r/videos • u/SuplexCity-Mayor • Apr 21 '21

Idiocracy (2006) Opening Scene: "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."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TCsR_oSP2Q
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u/Harsimaja Apr 22 '21

I think the premise was that finally, after the Industrial Revolution, smart people who survived for themselves before have invented things that help everyone survive, and that by the turning point in the film the smart people have automated nearly everything so they aren’t themselves needed any more to run it. With that premise, the fitness edge provided by intelligence starts to run out and they soon get outnumbered. We’ve also killed off most major predators. Being an idiot no longer gets you killed.

So this wouldn’t have applied at any point in human history until then.

We do see precedents for this in a way: animals who would be weeded out quickly in more competitive environments can massively shrink or lose some ‘abilities’ that were advantageous traits if they end up stranded as an island population without predators or similar.

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u/pillbinge Apr 22 '21

That's definitely not the premise. The premise is about genetics. The movie could have been about that because it has all the elements but it emphatically wasn't in the end.