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Comment by iugtmkbdfil834 | Hacker News Reader

Not so long ago, I have come to a rather unpleasant realization that whether a lot of that will happen, will depend heavily on whether the ones currently trying to make technology control every facet of our lives decide to allow society get dumber first ( think Idiocracy, which AI very much could allow ) or not in which case it is anyone's guess, because people will still have some basic skills and memories of what could be.

I am hoping for the best, but life has taught me hard not to bet against humanity's worst instincts.

edit: add whether

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100%. Same applies to any hypothetical sentient AI that may or may not arise. The incentives to keep everyone weak and dumb are too strong.

I have a friend in a position of some influence, and am currently trying to persuade them to stop being so comfortable trusting in humanity to come to the right decisions for exactly that reason.

The thesis of Idiocracy is that society gets dumber in the future because intelligence is mostly genetically-determined and smarter people systematically have fewer children than dumber people, i.e. literal evolutionary selection against human intelligence over many human generations. This is clear in the first several minutes of the movie. People who recognize that this is what that movie is saying often then condemn it for being Nazi-adjacent pro-eugenics propaganda.

In the logic of Idiocracy, the way that an AI would "allow" the future society portrayed in the movie is by letting dumb people systematically have more kids than smart people, and "not allowing" this would entail some kind of coercive eugenics policy aimed at getting smart people to have more kids than they would otherwise be inclined to.

Here is a problem, I am not arguing "Idiocracy: the process as presented in the movie"; I am arguing "Idiocracy; the resulting dumbed down populace". Admittedly, it is a mental shortcut and a bad one since it clearly did not land as I had hoped.

Idocracy is basically arguing against the idea that progress is inevitable so we can just sit around and do nothing. Joe’s character development is in his shift away from getting out of the way and toward a follow or lead choice. It’s called out at the start of the movie when he’s sitting on his butt at the military library and his CO is like “you’re not supposed to get out of the way.”

I recently saw a razor commercial where a man was shaving his cheek. I immediately condemned the company for being Nazi-adjacent propaganda since the actor was one step away from giving himself a Hitler mustache.

because intelligence is mostly genetically-determined

None of the points of Idiocracy depend on whether intelligence is by nature or by nurture. The premise of the movie stays exactly the same if you replace those two minutes of backstory with a dysfunctional education system, the return of child labour, an increase in teen pregnancies, and anti-intellectualism in general.

I think the opening scene makes the hereditary position very clear, I don’t know how anyone could interpret that as not marking the case of ‘nature’ determining intelligence.

Edit; sorry, either I misread your comment or it was changed. On the premise that ignoring the intro a nurture based idiocracy could be possible, I would suggest it’s the thoroughness and extent of dumbing down that wouldn’t be possible if it was based on nurture.

Is it hereditary when parent is a dumb jock who creates a ridiculously bad environment in terms of 'nurture' aspect? I am not sure you thought your argument fully through.

Yes, and science explicitly allows him to continue procreating where otherwise he would have not been able to (he was in an accident because he was stupid). It’s explicitly saying the darwinian winnowing of the weaker (dumber) members of the species has been interfered with.

Fair point. I re-read your argument and I accept it.

smart people are born into dumb families pretty regularly

Are you implying widespread infidelity here, or are you making the case that something besides "nature" may be determining intelligence?

I did edit that out before your comment because I didn’t feel I needed it, but I still stand by it.

There is still quite a lot of randomness in genes, the idea that intelligence would always be the average of the parents would require that that a very large number of SNPs are involved. GWAS studies do say this but this is more a side effect of using linear regression for the scores as this assumes independence which I think is not a safe assumption. I think some intelligence genes can be recessive so you can have two carrier parents where 1/4 of their children will be smarter than either of them.

I should also add, by pretty regularly I mean from the point of view from the smart people. Given a sample of smart people how often are they notably smarter than both parents.

That's the story they used in the movie. It's possible that real life will arrive at a similar situation by completely different means.

Also did you think about why dumber people might have more children? A large part of that reason is national policy choices.

> People who recognize that this is what that movie is saying often then condemn it for being Nazi-adjacent pro-eugenics propaganda.

In this respect, that movie is a great filter for virtue-signalling low-intelligence societal rejects.

Why is saying things that are true called propaganda? Also, it is not just genetics but that is a part of it. The idea is also that parents with lower intelligence will value education for their offspring less and care less about whether their kids learn to read well, etc. Honestly, it just completely obvious and is playing out in real time. It's just obvious.

> The idea is also that parents with lower intelligence will value education for their offspring less and care less about whether their kids learn to read well, etc.

Educated people can neglect their kids. And less educated people can still recognize when education is valued by society.

Now look around. Do you feel like we're living in a society that values education? Did the successful people that kids see in their formative years get there through education, and/or do they visibly value education beyond lip service?

Some of them, yes. But I'd argue that between influencers, teachers' pay, and the increasingly obvious nepotism and corruption by people in power, the situation is looking pretty dire. We don't truly value education as a society and are therefore teaching a new generation that education isn't to be valued. And that has nothing to do with genetics.

But, all your exceptions, at best prove the rule. Just go and observe out in the world. That is why I said it is happening in real-time. I think you are not looking at what's in front of you. Teacher's pay? Teachers were never highly paid. It is quite clear that many of the families of kids in low performing are not families that push education or reading or any of that sort. Yes, you can have a well-to-do family where both parents are lawyers and they neglect their kids. I think its not a coincidence that many such families produce kids that are lawyers. You may think overall people are valuing education less and that might be true but that is not what my argument. My argument is there are clearly families that value it much, much less and that is a cycle and it is not down to teachers or all the the other boogeymen.

> Teachers were never highly paid.

Teachers never got rich, that's fair, but there was a time, at least in my culture, when teachers were usually one of the most highly regarded and respected people around, on a similar level as priests and doctors.

  The thesis of Idiocracy is that society gets dumber in the future because intelligence is mostly genetically-determined

I don't remember the movie taking side on the nature vs nurture debate. The thesis is that intelligence is _inherited_.

Friendly reminder that plenty of nurture is inherited too.

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