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afavourtoday at 3:26 PM4 repliesview on HN

Yeah, Idiocracy isn't wrong on the facts about our current day scenario. The issue is where it takes that: poor, lower educated people will inevitably have poor, lowered educated children who will in fact get less and less educated as time goes on, and they will take over, leading to... idiocracy.

There's a whole conversation to have about the assumptions in that. Is the implication it's genetic? The children of lower educated people aren't capable of moving to greater things? Or is it societal, that our education system fails the poor and doesn't give them the tools they need to thrive?

The movie isn't really interested in interrogating any of that and I don't think it needs to. Like I said, I see it as a fun movie that isn't that deep. But there's a common thread of opinion on the movie that holds it up as a biting satire ("Idiocracy is a documentary!" is essentially a meme at this point) and those folks don't seem to engage with the topic either. A worrying number of people seem to have a takeaway of "poor people shouldn't procreate as much".

Anyway, to bring it back to the actual topic at hand (and why I originally replied): I think something like VAST goes directly against what Idiocracy implies. We're all potential victims to distractions that reduce our capacity for executive function. A more accurate movie might show people of all financial and educational achievement glued to endless social media feeds.


Replies

nixon_why69today at 4:37 PM

You could also look at it as a metaphor for the continued debasement of american public life and mass media. Or an excuse to make lots of dick jokes.

pohltoday at 5:34 PM

I always saw the mechanism being that Clevon created more offspring without instilling good memes.

inigyoutoday at 5:11 PM

If it's even a little bit genetic, the idiocracy effect still holds up

sitkacktoday at 3:32 PM

The number one goal in a functioning democracy should be to have the highest possible education rate.

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