this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2026
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
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- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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Idiocracy is an entertaining fictional comedy, but any time someone tries to compare it to real life I want to smack them. IMO, the movie would've been improved if they'd chopped off the eugenicist intro and just said he'd been isekai'd into a world of idiots.
The movie portrays a world where everyone is stupid, no exceptions, but nearly all of them are well-meaning. President Comacho cares about doing the right thing, he just has no idea how to solve the problems the country is facing. But then when someone smarter comes along, Comacho at least understands that he can step aside and let Not Sure save the day.
The problems facing the real world come from people who are both intelligent and evil. Smart people at the top use propaganda to manipulate dumb people at the bottom. That's nothing like Idiocracy, not even close.
I've been making this argument every single time. What we're living through right now is a mean idiot in charge of the government with a relatively smart, evil fucker pulling his strings. Not a bunch of morons with a 1st grade reading level who are, at the very least, not doing blatantly evil things. The folks in Idiocracy are indeed idiots, but they're well-meaning idiots. These folks are just plain malicious assholes doing everything they've always wanted to do because they're just corrupted individuals.
I'd much rather live as I am (I was the "gifted kid" in school) in Idiocracy than where I do now. Idiocracy was actually merit based. These fuckers are cultish in everything they do.
Yeah I don’t think comparison between what we have right now and Idiocracy is fair. However, I can completely see where we are now as leading to idiocracy. Making education harder and harder to get, anti-science, anti-intellectualism, pseudoscience, too much power and wealth concentration, etc. I totally think it could happen.
Those things are actively being done by the 'smart' people who want to horde all the benefits of those things for themselves. The concept of lifting up the unwashed mashes via education is considered niave now. What people are doing is isolating themselves into geographic bubbles of extreme wealth and making rules to keep everyone else out who doesn't have a few million in the bank to afford the ticket.
I think the meaning is the less educated you are the more kids you make, the less you have to educate them etc. That does tend to happen, but we are not talking about inteligencd but just lack of education, so ignorance, and therr is a great antidote for ignorance, it's called Education
I agree with you I just think the movie missed that out.
Some people come from families where no one ever even finished high school, but they become doctors. If it was only about dna this would not happened
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there no such thing as intelligence, it's too broad an umbrella terms. I'm some conversations I'm the smartest I'm the room, in others I'm comically stupid. Some might have amazing creativity but bad memoy, or great intuition is some fields but terrible ideas...
any attempt to measure it, will be made in such a way to favour whoever is making the test to assert their superiority.
Having a test to see if kids are in the right environment is the only good use of IQ tests. anything else and you're on your way to introducing eugenics.
historically, poor "uneducated" had more babies, and IQ tests have to be recalibrated because on average we have much better results than in the past. likely due to better education and resources.
want to improve collective intelligence? Shove that eugenics bs as far as your arse as you possibly can and invest in public education and community resources.
I'm glad you clearly defined the issue so that I now understand why everyone is so up I'm arms about the intelligence argument. I made a similar one recently to a person who said black folks had lower IQs and explained that the test results would have probably been much different if all participants came from the same socioeconomic backgrounds. But then got called a Nazi in a separate discussion for discussing intelligence and race on Lemmy. So I guess my real problem was not realizing that other people don't get how education and environment can change the results of IQ tests and intelligence perception. I just kinda thought everyone knew that. So if you speak in terms of race and perceived intelligence, other people have no way of knowing that you have considered all the other environmental factors and just assume a person is a racist.
I guess what I am saying is that it would be better discourse if more people nicely explained what the problem with their language is like you did, but without assuming a person is racist or on board with eugenics. Like, personally, I'm willing to make adjustments so that it's not offensive to others, but I wasn't inclined to previously because people just said I was wrong and a Nazi and I had no idea wtf they were talking about until I read your comment just now.
Attaching IQ to race is 100% racist and Nazi. there is more genetic variety within "races" (a racist pseudoscientific term that has no biological bearing) than between races, and also, if we went with the assumption that race is related to IQ, then Africans would be the smartest people on the planet. Because there is more genetic variety in Africa than the rest of the world^1^. There is also the fact that IQ is malleable, spend a year watching tiktok and get tested you will see a cognitive difference, it is 100% a reflection of affluence and education.
Also conservatives (racists especially) love to talk about IQ, high IQ people. Those must be dog whistles, when they say high IQ they mean whites and Asians, and by low IQ they mean brown and black people. That is likely the issue, they were not talking about human intelligence as an academic conversation, they are just trying to say that there is a racial hierarchy, you did not understand each other because you were having different conversations. if you reply to them agreeing about that bs, they will likely open up about their racism and try to recruit you or push you further to the right.
^1^ Humans were developing in Africa way before they left the continent, those who left were from relatively small population pockets, that is why the tallest and shortest ethnicities are in Africa. That is a scientific fact.
I think they meant that we still live in inequal society where minorities are more likely to have poor sosioeconomic position that can reflect how well people do in IQ tests.
You can wave nazi card or think why certain social groups do worse in those test and what that does tell about the society as a whole.
as long as we attribute the difference in socio-economic status.
Nazis do the opposite, they attribute low socioeconomic status to having low IQ, a nd therefore, somehow deserved? still a wrong thing to conclude even if, there's is an IQ difference between ethnicities.
I see a good amount of idiocracy, but more what I see is... let's call it "lunaticracy." It's not just that a significant number of powerful and influential people (and their sycophants) aren't smart - they aren't even sane.
Everyone now thinks they have exceptional intelligence. Thanks to social media they have all convinced themselves they are geniuses who think The Truth is a 5 second soundbite that they must endlessly repeat.
That's the root of the problem. 90% of the content of lemmy is really dumb people thinking they are original geniuses who just discovered communism/anarchism/socialism, as if it hasn't existed for 200 years previously, and if only everyone else believed what they believed everything would be magical and perfect.
I don't have exceptional intelligence, but I do think we are living in Idiocracy.
You don't need to be particularly intelligent to see it. Case in point, I can see it.
It's the combo that sucks: Being intelligent & having morals. Perfect recipe for severe depression.
Felt the same a year a ago. it's such a lonely and maddening feeling.
I started volunteering local community events, and got in contact with peers who feel the same and are working really hard to improve communities. We are very active politically and we get to see first hand how our works helps people. Also I now have a close knit friend group whom I love dearly.
it turned that frustrating into positive power. Go out, get active. you aren't alone, there are likely many people who think just like you, and if you get together you might change everything.
you have no idea how much power a dozen people have when they show up to city hall meetings with consistent comments. and we're working on putting our members in political positions, like Dems (🤮), DSA, Municipalities...
now to be selfish: my mental health is now at an all time high (was suicidal a year ago, and suffered life long depression). I am now someone my past self would have admired. And I get to expand personal hobbies into projects that are much bigger than me (I'm playing with meshtastic, and am currently testing settings up a city wide network for clandestine/emergency communication). Or I swell with pride whenever I see someone carrying anti-ICE whistles I mass produced in my 3d printer. Or people wearing Palestine patches I made at the library. talk to me a year ago and now and you would not recognise me.
in conclusion, you are not alone, get organised, fuck shit up, there's so much you can do. no one has ever regretted helping his community.
sorry for the steam of consciousness wall of text.
(If you are in South west Michigan, DM me and we'll talk)
Oh shit. You just gave me an epiphany.
Smart enough to know the world is a hellscape. Moral enough to care, even if your own life is decent.
and egotistical enough to think your feelings matter.
That's not an ego thing. Barring the most diehard stoic, everyone's feelings matter to them. It's just part of the human condition.
And perhaps it does matter in the sense that it may direct one's actions, however limited the scope may be.
It's an ego thing when you think the world should care about your feelings and should modify itself to suit them.
You made up that position and imposed it on that poster
You don't even really need exceptional intelligence. Just be average or slightly above average.
The average level of dumbness means 50% of people are below that level. I think George Carlin said something of that ilk.
"Imagine how stupid the average person is and then realize half of them are stupider than that."
The problem with measuring intelligence is that there is no clear definition of intelligence
There are clear measurements of various abilities, but there is no measure of general intelligence in the sense of being able to process new information and draw novel conclusions about it, or think outside of existing socially dominant schemas.
Even the most 'smart' people I know, very few exercise this ability, even if they have it. To think well you often have to be trained to do so, and even then a lot of people will fail in that training willfully. Mostly because they are aware taht exhibiting thoughtful individuality will get them socially shitcanned and ruin their career, because so much of society is and career success is built on being a yes man.
A lot of people are smart enough to realize that being intelligent isn't going to get they paid more or make them popular. Being an sycophant however, will often get them both.
It's beyond stupid... It's basically a mix of stupidity, naivety, criminal, and evil.
I don't think genuine humanity will ever come back because everyone sold humanity out and now humanity is owned. It's been gone for awhile but people are starting to understand that they fucked everything up by giving trust to people that scammed their hopes dreams fears and emotions. It's surreal and hard to admit... So we are seeing people reacting out of denial and hope that it can be fixed. It'll never even have a chance to be fixed if it is not admitted though.
If you think Idiocracy is the future (or the present) you believe in eugenics. It's a cute move, but it's writers have a worse understanding of evolution than the makers of Pokemon.
Here we go with more "you're a Nazi and I'm not" virtue signaling. This has got to be the most annoying trend I've ever seen on the Internet.
That would explain why I keep seeing Crocs everywhere.
I hate wringing my hands over people being stupid. We need to acknowledge we’re not doing enough to reconcile « thinkers », « feelers » and the majority that fall in between.
People being stupid isn't a problem or bad necessary.
The problem is when stupid being engage in collective delusion and damage/destroy the principles and needs that build society. For example, the belief that taxes are theft, rather than the cost of social infrastructure that makes their private businesses and lives even possible.
What's it like living in the past?
No, Not Sure was leagues ahead of everyone else in intelligence. Even the smartest person on earth today has plenty of other people that are that smart as well.
Not Sure was 100 IQ and everyone else in 2505 is under 10 IQ or so if we go by the chart in the movie. Someone like Marilyn vos Savant is ~200 IQ with ten or more people in that league and many many many other people in the 130+ IQ which is considered genius level IQ.
10 is not even functional. Genius is 145+.
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People just have atrophied brains because they never learned what it meant to think, make your own conclusions from solid bases and stand by them, and they're also heavily uninformed (propaganda is one hell of a drug). It's less base intelligence and more lack of practice and ignorance what makes the difference, IME.
Always have...
If you're over 145 (where a normal test stops), it's only like 1 in 750, but it means you're over 30 points above around 80% of the population.
30 points is the line where communication is noticably difficult.
Being smart is like being tall. A little over average is great, but once you're statistically insignificant you're still jammed in the same hole as everyone else even tho you clearly don't fit.
Like, that was the whole point of the movie. It wasn't a warning about the future it's how an intelligent person has always viewed the world.
The drug abuse correlation with high IQ isn't just "novelty seeking", it's actively and intentionally getting on everyone else's level, at least for a little bit.
Well, why aren't you doing anything to make an impact with your exceptional intelligence then?
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