IQ only measures capacity, consider the implications of that in terms of 'Idiocracy'

Idiocracy is probably the most referenced film on this site. I would assume almost everyone here has seen it. One problem that I've always had with the theory behind the film is that a society were everyone is severely retarded (by today's standards) couldn't be technological IMHO. There wouldn't be enough intelligence around to develop, construct, and maintain a technological civilization the way it's portrayed in the film. I believe a civilization of severely retarded humans would be just one step removed from apes (bringing to mind "Planet of the Apes"). Therefore, I've always taken the film to be only metaphorical.

Recently I learned something that's so profound that it brings it all into a new perspective for me:

IQ only measures capacity

If people aren't using their intelligence capacity then it doesn't matter what their IQ is IMHO. You could live in a society where the average IQ is high but the day to day experience could resemble "Idiocracy", at least theoretically. It would just come down to people having the capacity for intelligence but not using it.

What could cause that?

A drugged up society from prescription drugs (Nearly 60 percent of Americans)

Fluoride in the water (Over 67% of the US population)

Chemtrails (Everywhere in the US)

GMOs (or “genetically modified organisms”) (Everywhere in the US)

All of those things and other similar issues could help cause a situation where the capacity for intelligence is relatively high but it's a de facto "Idiocracy"-type situation.

As an aside, when I was researching for this post I found the following articles:

Is Donald Trump the Herald of ‘Idiocracy’?

Trump, Rubio turn presidential campaign into ‘Idiocracy’

a reply to: Profusion

i see what you did there

a reply to: Profusion I vaguely remember seeing some of the movie, Idiocracy. It's late and my brain is not functioning clearly.


Thanks for the thoughtful OP!

So people voting for Donald are intellectually inferior, but people that vote for politicians who promise to give them free things aren't?
How does that work again

originally posted by: avgguy
So people voting for Donald are intellectually inferior, but people that vote for politicians who promise to give them free things aren't?
How does that work again

Good point.

The same way it works for those who vote for criminals who are under FBI investigations that figure... "What difference could it possibly make?" I suppose.

Echo chambers and cognitive dissonance herald in Idiocracy IMO.

a reply to: Profusion

The ol' Idiocracy meme.

Excellent point about the GMOs and such. They've kept us smart enough to do our jobs and pay our taxes whilst they rape the benefits to feed their war machines.

I see more of a War of Worlds future for some of us.

Most people want to be a little doped up. It allows us to be social and mellow. There are opiate peptides in many foods. There is a lot of sugar in food with triggers opiate release by the brain. There is way more doping chemistry consumed now than there is intelligence promoting chemistry.

Of course, the Government wants us a little doped so society can work. Otherwise there would be more riots. Even milk was promoted to calm the crying society. The same way with fluoride, it does calm people as it interacts with the organics of our body. Wheat was introduced into the food chain by Egypt when they found the grain calmed people. It has been exploited by almost every Western diet government. Now that people are backing away from it, they are getting less doped with that chemistry but replacing it with other calming chemistries that are being promoted.

Our society is all strung out. That is the new normal. We are conditioned to believe only illicit drugs and alcohol are to be focused on. Look at the people on antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs. We have become a drug laden society.

But to be serious and thinking all the time is not too fun at all. I used to like it living in sweet bliss and just working to live. Now I decided to quit the doping because I was starting to notice that those in the upper sect of our local society were all messed up. They were following irrational evidence, evidence that was created to profit someone. I know these people, they are not bad people, but their comprehension has been hijacked.

Society needs to be calm to be society but some alchemists have been profiting by convincing people in our countries capital that the more doping the better it is and our regulators just keep on allowing more and more doping chemistry to the mix. There are many different ways to accomplish this, but as in chemistry class, mixing the wrong combinations cause problems.

If you hear someone saying how good something is, they are probably referring to how good it makes them feel. They are referring to the calming chemistry or the tyramine chemistry . Some tyramines calm one person while they fire a different person up and then they do something to stimulate the opiates or endorphins.

I got started studying this because of my Epilepsy and was looking for foods to control it. I had used the nootropic drug provigil for three or four years and looked for natural sources to replace that. I still use natural sources to utilize the properties of both of these chemistries. The doping chemistry needed for the epilepsy isn't good without a little nootropics to balance it.

If any of you think food chemistry is not strong, you have not actually evaluated it. We constantly tip the balance to how we want to feel and when we want to feel a certain way. We do this subconsciously. When you are going to go out with your friends to do something, you tend to eat certain food chemistry that day to prepare you for what you are going to do. As we get older, we usually get better at doing this but society has made some things bad then we need to take medicines to balance the chemistry. Who is telling us these things are bad and how do they profit by it? Rumors are created and spread without people actually checking out if they are real. Moderation in diet should be observed which means balancing food chemistry, not just all calming food chemistry foods that are all in the same classes.

People pick on MSG, that is nothing compared to all the stuff out there.

a reply to: Profusion

a reply to: Profusion

IQ Test's are mainly flawed as an analysis tool, there result's are of course not as objective as they are intended to be for a number of reason's, how many highly talented artist's and other artisan's for instance would fail to gain a high score in spite of what may be regarded as genius level ability.

Then there are people with Dyslexia whom may also be unable to complete some of these test's due to the fact that though on average they have a far higher social interaction skill when it come's to verbal communication while they simply struggle to read and write in what used to be called word blindness, a condition which of course can also affect there visual skill set when trying to solve the visual test's.

Other's are simply not mathematical by there very nature and so this rule's out many whom would otherwise ace these test's.

They are also a very poor measure of common sense ability and day to day skill set's.

But many company's and agency's these day's use them as a catagorizing tool, this is in error I personally believe but of course when an idea become's entrenched in the general human psyche as a valid system then it is regarded as such by those whom choose to use this type of testing which I would actually argue would be more at home in a modern scriptorium than the real world.

These day's you will find IQ based psychometric testing in many profession's when you go for an interview or apply to move up in the rank's of such organisation's and for the above reason's this is often unfair to those with niche and general talent's while it favour's the crossword junky's whom though they often score very highly are often litterally as thick as two short plank's as we say over here in northern Britain.

Here is a flavour of one online IQ test's,
www.iqtest.com...

There are many more but as you can see many of the question's do not apply to real world scenario's, they may be structured to analyse thought capacity and problem solving as well as visual accuity in there somewhat limited scope but to draw a coarse analogy, take a lady whom works in visual inspection and quality control on a factory conveyor belt, she studies objects for visual defect's constantly and becomes exceptionally good and fast so fo course this would skew the result's for the visual part of the test as she is much more able through practice to perform this section with no difficulty but to what degree has her mind been acclimatised in this way to be able to perform just this very function, is this a fair test of intellectual capability or has this test fallen foul of it's own criteria (to be fair the lady performing the quality testing is probably highly skilled so would be regarded as intelligent anyway).

Constructing a more generalised real world test would not of course work on a computer screen and so of course there are men regarded as expert in there field's whom have been paid to construct these test's but are they really any good as a measure of general aptitude and is the IQ score really worth the paper it is written on.

In the old day's craftsmen would train up in there skilled trades for many years before becoming time served, there skill set was of course tailored to there particular profession but they excelled in there field and while this may have caused resistance to new innovations in some field's they remained masters of there trade's.

Is a time served master cobbler for example less valuable than a clerk whom has his ego bouyed up by his IQ score or when you need that new pair of custom shoes is the illiterate but highly skilled 85 year old cobbler whom is still plying his now sadly dying profession the better choice of valued person for your quality society.

I have seen a triple doctorate chemist boil a litre of mercury he had spilled with nothing but a cloth face mask in a closed laboratory in a run down teaching establishment and faulty air conditioning, very clever guy and a nice guy too boot but is that acting intelligently, the mercury was of course expensive and with a limited budget to factor in, well? but still.

I have seen an Electonic's lecturer make mistake's that a first year student would not and nearly get himself seriously injured, in the event it took him a while to get the feeling back in his hand after getting shocked by an open power source.

Day to day I see drivers, business men and many other's with cell phone's glued to there ear's driving on the roads over here in britain, it is illegal and damn stupid but they still do it.

And I guess a lot of these people would ace those tests.


Your point is perfectly correct, politic's aside is Valid and though I am not from the US trump in my opinion is a loon, a dangerous loon though and though he does not stand a chance in hell Bernie Sanders would serve the US people far better than Donald or Hillary.


Now someome mentioned monosodium glutomate, nasty stuff but so is sodium benzoate and especially aspartame (liberate the benzine in the bio-chemical reactor that is your stomach and also phenylalinine from the aspartame - e coli feces - and you have a potentially lethal cancer causing/triggering combination, the phenylalinine acts as an intra cellular solvent which is why it is used in microscopy to carry dye's into cells (phenyl red and phenyl blue etc) and highlight the nucleus as well as the other cytoblasts, mitochondria etc, and so when mixed with liberated benzine ring's a known carcinagen then of course it is presumably possible the phenylalinine will facilitate the introduction of the benzine to the cell's interior were it can cause the most harm).

Mercury in your tooth filling's (mercury amalgum) though stable in the amalgum will still leak out over time into your body and mercury being bio accumulative (it stays in your system) will disrupt your body, nervous system over time, not noticibly perhaps but it is still there).

Your body is a bio electrochemcial organism and so exposure to electrical field's or more precisely alternating electromagnetic fields must cause interferrance and even if that is negligable it is still potentially harmful as well as potentially neurplogically disruptive.

Psychological implications must also be taken into account.

a reply to: Profusion

Another aspect was that they had socially stigmatized intelligence.

Anyone who was too smart was made to feel ashamed, and so they all shrived to be idiots.


Edit, and if you know evolution, society, life, etc. then you know that what is deemed "good" plays a huge role in what is developed. E.g. Races have different kinds of intelligence aptitudes almost certainly because they valued different kinds of intelligence. The differences in our bodies reflect what we did/do and that is a reflection what we think is good.

a reply to: Profusion

Idoiocracy is a 'what if' scenario, what if dumbing down were allowed to continue in perpetuity? I love the wide shots in the film, mega corp buildings surrounded by a wasteland of garbage, people driving off the end of freeways, cars piled up in a heap. Its comedy and thoroughly impossible form a practical viewpoint.

Human kind would have destroyed itself long before it ever gets there. You mentioned Planet of the Apes. Thats the logical conclusion, world war with nuclear weapons, destroying everything.

How idiotic is that?

a reply to: Profusion
I see people often bragging about their IQ on here.


I was friends with a guy in high school who was like that. He would often brag about his IQ and how brilliant he was. This explains him perfectly and makes sense when I see people bragging about it on ATS. I feel bad for them.

Edit: PS- fluoride doesn't do what you are claiming it does. Don't fall for more lies, research, or you aren't any better than the people you are calling out.

a reply to: Profusion

You could live in a society where the average IQ is high but the day to day experience could resemble "Idiocracy", at least theoretically. It would just come down to people having the capacity for intelligence but not using it.

Wonderful post about the nature of IQ. Regardless of how capable of intelligence a human might be, if they are unwilling to educate themselves and use that intelligence to make the world better then who cares how large their "IQ" might be.

I liked the parallel to modern American/western society. Another control I would like to note is the education system becasue it is a system that rewards those who can perform repeatable tasks while stifling any student creativity.

Anyway, wonderful post thanks for the research!

a reply to: Profusion
I think you have used 3 too many letters in you post title. The word you are looking for is idiocy, not idiocracy.
Anyone equating IQ with real life inteligence is seriously lacking. As I've said before I know a couple of high IQ univercity bods, seriously clever in their fields, but very sadly lacking in everyday living and decision making.