Editing Talk:603: Idiocracy

This explanation seems to be incorrect. The key point was that White Hat actually was wrong! The average education has gone up, and the average IQ ''cannot'' sink! By allowing Cueball to agree with clearly false laments, he baits him into revealing his stupidity. --[[User:Quicksilver|Quicksilver]] ([[User talk:Quicksilver|talk]]) 19:58, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
:The title text pretty much spells out that, in Randall's mind, White Hat is correct. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.66|199.27.128.66]] 06:14, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

I propose that the hatted figure is not in fact [[White_Hat|White Hat]], as neither the hat shape nor the personality are consistent with other appearances. ([[:Category:Comics featuring White Hat‏‎]]) The real White Hat, when he speaks, is generally a bit of a wet blanket or well-meaning buffoon. This one, whom I'll dub [[White_Derby|White Derby]], is speaking counter-buffoonery, what we may reasonably guess to be the actual thoughts of the author. Usually Cueball fills this role (eg [[258:_Conspiracy_Theories]]), and in fact if the roles here were reversed I'd tend to ignore the misshapen hat. But two and two, together, well... --[[Special:Contributions/66.114.70.139|66.114.70.139]] 18:39, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
:Eh. He hasn't appeared in any other strips, and it's not too harmful to put him under the umbrella of the real White Hat. I see your point; White Hat is no longer a generic character like [[Hairy]], but an actual recurring one.
:Also, have Black Hat and White Hat ever appeared in the same comic? (Click and Drag doesn't count.) [[User:Alpha|Alpha]] ([[User talk:Alpha|talk]]) 09:08, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
::White Hat is not this Safari Hat guy and this has been corrected recently. Also recently in [[1708: Dehydration]] White and Black Hat appears together and Black Hat actually reacts in a discussion White Hat has begun. See more under the explanation for [[:Category:Characters with Hats|Characters with Hats]]. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 19:56, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

So, does this page qualify for Complete now? [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.66|199.27.128.66]] 05:36, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry Randall. You're wrong here. IQ can change. Just because there is a mean for the IQ of the current population, doesn't mean that average can't shift over time. And if we used to be cavemen then either the IQ did shift, or we've always been this smart, which means we couldn't have evolved.

In this case, IQ is exactly the same as morality. Both shift ever so slightly over time, such that the mean is always the acceptable "norm". You can't feel this shift unless you study it. The difference is that morality exhibits locality, so morality shifts slower or faster depending on the subsection of society. Thus you have people who believe they are more right than others, but no one believes they are outright wrong (as a culture). Proof in the pudding is doing a poll on the population as to how smart they think they are. They always rate themselves such that the mean is shifted 1 or 2 deviations up. Same thing with morality. People all espouse a morality that they think is 1 or 2 deviations greater than the standard, whether they are a religious sect or secularists.

But the short of it, a population mean doesn't imply the mean never changes.[[User:Cflare|Cflare]] ([[User talk:Cflare|talk]]) 21:12, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

:While IQ can change, the way you're explaining it is not the way the Cueball or "White Hat" is explaining it. In fact, "White Hat" never explicitly states that IQ doesn't evolve at all; just not to the depressing trend Cueball here thinks it does. Anonymous 23:04, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

In fact average IQ cannot change. The average IQ of humanity is always 100, because that is the definition of the IQ scale.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.129|108.162.216.129]] 01:15, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

"IQ" per se is simply what IQ tests measure. There's no law that says any specific test that purports to be the best measure of IQ is the gold standard. In the US and many (perhaps most) other English-speaking countries, the Wechsler and Stanford-Binet scales are the most popular. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale is the IQ test most commonly used (for adults) by neuropsychologists. It's re-normed every few years (e.g., WAIS-III becomes WAIS-IV, then WAIS-V, etc.). In "re-norming" each question is studied and perhaps refined, some are dropped, and new questions--sometimes entirely new subtests--are added. The method of calculating the IQ is often tweaked as well. Re-norming involves administering versions of the test to thousands of people and using statistics to determine the one to keep. Obviously the same pool of test-takers is not used every time in a process that goes on decade after decade. It's not unusual for test questions to become more difficult and what's considered to be an average score to be a bit higher in the new edition than in the old. This has been interpreted to mean that people are getting more intelligent, but that's not the only possible explanation. (Also, the test is not normed on "humanity" but on a tiny subset of earth's humans.) Oh, and your IQ is not a number carved in stone, so to speak, but a best-guess that falls within the range of scores you'd be expected to earn if (theoretically) you took the same test multiple times.[[User:Npsych|Npsych]] ([[User talk:Npsych|talk]]) 10:20, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

If there is reason for climate change it is almost certainly due to the destruction of trees. Any ridiculous assertions about carbon dioxide can not be confirmed or denied and the political machinations about carbon dioxide stem from Margaret Thatcher's war on the coal miners in Britain.

It would be a simple matter to replant forests. All we would have to do is pay for that in higher latitudes and send in drones to deal with illegal loggers in lower latitudes. 20 years or so should sort out most of the problems.

[[User:Weatherlawyer| I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait]] ([[User talk:Weatherlawyer|talk]]) 17:03, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

: I see what you did there... This is the bit where you go "Everything I just said was wrong" --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 17:26, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Elitism is an eminently more desirable trait than stupidity to breed into one's offspring.  An elitist might be hated, but he will be *competent*; he will *accomplish things*, while a stupid person will harm themselves and others through their stupidity, often remaining well-liked in spite of being cancerous and toxic to everything nearby.  Elitism is the bitter taste of medicine which will make you better; stupidity is the delicious candy to which you will become hopelessly addicted at a formative age, leading to a miserable lifetime of diabetes and an early death by heart failure.  I only wish I intended to reproduce, so that I could practice what I preach on this regard.  [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.52|173.245.54.52]] 19:28, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

: This viewpoint is predicated on the false dichotomy between elitism and stupidity. Many elitists are no more intelligent or capable than those to whom they profess superiority. (And frequently this perceived superiority makes them resistant to social cooperation or empathy and therefore effectively ''less'' useful or capable—whereas others may overcome a relative lack of ability with humility and willingness to work with others.) Chances are you're not as smart as you think you are, although you're probably right about being hated... [[User:Colt605|Colt605]] ([[User talk:Colt605|talk]]) 00:23, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Changed the text in the first paragraph because the movie never implied that people with lower IQ were more fertile, it clearly stated that they were more likely to reproduce due to lack of education, absence of planning, and general negligence with regards to the consequences of their actions. If you disagree with me on this, go watch the movie again. Or just the first few minutes which explains this in detail. -Pennpenn [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.162|108.162.250.162]] 05:08, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

So... what else does this explanation need to be considered complete? [[User:Edo|Edo]] ([[User talk:Edo|talk]]) 23:24, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

The explanation of the Dunning-Kruger effect is incorrect, insofar as it tries to apply the effect to intelligence, and mention here may be off topic entirely. The Dunning-Kruger effect is refers to bias in self assessment relative to the norm of low-skilled people in a given field to high skilled people in the same field. Proficiency in a field is not intelligence, nor does the theory allow generalization to intelligent people generally versus those less intelligent generally, irrespective of field, and while there is probably evidence of a correlation between IQ and and proficiency within some collection of fields, the Dunning-Kruger effect would require much stronger evidence to generalize to intelligence for specific proficiency, specifically it would require evidence of a causal, not correlative, (from skill to IQ, and not the reverse) link, and evidence that such link exists not just in general or at average, but that such link occurs in any hypothetical, non-specified area if proficiency. The wiki article that is linked is technically correct but somewhat misleading in use of the term 'cognitive ability,' which is in some contexts used to refer to intelligence, but in context refers to the specific, non-IQ domained, mental practice of effective megacognition and self-assessment, as well as a type of social awareness regarding group standards of passable performance. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.142.100|162.158.142.100]] 22:02, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

https://www.newsweek.com/iq-scores-are-declining-and-researchers-point-school-media-973040[[Special:Contributions/172.69.69.28|172.69.69.28]] 15:24, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
:What's your point? I can link thousands articles as well. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 19:24, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
::The point, from the "Flynn effect" wikipedia article : "Research suggests that there is an ongoing reversed Flynn effect, i.e. a decline in IQ scores, in Norway, Denmark, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, France and German-speaking countries,[4] a development which appears to have started in the 1990s". This kind of nullifies the comic's point.
:::One, sign your writing, two, format correctly, three, one study proves nothing, especially on Newsweek of all things. Seriously, Newsweek. Four, average IQ can’t decrease, or increase for that matter, five, IQ isn’t the best measure of intelligence anyways.

This is not a new form of elitism. Until WWII, there were many elitists who formed a theory based on their perception of Darwin's theories. (Notice that I am not suggesting that Darwin agreed with them.) They were commonly known as Social Darwinists and Eugenicists. Their philosophy fell into disrepute because of Hitler's views on racial superiority and the atrocities which he produced as a result of his form of elitism. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.173|108.162.212.173]] 18:39, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
:Nazis ruin everything.