3 ms·

The article ends with the interesting question of "what next"? Idiocracy comes to mind.

ramraj07 4y ago
People always keep saying idiocracy is like the worst case scenario for the future. Are you kidding me? That movie is close to the best case scenario. Everyone in the movie is just having fun doing whatever they want, and importantly, quite literally everyone is actually nice and just trying to do the right thing. There’s literally no villain just some misunderstanding. Even the evil corporations actually turn out to be evil just because of incompetence (carls junior actually takes over child care if it deems their parents unable; the soda company genuinely was shocked that their soda shouldn’t be used to irrigate). Except the one genuinely evil person (the pimp) who turns out is not from that time, and thankfully only pops up in the end to set up the sequel. I would choose idiocracys universe to whatever we have even today, where a good fraction if not the majority of the world population has decided that selfishness and bigotry are the way to go.
- qbrass 4y ago
  I call it the Blade Runner problem. While waiting for the cool neon and chrome cyberpunk dystopia from the movies to show up, the boring, black and white with blue LED cyberpunk dystopia slipped in instead. We won't get the Hollywood version of Idiocracy, either.
  - Auracle 4y ago
    The real version of Idiocracy would be everyone back to tribal warfare. Which, I suppose, would bounce humanity back in the other direction. My hope for that not happening is that we’ll end up genetically altering our babies en masse, which sounds…not great, but it’s probably better than the alternative.
- mellavora 4y ago
  > a good fraction if not the majority of the world population has decided that selfishness and bigotry are the way to go. agree, this is an unfortunate Nash equilibrium. I will say it is much more present in US society than Europe. Also, it is an artifact of current society. It can be unlearned. People, as social animals, have a strong inner drive to take care of their clan. That won't fix the bigotry, but it sure can tamper down the selfishness. We've just split ourselves into atomic units instead of molecules and materials, and build so much of our world around our individualistic pods.
- pstuart 4y ago
  They would have effectively died off starvation if Joe hadn't come along. Everything was falling apart and they were coasting on the remnants of the work before them. The labor situation was glossed over, but it also looked like sex work was far more prevalent. I'm not saying that sex work is inherently bad, only when by force (either explicit or implicit due to opportunities).

People always keep saying idiocracy is like the worst case scenario for the future. Are you kidding me? That movie is close to the best case scenario. Everyone in the movie is just having fun doing whatever they want, and importantly, quite literally everyone is actually nice and just trying to do the right thing. There’s literally no villain just some misunderstanding. Even the evil corporations actually turn out to be evil just because of incompetence (carls junior actually takes over child care if it deems their parents unable; the soda company genuinely was shocked that their soda shouldn’t be used to irrigate). Except the one genuinely evil person (the pimp) who turns out is not from that time, and thankfully only pops up in the end to set up the sequel. I would choose idiocracys universe to whatever we have even today, where a good fraction if not the majority of the world population has decided that selfishness and bigotry are the way to go.

qbrass 4y ago
I call it the Blade Runner problem. While waiting for the cool neon and chrome cyberpunk dystopia from the movies to show up, the boring, black and white with blue LED cyberpunk dystopia slipped in instead. We won't get the Hollywood version of Idiocracy, either.
- Auracle 4y ago
  The real version of Idiocracy would be everyone back to tribal warfare. Which, I suppose, would bounce humanity back in the other direction. My hope for that not happening is that we’ll end up genetically altering our babies en masse, which sounds…not great, but it’s probably better than the alternative.
mellavora 4y ago
> a good fraction if not the majority of the world population has decided that selfishness and bigotry are the way to go. agree, this is an unfortunate Nash equilibrium. I will say it is much more present in US society than Europe. Also, it is an artifact of current society. It can be unlearned. People, as social animals, have a strong inner drive to take care of their clan. That won't fix the bigotry, but it sure can tamper down the selfishness. We've just split ourselves into atomic units instead of molecules and materials, and build so much of our world around our individualistic pods.
pstuart 4y ago
They would have effectively died off starvation if Joe hadn't come along. Everything was falling apart and they were coasting on the remnants of the work before them. The labor situation was glossed over, but it also looked like sex work was far more prevalent. I'm not saying that sex work is inherently bad, only when by force (either explicit or implicit due to opportunities).