongst other things, despite being Scottish himself, made a televised diatribe where he claimed Scottish people were poor morons who didn’t deserve self determination.
And I know that’s a lot of text, but sometimes you have to go into detail. So here’s the tl;dr:
- Idiocracy’s whole premise, start to finish is “smart people don’t have as many kids and dumb people have too many, and that will result in a degenerate society of morons.”
- The real cause of anti-intelectualism are terrible people promoting bullshit, fighting against scientists and even just generally moral and ethical people, for their own self interest.
You are trying to shoehorn too many of your pet subjects into a 2 minute premise. If you are not controlling breading, you are not practising eugenics.
But I thank you for making me look closer. It turns out the film does have a scientific foundation.
Even if it mentions this, this isn’t a major part of the film. I haven’t watched it recently, but I know it mentions Brawndo buying most of the food chains (like nestle) and if you look what people are watching (“Ow my balls”) it’s very reminiscent of terrible TikToks (which are practicly just sensory stimulating content, while not having an intellectual or educational value). On the monitor, around the “Ow my balls” show, there is a lot of ads, like the modern web and crappy mobile games. I think we already live in Idiocracy.
That’s kind of a bold claim, as it always seemed to me that the ‘smart people aren’t having kids while dumb people are’ wasn’t about eugenics, but about cultural norms- dumb parents aren’t going to encourage critical thinking, going to school, valuing intelligence, or any number of things to their kids. Moreover, dumb parents aren’t going to want, or be able, to provide their kids the sort of resources needed for that kid to shine even if the kid DID want to go against the local grain and focus on those things, because dumber people generally tend to make less money.
More to the point, lack of intelligence is, generally, more based in environment and means, not personal ability- people usually aren’t dumb because they’re inherently dumb, it’s because they lack teaching and resources, or are in an environment that discourages intelligence. The most common indicator of this is the local economy- a brutal catch 22 of being poor meaning there’s worse resources for people, who cannot get ahead and thus end up poor themselves.
There’s an old joke in the US that you can easily divide people up by their earning potential with a single simple number- their zip code. The same thing applies to test scores.
‘smart people aren’t having kids while dumb people are’ wasn’t about eugenics…
That is literally the main claim of Eugenics and the premise of the film. Go back and retake high school English.
Source?
It’s comforting to know that while things may seem to be going in one direction, the opposite is actually happening. IQ isn’t a static measurement, nor is it all that useful… However it has been trending upwards ever since it’s inception. Meaning that what 100 IQ currently is used to be closer to 130 back in our grandparents time.
That was true for the past, but IIRC recent studies have shown that this trend reverses for the first time
Well shucks I’m out of date. Thanks for catching me up.
Are your studies based on united states, North America, “first world” countries, or global?
E.g. here, and since I’m not a big fan of dailymail, a direct link to I think the study they mean, so yeah, US…
that direct link had a concerning title, but then there was this paragraph:
research and meta-analyses over the last two decades suggest that the Flynn effect had already stagnated or begun to reverse. In a meta-analysis examining IQ scores across 31 countries from 1909 to 2013, Pietschnig and Voracek (2015) found that the magnitude of higher IQ scores observed for newer cohorts has declined. Dutton and Lynn (2013) found Finnish IQ scores had differed −2.0 IQ points (0.13 SD) from 1997 to 2009, while French IQ scores differed −3.8 IQ points (0.25 SD) from 1999 to 2009 (Dutton and Lynn, 2015); for these studies, more recent samples had lower IQ scores than previous samples. In a meta-analysis examining nine original studies that observed a reverse Flynn effect, differences ranged between −0.38 IQ points (0.03 SD) and −4.3 IQ points (0.29 SD) per decade (Dutton, van der Linden, and Lynn, 2016). Recent evidence within German-speaking countries, also suggests that the magnitude of higher visual-spatial ability scores in newer cohorts could be declining across certain regions of Europe (Pietschnig and Gittler, 2015).
Linking to a ton of other studies, which is enough data for me to consider acceptable.
It was not supposed to be an instructional video
wait, what country is on six year election cycles and has elections this year
Well the senate and most governors are on a six year cycle
I would estimate 1/3rd of each
deleted by creator
Surely about 1/6 or so!
Mexico. Six year presidential term, and they had elections this year.
Russia?
Putin already
wonasserted complete control over electoral system.
