h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Surely in a postmodern age truth is both democratic and personal? But in the neo-liberal age truth is what sells and is subject to restyling.

In any case I read somewhere that Wikipedia is as accurate as other tried and tested knowledge databases such as Encyclopaedia Britannica. Here it is, it's from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia

I find Wikipedia is a valuable reference tool. It tells you where to start looking.

But it annoys when I look for some obscure fact, and I find 10 sites have exactly the same phrase quoted verbatim from Wikipedia, and it is wrong. It's good to put stuff up on Wikipedia, even if you get it wrong occasionally. But there's not much credit in copying information from Wikipedia and presenting it as if it was the last word.

Of course the irritation is when you read undergraduate / graduate level student essays comprised of cut and paste from Wikipedia & elsewhere. As you say the key is having a critical mind.

Web quoting web is the source of much spurious credibility. As I found when I followed up an utterly spurious quote from Oscar Wilde.

Quotes are absolutely the worst. There exist x-number of sites where they hire people to cut-and-paste all day. One gets a bad quote, they all get it.

NEVER use a quote without tracing it to its original source. Otherwise, you'll end up with Maya V Patel. Dr Patel inspires many people, but appears to be fictional.

"Don't believe everything you see on the Internet" - Abraham Lincoln

I have to see that film ... "The Age of Stupid" ... which I think predicts a decrease in human intelligence as we become more dependent on technological replacements to our own brain function and as we surround ourselves with virtual realities at the expense of actual reality.

It's available on Netflix (US) streaming until only 24.8.2013.

I guess I'll watch it tonight. Sounds like a more thoughtful Idiocracy.

I think I was thinking of "Idiocracy" ... but I haven't seen either films ... so can't comment on respective quality. But I think there is no guarantee that the future is going to give rise to an evolved improved human intelligence ... although it's possible humans could create an "artificial" intelligence to surpass their own.

I've almost finished The Age of Stupid.

It's not like Idiocracy at all, really. It's focus is strictly on global warming and how despite all obvious evidence and science, we as a species are boldly driving right off the cliff.

It was Idiocracy I was referring to ... I haven't yet seen it but apparently it has developed a cult following after essentially being pulled by 20th century fox because of its "un-American ness".

Yep emissions of greenhouse gases are increasing ... globalisation has essentially put paid to any attempts to curb emissions as production is shifted to coal burning China, India etc where there is cheap labour and then transported across the globe on huge oil burning container ships.

Idiocracy was a good film. It wasn't subtle, of course. But it was quite funny and it does make a good point. Especially in this world we live in today where a US cable channel, once called "The Learning Channel" features Honey Boo Boo and The Discovery Channel is running "Amish Mafia".

It has been claimed that people are already less intelligent than they were in the Stone Age, because society supports the stupid.

That's worth thinking about. Plus the fact that natural selection means that the human race has been getting stronger and fitter - scary. Where did I hear that human intelligence has already deteriorated so far that we wouldn't have the knowhow these days to put a man on the moon. With robots doing amazing things on Mars, however, that is obviously to be taken with a pinch of salt. Whether those robots would have got there if everything had to be worked out with pencil and paper is another question.

"Idiocracy" is an unbearably awful projection of how all this could further progress, except that the people are surprisingly normal-sized (they would, in a society like that, surely become obese). Another bg loophole: They rely entirely on technology from TV on upwards. There must be some geeks somewhere running the workings of it. Maybe the geeks are obese.

TC, you can't show that "natural selection means that the human race has been getting stronger and fitter".

Natural Selection works mainly by killing the unfit before they reach maturity and reproduce. It works secondarily by the fitter males fathering nearly all the children while the less fit father hardly any.

This meaning of 'fit' is not 'strong and healthy' but 'suited to the environmental niche'.

So a modern (i.e. farming) society permits the reproduction of many human genes, both the more fit and the less so. As with intelligence, the expected result of this is that general health and strength will decline. However, the time-scale for this decline would be rather long (I expect) and we have only been farming for ten to twenty thousand years.

Oh yes, I realise that it was a drastic generalisation. It was just that, coupled with Gnomon's statement that humans are getting dumber, the thought that, parallel to that, they are getting bigger and stronger was rather scary.

I only based my theory that people are generally bigger on the observation that in very old houses (200 - 300 years old), many 20th/21st century people have to duck to get through the doorways.

As far as "normal sized" humans in Idiocracy, I think Wall-E showed a more probable future if humans last that long.


Here's some relevant quotes from the Narrator of Idiocracy:

Narrator: As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? 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.

Later:

Narrator: The years passed, mankind became stupider at a frightening rate. Some had high hopes the genetic engineering would correct this trend in evolution, but sadly the greatest minds and resources where focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections.

Better nutrition, growth hormones (percolating through the food industry?), steroids, medicines ... have also helped to make people bigger and stronger compared to the past.

>> but sadly the greatest minds and resources where focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections <<

but sadly true.