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Because the film itself implies that the idiocracy is due to stupid people breeding more, a classic tenet of Nazism and eugenics alike
by marxisttemp 6mo ago
Because the film itself implies that the idiocracy is due to stupid people breeding more, a classic tenet of Nazism and eugenics alike
- Filligree 6mo agoBut is it true or false?
- pbhjpbhj 6mo agoIt's true though, isn't it? The response is what typifies Nazi and similar positions. It is curious that there's no reported disgenic effect though - that seems counter to evolutionary theory? Perhaps it's only limiting the rate of growth of IQ/intelligence. There's a classic sci-fi story in which we rely on computers, the population gets dumber to the point noone knows how to make/fix the computers. I think in that there's a computer glitch that then wipes out humanity; but it's from the time when there were monolithic computers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence - it says 'fertility' but I think it means fecundity/actual reproduction
- lelanthran 6mo agoAre you talking about the one called "The Machine Stops", published like a hundred years ago?
- rob74 6mo agoI think there are lots of sci-fi stories on this topic, one I can think of is "Pump Six" by Paolo Bacigalupi (https://books.google.de/books?id=HoSXDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT125&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=1#v=onepage&q=pump%20six&f=false https://books.google.de/books?id=HoSXDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT125&sourc...), which is from this century...
- actionfromafar 6mo agoThat story is incredible, with insights into what technology would mean.
- coldtea 6mo ago>but it's from the time when there were monolithic computers. Or centralized SOTA LLMs.
- marxisttemp 6mo agoWhat sort of a response do you think a movie whose premise is “dumb people have overbred and made the world worse” is intended to provoke?
- anonymars 6mo agoLaughter? Is Dennis the Menace a treatise on corporeal punishment? If we want to treat Idiocracy as a policy paper, why not take away as a lesson to think beyond merely themselves when the well-educated decide whether to raise children?
- cindyllm 6mo ago[dead]
- marxisttemp 6mo agoThe film wasn't about education, it was about genetics, as the intro makes abundantly clear. And the Redditors who get themselves hot and bothered about this film aren't laughing, they're congratulating themselves on being the intelligent ones instead of the dysgenic stupids while crowing about how "Idiocracy is a documentary" -> stupid people are overbreeding.
- anonymars 6mo agoIf most people in the thread have different takeaways, and you're laser-focused on seeing eugenics and superiority (especially when you keep making condescending remarks like "hope this helps" or "work on your reading comprehension"), I don't think that reflects on the film
- marxisttemp 6mo agoYeah, the consensus of a plurality of users of a Silicon Valley startup incubator heavily associated with the right wing is definitely the only opinion that matters about the subtext of a film.
- rob74 6mo agoThat's ironic seeing that nazis (or the far right in general) usually need stupid people to vote for them so they get into a position where they can undermine a democratic system...
- coldtea 6mo agoAll kinds of people voted for the Nazi party, including very intelligent and respectable professors, and there was no special split in intelligence between either side voters (or measure of that). What's ironic is using nazi-like thinking (the idiot masses who vote far right vs the enlightened people who vote left), instead of treating it as a complex political matter, and accepting that perfectly intelligent people can just as well fall for that shit.
- marxisttemp 6mo agoVoting for the right as a member of the working class is truly idiotic. Not that most people on this site have ever dipped below PMC treatlerite comfort.
- coldtea 6mo ago>Voting for the right as a member of the working class is truly idiotic Or not everybody shares your priorities and ideological outloook, or even pragmatic assessment of how more fucked they are with the right vs the left in power in the past, and it's the above that's naive. Perhaps they're adverse to people so apolitical and self-righteous that think nobody can't vote anything else than what they're selling, unless they're stupid or immoral.
- marxisttemp 6mo agoEvery single quality of life improvement for the working class, from minimum wage, to overtime, to weekends, was delivered by the left. Please tell me one thing that the right has accomplished for laborers.
- ndneighbor 6mo agoI think the intent of Mike Judge's joke was less so an outright promotion of eugenics and more so mocking the upper crust of American society's approach to family planning. (That of which Judge was intimately familiar with during his time in SV when he worked for a graphics card company.) A lot of his work with KotH analyzed the same dynamics of educated and uneducated America and the interplay and I think Idiocracy is essentially the terminus of the observations he would make where if the idiots got their way. (A semi-common plot point with Hank in KotH where he would be pit against rediculous circumstances.)
- Froztnova 6mo agoI mean yes but the point at the end of the day was that the people who were breeding in Idiocracy had genetically inferior intelligence.
- anonymars 6mo agoDid the movie ever say anything about genetics or IQ?
- Froztnova 6mo agoIt does explicitly reference IQ and, at one point, shows an adult taking an intelligence test and trying to put a square peg into a round hole. There is nothing in the movie that suggests that the decline in average intelligence is a result of cultural factors or education.
- wiseowise 6mo ago> There is nothing in the movie that suggests that the decline in average intelligence is a result of cultural factors or education. Have you skipped start of the movie or did we watch different editions? They literally open the story with redneck family breeding and spreading their redneck ways through family ties while “smart” family waits for the perfect moment.
- coldtea 6mo agoNazis also thought smoking is bad. The problem is their applied genocidal eugenics. Not whether they thought IQ is hereditary.
- dist-epoch 6mo agoIs Darwin natural selection eugenic? Was the rise of humans from chimps an eugenic like event?
- IAmBroom 6mo agoHumans didn't "rise" from chimps, and natural selection doesn't promote "rising".
- marxisttemp 6mo agoNo, because that’s natural selection, not artificial selection by an authoritarian government. Hope this helps!
- dist-epoch 6mo agoThere was no artificial selection by a government in this movie.
- marxisttemp 6mo agoThe movie obviously doesn’t depict a eugenics program, but it makes the core argument of eugenics: if human breeding is left uncontrolled it will lead to “stupid” people breeding more.
- wiseowise 6mo agoWhich authoritarian government, lmao.
- marxisttemp 6mo agoNazi Germany and America, for two, lmao
- wiseowise 6mo agoAmerica didn’t mandate eugenics in the movie and what does this even have to do with Nazies?
- wiseowise 6mo agoEugenics is artificial. Who’s forcing smart stupid to not breed in the movie and stupid to breed?