I took Idiocracy more as a satire of modern society than a chilling vision of things to come.
ETA: IOW, what kingpengvin said.
My best guess is that idiocracy, while possible, is unlikely in the United States. A more likely result is that the country will be populated by Mormons and Orthodox Jews. Just a guess though.
But we’re not Stone Age hunters, are we? And why would you be screwed? Nearsightedness is in most cases a modern development caused by an overuse of our short distance vision (edit: I see this has been mentioned already) and Stone Age hunters didn’t have it in part because they didn’t spend a lot of time reading books or using computers.
Besides, hunter-gather humans are usually group hunters. If you’re hunting in a pack of half a dozen humans or more, you only need one to spot the mammoth at a distance.
You can’t separate human behaviour from humanity and pretend it constitutes a force that prevents natural selection. Our behaviour is a part of what we are as a species, and is one of the factors in the future of our species. Human altruism, empathy, and affection - the emotions that cause us to help others when they are weak - are some of the reasons our species has been as successful as it is.
Evolution cannot be “Stopped in its tracks.” Evolution is a constant force that affects all orgamisms. Some stay the same for a long time. Some do not. It depends on how adaptable the organism is.
I’d like to counter the notion that we as a species have managed to utterly hamstring evolution by protecting the weak among us by saying that we are still inescapably under selective pressures, and therefore, still subject to the forces of evolution. I mean, things still kill us before we can pop out offspring, right? Disease, obesity, congenital conditions, plenty of ways to die that are more-or-less under the influence of natural selection.
The things that were selected for ten thousand years ago (hell, even now in some parts of the world) are selected against today — fat storing, the gene that causes sickle-cell anemia (which also imparts resistance to malaria, very handy if you’re living in some of the swampier parts of the world), and so on.
In before a full page of America digs…
bah. Nevermind.
I think it’s happening now. I also don’t think it will happen on the level it was at in the movie, but it will eventually happen.
I think you’re missing two vital points here.
- 500 years less than a millisecond in evolutionary terms and not nearly enough time for anything as dramatic as a world full of idiots to develop.
- Poor = Stupid is a pretty sweeping statement and is not nearly as true as Poor = Uneducated.
Also evolution is about favourable traits reaching dominance, so evolving into idiots would only work if being an idiot gave you an advantage which is unlikely considering the level of intelligence required to live at a first, second or third world standard. Finally, what is an idiot? Is it not being able to do algebra? Not being able to set your VCR? Not being able to hunt wildebeest to feed your family?
Other social species do not behave like our evolved societies. Natural selection still reigns in antelope herds.
Even setting IQ heritablity aside for a second…how about the social and political implications? Do enough pull themselves out of poverty that we can dismiss a perceived or possible “cycle of poverty?” (i.e. kids who grow up poor are more likely to be poor themselves). Is this the making of a stratified society?
:dubious: Been reading S.M. Stirling much, lately?
Not to mention all the factors that may not kill us, but still lower the chances of reproductive success. Abnormally low intelligence is probably one of them, despite all the counter-examples that may have sprang to your mind.
Everything he’s ever written! 
Hey, c’mon! It’s all esthetic appreciation! I’m still a socialist! :o
People don’t just look around at how little money they have and decide “fuck damn, I’m gonna spit me out some kids.” Birth is not just a function of wealth but education, specifically a knowledge of birth control. The two just happen to go hand in hand.
I’ve always been amazed at how widespread this belief is, given that it seems to arise from nothing other than a general dislike of poor people. In fact, it’s the rich who have more children than any other social class, so any gradual evolutionary decay in the quality of the human race would be proof of their inferiority.
Well I’ll be damned.
Yes, but the rich are also far less numerous than the poor.
“One new mini-trend identifies the wealthy (with incomes of about $250,000) as having more children (2.3) than the middle class (1.8)—slightly more, even, than lower-class families. And the very wealthiest have the most children by far, averaging 2.9 kids.” [p.2]
I find it odd that they don’t cite a number for the lower class, but we can safely assume it’s somewhere between 1.8 and 2.3. If it weren’t bumping up to 3:00 AM where I live, and if I didn’t have class in the morning, I’d go hunting for any relevant cites the article based its statements on.
Still, we’ll run with the numbers given here, and in my late-night caffeine-fueled blitz, I’ll just assign an average of 2.2 kids per lower-class household (since the article says ‘slightly more’).
Say the ‘wealthy’ (which the article defines as those whose incomes are $250,000/yr or more) amount to oh, say, 5% of the population, and the poor amount to 20% (which is a WAG based on some half-remembered percentage of people living under the poverty line).
With 300 million USAians, we’d have a good 15 million living wealthy (strikes me as a high number, but let’s run with it), and 60 million living in poverty. If our rich households are having 2.3 kids and our poor households are having 2.2, then we’d have 17,250,000 kids (an increase of 2.25 million), while the poor come out with 66,000,000 (an increase of six million).
Any evolutionary decay in the quality of Homo sapiens would be independent of economic class.
(I divided the number of people by 2, assuming we’re dealing with 2 parents per kid, then multiplied the result by the average number of children per household)
[sub]And I just know I got my math wrong somewhere…[/sub]
In any case, besides the many many factors that come into play (what do we consider intelligent? Would a new form of entertainment or communication be considered dumb then be realized as an intellectual powerhouse? What about the other direction (how long before some sort of porn, ASCII or text stories, made it on to the “net”?)… Again… in any case… somebody had to be smart enough to handle putting together the electronic infrastructure to keep the homes powered, the people from getting sick from lack of facilities that keep things hygienic, the super cable being broadcasted… etc…
If we are getting dumber its more likely we’ll overspend our budget that could be spent on useful advances for society out of stupidity and collapse into a social… oh s***.
You know what? I think regardless of whether “civilisation” gets smarter or dumber, we’re still bound to have a TV show called “Ow my balls!”
Don’t we already (really that should be a link to America’s Funniest Home Videos, but this is much more clever)
I participated in this exact thread on another forum recently and the general consensus was that every generation has its cultural pessimists who say that the civilization is in decline due to its stupid kids.
My Father-In-Law likes to joke about how he used to get blamed for Sputnik when he was 15 years old.