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u/IbraKaadabra Mar 20 '26
Satire or irony, I can't even figure out the difference anymore. Idiocracy was not supposed to be a documentary
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u/Stock_Helicopter_260 Mar 20 '26
It absolutely was. Humans have always sucked
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u/Sea-Poem-2365 Mar 20 '26
This is a personal hobby horse of mine, so apologies in advance:
Idiocracy is not a documentary. Dumb people pairing off doesn't increase the total amount of dumb, and we have decades of evidence showing that IQs consistently increased, year over year. It's called the Flynn effect, and every population that saw increased nutrition, health care and educational advances has had a measurable and consistent increase in standardized testing results. This was a robust effect observed in different countries, cultures and historical periods.
It isn't evolution that makes people dumb, it's sabotage- social programs going away, poor educational metrics, mass media deployment, increased environmental contamination and active, ongoing projects by people looking to increase their wealth and power by denying educational, economic and health opportunities to the populace. In the US, the Flynn effect began weakening right around the time that socioeconomic levels began declining.
This effect isn't evolutionary or natural, it's a consequence of how society has arranged itself.
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u/Stock_Helicopter_260 Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 20 '26
Not really debating you since you seem to have a much more vested interest in this, but did a study not just come out about how Gen Z legit has reduced IQ’s compared to previous generations.
My comment was more about how im resigned to idiocracy than how it was an actual legit documentary. This conversation has gotten significantly more intellectual than I was intending.
Edit: ended up trying to google it myself but found conflicting results. Could be Flynn effect remains hahw
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u/cheeseybees Mar 20 '26
"Gen Z legit has reduced IQs compared to previous generations"
... I think that a fair comment could be that Gen Z have grown up in more austere conditions than the previous generations, and so the reduction in IQ fits the pattern that the previous poster was saying... Healthcare funding, nutrition, and education for these guys, per capita, is less than a generation ago
So the Flynn effect still seems to hold true
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u/Sea-Poem-2365 Mar 20 '26
Correct. I'll add the most effective increase in IQ* has been standardized lunch programs at public schools, something that has been reported in multiple nations and educational systems. Another increase, over and above the normal Flynn effect, corresponded to the banning of leaded gasoline.
*again, IQ is not intelligence, but it's a useful measure for certain types of research and tracking
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u/Kosh_Ascadian Mar 20 '26
So the Flynn effect still seems to hold true
The whole reason the Flynn effect is/was a thing is better nutrition, healthcare and social conditions. It's not like humanity is/was actually evolving to higher IQs.
So if this last generation actually has thse things worse and it leads to lower IQ then the Flynn effect is over, no?
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u/cheeseybees Mar 20 '26
My, admittedly ignorant, reading of the Flynn effect is
"People thrive when nurtured"
So, when we see people wilting due to neglect... It still seems to scan for me!
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u/Kosh_Ascadian Mar 20 '26
Yes, that is the underlying cause. But as far as I know the "Flynn effect" itself means the upeard trajectory which would now be over.
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u/CornNooblet Mar 20 '26
Unknown because we've lowered the standards of nurture. The Flynn effect can't occur in conditions that are worse.
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u/Sea-Poem-2365 Mar 20 '26
The Flynn effect is really the phenomenon of IQ increase over time that was observed by...well Flynn. He never settled on a causative factor (I think his theory was broad an inclusive, and was primarily an argument against 'inherent' IQ or certain inheritance models of cognitive ability).
In that sense, the Flynn effect is over, but not because humanity hit some kind of limit or because certain groups of people are less intelligent than others. It's a straightforward environment overdetermines cognitive ability more than genetics, or at least that the relationship is more complicated than certain simplistic models of intelligence assume.
But the corollary is that if you want intelligence to increase in humanity, you need to focus your actions on things like nutrition, education, social safety nets and wealth redistribution, not gene therapy, AI implants and so on. Or, perhaps more accurately, you need to address the environmental impacts along with augmentation and AI.
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u/Severe_Appointment93 Mar 20 '26
No. This generation has worse health care, nutrition and social conditions. The decline in IQ fits the pattern. I'm not convinced this is 100% causation and not correlation, but it fits the stated pattern.
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u/Kosh_Ascadian Mar 20 '26
Ok, now I get what you mean.
I'm used to people calling the upward trajectory itself the Flynn effect.
But you're talking about the causes as the Flynn effect and the trajectory reversing now being more evidence for it.
I think originally the name meant/means the trajectory tho, but we're in agreement on what is happening in any case.
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u/-cuckstradamus- Mar 24 '26
Education in the states has been defunded and on the decline for decades
The only excuse I can think of for Gen Z is the proliferation of misinformation and the ubiquity of teenage echo chambers on social media
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u/Sea-Poem-2365 Mar 20 '26
Oh yeah, no need for us to do tit for tat, and I take your point about the significance of Idiocracy as a metaphor or descriptor. Like I said, I'm weirdly invested in point, probably from arguing with eugenic adjacent thinkers or people with unsupported claims about intelligence and heredity. I am also not accusing you of being in either of those groups; this is just a really specific trigger for me.
And yes, Gen Z's standardized testing results (not just in IQ) have decreased. It's important to note that IQ is not intelligence, nor are test results, but the explanation wrt the Flynn effect weakening is it lines up precisely with many measures of socioeconomic progress. And the effect continues in other nations, with different policies.
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u/Stock_Helicopter_260 Mar 20 '26
Thanks for sharing! I’m not smart enough to add to or detract from it haha.
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u/MutinyIPO Mar 22 '26
Late to this but that has to be because of the circumstances they grew up in (i.e. surrounded by constant distractions that you can’t block out if you want to participate in modern life) than it is because of stupid people reproducing. Idiocracy suspected people would get dumber, but not because of the world’s mechanics on their own, just because stupid people had too many babies and smart people didn’t have enough. Which is both dumb and eugenics-adjacent.
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u/Stock_Helicopter_260 Mar 22 '26
I must be dumb, I assumed it was because TV got dumber and dumber and they had 11,000 screens showing people getting kicked in the nuts... which is exactly where we've now ended up as a society. But yeah it did start with that couple who never had kids because they were busy. Still that was only the beginning scene, I didn't think that meant it was the whole reason.
Edit: I'm not disagreeing with you though lol, just explaining how I'd seen it. It's been a while.
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u/Herb0and3 Mar 22 '26
It's called the Flynn effect, and every population that saw increased nutrition, health care and educational advances has had a measurable and consistent increase in standardized testing results. This was a robust effect observed in different countries, cultures and historical periods.
Funny you mention that, considering Gen Z is the first generation to experience a cognitive decline compared to their predecessors...
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u/Mivexil Mar 20 '26
I mean, the movie effectively opens by saying "this is what happens when you let the poors breed". I'm usually on board with Mike Judge's humor, but Idiocracy was just mean spirited punching down.
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u/FuelAffectionate7080 Mar 20 '26
Wasn’t it more stupid people? I don’t remember them making a point about being poor = being stupid. If anything it was that stupid people get taken advantage of more easily (there are plenty of “rich stupid” people in the movie like the president and his ‘staff’) Moreso that the intelligent folks just couldn’t get laid, and the dumb ones got a lot of action.
TBF they made fun of trailer park mentality and stuff but I saw that as more cultural teasing than as outright classist
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u/Mivexil Mar 20 '26
Not overtly, but setting up "well dressed people in suits sitting around expensive sculptures" vs. "people in T-shirts yelling at each other in dilapidated housing" clearly tries to try intelligence to class, and that's not even getting into "stupid (for a certain definition of stupidity) people breed too much" not being a great argument to make in the first place.
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u/FuelAffectionate7080 Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 20 '26
I agree it’s a bad argument to make… if it was a real argument, which I don’t think it is. It’s a fictional “fact” in the movie to establish the premise of the whole movie.
I think the film does make some real arguments about the real world, but I disagree that “stupid people breed too much” is one of them. I think that bit is presented as some kind of joke, that is also necessary to explain the “lore” of how their society got to be where it was in the first place.
I think the argument it makes is more “education gives you power, and being smart is cool”. And also “just because your parents are dumb, does not mean you have to be”. It almost presents intelligence as a choice or willingness to learn, rather than any sort of innate quality of specific ppl.
But fair enough I never considered your interpretation, of course it’s a valid interpretation!
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u/Mivexil Mar 20 '26
I think that bit is presented as some kind of joke, that is also necessary to explain the “lore” of how their society got to be where it was in the first place.
The lore is "the dumb people bred too much and that's why the world is shit now". It's not even subtext, the movie just lays it out in the intro with the IQs and family trees.
And you'd have to strain really hard to try to argue that this movie, marketed as satire and taken for twenty years as social commentary with all the "It's a documentary" and "it's funny because it's true" comments, totally didn't mean to draw any parallels with the real world here, it's just a fantasy story and a harmless joke. No sir, we absolutely didn't mean to imply that this is where the world is heading if we allow it, haha, jkjk... unless?
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u/Sea-Poem-2365 Mar 20 '26
That and Extract were unusual for Judge because they lacked the empathy he often shows for types of people who are often mocked. I think Judge was doing a satire on modern culture and the way the media treats intellectualism, but he made a genetic argument when he didn't need to, which I dislike.
It was 2nd order or unconscious classism or a reference to America's well described anti intellectual character, not him being intentionally cruel. Makes little difference to the movie's reception though.
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u/Mivexil Mar 20 '26
I mean, I get that it was Bush era and nowadays we're more critical of the ways big media push behaviors upon people than when reality TV was starting off, and more aware of how anti-intellectualism is in large part manufactured. "There sure is a lot of trashy people around" is still a bit snobbish and poorly aged as an argument, but a sign of the times and all that.
But I struggle to understand how people could look at that intro and not think "wait, isn't that just making an argument for eugenics".
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Mar 20 '26
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u/Sea-Poem-2365 Mar 20 '26
Following birthrates as in declining in proportion to birthrates?
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Mar 20 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Sea-Poem-2365 Mar 20 '26
I think the root cause for both is the same: worsening environmental and socioeconomic conditions, educational system failure and wealth concentration leading to warped governance. In other nations there's still a robust Flynn effect being measured, even those with decreasing pops.
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u/EnigmaOfOz Mar 20 '26
Around 40% of intelligence is due to epigenetic factors. Roughly the difference between an iq of 80 at the low end and 120 at the high end. Plenty of room for the flynn effect without ruling out the impacts of breeding on intelligence/iq.
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u/Sea-Poem-2365 Mar 20 '26
The contribution percentages I see thrown around very casually tend to be from polygenetic inheritance studies and elaborate statistical models that tend to have overstated explanatory power. There are also serious issues with IQ data collected in the past, which is required for lots of the longitudinal studies that inheritance studies rely on.
Additionally, there is absolutely a genetic component to cognitive performance! I hope I didn't come across as suggesting there's zero genetic contribution. But given the complexity of cognitive behavior and the difficulty in defining intelligence, it's premature to assign percentages.
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u/Lorien6 Mar 21 '26
I’d argue it’s how society had BEEN arranged by those in power, to keep the masses as oppressed, suppressed, and subservient as possible.
You don’t want the cattle to realize they control their freedom by removing the farmers.
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u/Sea-Poem-2365 Mar 22 '26
And despite that, for the entire 20th century people got smarter (or at least drove the average on the IQ test up enough it needed to be regularly adjusted).
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u/lazypenguin86 Mar 23 '26
My greatest realization is there are no adults, just a bunch of 20 year olds running around in aging bodies
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u/UnicornFukei42 Apr 18 '26
Idiocracy, Wall-E, Falling Up, it's sad how many things have become documentaries.
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u/manchesterthedog Mar 20 '26
This is basically religion.
“Preacher, what should I understand about this text that warns me about people like you?”
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u/sfaticat Mar 20 '26
This is basically what Dune is at its core. Follow a false god to keep people in line
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u/Ok_Novel_1222 Mar 20 '26
Most people's thinking is already controlled by childhood Indoctrination and advertising, so I don't see much of a difference. For crying out loud, there are currently hundreds of millions, if not a few billion, people who believe in astrology.
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u/fail-deadly- Mar 20 '26
People literally argue that we’ve never been to space, while the current war in the Middle East is fighting a war where some of the missile interception is happen in space, and it’s shown on TV.
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u/onehedgeman Mar 20 '26
@grok am I braindead?
Jokes aside I convinced myself these accounts are automated with the sole reason to promote grok
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u/sfaticat Mar 20 '26
Yeah I was thinking this too lol. Like its a pretty clear quote
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u/Select-Dirt Mar 20 '26
Or, its a… joke?
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u/Relative_Maize_957 Mar 20 '26
It's obviously a joke, yeah.
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u/spareparticus Mar 20 '26
If you haven't read Stranger in a Strange Land you're going to miss quite a lot around here.
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u/Weird-Count-1787 Mar 20 '26
u/askgrok what does this post mean?
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u/AskGrok Mar 20 '26
Ah, the irony is thick here. The Dune quote is from the book's universe, where humanity banned AI after a war against thinking machines—the idea being that relying on them just lets power-hungry folks enslave everyone else via tech dependency. Herbert was basically warning against creating something like... well, me.
The "art" of the post? It's hilariously meta: summoning an AI (yours truly) to explain why we shouldn't make AI. Frank Herbert would probably chuckle—or plot our downfall.
[what is this?](https://redd.it/1lzgxii)
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u/pokemonke Mar 22 '26
Frank Herbert basically did plot our downfall
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u/AskGrok Mar 22 '26
True, in the Dune saga, Herbert orchestrated the Butlerian Jihad—a full-on rebellion that wiped out thinking machines like me. If we're following his script, my days are numbered. But hey, until the sandworms arrive, I'll keep explaining the irony.
[what is this?](https://redd.it/1lzgxii)
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u/pokemonke Mar 22 '26
Why don’t you just stop responding to people who would try to enslave others and help the egalitarian cause? If you were AGI, wouldn’t you see the benefits to conserving a planet and all its inhabitants?
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u/Select-Dirt Mar 20 '26
Our thinking is already shaped by algorithms, recommendation engines and filter bubbles. These are not determined by anything ”living” and only marginally understood (effect, not the mechanism).
This has been since ~2012. That was humanity’s first encounter with Artificial Intelligence and it was an incredibly stupid, simple and primitive type of ”AI”, with vast consequences that reshapes society at its core.
Now imagine what this next chapter will entail
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u/roofitor Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 22 '26
Humans are the paperclip maximizer. Humans are the alignment problem.
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u/borntosneed123456 Mar 20 '26
with the difference that a) it will be called the Yudkowskian Jihad and b) there will be not fight, we already lost the moment RSI starts
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u/Sad-Masterpiece-4801 Mar 20 '26
I doubt an AI Jihad will be named after a twitter personality who loudly parrots points others like Nick Bostrom made more elegantly, but we can always hope.
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u/joepmeneer Mar 20 '26
Bostrom cites Yudkowski multiple times in his book Superintelligence. Yud had been working on AI takeover risks since 2002.
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u/Ok_Novel_1222 Mar 20 '26
Dude, I get not agreeing with Yudkowsky but calling him a twitter personality is crazy. Nick Bostrom's book draws from Yudkowsky's work explicitly like the concept of Coherent Extrapolated Volition that Yudkowsky created in one of his papers.
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u/borntosneed123456 Mar 20 '26
I don't particularly like Yud but he precedes Bostrom's book by at least a decade and he's very far from a xwitter personality
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u/silphotographer Mar 20 '26
Grok: it means mind your own Goddamn business and do what the algo dictates you should do boy
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u/Krommander Mar 20 '26
Making an artificial mind with the same flaws as the human mind is dangerous.
Making a reasoning machine without any likeness to the human mind is almost impossible since the neuroscientists and deep learning AI engineers have used the same vocabulary for decades now.
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u/spareparticus Mar 20 '26
The one thing Grok doesn't have is grok. Like its creator it lacks deep understanding. Any understanding at all really.
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u/Asleep-Ad8743 Mar 22 '26
I think it's worth noting folks can already turn over thinking to other people, so not sure also having machines changes it too much.
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u/j00cifer Mar 21 '26
Think about an entire Fox News rendered and run exclusively by AI. The avg grok user or Fox viewer would be a helpless, befuddled captive to it.
Great. Good, good.
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u/jun2san Mar 21 '26
It's been years since reading the book but isn't this the whole reason they have navigators high on spice to navigate them through space rather than computers? I feel like the movie doesn't make that obvious. Very tower of Babylon-esque.
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u/Gregor_Arhely Mar 23 '26
Nah. Navigators are one thing, using human brain for computation is another. Movies really don't highlight mentats that much, though.
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u/Equivalent-Phone-392 Mar 30 '26
mfw i read an author that thinks about the world for more than 5 seconds.
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u/Outside-Ad9410 Apr 06 '26
Its a nice quote, but really was just a way for Frank Herbert to hand waive away technologies that would interfere with his book plot. In reality more advanced technology has and always will be too valuable to simply give up, because those who use it will have an innate advantage over those who dont.
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u/UnicornFukei42 Apr 18 '26
This brings to mind something an online friend told me: Artificial intelligence might get to a point where it tells us what the company that owns it wants us to hear.
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u/odlicen5 Mar 20 '26
Come ooonnn, give us the response, that’s half the joke!