Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 2)

[benji]

https://medium.com/@epiphanyaweek/the-10-most-society-damaging-xkcd-comics-1282089de03b

Blankfaces absolutely hate the movie Idiocracy for a number of reasons. 1) They have no sense of humor, 2) Idiocracy says that IQ tests are valid, 3) Idiocracy says that society’s problems are caused by human stupidity, rather than the explanations that sociologists like, 4) Idiocracy essentially (albeit humorously) supports the dysgenics theory.

Recently, youtuber Sarah Z made a video on why idiocracy is bad, basically arguing all of these points. Recently, youtuber Sarah Z made a video on why idiocracy is bad, basically arguing all of these points. For starters, she has a bone to pick related to point 2, echoing the “IQ is bunk” claim. Blankfaces like to claim things they dislike are “pseudoscience,” but in the case of IQ, a 1 minute escapade into google scholar would reveal that 1) credentialed, respected scientists, not psuedoscientists, have 2) published many articles in prestigious scientific journals, not pseudo-scientific journals, and 3) the findings of those articles is that IQ is the most-predictive measurement in all of the social sciences. I wonder if Sarah Z noticed this… Well, given that she called it bunk pseudoscience, we know she is just saying what she heard from her social circle and other blankface influencers without checking.

Referencing back to my second paragraph: Point #1 is self-explanatory, and point #3 can be roped into point #4. That leaves us with dysgenics.

Is the dysgenics theory true? I don’t know. It’s complicated? Either way, it’s a serious hypothesis that deserves real research and investigation. I wonder how the guy in the comic came to the conclusion that it was bunk…

Media literacy point: the premise of Idiocracy isn't the point so it can't be "bad" because it sets up a scenario unless your argument is that certain scenarios should never be depicted for any reason, which to be fair a lot of these people do believe. The point is the rest of it, that despite a much stupider world society seemed to continue to function remarkably well, to the point that a complete fuckup from today with an average IQ and possibly below average knowledge saved the world and seemed to direct it in a positive direction. (Although we don't know what Upgrayedd bringing his double dose of pimping to the future will do.)

The real flaw with Idiocracy is there's no explanation for where the smart people went. The number of generations is nowhere near enough to breed them out of the population permanently nor any explanation why none of the dumb people produce smarter kids. Our current education system is very stupid and employs gobs of stupid people that has everyone involved doing stupid things, yet intelligence is increasing, so why did Idiocracy's society do otherwise to where it dramatically harmed everyone? 

I almost never have seen critiques like this though, so his point remains albeit that you don't need to wank off over IQ to show why the critique is stupid. People's IQ is merely a way to show that people got stupider in a few seconds, the critics objection isn't actually to IQ, it's to the idea that intelligence is inheritable. If it is, and everything seems to indicate that it is, they fear they can't argue why you shouldn't do eugenics. That's too much of a threat to their ideological premises so it's required to simply pretend none of this is true and yell that even talking about it is bad.