this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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Unpopular Opinion
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The problem with comparisons between the movie and real life is that there are still plenty of people of intelligence behind the scenes making our lives miserable.
The world of idiocracy is basically the result of accidental eugenics. "Smart people" don't have babies, so only dumb trailer trash has babies, so the world gets dumber. That's not how the real world works, people who were born to families living in trailer parks or low-income housing have just as much of a chance to be smart as those born to the rich... as long as they have the same opportunities. For the most part, they don't, but there's a minority that still gets grants and scholarships and just luck to become the "smart elite" that don't exist in the world of Idiocracy.
This is a bit of a controversial topic that's surely bigger than this thread, but I'm going to leave it here anyway for other people reading this.
You talk about trailer parks/low income families vs rich families, but I think that Idiocracy is not about income, it's about being dumb. Part of which is just cultural (ignorance), but part of it seems to be intelligence. And as far as I know, there's no evidence that any kid can become as intelligent as anyone else with proper raising and education. Research seems to pretty clearly show that IQ is heritable to a significant degree, and while it can be needlessly lowered in many ways (like malnutrition or high stress in critical development phases), in the absence of these issues no enrichment is able to raise it.
Despite how controversial it is in some circles, the Wikipedia article on the topic seems to be pretty good.
However, since the movie really is not deep, it's possible that its whole point was just that the idiocy is cultural, and in that case the above obviously doesn't apply. I'm just saying what it seemed like to me.
IQ isn't even a good metric of intelligence, just of the ability to do well at IQ tests.
The point of the movie is to show how stupid people are everywhere, and it's their fault that the world is going to shit. Which is an elitist, shitty argument. It completely ignores the direct involvement of those with a vested interest in keeping people ignorant of the world around them.
Sure, you can make an argument that a certain level of intelligence is inheritable... but not to such a degree that is implied by the movie, or by how people interpret it. Sure, you may not have quite the same ability to quickly consume and interpret information... but most everyone has the ability to do it eventually. It's just a matter of how much you want to. Many people, especially those in the American culture presented in the movie, have been trained to not do that, and that's what people see when they look around and find idiots all around them. The unfortunate truth, though, is that those who judge others based on that vapid criteria suffer from the same lack of intelligent thought. They don't put any effort into interpreting the world around them, and thus just assume those around them are a bunch of idiots who cause all the problems in their life.
It is the best way we have to measure g factor. IQ is highly correlated with life outcomes, so the argument that it only measure one’s ability to do IQ tests well is clearly specious. It’s measuring g factor, and g factor enables one to work more productively and delay gratification, meaning less crime. The average IQ in prisons in America is something like 85. That’s near the cutoff for the army, because not even they can teach such a person to peel potatoes. The ramifications of this are obvious: we’ve built economies which require intelligence. Someone with an 85 IQ (more than 10% of the population) can’t even be trained to run cash registers at McDonald’s. What does one do if they can’t work? Crime, poverty, self harm, and chronic welfare. We need to figure out what to do with these people, and the first step is acknowledging that not everyone is equally capable of contributing to society. Then we can have an honest discussion about welfare and UBI for these vulnerable people. Pretending they’re not severally disadvantaged is harming them immensely.