Idiocracy is an entertaining comedy, but it isn’t realistic in the slightest.
Idiocracy uses a eugenicist premise (and the problem with that premise is a whole can of worms unto itself) to set up a world where everyone is an idiot, no exceptions. But they’re well-meaning idiots, and they have enough sense to be able to defer to the one and only smart guy in the room who ultimately saves the day.
The real world is suffering not because the people in power are stupid, but because the people in power are selfish and evil, and because they are smart enough to manipulate people who are dumber than them. There’s only one exception here, but the one guy who is a true idiot is a puppet being controlled by smart evil people.
TV shows almost look like OW MY BALLS today; with newer smart TVs injecting ads into content that isn’t even theirs.
We’ve got a president doing McDonalds buffets for events, suggesting people “inject light” into their veins for medical intervention, wanting to rename greenland to “Red White and Blueland”…
Nah. That shit hits far too close to home.
And if other animals can be bred for specific traits, so can humans. We’re not special in any way regarding that. Rejecting that because of how it was incorrectly used to justify horrible things in the past is flat out unscientific.
If we bred for it, we could make it happen. That’s the point.
Also, it isn’t unscientific. They’ve done it in rat/mouse studies. Look up mouse utopia. We aren’t immune to social collapse. As a species we aren’t that smart to begin with. It’s our social structure, public schooling, etc that allow us to advance early age and maintain the higher order thought that our society continues to have. When shit goes sideways, kids don’t have public schools any more, etc – you’ll see how stupid genetically, we all are.
I have friends, who are legitimately “mentally stunted” because they weren’t taught language due to a neglective environment.
Nothing you’ve just described has anything to do with genetics. You’re talking about nurture, not nature.
The premise of Idiocracy, that this setting came about because dumb people had too much sex, is fundamentally flawed. That isn’t how genetics work and it isn’t how intelligence works.
And look, for a work of fiction I can suspend disbelief on the premise and still enjoy the story told in that setting, I’m not even saying it isn’t a funny movie, but realistic is not a word that can be applied to any part of the film.
Honestly, I think the movie would’ve been improved if you chopped off the intro and just reduced it to “Man gets isekai’d into a world where everyone’s stupid because that’s just what this fictional world is.”
That isn’t how genetics work and it isn’t how intelligence works.
On a simplified level, it absolutely is. If having more kids gives an evolutionary advantage, and being unintelligent is part of that caste, then absolutely the children will be born with a lower capacity for intelligence.
Look at Huskeys vs other dogs. Massive, MASSIVE difference in personality, intelligence, energy, etc.
And they aren’t a different species either - it takes fractions of a % of difference in DNA to produce huge swings in things like intelligence.
If we share something like 90% of our DNA with monkeys, it’s not going to take an entire speciation to measure intelligence differences. This is a lie told by people who pretend to be scientists, but are more interested in the moral implications of confirming than they are truth and facts. Yes, telling people you can control the genetic population of the species to push for certain outcomes within the species in a dangerous thing. We get that. But that is the truth of the matter, not some fairy-tale that we’re all kumbyah and that every genetically distinct population doesn’t have advantages and disadvantages (of which there are hundreds or thousands of distinct genetic populations within the h. sapien species; If you’re a pacific islander, a DNA test can tell you exactly what island you originate from).
Sure, on an individual level - people as single data-points can fall upon that distribution, but you absolutely can shift that distribution up or down.
Granted, doing genetic control like this comes with its own incredibly dangerous set of consequences such as amplification of mutant genome, because you would be controlling for 1 trait, but missing the other millions of traits/genetic markers that you need to keep diverse in order to keep the human body working. – Again, using dogs as a reference here, how most dalmations have hearing problems or are completely deaf because when their line was bred, they were controlling for the patterning, not other genetic defects.
If anything, better education would genetically select in favor of more stupid people. If you’re stupid and can get by because of a phenomenal education then guess being stupid was smart enough.
Whether what you’ve described is actually how things work or not (it’s not) doesn’t matter though. Because breeding entire populations takes thousands of years and will not solve any of our problems today. It’s really not worth talking about.
Idiocracy. We’re basically dumping brawndo on the plants as we speak…
Idiocracy is an entertaining comedy, but it isn’t realistic in the slightest.
Idiocracy uses a eugenicist premise (and the problem with that premise is a whole can of worms unto itself) to set up a world where everyone is an idiot, no exceptions. But they’re well-meaning idiots, and they have enough sense to be able to defer to the one and only smart guy in the room who ultimately saves the day.
The real world is suffering not because the people in power are stupid, but because the people in power are selfish and evil, and because they are smart enough to manipulate people who are dumber than them. There’s only one exception here, but the one guy who is a true idiot is a puppet being controlled by smart evil people.
TV shows almost look like OW MY BALLS today; with newer smart TVs injecting ads into content that isn’t even theirs.
We’ve got a president doing McDonalds buffets for events, suggesting people “inject light” into their veins for medical intervention, wanting to rename greenland to “Red White and Blueland”…
Nah. That shit hits far too close to home.
And if other animals can be bred for specific traits, so can humans. We’re not special in any way regarding that. Rejecting that because of how it was incorrectly used to justify horrible things in the past is flat out unscientific.
The idea of smart people going extinct is simply not how genetics works. That is flat out unscientific.
If we bred for it, we could make it happen. That’s the point.
Also, it isn’t unscientific. They’ve done it in rat/mouse studies. Look up mouse utopia. We aren’t immune to social collapse. As a species we aren’t that smart to begin with. It’s our social structure, public schooling, etc that allow us to advance early age and maintain the higher order thought that our society continues to have. When shit goes sideways, kids don’t have public schools any more, etc – you’ll see how stupid genetically, we all are.
I have friends, who are legitimately “mentally stunted” because they weren’t taught language due to a neglective environment.
Nothing you’ve just described has anything to do with genetics. You’re talking about nurture, not nature.
The premise of Idiocracy, that this setting came about because dumb people had too much sex, is fundamentally flawed. That isn’t how genetics work and it isn’t how intelligence works.
And look, for a work of fiction I can suspend disbelief on the premise and still enjoy the story told in that setting, I’m not even saying it isn’t a funny movie, but realistic is not a word that can be applied to any part of the film.
Honestly, I think the movie would’ve been improved if you chopped off the intro and just reduced it to “Man gets isekai’d into a world where everyone’s stupid because that’s just what this fictional world is.”
On a simplified level, it absolutely is. If having more kids gives an evolutionary advantage, and being unintelligent is part of that caste, then absolutely the children will be born with a lower capacity for intelligence.
Look at Huskeys vs other dogs. Massive, MASSIVE difference in personality, intelligence, energy, etc.
And they aren’t a different species either - it takes fractions of a % of difference in DNA to produce huge swings in things like intelligence.
If we share something like 90% of our DNA with monkeys, it’s not going to take an entire speciation to measure intelligence differences. This is a lie told by people who pretend to be scientists, but are more interested in the moral implications of confirming than they are truth and facts. Yes, telling people you can control the genetic population of the species to push for certain outcomes within the species in a dangerous thing. We get that. But that is the truth of the matter, not some fairy-tale that we’re all kumbyah and that every genetically distinct population doesn’t have advantages and disadvantages (of which there are hundreds or thousands of distinct genetic populations within the h. sapien species; If you’re a pacific islander, a DNA test can tell you exactly what island you originate from).
Sure, on an individual level - people as single data-points can fall upon that distribution, but you absolutely can shift that distribution up or down.
Granted, doing genetic control like this comes with its own incredibly dangerous set of consequences such as amplification of mutant genome, because you would be controlling for 1 trait, but missing the other millions of traits/genetic markers that you need to keep diverse in order to keep the human body working. – Again, using dogs as a reference here, how most dalmations have hearing problems or are completely deaf because when their line was bred, they were controlling for the patterning, not other genetic defects.
If anything, better education would genetically select in favor of more stupid people. If you’re stupid and can get by because of a phenomenal education then guess being stupid was smart enough.
Whether what you’ve described is actually how things work or not (it’s not) doesn’t matter though. Because breeding entire populations takes thousands of years and will not solve any of our problems today. It’s really not worth talking about.