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> Instead of anti-eugenics making brains feeble, I didn't read Idiocracy as eugenics/anti-eugenics. It wasn't saying that stupid people breeding made the popul

> Instead of anti-eugenics making brains feeble, I didn't read Idiocracy as eugenics/anti-eugenics. It wasn't saying that stupid people breeding made the population stupid, it was saying that the less educated breeding resulted in the more educated being pushed to the periphery and eventually fading out. The people of the film's future were not stupid, just massively uninformed and misinformed. They were able to grasp the problem and solution in the end. Unless I'm misremembering, and it did make direct reference to intelligence rather than education and access to it. It is a good few years since I last watched it. There is the title, of course, but educationally-disasavantaged-ocracy would not have been catchy enough!

dTal 7mo ago
I'm afraid you are misremembering. The movie is explicitly eugenicist. The people of the future are explicitly biologically stupid. The opening transcript is unambiguous: [Man Narrating] As the 21st century began… human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest… the fastest reproduced in greater numbers than the rest… a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man… now began to favor different traits. [Reporter] The Joey Buttafuoco case- Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized… and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. 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.
- chucksmash 7mo ago
  What is "explicitly eugenicist" in observing that the unprecedented way mankind has dominated its environment has changed the selection pressures we are subject to? My quest to survive to adulthood and pass on my genes looked nothing like the gauntlet an Homo erectus specimen would have run.
dist-epoch 7mo ago
> Unless I'm misremembering, and it did make direct reference to intelligence rather than education and access to it. They literally show IQ numbers in that scene. > Trevor: IQ 138, Carol: IQ 141 vs: > Clevon: IQ 84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP2tUW0HDHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP2tUW0HDHA
lelanthran 7mo ago
> Unless I'm misremembering, and it did make direct reference to intelligence rather than education and access to it. You are misremembering; they had a scene of an intelligence test that had adults matching shapes (stars -. tars, squares -> squares) and getting it wrong.

dTal 7mo ago

I'm afraid you are misremembering. The movie is explicitly eugenicist. The people of the future are explicitly biologically stupid. The opening transcript is unambiguous: [Man Narrating] As the 21st century began… human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest… the fastest reproduced in greater numbers than the rest… a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man… now began to favor different traits. [Reporter] The Joey Buttafuoco case- Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized… and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. 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.

chucksmash 7mo ago
What is "explicitly eugenicist" in observing that the unprecedented way mankind has dominated its environment has changed the selection pressures we are subject to? My quest to survive to adulthood and pass on my genes looked nothing like the gauntlet an Homo erectus specimen would have run.

dist-epoch 7mo ago

> Unless I'm misremembering, and it did make direct reference to intelligence rather than education and access to it. They literally show IQ numbers in that scene. > Trevor: IQ 138, Carol: IQ 141 vs: > Clevon: IQ 84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP2tUW0HDHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP2tUW0HDHA

lelanthran 7mo ago

> Unless I'm misremembering, and it did make direct reference to intelligence rather than education and access to it. You are misremembering; they had a scene of an intelligence test that had adults matching shapes (stars -. tars, squares -> squares) and getting it wrong.