Idiocracy is not an accurate prediction.

Prof. Edward Dutton.

Prof. Dutton focusses on differential birth rates, which are measured in generations. That looks pretty slow compared to other methods: Portland and San Francisco were collapsed in only years. His picture is harsh, but it’s hard to say it looks wrong.

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Prof Edward Dutton.

We're Getting Less Intelligent, But Not For the Reasons You Seem to Think

March 18th 2023.

“Idiocracy is the most violently and insanely optimistic movie I have ever seen. Ideocracy is set five hundred years from now, and in it America is a united society, with one government, with - to some extent - law and order. It reminds one of modern day El Salvador, or somewhere like that. That is not what is going to happen. The process of collapse is going to happen far more quickly than that. Based on the data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, we predict that the European Americans, European peoples will have an average IQ of 85 by the end of the century. It's 100 now. That is a massive difference. That's the difference between a science professor and a high-school science teacher; or a high-school science teacher and a policeman; or a policeman and a low level-security guard; or a low level-security guard and someone who is mentally retarded and incapable of working. That's the kind of difference we are talking about. Based on per-capita major innovation, we will have the IQ now that we had in the 16th century, and by the end of the century we will have the IQ we had in the year 1100. When that happens, trust levels collapse, because IQ is associated with trust; the ability to keep supply chains working collapses, because that involves intelligence. The ability to sustain civilisation collapses; the ability to sustain complex polities collapses. Polities break up into basically feudalism, war lords that control small areas; the whole electricity system, all of these things would be likely to collapse.

You can argue, well, is AI going to do anything about it? You may be right about that. AI might push it slightly into the future, or something like that. But eventually AI has to be sustained by humans, by electricity, by things that eventually we wont be able to do.

We are talking about getting to Idiocracy standards of living certainly by the end of the century.”