Someone needs to start a Trotsky decoy. There is no stronger reflex in tanky culture than to pursue leftist infighting.

Ehhh… It depends on what you mean by human cognition. Usually when tech people are talking about cognition, they’re just talking about a specific cognitive process in neurology.

Tech enthusiasts tend to present human cognition in a reductive manor that for the most part only focuses on the central nervous system. When in reality human cognition includes anyway we interact with the physical world or metaphysical concepts.

There’s something called the mind body problem that’s been mostly a philosophical concept for a long time, but is currently influencing work in medicine and in tech to a lesser degree.

Basically, it questions if it’s appropriate to delineate the mind from the body when it comes to consciousness. There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that that mental phenomenon are a subset of physical phenomenon. Meaning that cognition is reliant on actual physical interactions with our surroundings to develop.

We’re talking about the basic premise of the movie, which is: “If smart people reproduce too little and dumb people reproduce too much, we’ll have a problem of stupidity.”

That’s your own flawed interpretation. The premise of the movie is about social “devolution”. Basically, an inverse of the normal social motivators occurs, where society no longer values concepts like intellect or education, and begins valuing things like fame, and risk taking behaviour.

It doesn’t rely on nature or nurture, or anything else.

The concept of intellect is inseparable from the concept of nature vs nurture.

Mentally dishbled people have been sterilized, because they were “unfit for parenthood” due to eugenic arguments.

The eugenics based argument is that mentally disabled people shouldn’t have kids because they believe their illness will be passed down to their children.

Eugenics is a part of a long line of debunked “racial science”, and is meant to be applied in the aims of isolating a certain type of people from society. It’s not applicable to an entire society with different ethnicities being affected the same.

No, but that’s literally the thesis of the movie, which I dislike. 🙄

Lol, there are only two “smart” people in the movie, and one of them is a former sex worker… They also have three kids.

So I don’t really think that tracks, more than likely the writers were trying to get across that dumb people like to inappropriatetly talk about their sex life in public.

I think you’re getting a little caught up on concepts like “breeding”, which you seem to think is only something that happens in eugenics. All mammals are the product of breeding, it’s just a semantic term for sex with added negative connotations because we typically use it while talking about animals.

The important part which you are ignoring is what could possibly explain the social devolution of every single person in a country within 500 years. Even if we were talking about selective breeding where we purposely paired stupid people together, this still would not explain every single person being an idiot. That would require a complete shift in social mores to the point where society as a whole sees no value in education or intellect.

You are just being willingly obtuse, or are just really ignorant at this point. I’ve provided rebuttals for all your examples, and youve failed to do the same for mine, other than saying I’m “cherry picking”, which really isn’t an argument.

although being smart doesn’t make you a good parent and being dumb doesn’t make you a bad one, so I’m already generous)

Lol, notice how you had to completely change the wording to make that somewhat palatable? Being smart doesn’t make you a good parent, but that’s not what we were talking about. Stability and access to a decent education is what nurtures intellect.

how many mentions that dumb people do be fucking?

So your argument is that only dumb people like to fuck?

What theory? Eugenics doesn’t work in real life. I’m critizising the movie on its’ own premise, not on scientific pedantry.

But you aren’t… There isn’t any clear delineation in the movie that would suggest they’re implying intellect is due to nature over nurture.

The reason this is still a debate in psychology is because it’s hard to achieve a statistically viable sample size for a conclusive study. To make a factual delineation you would have to know about the parents intellectual capabilities and then their children’s intellectual abilities. However, we would also need to study a child that they didn’t raise…

So, unless Idiocracy has a scene in it where the child of “smart parents” was raised by idiots, and remained smart… Then it’s impossible to know if they were implying bits an inherited trait.

Wait, I thought the clip was the setup of the premise. Like, the beginning. What other clip have I shared?

I was talking about the end of the movie…that’s what we were talking about from what you quoted.

At around 3 min in this clip. The narrator says they have 3 of the smartest kids in the world, and in the scene we can see the protagonist teaching his kids how to read. It also says his friends has 30 of the dumbest kids in the world, and he is teaching them how to chase each other with mallets.

the prologue constantly bangs on how much stupid people are fucking and smart people don’t.

People in lower income levels tend to have more kids with less access to decent public education… America being a land of inequality based on social status isn’t exactly a new idea.

You never see a focus on kids not being raised well, which would be a nuture standpoint.

In the clip you just posted their are kids being actively ignored by the parents who are arguing over infidelity… Not exactly great parenting.

Basically all idiots in the movie are coded like white “trash” trailer park people (except the President, maybe).

I did not get that impression… Maybe you just have some biased preconceptions about trailer parks?

Where is an example of a behaviorist stance by the movie?

How about the parts where you ignore the family structure and behavior of the “idiots” in the same scene? How about the protagonist teaching his kids to learn?

Lol, I really don’t know what this guy’s going on about. I feel the only way you could be this obtuse about nature vs nurture argument is if you actually believe intellect is a purely inherited trait.

Dude, modern eugenics was invented almost 40 years before they knew genes were even a thing. Do you expect them pointing at a double helix and saying “this is the stupid gene”, before you accept a premise that’s based on breeding having an eugenic message?

Yes, and this movie was written in the 2000s… If we want to get pedantic with the science aspect, then your theory is out the window to begin with. 500 years is not long enough for a species to radically alter their intellect on a societal scale.

Nice cherry-picking. In the rest of the clip, they’re constantly ref renceing, how much “stupid” people breed. One punchline is specifically that a stupid person’s junk was saved.

The rest of the clip? It’s literally the end of the movie… And again, there’s no way to delineate if the stupidity in question is a byproduct of parenting vs “breeding” as you put it.

Do you know what “except” means?

Lol, and how does it conflate poor people with stupidity? Just out of the blue…no context?

the movie explicitly negates these behaviorist ideas.

Lol, no it doesn’t.

You would have a point if it would have focused more on the poor children being badly cared for, instead of slutshaming the poor.

Lol, what are you talking about? I’ve brought up the care of children several times, and havent brought up sexual provocation at all?

I think you need to take a nap or something.

My understanding of these trophy hunts is that they only allow people to shoot the animals that are no longer contributing to the gene pool.

For now… A lot of these “conservation groups” putting out these types of studies are actually just hunting lodges owned by rich families. They claim that they are preserving the land, and that they use the proceeds from these types of hunts to protect the land.

However, these “conservationist” are typically just poachers with a marketing team. For the most part their goal is to legitimize the illegal hunts they are already committing.

The movie constantly focuses on genetics. It even ends with the naration that the (relatively smart) hero has a few smart kids and his dumb friend has a few dumb ones.

It doesn’t mention genes… In the clip you are talking about where he has smart kids, you can see both of the parents actively teaching their kids how to read. It then pans over to his friends who had a bunch of dumb kids and he’s teaching them to play with fireworks or something.

The movie never interacts with *any socioeconomic factors, except for conflating poor people with dumb people.

If it never interacts with socioeconomics how does it conflate poor people with dumb people?

The movie doesn’t get into that argument.

It’s the whole point of the movie…

What does “clean slate” have to do with this?

Lol, so no. You don’t understand.

Yes, that’s my point. The premise of the movie hinges on intelligence being mainly inherited.

How are you making that determination? How does one delineate between the two within the context of the movie?

Not off the top of my head, no, but my point is that the principles themselves were not Marxist nor Communist

So, just a vibe check then?

In what manner? Vibes?

Lol, in the same way as the Khmer Rouge…you never extrapolated how they were feudal to begin with.

Mao was not a deinustrialist, nor was he a nationalist. Yes, different forms of revolution are required, but intentionally setting the clock on progress backwards, rather than forwards, is inherently a reactionary position, which became self admitted!

First of all, I don’t think anyone can rightly claim Mao wasn’t a nationalist. He was an ardent anti imperialist and he wasn’t an ethno-nationalist, but still a nationalist at heart. Secondly progress is relative to the revolution, Cambodia prior to the revolution was for the most part dependent on substance farming. Adapting a centralized apparatus to control the economy is still progress.

but he was never operating under Marxist principles. At most, he took inspiration from the Chinese revolution with regards to the agrarian focus, but instead focused on deindustrialization and nationalism.

They didn’t deindustrialze, they were never industrialized to begin with.

More vibes.

Hilarious considering your arguments have been completely vibe based. Even when I ask you specify your claims… Nope just vibes.

The joke is “this could have been prevented, if that guy became infertile, but unfortunately, modern medicine saved him”. That’s not jumping to codclusions, that’s the literal text of the movie.

Yes…it is. Preventing a deadbeat dad from abandoning even more families to poverty is not saying that his genes are cursed or something.

Seriously, what’s wrong with your media literacy? It’s so obvious

Have you not ever heard of nature vs nurture? Never heard of tabula rassa? You do know that intellect isn’t determined by genes alone, correct?

Nice try. I’m sim’ly interpreting the text of the movie.

Yes, through the lens of eugenics…

He had denounced Marx and created a form of Feudalism.

When did he denounce Marx, do you have a quote?

Also, the same accusations of feudalism can be charged at North Korea.

His “agrarian Communism” was an expliciy rejection of Marxism from the get-go, as his concept of deindustrialization goes directly against Marxism

Or as the maoist say, Marxism with Chinese characteristics. The same charges could have been levied at aspects of the cultural revolution. Different forms of revolution are required for different forms of societal structures and limitations. The vanguard approach is not exactly going to fly in a mostly agrarian culture.

you have nothing in common with Communism except the name, you have to justify why you believe yourself to be Communist.

Lol, that’s not up to you to interpret. You are conflating nearly 50 years of history to a single decade. I could make very similar arguments about the Soviet Union based on just the 80’s as well.

I think it’s pretty obvious that we’re just trying to distance communism from a regime no one can morally defend. Nearly all the arguments you made have been levied at China, Korea, Russia, or Cuba at some point, but we tend to defend them because the ends mostly justify the means.

At 1m58sec they are talking about medical advancements…not genetics. Again, I think you are jumping to conclusions. Medical advancements that allow people to procreate at a faster rate is not biology, it’s sociology.

It kinda seems you are dismissing the possibility of nurture attributing to the equation at all, which in and of itself is a eugenics based argument.

don’t believe I made the point that contemporaries criticized their fascism outright, I made the point that they were fascist and rejected Marx. Calling them Communist isn’t accurate in any way, plus they were stopped by the Vietnamese Communists.

I think what’s pertinent to the original argument was that they were communist while the Khmer Rouge were committing their atrocities. Labeling a country that transitioned from communism to fascism as a purely fascist government is misleading and reductive.

Also, being opposed to a communist government does not mean you’re automatically a fascist. As we know communist China attacked communist Vietnam right after the US Vietnam war.

The history of geopolitics in Asia is very complicated and cannot be summed up in a short Lemmy comment

It’s no more complicated than the history of European geopolitics. As an Asian person, I get told this by western people a lot. I think it’s just a hold over from the western interpretation of the east being based in mystery. Also, the complications of any topic does not validate the type of misleading/reductive comment you made.

my point was to distance Pol Pot from Communism, because he wasn’t a Communist and denounced Communism, nor did he implement Socialism.

I think this is completely inaccurate depending on what time you are talking about. I would say Pol Pot was probably one of the most ardent communist of the 50’s, it was just a weird type of agrarian communism. And in the regions he controlled he did attempt to construct a classless agrarian socialist society.

Pol Pot didn’t really divert from communism until the 80’s and that was a last ditch effort to get the west to support his failing regime. I don’t particularly believe that “We chose communism because we wanted to restore our nation. We helped the Vietnamese, who were communist. But now the communists are fighting us. So we have to turn to the West and follow their way.” constitutes as denouncing Marxism.

China, the USSR, and North Korea were/are Socialist, and should be judged as such, for better and for worse. Pol Pot and the gang were not, so judging them as though they were is just silly.

You haven’t supported the argument that the Khmer Rouge were never communist… Now I’m willing to compromise and say they transitioned away from communism as did the Russians, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that they were communist at some point.

How exactly was Pol Pot/Khmer Rouge not communist in the 50s-70’s?

Khmer Rouge was backed by the US and was lead by fascists who rejected Marx, like the Nazis.

I think that’s a highly misleading and highly reductionist interpretation. The Khmer Rouge was supported by the US, but mostly after the conflict had ended.

The Khmer Rouge was overwhelmingly supported by the CCP, especially during the Vietnam war, and before the Chinese invasion of Vietnam afterwards.

Also, PolPot wasn’t criticized for his diversion from Marxism until the 80’s, well after the most turbulent times in Cambodia. And even then Deng Xiaoping only criticised the Khmer Rouge for engaging in “deviations from Marxism-Leninism”

The only person on the left who accused him of being a fascist was Hoxha, but that was after his schism with the maoist. So to him any communist Asian was basically a barbaric fascist.

Are we talking about the same movie?

Yes, everyone knows about this scene. This still isn’t claiming that intellect is a genetic trait that can only be inherited. It’s claiming that intellect is no longer a valued societal trait that people find necessary to procreate.

I think the problem with your interpretation is it is focusing on biological evolution, when in reality the satire is based on societal evolution. Idiocracy is only set like 500 years in the future, not exactly enough time to see humans biologically adapt in any significant way.

eugenistic because the movie argues idiot parents have idiot children while smart parents have smart children.

This still comes down to a nature vs nurture argument, and the movie tends to fall back on things like education being the primary issue.

Idiots raising idiots isn’t necessarily an argument based in eugenics. Parents who never learned are not going to be able to teach their children. If there isn’t something like a decent public education system, then what chance do the children of idiots really have?

Reminder that I’m a random person on the internet

My dad taught physiology and survival training in the Air Force, and later for the FAA. You’re right about this not being very useful in any kind of survival scenario.

You’re going to lose a lot more liquid just digging the hole than you would ever gain from collecting condensation. Pretty much the most important survival item in any scenario is a pot that can boil a couple cups of water.

For the most part, filters are just for taste and mouth feel. Nothing you can make or find in an emergency situation is going to filter out the stuff that’s going to give you dysentery, or it won’t work fast/efficient enough to keep you from dehydrating. Unless you have some iodine or bleach handy, being able to boil water is a must.

Nah, the Japanese government since WW2 has primarily been run by war criminals or the children of war criminals. Modern Japan is basically what Germany would have been if people like Goring got to skip the Nuremberg trials and instead became the president.

So you’ll give rulership to trump - who wants to have in the USA what Putin has in Russia - just to punish the DNC?

“So the DNC is giving rulership to trump - who wants to have in the USA what Putin has in Russia - just to punish the Democrats who want a more viable candidate?”

There is no other choice right now - it’s “doddering old man with a good cabinet and no ambition to become a fucking dictator,” or a wannabe dictator.

Why isn’t there another choice right now? Why wasn’t there another choice 6 months ago? Why are we being forced to choose between two decrepit old men?

I never said I was voting for Trump, or even abstaining from voting. I just think it’s ridiculous that people like you aren’t outraged at the DNC for propping up a candidate doomed to failure, and at such a crucial time.