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Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

208 points by zaptheimpaler 5y ago

Havoc 5y ago
> that famous quote often attributed to Charles Bukowski: “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” Isn't that a Yeats quote?
Apocryphon 5y ago
I liked this previous comment thread with a minority detractor view on Idiocracy, which argues it’s a little more dated to it’s specific Bush-era cultural milieu than everyone remembers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18489573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18489573
gandalfian 5y ago
It's a pleasant piece of silliness that I moderately enjoyed watching. Provided you suspend your disbelief and don't take it as real, as with most movies. https://xkcd.com/603/ https://xkcd.com/603/
durnygbur 5y ago
Common denominator to reach global audience is attractive young women and making the audience feel smarter than "dumb people". Those who decide about the money we use and about the power structures we submit to are constantly cunning and clever. I don't see them in Idiocracy.
luis8 5y ago
"The Bell Curve" also talks about the Idiocracy premise. I know the premise of this book is different, but they do touch on the fact that siblings usually have the same level of intelligence. This is a very controversial book. Any thoughts anyone would like to share?
data_dan_ 5y ago
This perspective always bothers me. It's the same with the recent Don't Look Up. The people who will watch and and understand it aren't the people who actually need to get the message. They're both bland movies that present a point of view they know their viewers will agree with. They then get praised--undeservingly, in my opinion--for presenting a "bold" perspective.
nescioquid 5y ago
The point of Idiocracy is a finger directed at everyone. Friends and colleagues who had children were sometimes offended (I think that really put a lot of people off), but the movie implicates us all as idiots drawn to spectacle. There's a marvelous scene in which Frito, Not Sure, and Rita peer around a corner as police surround Frito's car. The police open fire on the vehicle and as the fusillade intensifies, Frito is increasingly enthralled and delighted by the destruction until the car explodes under rocket fire and Frito exclaims in joy. And then the realization of what happened sets in, and as a viewer I became aware of how I was sucked into that bizarre scene. The joke was on me ;-)
SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
It's not actually a completely original premise: > "The Marching Morons" is a science fiction story by American writer Cyril M. Kornbluth, originally published in Galaxy in April 1951. > The story follows John Barlow, who was put into suspended animation by a freak accident involving a dental drill and anesthesia. Barlow is revived hundreds of years in the future. The world seems mad to Barlow until he discovers the 'Problem of Population': due to a combination of intelligent people not having children and excessive breeding by less intelligent people and coupled with the development of more sophisticated machinery that makes it less important to possess intelligence in one's working life, the world is full of morons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons
zqna 5y ago
The civilizations and societies rise and decline all the time. There is no reason to believe that this time will be different. Thinking otherwise is only wishful thinking, comparable to the idea that the price of house/stock/bitcoin can only rise. What we might disagree though is if we have already entered into decline or not. People overestimate education. The majority of population who play the biggest role in how society evolves don't get any wiser because of the school. One can even argue that today's education is dumber than say 30-40 years ago.
motohagiography 5y ago
If I were looking for a poignant pause, I'd compare anything Christopher Hitchens wrote for the Guardian a decade ago to what we're commenting on now, and consider whether this article about the prophecy of Idiocracy might land a bit closer to the writer than to the mark. The reason to be this pointed about it is the cognitive style of articles like these is to seduce readers with sympathy for their smallest and cruelist sentiments. It's as though media appointees imagine themselves as fomenting a better calibre of angry mob or inciting the right kind of superstitious villager. Appealing to Idiocracy as a parable of caution for our times seems a bit rich, especially when the very cause of the idiocy in the movie was that the society in the story had been completely coddled and unchallenged by the very people whose job it was to provoke some kind of thoughtfulness and reflection.
frabbit 5y ago
Idiocracy imagines a future so dumb that Idiocracy is the acme of political satire for the Jen Psakis of the world.
blamestross 5y ago
Idiocracy is hilariously optimistic. The people of the future: 1) Noticed that a guy they sent to jail was competent 2) Promptly assigned him a role with responsibility appropriate to the competency 3) Didn't understand but at least TRIED to listen to what he had to say 4) When he bypassed the bureaucracy to demonstrate ways to solve problems they noticed, listened, and rewarded him for it. I don't think our current government is that mindful and self-aware.
aaron695 5y ago
hvacmike 5y ago
blooalien 5y ago
Relevant literary reference → https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51233 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51233 "The Marching Morons - C.M. Kornbluth"
JohnWhigham 5y ago
aww_dang 5y ago
I'm not convinced that the author's favored political positions are above satire. >A blunt-smoking doctor at the hospital (Justin Long) is shocked that Joe doesn’t have a barcode on his arm, like everybody else, and asks, “Why come you no have a tattoo?” Yet, the author seems to be a fan of the bio-security state rationalized by the covid emergency. >...climate deniers... Is this not also a bastardization of language? Is anyone denying that the earth has a climate? To be fair to the author, it seems like a deliberate trashing of nuance. Yes, the movie is funny, but the review is a bit smug. The depopulation part was a bit over the top. From the opposing perspective the causes he champions such as "BirthStrikers" seem like willing rubes for authoritarians. If he can dish it out, then perhaps he should look in the mirror.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  > Is this not also a bastardization of language? Is anyone denying that the earth has a climate? To be fair to the author, it seems like a deliberate trashing of nuance. Do you actually not understand what the author means by “climate deniers”? The intended meaning seems quite clear to me.
  - luckylion 5y ago
    I'm sure everyone knows what the author means. Yet you can still say that it's inaccurate and only used for effect: the framing is that it's adjacent to holocaust deniers. If you're not a fan of that kind of use of language, you can criticize it while still understanding what the author wanted to convey ("those people").
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      The specific complaint was that it “trashes nuance.” But if everyone knows what the author means, in what sense is nuance being trashed?
      - luckylion 5y ago
        Everyone knows who you mean when you call one US party "fascists" and the other "communists", but you've lost pretty much all nuance. And all you've won is a bit of impact, for a while, because the tool will blunt with constant use. You'll have to reach for "super fascists" and "mega communists" next time and that will barely move the needle and you'll be far away from the effect you got when you tried that hack the first time.
scotty79 5y ago
First time I had a revelation that we are close to Idiocracy was when I saw the movie Crank which came out the same year. It a had vibe so close to "Ow my b*lls" movie featured in Idiocracy. And I was entertained.
- doopy1 5y ago
  Shortly after Idiocracy, someone bade an ow my balls mobile game and spread like wildfire. The thing is... we were already in Idiocracy when the movie came out. Good sci-fi isn't prophetic, it just describes the world as it already is.
- michaelt 5y ago
  Well, shows like Jackass and Za gaman were around long before Idiocracy. It was certainly a mirror held up to society as it was at the time.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    But the mirror is also temporal. There’s a lot of trash on TV these days but it’s probably not as lowbrow outright sensationally dumb as the shock jock reality TV era that Idiocracy was created in. We’re currently living in a highbrow era of television.
    - michaelt 5y ago
      Personally I'd say we've still got just as much "Ow My Balls" today. But instead of calling it "Jackass" we call it "Epic Fails Compilation"
- walrus01 5y ago
  there's now dozens of "fail army" youtube channels with many millions of subscribers that are basically "ow, my balls!" in real life.
borepop 5y ago
Don't Look Up, currently out on Netflix, seems to owe a fair amount to Idiocracy. And/or to the ways in which American culture morphed into Idiocracy over the last several years.
- dragonsky67 5y ago
  I Hated this movie. The level of discomfort it engendered was off the scale. The depiction of the political and media is so close to reality that I ended up fast forwarding through it and at this point have paused watching as continuing is just too uncomfortable. So from that point of view, and at least for me I would say that the movie is a success, job done. Unfortunately I don't think I'm the person who needs to receive this message. I don't need to be told that the world is going to shit at a faster rate than ever. I don't need to be told that most (all?) media, main stream or otherwise only succeed in rating somewhere between barely acceptable and blatantly corrupt on an ethical/truthfulness scale. The only way I can continue to exist with some degree of happiness is to simply try to ignore the majority of what is going on outside my bubble. I don't think I'm alone. That said, I'm really interested how this movie has been perceived by those who think everything is wonderful. Are their world views so different that they have any ability to understand that this is not a comedy set in a different world, where politicians and media are clueless to their own ignorance and stupidity? Do they understand that this movie is holding a big bloody mirror up to the Western world and giving a giant wake up call. Unfortunately given how a lot of people seem to have reacted to the last couple of years, I have to think that they would just look at themselves in the mirror, adjust the makeup and wonder how those stupid scientists can not understand that they are messing with the latest media fed delusion. Now I'm going to close my door again and pretend that the world really is wonderful. Have a nice day.
- alphabettsy 5y ago
  Yea, but while accurate it was terrible. Idiocracy is funny, Don’t Look Up was not to me.
  - lghh 5y ago
    It felt so grounded in reality that it took very little creativity to write or think about. Making 1-to-1 comparisons of things and people isn't very interesting. Such thin layers of abstraction don't add much value in media just as they don't in software development. It's basically just cut-and-paste.
magikaram 5y ago
"The underlying message of course is that humans ought to take such things as science, research and knowledge seriously, lest we create our own Idiocracy." Rather, I felt the underlying message of the film is that the film is a critique of the consumerism and corporatism of the US. The 'idiocracy' with how the government runs, the downward trend of education in the US, and the pessimistic views of our future.
- jrs235 5y ago
  I felt the underlying message was "Intelligent people, stop focusing on career and start having more kids (we really are in a race to the bottom)!"
  - lkxijlewlf 5y ago
    Wouldn't the Dunning-Kruger effect mean that unintelligent people would just keep having kids while the Imposter Syndrome would mean Intelligent people would not?
    - ruined 5y ago
      guess you'd better not have kids then. don't worry, i'll do extra
    - dllthomas 5y ago
      You think you know more about the Dunning-Kruger effect than you do.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    If we think we need intelligent people in order to have intelligent children that seems like an argument for nepotism and hereditary positions, which isn't very progressive.
    - FredPret 5y ago
      Perhaps the fact that we DO need intelligent people to have intelligent children will lead to some forced changes in our society down the line, progressive or not
cblconfederate 5y ago
ow alert alert, too many spoilers > is a single unbroken shot of a naked butt No, it was a butt that was farting, but we didn't know whose ass it was and why it was farting. I must have watched that movie 50 times. It explains the world so well and brings back the sanity. While the premise of the movie was demographics, the real world idiocracy is brought about by societies moving away from liberal ideals and turning democracy to a pure popularity/likes/retweets contest. And this is happening across the spectrum, from reactionary right to woke left.
jollybean 5y ago
It's funny to see how 'one side' will completely miss the satirization of themselves in the work, and just laugh at the jokes targeted towards them. (And FYI I'm not 'taking a side' I can only imagine what 'some other' publication would make of the film) Judge was also mocking lack of education, slouching cultural standards, lack of competency, lack of moral fibre, conscientiousness etc.. In pretty much every scene. Though the most memorable for me is: "Welcome to Costco, I love you" as the ultimate derision of cynical 'Happy Face' corporatism. Think of a brand that you like in part because of the 'Things They Seem to Support' - and be assured that that's the point the joke right there. But it's full of absurdist goodies: the Fast Food machine that takes your children away, the Costco Law School, Starbucks Rub & Tug etc. Edit: it maybe a kind of IQ test or maybe 'personality type' test because I saw it with a friend and she didn't grasp any of the satire at all, to her it was 'stupid' and she literally fell asleep. I didn't know what to make of that. Edit 2: 'Ow My Balls' will be huge on TikTok and it's not going to be long before it's nary exactly that.
- deleted 5y ago
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- haunter 5y ago
  >it maybe a kind of IQ test or maybe 'personality type' test because I saw it with a friend and she didn't grasp any of the satire at all, to her it was 'stupid' and she literally fell asleep. I didn't know what to make of that. Simply not everything is for everyone. The world is not black and white.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    I do realize that for sure. I can see someone not liking it. But it was eerie for someone to not see the satire jump out at them. This wasn't an 'anti take', or 'Oh a mean corporation how about that' i.e. cynical or blaze attitude to satire ... rather it was just 'don't get it'. That said, I will admit, if the medium of the message is not inspiring, then maybe it's not worth the effort for someone to even try to process it. Nobody in my family likes it either. But any film that's being reviewed 15 years later is worth watching I think.
A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
As iconic as the movie is, I think articles like these do it a disservice by trying to bang out a political narrative based on it ( Trump bad ). Yeah, there are similarities ( both Mountain Dew Terry and Trump have trademarked names ), but we are nowhere near the level of idiocy presented in the movie and hence statements like 'it is a documentary really' are, at best, a hyperbole.
slibhb 5y ago
Per the Flynn Effect, people are getting smarter. The source of the problems mentioned in the article is not increasing stupidity, it's a breakdown of the relationship between the elites and the masses. You see this clearly in the article where the author complains about sharing a country with deplorables with nutty beliefs. You see it in the elite turn against free speech: elites wonder aloud "is free speech a good idea if it leads to Trump or Brexit?" For their part, the masses seem determined to de-rail the train out of boredom or to spite the elites. Increasingly, people view their countries or cultures as farcical or unjust, without a legitimate claim to exist at all. Civic virtue has either disappeared or is no longer recognized. Someone like Robert Mueller represented the old school. The reward for his diligent work was ridicule by both political factions, with Trump's attacks and Democrats' insinuations of senility. The politicians we apparently prefer are those who can reliably generate viral content.
- beefield 5y ago
  Flynn effect has stopped during the last few decades. I have been wondering why. What are the environmental things that have happened in the last decades as oppoesd to most of last century? There is only a handful of possible explanations that I have been able to come up: 1. We might want to do more research on the effect of increasing CO2 on cognitive skills. 2. Wealth disparities have been increasing. There seems to be some research on poverty causing decline on cognitive skills. Maybe it is relative, not absolute poverty that does it? 3. We have reached (local?) maximum and are not going to get any more intelligent any time soon. 4. IQ is a flawed measure that comes up with random nonsense. Not so sure which of those I would pick most likely.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  > The politicians we apparently prefer are those who can reliably generate viral content. By prefer, you presumably mean elect, which in the US means using a voting system that has been shown to increase partisanship, because you can get elected by being loved by a minority even if also hated by a minority. Other voting systems encourage you to work for every voters vote and avoid a whole bunch of problems as a result.
- titzer 5y ago
ALittleLight 5y ago
Many people like to say "Idiocracy is a documentary" or some similar thing implying they think it's realistic. I've never seen anybody take the premise of the movie seriously though. If idiots are reproducing out of control and that will lead to a bad result, doesn't that mean we should reduce the reproduction of idiots and increase the reproduction of the intelligent? To avert Idiocracy we need eugenics, no?
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  Art isnt meant to be reality. A lot of comments here seem to be reading its plot as if it was some kind of futuristic documentary.
- chrsig 5y ago
  We'd only need eugenics if competency is strictly linked to genetics. We can probably make a lot of progress investing in schools, making higher education more accessible, finding more engaging teaching strategies, ensuring that parents have all the resources they need to care for their children...more access to mental health services...
- carapace 5y ago
  > I've never seen anybody take the premise of the movie seriously though. Where have you looked? People have been talking about this for awhile now. > If idiots are reproducing out of control and that will lead to a bad result Yeah... > doesn't that mean we should reduce the reproduction of idiots and increase the reproduction of the intelligent? Who's "we" in that sentence? Intelligent people are unlikely to adopt foolish plans, by definition. E.g. consider the (as yet fictional) Bene Gesserit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bene_Gesserit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bene_Gesserit
  - chrsig 5y ago
    > Who's "we" in that sentence? Intelligent people are unlikely to adopt foolish plans, by definition. You're confusing intelligence with wisdom. Intelligent people are likely to recognize a plan as foolish. They may or may not have the wisdom to avoid adopting it. Knowledge doesn't necessarily change behavior -- there are many many smart people who've gotten addicted to harmful substances, for example.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
Covid hysteria made it all too real. My super woke prime minister doing afro and blackface, and the judge that ordered the pastor to read out a pro mandate statement he wrote for him, every time he speaks publicly against it, really took the cake in my country. More vaccinated covid cases than unvaccinated in Ontario from the safe and effective vaccine is the cherry on top.
battles 5y ago
One of the best predictions from Idiocracy is our reliance on AI that no one understands anymore. They made all of these systems that did everything for them and decades later, after barely even needing to think for themselves for so long, they’re dumb as rocks and have no idea how anything works.
- scollet 5y ago
  The Time Machine is pretty relevant here. "Later in the dark, he is approached menacingly by the Morlocks, ape-like troglodytes who live in darkness underground and surface only at night. Exploring one of many "wells" that lead to the Morlocks' dwellings, he discovers the machinery and industry that makes the above-ground paradise of the Eloi possible. He alters his theory, speculating that the human race has evolved into two species: the leisured classes have become the ineffectual Eloi, and the downtrodden working classes have become the brutal light-fearing Morlocks."
- gota 5y ago
  That's more Wall-e than Idiocracy, I think. Was there any talk of AI in Idiocracy?
  - mateomorris 5y ago
    Automation, at least. When they started spraying the crops with water (like from the toilet) instead of Brawndo, half the population got automatically laid off.
    - gota 5y ago
      Good point. I was recalling the movie here and also noticed that the doctor's appointment consisted of the doctor plugging the patient into a machine, too.
- titzer 5y ago
  I particularly love the UI at the Hospital. Just icons. I have felt this way about tablets and the ever-devolving UI trends on the web that infantilize users. Just mashing our big fat fingers onto one of three pretty, beveled chips. Turning us into sub-literate simpletons because they can't be bothered to put a word on a thing!
BenoitEssiambre 5y ago
One thing that is maybe missing in this discussion is that this is not a new phenomenon. Greek antiquity had a period of intellectual enlightenment when science became popular enough to rival religion (see eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura ) then long medieval and dark periods where this was no longer the case. Then a renaissance, many aspects of which were also non lasting. The important thing to realize, especially in democracies is that non intellectuals usually have the most political power and it's the job of the smart to convince them to give support to smart things. This requires bringing common people to science's side instead of making fun of them. Although I enjoyed this movie and the newer one tackling the same themes as comic relief of really sad real world parallel situations, in some ways these movie makes the problem worst. There could be ways to turn a lot of people around to support good causes and to prevent them from falling pray to dangerous manipulators. There are tons of common folks who's views are constantly shifting based on primal emotions and there is no reason they couldn't be shifted towards following science and truth if those who represented those concepts showed more respect. With elections often very close, just a few percentage points could make a huge difference. The people caricatured are often easy to manipulate, not very smart and are often aware they are not very smart. They are often looking for leaders to guide and shepherd them. They won't however follow intellectuals who punch down on people who don't have academic aptitude. Showing contempt for these people makes them ripe to instead be plucked by villainous politicians, fueling the power of evil. Not everyone has the aptitude for academic thinking and they deserve no less respect. The fact that they confront the world as best as they can despite this handicap is worthy of praise. The common person is inherently vulnerable compared to the smart elite. It's not about educating. Scientific arguments don't get you very far with people that can't grasp them. These are people that only grasp the basics of morality and often only if they get help and reminders from moral guides and belief groups every sunday. Churches are their crutch, their wheelchair. Solving the sociological issues might require more participation and support of faith groups, helping improve them and shaping them. I cannot imagine anything that would work better to send shivers down anti-science politicians than if the pro-science would start gaining more influence inside faith groups. This might require sometimes lowering the bar on standards of morality, empathy and rationality when dealing with these people. Advanced morality about things like race and gender is complex and not within everyone's reach. Advanced empathy involves multilevel recursive counterfactual meta-cognitive logic ( https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K4eDzqS2rbcBDsCLZ/unrolling-social-metacognition-three-levels-of-meta-are-not https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K4eDzqS2rbcBDsCLZ/unrolling-... ) and sometimes academic understanding of past history. Though it seems natural to some humans, it's so complex that even the most advanced AIs cannot even begin to do it. Asking some of these people to understand these things is asking people in wheelchairs to run and run away they will. In the US common folks having power is even enshrined in the constitution which starts with "We the people", "the people", having a long history of being a polite way to refer to the less intellectually abled. Only recently did "populism" turn into a dirty word (see https://taibbi.substack.com/p/kansas-should-go-f-itself?r=79yga&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web https://taibbi.substack.com/p/kansas-should-go-f-itself?r=79... ). The way to manage this is to live with respect alongside non-intellectuals and help shepherd them towards the good so they aren't captured by villains.
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mattkevan 5y ago
Idiocracy doesn’t actually go far enough to match current-day reality. In the film, people were smart enough to understand they weren’t all that intelligent. Even the president was willing to defer to someone who knew more than him. The last couple of years have proven that to be rather naive when it comes to our real leadership.
- jmount 5y ago
  Idiocracy is in indeed the easy case. Notice there is no villain in the movie. Even the sports drink company isn't pressing hard.
  - q1w2 5y ago
    I envision a sequel to Idiocracy where the main character discovers a hidden wondrous island city of intelligent people who recognized the problem and hid there rather than deal with the ever-reproducing morons.
- Trex_Egg 5y ago
  nice plot by the way.
- sabhiram 5y ago
  Well, the Rock did just announce that he is interested in politics. Kidding aside, he would likely make a much better leader than the current self indulgent noise.
  - cbozeman 5y ago
    Ronald Reagan. Donald Trump. Shit... why not Dwayne Johnson?
    - ss108 5y ago
      I don't think grouping Reagan and The Rock with Trump is fair at all.
29athrowaway 5y ago
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
seanhandley 5y ago
The irony for me here is that the author adds no additional intelligence or insight of their own - this is a simple retelling of the story of the Idiocracy film - framed as a prophecy coming true - simply to add eyeballs to the content machine that pays their salary.
- autokad 5y ago
  also the irony is that the author's take is the idiocy isn't from the bad decisions of the government, its from those 'idiots' who just wont believe everything they say and comply.
- neuronic 5y ago
  If more people watch the film and become aware of the state of our "society" maybe such a blog post still served a purpose.
  - seanhandley 5y ago
    For sure! I'm not saying it has no purpose, but I wish it had a bit more intellectual weight to it.
    - squarefoot 5y ago
      If it had any, it would probably be ignored. Outrage could be the price to pay to see some of our faults thrown straight at our face.
- edoceo 5y ago
  I like money.
  - foreigner 5y ago
    I can't believe you like money too!
  - minitoar 5y ago
    - Dr. Lexus
dllthomas 5y ago
Relevant xkcd; I am unsure as to the veracity: https://xkcd.com/603 https://xkcd.com/603
andrewclunn 5y ago
There's always an underlying "those OTHER people are them dumb ones" in any and all of this sort of criticism. The thing is though, to sell it to the masses, not-so-smart characters need to be elevated to appearing intelligent, and straw men need to be employed in rapid fire. The truth is that these sorts of movies "Idiocracy" and "Don't Look Up" are there to give people of middling intelligence validation and reinforce their belief that they are the smart ones.
huijzer 5y ago
> 'Observing that “evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence”, the narrator explains that “with no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most – and left the intelligent to become an endangered species”.' As a counterexample, there are the people in the top 1 000 or so of the Forbes ranking. All pretty clever and not really endangered at all. The article reads more like trying to get attention by scaring people instead of being insighful
- FredPret 5y ago
  1000 counterexamples does not make a trend in a population of 7000,000,000
- chrsig 5y ago
  How does clever people in being in the forbes ranking relate to the darwinian appraisal?
chrsig 5y ago
I encourage everyone to watch Don't Look Up. In many ways it struck me as the spiritual successor to Idiocracy. I needed to watch it in chunks, because of how viscerally real it is. It is funny, in that it's ostensibly comedy, and the actors all have great comedic timing...but it's also a very very honest appraisal of where we're at as a society.
- alpha_squared 5y ago
  The really sad part is the script was originally written before the pandemic and wasn't at all meant to be about the current crisis, but about climate change. Then the pandemic happened and the director was surprised at how the script didn't go far enough and had to make it, "20% crazier."
- mullingitover 5y ago
  I know Don't Look Up was supposed to spur people into action, but I came away feeling hopeless, like the industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
  - scollet 5y ago
    I don't know that it's a disaster necessarily. I think people aren't prepared or don't want to pay the debt we took.
- YinglingLight 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
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- Ottolay 5y ago
  Saw this movie last night. One of the tougher movies I have watched. Being a satire, it exaggerates a bit, but still hits pretty close to home.
- opwieurposiu 5y ago
neuronic 5y ago
At the beginning stands disappointment. The decentralized, anonymous Internet was a chance. The Internet became hostile garbage the second broad access was popular. Creativity, serious discussion, and unseen exchange of minds is what I first connect to the word Internet. Then came the ads and shady business models... Today, I am deeply disturbed by the malice and sheer idiocy that social media has not only exposed but also amplified (with intent), as engagement is their business model. Broad engagement is and always has been easiest perpetrated by hate and gossip. There are still great blogs, great individuals and great content. Great communities and creativity. They can simply continue to exist. But we need to drive Facebook/Meta and all its ad-driven social media metastases (hah) to extinction, it's a cancer on society under the guise of free speech and social advancement. Algorithms take you in and bubble-wrap you in your own little safe space devoid of any exposure to other people and ideas. Connect the world yada-yada. Yea right... connect the world of alt-right Nazis maybe. Aside from that, I am pretty certain the Wild West days of the Internet will soon be over - maybe another 10-15 years for relative anonymity. Soon the China model will be replicated in the West as the Internet of today can under no circumstances guaruntee a lawful environment.
racl101 5y ago
At this point I'd pray for a Demolition Man kind of future. I could live with the notion of a high falutin Taco Bell.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  Seriously. Like, I still don't know how to use the 3 seashells, but, more and more it's looking like Idiocracy is actually more of a best case scenario for the next several decades. We're probably going to self destruct before the end of this century.
fairity 5y ago
This prophecy is flat out wrong because it ignores the future impact of genetic engineering. The rise of genetic engineering is going to allow humans to solely give birth to geniuses. This will more than counteract this idiocracy effect.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  provided that we don't get so dumb in the meanwhile that we forget how to do genetics
- oscargrouch 5y ago
  It depends of how this will be laid out. If the future generations choose for a more homogeneous sort of intelligence it might trigger the opposite effect, as humanity might loose a sort of balance the natural world struggled to achieve. But if somehow they manage to understand organic balance and go for a more heterogeneous composition of inteligences, than it might work out as intended. I guess the best approach is to just reinforce and even boost the genes that are already there in the gene pool of the human being. Lets get just one intelligence characteristic for instance that will be sort of harmless to boost in everyone: give us more memory.. Except for the fact that forgetting about some things can do wonders to our psychology and for a human being resisting through all the years it must to.. Maybe the suicide levels will rise, and people unable to function in society will also rise, creating the opposite effect. The thing is, this is a really complex matter, and i hope that when we are ready to do this, we live in a more advanced society (morally and philosophically) than we do now, or else the consequences of people that are unable to understand the consequences of what they are doing, do it without being really prepared for it. For me, the the nazi-germany of the 30's is a (extreme) cautionary tale of a possible future of ours, where we are technologically advanced, but morally corrupt, and that combination will probably lead to the human kind fallout, if nothing changes.. Our technological progress is good, but we need to rethink other important things, and the movie is on spot over this (they had all the technology to solve the problem, but they had the emotional IQ of toddlers).
- chrsig 5y ago
  You're presuming that the species lasts another couple centuries.
hamiltonians 5y ago
wealthy, smart people tend to have more kids, not fewer.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence > There is evidence that, on a population level, intelligence is negatively correlated with fertility rate and positively correlated with survival rate of offspring.[1] It is postulated that, if the inverse correlation of IQ with fertility rate is stronger than the correlation of IQ with survival rate, and if the correlation between IQ and fertility can be linked to genetic factors, then the hereditary component of IQ will decrease with every new generation, eventually giving rise to a 'reversed Flynn effect', as has been observed in Norway, Denmark, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, France and German-speaking countries, where a slow decline in average IQ scores has been noted since the 1990s
hamiltonians 5y ago
it's interesting how you have stories about how america is dumbing down going viral here juxtaposed with quanta magazine articles about quantum numb3r theory or some super complicated concept no one but 50 ppl can understand. what is it then. how can it be both. i guess society is getting both dumber and smarter.
netcan 5y ago
Idiocracy is fun, but the instinctive "OMG so true" is, IMO, wrong. The film riffs on a common fallacy more so than it's actually insightful. Statements like "people these days are so stupid/lazy/immoral" tend get an instinctive thumbs up. The slang, pop culture & consumerism of the future are the main way the film "demonstrates" that people got dumber. The premise of Idiocracy is that dumb people reproduce more and society gets dumber. Eugenical yuckness aside, the reality is that IQ has been rising. Education too. Literacy, obviously. The average ability think through abstract concepts is on the up. Meanwhile, bookish nerdiness is more highly rewarded culturally and financially than before. It's not marginal either. People are smarter, not dumber, in this sense. Whatever "stupidity" we observe isn't IQ. It's not a simple definition of smart and dumb. I suspect what people are observing when they observe a stupidity trend is more of a dumb culture than a culture of dumb people. Maybe individuals are getting smarter but the culture is getting dumber. IDK. I have no conclusions. Just pointing out that any concrete "arguments" made by the film are actually quite fallacious, despite being pretty widely resonant.
- quacked 5y ago
  IQ is not rising; literacy rates are falling in the developed world. As an example, fewer people are literate in Massachusetts now than when it was founded.
  - loteck 5y ago
    fewer people are literate in Massachusetts now than when it was founded I'm also sensing we may be having some trouble in the math department.
    - quacked 5y ago
      You're right. I can barely identify a number on sight.
  - SquibblesRedux 5y ago
    I found a reference about literacy in Massachusetts [0] and literacy for all states [1], but nothing suggesting literacy rates are worse than over 200 years ago. I would presume literacy rates for over 200 years ago would be worse due to lack of public education, gender inequality, and jobs/trades not requiring reading and writing skills. I am suspicious of the literacy rates in [0] and [1]. It seems that someone who immigrates from a foreign country would be considered illiterate if they did not speak English, but had high proficiency in reading and writing in their native language. Not knowing one specific language is very different from being generally uneducated. [0] https://mblc.state.ma.us/programs-and-support/adult-literacy/problem-in-mass.php https://mblc.state.ma.us/programs-and-support/adult-literacy... [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/us-literacy-rates-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/us-literacy...
vlunkr 5y ago
I haven't watched the film, but this article failed to convince me that it was prophetic at all. It came out it 2006, besides the fact that we had a clown president, things have really not changed much.

208 points by zaptheimpaler 5y ago

> that famous quote often attributed to Charles Bukowski: “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” Isn't that a Yeats quote?

Apocryphon 5y ago

I liked this previous comment thread with a minority detractor view on Idiocracy, which argues it’s a little more dated to it’s specific Bush-era cultural milieu than everyone remembers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18489573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18489573

gandalfian 5y ago

It's a pleasant piece of silliness that I moderately enjoyed watching. Provided you suspend your disbelief and don't take it as real, as with most movies. https://xkcd.com/603/ https://xkcd.com/603/

durnygbur 5y ago

Common denominator to reach global audience is attractive young women and making the audience feel smarter than "dumb people". Those who decide about the money we use and about the power structures we submit to are constantly cunning and clever. I don't see them in Idiocracy.

luis8 5y ago

"The Bell Curve" also talks about the Idiocracy premise. I know the premise of this book is different, but they do touch on the fact that siblings usually have the same level of intelligence. This is a very controversial book. Any thoughts anyone would like to share?

data_dan_ 5y ago

This perspective always bothers me. It's the same with the recent Don't Look Up. The people who will watch and and understand it aren't the people who actually need to get the message. They're both bland movies that present a point of view they know their viewers will agree with. They then get praised--undeservingly, in my opinion--for presenting a "bold" perspective.

nescioquid 5y ago

The point of Idiocracy is a finger directed at everyone. Friends and colleagues who had children were sometimes offended (I think that really put a lot of people off), but the movie implicates us all as idiots drawn to spectacle. There's a marvelous scene in which Frito, Not Sure, and Rita peer around a corner as police surround Frito's car. The police open fire on the vehicle and as the fusillade intensifies, Frito is increasingly enthralled and delighted by the destruction until the car explodes under rocket fire and Frito exclaims in joy. And then the realization of what happened sets in, and as a viewer I became aware of how I was sucked into that bizarre scene. The joke was on me ;-)

SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago

It's not actually a completely original premise: > "The Marching Morons" is a science fiction story by American writer Cyril M. Kornbluth, originally published in Galaxy in April 1951. > The story follows John Barlow, who was put into suspended animation by a freak accident involving a dental drill and anesthesia. Barlow is revived hundreds of years in the future. The world seems mad to Barlow until he discovers the 'Problem of Population': due to a combination of intelligent people not having children and excessive breeding by less intelligent people and coupled with the development of more sophisticated machinery that makes it less important to possess intelligence in one's working life, the world is full of morons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons

zqna 5y ago

The civilizations and societies rise and decline all the time. There is no reason to believe that this time will be different. Thinking otherwise is only wishful thinking, comparable to the idea that the price of house/stock/bitcoin can only rise. What we might disagree though is if we have already entered into decline or not. People overestimate education. The majority of population who play the biggest role in how society evolves don't get any wiser because of the school. One can even argue that today's education is dumber than say 30-40 years ago.

motohagiography 5y ago

If I were looking for a poignant pause, I'd compare anything Christopher Hitchens wrote for the Guardian a decade ago to what we're commenting on now, and consider whether this article about the prophecy of Idiocracy might land a bit closer to the writer than to the mark. The reason to be this pointed about it is the cognitive style of articles like these is to seduce readers with sympathy for their smallest and cruelist sentiments. It's as though media appointees imagine themselves as fomenting a better calibre of angry mob or inciting the right kind of superstitious villager. Appealing to Idiocracy as a parable of caution for our times seems a bit rich, especially when the very cause of the idiocy in the movie was that the society in the story had been completely coddled and unchallenged by the very people whose job it was to provoke some kind of thoughtfulness and reflection.

frabbit 5y ago

Idiocracy imagines a future so dumb that Idiocracy is the acme of political satire for the Jen Psakis of the world.

blamestross 5y ago

Idiocracy is hilariously optimistic. The people of the future: 1) Noticed that a guy they sent to jail was competent 2) Promptly assigned him a role with responsibility appropriate to the competency 3) Didn't understand but at least TRIED to listen to what he had to say 4) When he bypassed the bureaucracy to demonstrate ways to solve problems they noticed, listened, and rewarded him for it. I don't think our current government is that mindful and self-aware.

aaron695 5y ago

hvacmike 5y ago

blooalien 5y ago

Relevant literary reference → https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51233 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51233 "The Marching Morons - C.M. Kornbluth"

JohnWhigham 5y ago

aww_dang 5y ago

I'm not convinced that the author's favored political positions are above satire. >A blunt-smoking doctor at the hospital (Justin Long) is shocked that Joe doesn’t have a barcode on his arm, like everybody else, and asks, “Why come you no have a tattoo?” Yet, the author seems to be a fan of the bio-security state rationalized by the covid emergency. >...climate deniers... Is this not also a bastardization of language? Is anyone denying that the earth has a climate? To be fair to the author, it seems like a deliberate trashing of nuance. Yes, the movie is funny, but the review is a bit smug. The depopulation part was a bit over the top. From the opposing perspective the causes he champions such as "BirthStrikers" seem like willing rubes for authoritarians. If he can dish it out, then perhaps he should look in the mirror.

tshaddox 5y ago
> Is this not also a bastardization of language? Is anyone denying that the earth has a climate? To be fair to the author, it seems like a deliberate trashing of nuance. Do you actually not understand what the author means by “climate deniers”? The intended meaning seems quite clear to me.
- luckylion 5y ago
  I'm sure everyone knows what the author means. Yet you can still say that it's inaccurate and only used for effect: the framing is that it's adjacent to holocaust deniers. If you're not a fan of that kind of use of language, you can criticize it while still understanding what the author wanted to convey ("those people").
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    The specific complaint was that it “trashes nuance.” But if everyone knows what the author means, in what sense is nuance being trashed?
    - luckylion 5y ago
      Everyone knows who you mean when you call one US party "fascists" and the other "communists", but you've lost pretty much all nuance. And all you've won is a bit of impact, for a while, because the tool will blunt with constant use. You'll have to reach for "super fascists" and "mega communists" next time and that will barely move the needle and you'll be far away from the effect you got when you tried that hack the first time.

scotty79 5y ago

First time I had a revelation that we are close to Idiocracy was when I saw the movie Crank which came out the same year. It a had vibe so close to "Ow my b*lls" movie featured in Idiocracy. And I was entertained.

doopy1 5y ago
Shortly after Idiocracy, someone bade an ow my balls mobile game and spread like wildfire. The thing is... we were already in Idiocracy when the movie came out. Good sci-fi isn't prophetic, it just describes the world as it already is.
michaelt 5y ago
Well, shows like Jackass and Za gaman were around long before Idiocracy. It was certainly a mirror held up to society as it was at the time.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  But the mirror is also temporal. There’s a lot of trash on TV these days but it’s probably not as lowbrow outright sensationally dumb as the shock jock reality TV era that Idiocracy was created in. We’re currently living in a highbrow era of television.
  - michaelt 5y ago
    Personally I'd say we've still got just as much "Ow My Balls" today. But instead of calling it "Jackass" we call it "Epic Fails Compilation"
walrus01 5y ago
there's now dozens of "fail army" youtube channels with many millions of subscribers that are basically "ow, my balls!" in real life.

borepop 5y ago

Don't Look Up, currently out on Netflix, seems to owe a fair amount to Idiocracy. And/or to the ways in which American culture morphed into Idiocracy over the last several years.

dragonsky67 5y ago
I Hated this movie. The level of discomfort it engendered was off the scale. The depiction of the political and media is so close to reality that I ended up fast forwarding through it and at this point have paused watching as continuing is just too uncomfortable. So from that point of view, and at least for me I would say that the movie is a success, job done. Unfortunately I don't think I'm the person who needs to receive this message. I don't need to be told that the world is going to shit at a faster rate than ever. I don't need to be told that most (all?) media, main stream or otherwise only succeed in rating somewhere between barely acceptable and blatantly corrupt on an ethical/truthfulness scale. The only way I can continue to exist with some degree of happiness is to simply try to ignore the majority of what is going on outside my bubble. I don't think I'm alone. That said, I'm really interested how this movie has been perceived by those who think everything is wonderful. Are their world views so different that they have any ability to understand that this is not a comedy set in a different world, where politicians and media are clueless to their own ignorance and stupidity? Do they understand that this movie is holding a big bloody mirror up to the Western world and giving a giant wake up call. Unfortunately given how a lot of people seem to have reacted to the last couple of years, I have to think that they would just look at themselves in the mirror, adjust the makeup and wonder how those stupid scientists can not understand that they are messing with the latest media fed delusion. Now I'm going to close my door again and pretend that the world really is wonderful. Have a nice day.
alphabettsy 5y ago
Yea, but while accurate it was terrible. Idiocracy is funny, Don’t Look Up was not to me.
- lghh 5y ago
  It felt so grounded in reality that it took very little creativity to write or think about. Making 1-to-1 comparisons of things and people isn't very interesting. Such thin layers of abstraction don't add much value in media just as they don't in software development. It's basically just cut-and-paste.

magikaram 5y ago

"The underlying message of course is that humans ought to take such things as science, research and knowledge seriously, lest we create our own Idiocracy." Rather, I felt the underlying message of the film is that the film is a critique of the consumerism and corporatism of the US. The 'idiocracy' with how the government runs, the downward trend of education in the US, and the pessimistic views of our future.

jrs235 5y ago
I felt the underlying message was "Intelligent people, stop focusing on career and start having more kids (we really are in a race to the bottom)!"
- lkxijlewlf 5y ago
  Wouldn't the Dunning-Kruger effect mean that unintelligent people would just keep having kids while the Imposter Syndrome would mean Intelligent people would not?
  - ruined 5y ago
    guess you'd better not have kids then. don't worry, i'll do extra
  - dllthomas 5y ago
    You think you know more about the Dunning-Kruger effect than you do.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  If we think we need intelligent people in order to have intelligent children that seems like an argument for nepotism and hereditary positions, which isn't very progressive.
  - FredPret 5y ago
    Perhaps the fact that we DO need intelligent people to have intelligent children will lead to some forced changes in our society down the line, progressive or not

cblconfederate 5y ago

ow alert alert, too many spoilers > is a single unbroken shot of a naked butt No, it was a butt that was farting, but we didn't know whose ass it was and why it was farting. I must have watched that movie 50 times. It explains the world so well and brings back the sanity. While the premise of the movie was demographics, the real world idiocracy is brought about by societies moving away from liberal ideals and turning democracy to a pure popularity/likes/retweets contest. And this is happening across the spectrum, from reactionary right to woke left.

jollybean 5y ago

It's funny to see how 'one side' will completely miss the satirization of themselves in the work, and just laugh at the jokes targeted towards them. (And FYI I'm not 'taking a side' I can only imagine what 'some other' publication would make of the film) Judge was also mocking lack of education, slouching cultural standards, lack of competency, lack of moral fibre, conscientiousness etc.. In pretty much every scene. Though the most memorable for me is: "Welcome to Costco, I love you" as the ultimate derision of cynical 'Happy Face' corporatism. Think of a brand that you like in part because of the 'Things They Seem to Support' - and be assured that that's the point the joke right there. But it's full of absurdist goodies: the Fast Food machine that takes your children away, the Costco Law School, Starbucks Rub & Tug etc. Edit: it maybe a kind of IQ test or maybe 'personality type' test because I saw it with a friend and she didn't grasp any of the satire at all, to her it was 'stupid' and she literally fell asleep. I didn't know what to make of that. Edit 2: 'Ow My Balls' will be huge on TikTok and it's not going to be long before it's nary exactly that.

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haunter 5y ago
>it maybe a kind of IQ test or maybe 'personality type' test because I saw it with a friend and she didn't grasp any of the satire at all, to her it was 'stupid' and she literally fell asleep. I didn't know what to make of that. Simply not everything is for everyone. The world is not black and white.
- jollybean 5y ago
  I do realize that for sure. I can see someone not liking it. But it was eerie for someone to not see the satire jump out at them. This wasn't an 'anti take', or 'Oh a mean corporation how about that' i.e. cynical or blaze attitude to satire ... rather it was just 'don't get it'. That said, I will admit, if the medium of the message is not inspiring, then maybe it's not worth the effort for someone to even try to process it. Nobody in my family likes it either. But any film that's being reviewed 15 years later is worth watching I think.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago

As iconic as the movie is, I think articles like these do it a disservice by trying to bang out a political narrative based on it ( Trump bad ). Yeah, there are similarities ( both Mountain Dew Terry and Trump have trademarked names ), but we are nowhere near the level of idiocy presented in the movie and hence statements like 'it is a documentary really' are, at best, a hyperbole.

slibhb 5y ago

Per the Flynn Effect, people are getting smarter. The source of the problems mentioned in the article is not increasing stupidity, it's a breakdown of the relationship between the elites and the masses. You see this clearly in the article where the author complains about sharing a country with deplorables with nutty beliefs. You see it in the elite turn against free speech: elites wonder aloud "is free speech a good idea if it leads to Trump or Brexit?" For their part, the masses seem determined to de-rail the train out of boredom or to spite the elites. Increasingly, people view their countries or cultures as farcical or unjust, without a legitimate claim to exist at all. Civic virtue has either disappeared or is no longer recognized. Someone like Robert Mueller represented the old school. The reward for his diligent work was ridicule by both political factions, with Trump's attacks and Democrats' insinuations of senility. The politicians we apparently prefer are those who can reliably generate viral content.

beefield 5y ago
Flynn effect has stopped during the last few decades. I have been wondering why. What are the environmental things that have happened in the last decades as oppoesd to most of last century? There is only a handful of possible explanations that I have been able to come up: 1. We might want to do more research on the effect of increasing CO2 on cognitive skills. 2. Wealth disparities have been increasing. There seems to be some research on poverty causing decline on cognitive skills. Maybe it is relative, not absolute poverty that does it? 3. We have reached (local?) maximum and are not going to get any more intelligent any time soon. 4. IQ is a flawed measure that comes up with random nonsense. Not so sure which of those I would pick most likely.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
> The politicians we apparently prefer are those who can reliably generate viral content. By prefer, you presumably mean elect, which in the US means using a voting system that has been shown to increase partisanship, because you can get elected by being loved by a minority even if also hated by a minority. Other voting systems encourage you to work for every voters vote and avoid a whole bunch of problems as a result.
titzer 5y ago

ALittleLight 5y ago

Many people like to say "Idiocracy is a documentary" or some similar thing implying they think it's realistic. I've never seen anybody take the premise of the movie seriously though. If idiots are reproducing out of control and that will lead to a bad result, doesn't that mean we should reduce the reproduction of idiots and increase the reproduction of the intelligent? To avert Idiocracy we need eugenics, no?

cblconfederate 5y ago
Art isnt meant to be reality. A lot of comments here seem to be reading its plot as if it was some kind of futuristic documentary.
chrsig 5y ago
We'd only need eugenics if competency is strictly linked to genetics. We can probably make a lot of progress investing in schools, making higher education more accessible, finding more engaging teaching strategies, ensuring that parents have all the resources they need to care for their children...more access to mental health services...
carapace 5y ago
> I've never seen anybody take the premise of the movie seriously though. Where have you looked? People have been talking about this for awhile now. > If idiots are reproducing out of control and that will lead to a bad result Yeah... > doesn't that mean we should reduce the reproduction of idiots and increase the reproduction of the intelligent? Who's "we" in that sentence? Intelligent people are unlikely to adopt foolish plans, by definition. E.g. consider the (as yet fictional) Bene Gesserit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bene_Gesserit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bene_Gesserit
- chrsig 5y ago
  > Who's "we" in that sentence? Intelligent people are unlikely to adopt foolish plans, by definition. You're confusing intelligence with wisdom. Intelligent people are likely to recognize a plan as foolish. They may or may not have the wisdom to avoid adopting it. Knowledge doesn't necessarily change behavior -- there are many many smart people who've gotten addicted to harmful substances, for example.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

Covid hysteria made it all too real. My super woke prime minister doing afro and blackface, and the judge that ordered the pastor to read out a pro mandate statement he wrote for him, every time he speaks publicly against it, really took the cake in my country. More vaccinated covid cases than unvaccinated in Ontario from the safe and effective vaccine is the cherry on top.

battles 5y ago

One of the best predictions from Idiocracy is our reliance on AI that no one understands anymore. They made all of these systems that did everything for them and decades later, after barely even needing to think for themselves for so long, they’re dumb as rocks and have no idea how anything works.

scollet 5y ago
The Time Machine is pretty relevant here. "Later in the dark, he is approached menacingly by the Morlocks, ape-like troglodytes who live in darkness underground and surface only at night. Exploring one of many "wells" that lead to the Morlocks' dwellings, he discovers the machinery and industry that makes the above-ground paradise of the Eloi possible. He alters his theory, speculating that the human race has evolved into two species: the leisured classes have become the ineffectual Eloi, and the downtrodden working classes have become the brutal light-fearing Morlocks."
gota 5y ago
That's more Wall-e than Idiocracy, I think. Was there any talk of AI in Idiocracy?
- mateomorris 5y ago
  Automation, at least. When they started spraying the crops with water (like from the toilet) instead of Brawndo, half the population got automatically laid off.
  - gota 5y ago
    Good point. I was recalling the movie here and also noticed that the doctor's appointment consisted of the doctor plugging the patient into a machine, too.
titzer 5y ago
I particularly love the UI at the Hospital. Just icons. I have felt this way about tablets and the ever-devolving UI trends on the web that infantilize users. Just mashing our big fat fingers onto one of three pretty, beveled chips. Turning us into sub-literate simpletons because they can't be bothered to put a word on a thing!

BenoitEssiambre 5y ago

One thing that is maybe missing in this discussion is that this is not a new phenomenon. Greek antiquity had a period of intellectual enlightenment when science became popular enough to rival religion (see eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura ) then long medieval and dark periods where this was no longer the case. Then a renaissance, many aspects of which were also non lasting. The important thing to realize, especially in democracies is that non intellectuals usually have the most political power and it's the job of the smart to convince them to give support to smart things. This requires bringing common people to science's side instead of making fun of them. Although I enjoyed this movie and the newer one tackling the same themes as comic relief of really sad real world parallel situations, in some ways these movie makes the problem worst. There could be ways to turn a lot of people around to support good causes and to prevent them from falling pray to dangerous manipulators. There are tons of common folks who's views are constantly shifting based on primal emotions and there is no reason they couldn't be shifted towards following science and truth if those who represented those concepts showed more respect. With elections often very close, just a few percentage points could make a huge difference. The people caricatured are often easy to manipulate, not very smart and are often aware they are not very smart. They are often looking for leaders to guide and shepherd them. They won't however follow intellectuals who punch down on people who don't have academic aptitude. Showing contempt for these people makes them ripe to instead be plucked by villainous politicians, fueling the power of evil. Not everyone has the aptitude for academic thinking and they deserve no less respect. The fact that they confront the world as best as they can despite this handicap is worthy of praise. The common person is inherently vulnerable compared to the smart elite. It's not about educating. Scientific arguments don't get you very far with people that can't grasp them. These are people that only grasp the basics of morality and often only if they get help and reminders from moral guides and belief groups every sunday. Churches are their crutch, their wheelchair. Solving the sociological issues might require more participation and support of faith groups, helping improve them and shaping them. I cannot imagine anything that would work better to send shivers down anti-science politicians than if the pro-science would start gaining more influence inside faith groups. This might require sometimes lowering the bar on standards of morality, empathy and rationality when dealing with these people. Advanced morality about things like race and gender is complex and not within everyone's reach. Advanced empathy involves multilevel recursive counterfactual meta-cognitive logic ( https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K4eDzqS2rbcBDsCLZ/unrolling-social-metacognition-three-levels-of-meta-are-not https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K4eDzqS2rbcBDsCLZ/unrolling-... ) and sometimes academic understanding of past history. Though it seems natural to some humans, it's so complex that even the most advanced AIs cannot even begin to do it. Asking some of these people to understand these things is asking people in wheelchairs to run and run away they will. In the US common folks having power is even enshrined in the constitution which starts with "We the people", "the people", having a long history of being a polite way to refer to the less intellectually abled. Only recently did "populism" turn into a dirty word (see https://taibbi.substack.com/p/kansas-should-go-f-itself?r=79yga&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web https://taibbi.substack.com/p/kansas-should-go-f-itself?r=79... ). The way to manage this is to live with respect alongside non-intellectuals and help shepherd them towards the good so they aren't captured by villains.

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mattkevan 5y ago

Idiocracy doesn’t actually go far enough to match current-day reality. In the film, people were smart enough to understand they weren’t all that intelligent. Even the president was willing to defer to someone who knew more than him. The last couple of years have proven that to be rather naive when it comes to our real leadership.

jmount 5y ago
Idiocracy is in indeed the easy case. Notice there is no villain in the movie. Even the sports drink company isn't pressing hard.
- q1w2 5y ago
  I envision a sequel to Idiocracy where the main character discovers a hidden wondrous island city of intelligent people who recognized the problem and hid there rather than deal with the ever-reproducing morons.
Trex_Egg 5y ago
nice plot by the way.
sabhiram 5y ago
Well, the Rock did just announce that he is interested in politics. Kidding aside, he would likely make a much better leader than the current self indulgent noise.
- cbozeman 5y ago
  Ronald Reagan. Donald Trump. Shit... why not Dwayne Johnson?
  - ss108 5y ago
    I don't think grouping Reagan and The Rock with Trump is fair at all.

29athrowaway 5y ago

Welcome to Costco, I love you.

seanhandley 5y ago

The irony for me here is that the author adds no additional intelligence or insight of their own - this is a simple retelling of the story of the Idiocracy film - framed as a prophecy coming true - simply to add eyeballs to the content machine that pays their salary.

autokad 5y ago
also the irony is that the author's take is the idiocy isn't from the bad decisions of the government, its from those 'idiots' who just wont believe everything they say and comply.
neuronic 5y ago
If more people watch the film and become aware of the state of our "society" maybe such a blog post still served a purpose.
- seanhandley 5y ago
  For sure! I'm not saying it has no purpose, but I wish it had a bit more intellectual weight to it.
  - squarefoot 5y ago
    If it had any, it would probably be ignored. Outrage could be the price to pay to see some of our faults thrown straight at our face.
edoceo 5y ago
I like money.
- foreigner 5y ago
  I can't believe you like money too!
- minitoar 5y ago
  - Dr. Lexus

dllthomas 5y ago

Relevant xkcd; I am unsure as to the veracity: https://xkcd.com/603 https://xkcd.com/603

andrewclunn 5y ago

There's always an underlying "those OTHER people are them dumb ones" in any and all of this sort of criticism. The thing is though, to sell it to the masses, not-so-smart characters need to be elevated to appearing intelligent, and straw men need to be employed in rapid fire. The truth is that these sorts of movies "Idiocracy" and "Don't Look Up" are there to give people of middling intelligence validation and reinforce their belief that they are the smart ones.

huijzer 5y ago

> 'Observing that “evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence”, the narrator explains that “with no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most – and left the intelligent to become an endangered species”.' As a counterexample, there are the people in the top 1 000 or so of the Forbes ranking. All pretty clever and not really endangered at all. The article reads more like trying to get attention by scaring people instead of being insighful

FredPret 5y ago
1000 counterexamples does not make a trend in a population of 7000,000,000
chrsig 5y ago
How does clever people in being in the forbes ranking relate to the darwinian appraisal?

chrsig 5y ago

I encourage everyone to watch Don't Look Up. In many ways it struck me as the spiritual successor to Idiocracy. I needed to watch it in chunks, because of how viscerally real it is. It is funny, in that it's ostensibly comedy, and the actors all have great comedic timing...but it's also a very very honest appraisal of where we're at as a society.

alpha_squared 5y ago
The really sad part is the script was originally written before the pandemic and wasn't at all meant to be about the current crisis, but about climate change. Then the pandemic happened and the director was surprised at how the script didn't go far enough and had to make it, "20% crazier."
mullingitover 5y ago
I know Don't Look Up was supposed to spur people into action, but I came away feeling hopeless, like the industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
- scollet 5y ago
  I don't know that it's a disaster necessarily. I think people aren't prepared or don't want to pay the debt we took.
YinglingLight 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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Ottolay 5y ago
Saw this movie last night. One of the tougher movies I have watched. Being a satire, it exaggerates a bit, but still hits pretty close to home.
opwieurposiu 5y ago

neuronic 5y ago

At the beginning stands disappointment. The decentralized, anonymous Internet was a chance. The Internet became hostile garbage the second broad access was popular. Creativity, serious discussion, and unseen exchange of minds is what I first connect to the word Internet. Then came the ads and shady business models... Today, I am deeply disturbed by the malice and sheer idiocy that social media has not only exposed but also amplified (with intent), as engagement is their business model. Broad engagement is and always has been easiest perpetrated by hate and gossip. There are still great blogs, great individuals and great content. Great communities and creativity. They can simply continue to exist. But we need to drive Facebook/Meta and all its ad-driven social media metastases (hah) to extinction, it's a cancer on society under the guise of free speech and social advancement. Algorithms take you in and bubble-wrap you in your own little safe space devoid of any exposure to other people and ideas. Connect the world yada-yada. Yea right... connect the world of alt-right Nazis maybe. Aside from that, I am pretty certain the Wild West days of the Internet will soon be over - maybe another 10-15 years for relative anonymity. Soon the China model will be replicated in the West as the Internet of today can under no circumstances guaruntee a lawful environment.

racl101 5y ago

At this point I'd pray for a Demolition Man kind of future. I could live with the notion of a high falutin Taco Bell.

actually_a_dog 5y ago
Seriously. Like, I still don't know how to use the 3 seashells, but, more and more it's looking like Idiocracy is actually more of a best case scenario for the next several decades. We're probably going to self destruct before the end of this century.

fairity 5y ago

This prophecy is flat out wrong because it ignores the future impact of genetic engineering. The rise of genetic engineering is going to allow humans to solely give birth to geniuses. This will more than counteract this idiocracy effect.

cblconfederate 5y ago
provided that we don't get so dumb in the meanwhile that we forget how to do genetics
oscargrouch 5y ago
It depends of how this will be laid out. If the future generations choose for a more homogeneous sort of intelligence it might trigger the opposite effect, as humanity might loose a sort of balance the natural world struggled to achieve. But if somehow they manage to understand organic balance and go for a more heterogeneous composition of inteligences, than it might work out as intended. I guess the best approach is to just reinforce and even boost the genes that are already there in the gene pool of the human being. Lets get just one intelligence characteristic for instance that will be sort of harmless to boost in everyone: give us more memory.. Except for the fact that forgetting about some things can do wonders to our psychology and for a human being resisting through all the years it must to.. Maybe the suicide levels will rise, and people unable to function in society will also rise, creating the opposite effect. The thing is, this is a really complex matter, and i hope that when we are ready to do this, we live in a more advanced society (morally and philosophically) than we do now, or else the consequences of people that are unable to understand the consequences of what they are doing, do it without being really prepared for it. For me, the the nazi-germany of the 30's is a (extreme) cautionary tale of a possible future of ours, where we are technologically advanced, but morally corrupt, and that combination will probably lead to the human kind fallout, if nothing changes.. Our technological progress is good, but we need to rethink other important things, and the movie is on spot over this (they had all the technology to solve the problem, but they had the emotional IQ of toddlers).
chrsig 5y ago
You're presuming that the species lasts another couple centuries.

hamiltonians 5y ago

wealthy, smart people tend to have more kids, not fewer.

cblconfederate 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence > There is evidence that, on a population level, intelligence is negatively correlated with fertility rate and positively correlated with survival rate of offspring.[1] It is postulated that, if the inverse correlation of IQ with fertility rate is stronger than the correlation of IQ with survival rate, and if the correlation between IQ and fertility can be linked to genetic factors, then the hereditary component of IQ will decrease with every new generation, eventually giving rise to a 'reversed Flynn effect', as has been observed in Norway, Denmark, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, France and German-speaking countries, where a slow decline in average IQ scores has been noted since the 1990s

hamiltonians 5y ago

it's interesting how you have stories about how america is dumbing down going viral here juxtaposed with quanta magazine articles about quantum numb3r theory or some super complicated concept no one but 50 ppl can understand. what is it then. how can it be both. i guess society is getting both dumber and smarter.

netcan 5y ago

Idiocracy is fun, but the instinctive "OMG so true" is, IMO, wrong. The film riffs on a common fallacy more so than it's actually insightful. Statements like "people these days are so stupid/lazy/immoral" tend get an instinctive thumbs up. The slang, pop culture & consumerism of the future are the main way the film "demonstrates" that people got dumber. The premise of Idiocracy is that dumb people reproduce more and society gets dumber. Eugenical yuckness aside, the reality is that IQ has been rising. Education too. Literacy, obviously. The average ability think through abstract concepts is on the up. Meanwhile, bookish nerdiness is more highly rewarded culturally and financially than before. It's not marginal either. People are smarter, not dumber, in this sense. Whatever "stupidity" we observe isn't IQ. It's not a simple definition of smart and dumb. I suspect what people are observing when they observe a stupidity trend is more of a dumb culture than a culture of dumb people. Maybe individuals are getting smarter but the culture is getting dumber. IDK. I have no conclusions. Just pointing out that any concrete "arguments" made by the film are actually quite fallacious, despite being pretty widely resonant.

quacked 5y ago
IQ is not rising; literacy rates are falling in the developed world. As an example, fewer people are literate in Massachusetts now than when it was founded.
- loteck 5y ago
  fewer people are literate in Massachusetts now than when it was founded I'm also sensing we may be having some trouble in the math department.
  - quacked 5y ago
    You're right. I can barely identify a number on sight.
- SquibblesRedux 5y ago
  I found a reference about literacy in Massachusetts [0] and literacy for all states [1], but nothing suggesting literacy rates are worse than over 200 years ago. I would presume literacy rates for over 200 years ago would be worse due to lack of public education, gender inequality, and jobs/trades not requiring reading and writing skills. I am suspicious of the literacy rates in [0] and [1]. It seems that someone who immigrates from a foreign country would be considered illiterate if they did not speak English, but had high proficiency in reading and writing in their native language. Not knowing one specific language is very different from being generally uneducated. [0] https://mblc.state.ma.us/programs-and-support/adult-literacy/problem-in-mass.php https://mblc.state.ma.us/programs-and-support/adult-literacy... [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/us-literacy-rates-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/us-literacy...

vlunkr 5y ago

I haven't watched the film, but this article failed to convince me that it was prophetic at all. It came out it 2006, besides the fact that we had a clown president, things have really not changed much.