Agreed. It’s cited so often on Reddit by people who want to establish their superiority over the masses. “It’s a documentary!!” is a meme unto itself.
It’s also got a kind of weird eugenics-y vibe to it (like establishing “stupid people breeding makes stupid people” as incontrovertible fact) when you step back and examine it as a movie that’s making Serious Statements. But it isn’t. It’s not a bad movie. But it’s a comedy, the satirical elements are heavily over exaggerated by fans.
It's kind of funny when you say the movie isn't making serious statements when the highest of our publicly elected officials isn't a serious person. We elect people that are actively harmful to our well being. These people say things so incredibly stupid it can be painful. And then you wonder why people look at the movie like it's a documentary?
He might not present as a serious person but he is. The nativist impulses, the gutter racism, the “F you I’ve got mine” attitude, the party establishment that enabled him despite all that… these are all serious things worth serious analysis.
“Stupid people vote for stupid guy” is exactly the kind of analysis I’m critical of Idiocracy for.
I think you may misunderstand what the term "not a serious person" means. Just because someone is an ego driven performer doesn't mean their actions don't have consequences, it means you've fucked up if you follow them and take them for face value.
There has been a ton of analysis for why said stupid people vote for stupid people, but very little of it can prevent said behaviors.
Just to be clear, the smartest person is still a minister in Idiocracy, and the whole premise hinges on the idea that the elite still recognizes intelligence as something desirable.
It's not a eugenics-y vibe. The inciting incident is dysgenics, and the in-narrative apocalypse would have been prevented by eugenics.
It doesn't preclude the movie from being enjoyed or appreciated. The movie also came out at a time when test scores, literacy rates, and whatnot were all _increasing_, so that was the more salient lens to criticize it by.
That trend has reversed now, though. I don't agree with the dysgenic narrative, but I have often found myself thinking, "Gotta hand it to the movie Idiocracy, it's feeling familiar".
For all its flaws, I was a child at the time saturated in post-Y2K optimism that tomorrow would always be better than the day before. It was one of the first things that made me seriously consider, "What if humanity is not on a linear path of improvement"?
Given the number of people in this thread saying “it’s a documentary” I don’t think there’s a significant difference. And there’s also plenty of criticism of Idiocracy on Reddit too.
I never understood that eugenics criticism of the movie. They make zero references to genetics in that opening sequence, and the nurture side of that argument is readily trotted out as a truism even here on HN: "people from affluent parents have easier access to education".
The introduction describes it as a "turning point in human evolution", and that "natural selection ... began to favor different traits". These are some of the very first sentences of the movie.
The thesis is given: "Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species". The characters dramatizing the inciting incident in the introduction are introduced with their IQs. It's very explicitly a dysgenic apocalypse narrative, which could have been avoided with earlier eugenicist intervention. (They attempt "genetic engineering" later on, but they fail, as the unintelligent are able to win by sheer numbers.)
It's okay to like the movie, and it is fiction. But it's certainly a dysgenic narrative which has eugenicist implications.
That's not a eugenics argument, that's merely an evolutionary argument (identifying a change in selection pressure). The eugenics argument would first have to make the case that the people are stupid/intelligent because of their genetic lineage rather than their upbringing.
This is one of those threads that's making me feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Like, I don't think enjoying Idiocracy makes someone a bad person or anything like that, but it's pretty clearly making a eugenics argument without any mitigating counter-hypothesis.
It's particularly amusing because there are people quoting Neal Stephenson in this thread, ignoring the fact that when Stephenson tackles similar subject matter, he's very careful to make it clear that he's talking more about the cultural axioms which have a long-term effect on how people value learning and intellectualism. It's not even subtext, I've been reading The Diamond Age recently and very early on there's a line where a character clearly states that there's no coherent genetic theory of human intelligence, and the entire thesis of the book runs counter to that notion that intelligence is primarily genetic.
I hadn't seen it since it came out, but had a that kind of general movie recollection that it was as funny as it was prescient. Watched it again with my wife who had not seen it before: it's not funny. Maybe I'm getting too old.
> like establishing “stupid people breeding makes stupid people” as incontrovertible fact
That’s based on environment and not on genes. You might not be born “stupid”, but if you’re surrounded by retards (like in the movie), chances are you won’t be splitting atoms.
I really don't think we have. When I was growing up in the 90s it was the heyday of the pop single but there were still plenty of albums being produced and I think it's the same today.
I can tell you that myself (and many others) still create concept albums as our primary format. It's not that people aren't still creating it.
The choice is still there for any listener that cares about albums as a format. I don't mean that in a negative way. I suspect that many people listen to both playlists of singles, and albums of their favourite artists, depending on mood.
No, the game has changed. Back then, the singles were typically accompanied by an album, even if it was just filler. It's better to release singles now due to the way the Spotify and iTunes algos work. Best practice is now to release your songs one at a time rather than a full album (at least if you aren't an established player).
On one hand this pretty much destroys thematic albums (like classical music, prog rock, Tool or for example, something like Alice in Chains' Dirt), but on the other few could pull it off and those who can are still doing it (ex: the latest Opeth album). So maybe discovering new music is hurt, because itunes and spotify look like crowded ERs, but there's just as much good music out there - regardless of your tastes.
Right, there's less unnecessary dressing of an "album" of filler. But I don't think that's a meaningful change. Singles drove the market then and they do now. Albums were still produced then and still are now.
Nvidia GPUs were usable on Intel Macs, but compatibility got worse over time, and Apple stopped making a Mac Pro with regular PCIe slots in 2013. People then got hopeful about eGPUs, but they have their own caveats on top of macOS only fully working with AMD cards. So I've gotten numb to any news about Mac + GPU. The answer was always to just get a non-Apple PC with PCIe slots instead of giving yourself hoops to jump through.
Until there is official support for Mac coming from nvidia, I don't think anything will happen.
> the hardware wasn't usable on macOS
This eGPU thing is from a third-party if I understand correctly. I don't see why nvidia would get excited about that. If they cared about the platform, they would have released something already.
The point is that if nvidia cared about Mac platform they would have done something to make eGPU usable on Mac a long time ago.
Even on Intel Macs using eGPU with nvidia cards was near impossible. nvidia just doesn't care about it after the breakdown of the two companies' relationship.
Whether a third party has created a signed driver or not doesn't matter much until there is more interest from the GPU maker. This barely moves the needle.
Stop using AI to “write” slop. It’s immediately obvious from the kicker of the article. Save us all some time and just post the bullet points you gave to an LLM.
You're right, I do use AI to help with the writing. English isn't my first language (I'm native Spanish speaker) and I use it to translate and polish my text. I wouldn't be able to participate here otherwise.
The site runs in 4 languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian) and covers 261 countries. Back in 2011 we relied on the machine translators available at the time, you probably remember how rough those were for the end user. AI finally lets us produce content that people can actually read in their language without those painful translation artifacts.
I apologize if that's off-putting, but the alternative would be less content for fewer people, or content full of bad translations.
The difference is that Airbnb customers used Airbnb because they thought hotel regulations were dumb and overbearing (or at least, they didn't care about the laws). Delve customers were literally trying to obey the law and Delve (allegedly) lied to them about it.
I disagree, I think the $100k fee was a deliberate move to make sure the yearly allocation is only available to large companies like Oracle and out of reach of smaller startups.
Despite the rhetoric the administration is very friendly to big business and will absolutely help them hire cheaply. Larry Ellison especially.
It’s also got a kind of weird eugenics-y vibe to it (like establishing “stupid people breeding makes stupid people” as incontrovertible fact) when you step back and examine it as a movie that’s making Serious Statements. But it isn’t. It’s not a bad movie. But it’s a comedy, the satirical elements are heavily over exaggerated by fans.
reply