Would they have all still fought against him?
Isaac Asimov, a very intelligent person, wrote a lengthy essay to the effect that he had no idea what intelligence was. He talked about how society would generally consider him more intelligent than the nearly illiterate man who repaired his car, and yet whenever something went wrong with his car he would go to his mechanic and listen to his advice as if it was being handed down from the mountaintop by Moses himself, because Isaac Asimov knew fuck all about car repair. He talked about how he thought that supposedly objective IQ tests were generally a series of gates designed by people already considered intelligent to keep themselves in power, and that they totally disregarded huge swaths of indispensable human knowledge and talent. Isaac Asimov, who has been published in literally every section of the Dewey Decimal System, concluded that he had no firm idea as to what exactly “intelligence” even was.
In short, how could one even define “the dumbest 50%”?
And that’s why Thanos should have made everybody half as large as they once were.
He talked about how he thought that supposedly objective IQ tests were generally a series of gates designed by people already considered intelligent to keep themselves in power, and that they totally disregarded huge swaths of indispensable human knowledge and talent.
Modern psychology supports this, too. IQ tests are bullshit, and intelligence is not something that can be reasonably quantified in any meaningful sense without an insane amount of asterisks.
Also…are we counting kids? Because you’d probably find kids are consistently beneath the 50% line on any generic intelligence measuring criteria someone makes up.
I agree, I took a few IQ tests and scored high and initially it made me wonder is if everyone else was as concerned as I was watching our species being driven into early graves for yearly profit projections.
Suffice to say, most people I met who scored high lacked the foresight to even think we might be screwed. Which led me to a swift conclusion that your IQ doesn’t mean jack squat, it was a biased system that was simply a biased form of dick measuring.
Perhaps I’m disillusioned, but the best summary of our species is that old video of a chimpanzee in a zoo pissing in its mouth.
Many IQ tests, even ones that claim to be scientific, and especially free ones, artificially inflate the scores they give, to encourage the people taking them to purchase an in-depth analysis of their results.
Like, “Your IQ is 135! That’s well above average! For $39.99, we’ll give you this in-depth, 18 page question by question analysis showing how you stacked up against everyone else, and what your answers mean!”
I’m not sure if it was like that, since it was almost 30 years ago. They might’ve still been using smoke signals lol
snort “modern psychology” calls pseudoscience on someone? That’s my laugh of the day. Thank you!
SHNARF
I love the entire story, then your very solid and succinct answer
The dumbest 50% is everyone but me.
Ahhhh the GOAT. Seriously, as a smart kid everything else about me was ignored. Something wrong at school? You CAN do it, so just do it. D&D breaks up mental stats, but there’s even more out there. Int, Wis, Cha to start. Then there’s motivation, happiness, and empathy, and more. The mind is super complex and an int score of 18 being all that matters is like the saying “this hammer solves my nail problem, it will surely solve my window problem.”
Lol dude is asking for scientific way to define “dumbness” in a world with infinity stones and flying people
Thanos selected the 50% luckiest people. That’s good for everyone!
Larry Niven enters the chat
I can’t get past how weirdly horny Niven was… had to stop reading the second ringworld. That being said Asimov gets weirdly horny in the later foundation novels too. Both of them really liked writing in way older men dating way younger women that just comes off as creepy now.
Try Frank Herbert.
Love the tag.
and good Asimov story thanks
So Thanos could eat them more easily?
Even with the classic definition of intelligence it’s just useless - not predictive or indicative of anything.
A student without the skills to learn isn’t going to learn much regardless of whether they’re intelligent.
I really appreciate Asimov’s thoughts. Ethical hat off for a second - I would suggest removing the most destructive 50%. If someone is truly stupid they might just as well be harmless. However, removing the swathe of the population that engage in violence, greed, etc. would be a far better use of the finger snap than some metric of stupidity.
I would characterise that as “ethical hat on”.
It would be more ethical to give these things to the planet for free. They benefit the world.
Multiverse Thanos where he tries to wipe out the 50% most destructive, but snaps himself out of existence first because even by trying he made himself the most destructive person in the universe.
Win-win?
The definition for intelligence changed over the last 2 centuries because we keep discovering how an animal can fit the definition, and intelligence was used to separate humans from animals. Now it’s even worse because people are trying to separate AI from humans.
I like the concept laid out by Delany: in a novel he describe 3 levels of intelligence based on the understanding of various point of views, but it’s not a ranking.
The first stage is simplex: people don’t understand the science of the world, so everything is kind of magical but this concept of magic make the world hold itself and they can grasp everything and use everything with this conception of magic.
Second stage is complex: people have an understanding of science and they can explain many things, but not everything. And when they can’t explain something, they can’t cope with it, because they don’t have the conceptual tools for it. Thus they will either deny this thing existence of plug it into their existing concepts by ignoring the feature that can’t fit.
Third and last stage is multiplex : people can accept that there are theories different than the ones they know, ideas also. Point of views can shape the way you see the world, and even the scientific theories you have to explain the world can be seen as a point of view on the world, so changing this point of view can bring a new or different understanding of a phenomenon or thing or person. These points of view all coexist at the same time, none of them is more true than the other. Like the concept of magic, this allows to grasp, use or accept even the ununderstandable and the unknown, but with a better ability to understand than the simplex stage.
I like this model. But it’s more a model for open-mindedness than intelligence. But maybe that’s the thing.
Good questions from Asimov. But just like with car repair, he didn’t know this subject. It has been a field of study for a while, and researchers have worked directly on this core problem defining general intelligence distinct from specific knowledge.
This Veritassium video is a balanced overview of the topic: https://youtu.be/FkKPsLxgpuY?si=iY7QBEQK1DkzNhxI
Needless to say, no, the IQ test is not a conspiracy by people who are good at number sequence problems to keep themselves in charge of the world.
IQ of someone is not stable: it changes depending on how much you train to do it or the mental/psychological state you are in when you pass it. Thus it is not a sound scale to measure anything.
The fact that it is merely a ranking of people further push it in the realm of straight bullshit.
How can you possibly measure intelligence separately from the mental state of the person taking the test
In Summer the Eiffel tower is higher than in Winter. Does that mean meters are not a sound scale to measure length?
The metter is not determined by the average height of the eiffel tower. The average height of the effeil tower is measured with the meter. That is the important difference. The meter is also based on constant of physics, and has a very precise definition. You can’t say the same of IQ.
Do you happen to know where Asimov published this opinion and what its title was?
Found it!
The essay is “Thinking About Thinking,” ©1989, collected in the book Magic: The Final Fantasy Collection.
Thank you very much! (Let’s hope this comment gets federated.)
And that’s why Thanos should have made everybody half as large as they once were.
Holy cow. However intelligence is defined, you’re smarter than I am. That would have been a really short film.
…and I’m just realizing that universe would look pretty much exactly like those little kid Marvel Adventures shows…
sorry to stop the circlejerk, but this is dumb. an intelligent person could learn to repair the car more easily and have more insight than a moron. intelligence exists and we all experience it everyday. the wais-r is a relatively good test, but no there is never going to be a perfect way to measure intelligence. you can say intelligence is just what the test measures which is really pretty non biased, but that’s reducing things too much. y’all know morons and people that are crazy fucking smart. experience in different subjects is distributed, but the ability to gain experience quickly is the biggest difference.
Yeah, because it’s so morally defensible to eliminate all of the developmentally disabled and republicans.
rip grandma
cougheugenicscough
I’d bet good money that most republicans are smarter than AOC
You think most Republicans could graduate cum laude with a BA in International Relations and Economics?
Given they are republicans who harp on about one member of Congress that likely doesn’t represent them, I doubt it
Case in point.
Done, how much we going in for?
Considering that most are over 60 and believe in magical ecosystems that would suddenly stop burning with ever-increasing frequency and severity each summer overnight if West coast states where that happens most often elect more Republican leadership- and will now literally try to deny that it’s not raining outside- I highly doubt they’re that clever at all, let alone more so than one congresswoman who lives in their heads rent-free
Jokester over here
Hang on, do you mean “with the least capacity to be smart,” or is he killing all the babies and children?
I mean, the average newborn is smarter than the average politician, so maybe it’s not as bad as we think.
Bruh babies cant even talk or have object permanence, don’t try to spin that as being smart.
I once convinced a 9 year old that dogs are just cats but older. Little humans are smart as hell 😎
Maybe it should be split for every age group, I guess that would make it fair
Politician dumb
They’d still be appalled and try to stop him given their strong moral code. And given that they’d be at full strength they’d probably find a way to stop him and reverse things faster than they did in OTL
I’m frankly astonished anyone could genuinely think the Avengers would ever somehow be more ok with letting Thanos kill “only the stupid people”. Like…that’s a very strange read on these characters to think they’d ever react any differently in this scenario.
But even if they were so morally and ethically bankrupt to think it may not be such a bad idea, the truth is killing “the dumber 50%” is still causing catastrophic secondary effects. People would lose loved ones. That’s enough of a reason to go Avenging.
Hell, how are we defining “dumb”? Because you may have just murdered every child under a certain age.
You think none of the Avengers is in the “dumb” 50%?
Of course not, didn’t Drax have a calculus scene in guardians 3?
He’s still dumb even if he can do calculus
You missed the sarcasm mate. I chose Drax specifically because he’s clearly not in the top 50% and I havent even seen gotg3.
I thought it was obvious but actually I could totally see James gunn putting a tongue in cheek maths scene in a film.
Drax DID actually subvert his intelligence in the third film
Deep cut
And given that they’d be at full strength they’d probably find a way to stop him and reverse things faster than they did in OTL
Good point. But I dunno. Thor is a big power loss, and unless Captain America gets a free pass for emotional intelligence counting, they’re short in leadership, too.
Would they have all still fought against him?
I know this is No Stupid Questions but…come on.
Why on Earth would the Avengers react any differently? Is the assumption that they’re morally bankrupt enough to actually reconsider in this scenario? That somehow letting “stupid” people be murdered is ever, in any way, acceptable?
You see the Avengers are super big into eugenics. It’s in the subtext mate
50% was such a dumb number anyways.
It requires a single doubling to get back to where we were. To double, you’d need about 10 times a 7% growth. Probably within less than 100 years you’d be back at the same problem
Not to mention that when you murder a shit tonne of people, and when it’s over you’ll likely have lots of people getting babies, so you get a birth wave about 9 months later. That regrowth starts FAST.
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Build the fence! Build the fence!
He was called mad because he wanted to return earth to it’s 1970 population
I mean, he could have just created 200% more resources as well. Or he could have equally redistributed all the resources. The problem he was trying to solve would still eventually happen again, because solving the problem relies on everyone working unselfishly, which is simply not possible when humans are involved.
I think he should have cut the pregnancy rate to a third of what it is now. No one would notice. No one would die or be missed. There’d just be a lot less people within fifty years.
OK while that would be a better idea the thought that no one would notice is laughable. We have detailed pregnancy rate records going back 75 years, an immediate 30% change would definitely raise a lot of red flags.
I think he should have made everyone half size. Then they would have only needed half as many resources plus there’s a little tiny, angry Spiderman jumping around.
If they were half as large, they’d need less than half as many resources, as their volume would decrease by considerably more.
I kinda like the idea of randomly distributing how much each person gets shrunk. Each person ends up anywhere from 99.9% to 0.1% of their original size. Think of the added chaos it would create.
This would make a great short story. People would probably divorce and marry based on size
Yeah, I feel like it would create a hell of a lot more chaos than half the world disappearing. And hijinks. And genocide.
That wouldn’t have impressed death. He is into goth girls.
Actually a good point. He should have just done that.
Yeah, Dan Brown dealt with it in a much better manner.
The real question is which avengers would be gone. Putting my money on Thor
Thor, Starlord, Drax, and Mantis would all be toast. Steve, Bucky, and Falcon are tossups because I think their intelligence is supposed to be about average.
Not necessarily any Avengers would be gone.
If Thor is on the upper half of intelligence in his kind then…
Good point, technically. But… We all know Thor would be gone. There’s no way the rightful heir to the throne of Asgard is in their top 50% intelligence.
I think the whole 50% depopulation is a flawed premise, of the hundred of thousands of years modern humans have existed that would throw total population back to… 1970
Yup. His movie motivation was dumbed down. The whole resources thing is stupid for exactly this reason.
In the comics, Thanos became infatuated with the Marvel Universe incarnation of Death. …And naturally he figured that if he killed half the universe at once, he’d get her attention. (cause girls love it when a boy makes a huge amount of work for them…)
Anyway, his plan was still moronic, but “manchild does stupid thing to impress girl” is a classic for a reason.
It wasn’t just humans, it was the whole universe. He wasn’t concerned with how each individual species’ populations would fluctuate, he just had a solution in his head and went with it.
Ya know, the “mad Titan” thing.
There is an addendum to his plan that might have made it make sense. If he had said something like “I’m giving the universe the chance to make better decisions”, suddenly having half as many people means (probably a little more than) half resource consumption, half the carbon emission, and more time to figure out and implement solutions to these problems. I’m not sure how the housing crisis would pan out, I expect it would get worse. It also makes more sense that he destroys the stones after “I gave the universe its chance, now the ball is in its court”.
This also solves the doubling resource problem. His motives are to pressure people to change their ways. Giving them more stuff might cut hunger, but you’ll just have that hunger again in 50 years and we’d probably increase carbon output to boot, and destroy more environment to get these doubled resources.
I don’t know enough about the stones to say whether “infinite resources” or whatever cheat code would have worked, but they certainly could have dropped a line that it wasn’t possible, or that it would cause more problems than it solved (how does chemistry even work in this universe? If nothing ever gets used in reactions then the chemistry that makes our bodies work is borked)
But anyway, as the Russos did not put this line in, the premise was flawed
Maybe the classic: “Impossible to create something out of nothing”, even with the magical stones
Dude, he killed Vision and Gamora and other people close to the member of Avengers, no way they gonna let him off the hook.
I think it largely depends on his definition of “dumb”…. Given he’s already committed to wiping out half of all life, I’d consider his mental facilities to be of questionable intellect already. His idea of who is dumb may be similarly questionable…
Then we know he would have killed all of GOTG
Why couldn’t Thanos just wish for unlimited resources? Or universal peace? Or literally any number of things that would have solved the problems he was trying to solve without anyone getting hurt or never existing? His method was stupid.
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I think that the motive should be allowed to be dumb, and their mistake was making Thanos appear lucid and competent. They really should have leaned into “the mad titan” thing and made him act more like an unhinged despot.
Right? Nothing about him seemed really that insane or unhinged. Even killing Gamora, his adopted daughter that he appeared to care for, can be explained as him doing whatever it takes, not being insane. Even what he did to Nebula came off, to me, as just him being extreme in his desire for her obedience and perfect, like any other obsessed and controlling parent.
Honestly, he came off more as the “annoyed Titan” than anything else.
That would have at least made his non-sense make sense. If he’s crazy, he gonna do crazy shit. That may even be why I have always preferred the over-the-top cartoon villains. They were insane, and their plots didn’t have to make sense because they were insane.
“I’m gonna blow up the world!”
“But, um… aren’t you part of the world?”
“Shut up, you and pull the lever!”
His method was stupid
He would be part of the dumbest 50%.
But then you don’t get to massacre people
I always wondered if your goal is to reduce population. Why not just make half the people infertile?
Too slow
Has to be more than that. People can have multiple children and probably would have more just because they can. It’d need to be cut to at least one third or less.
Non-zero chance that the distribution of infertility does not match the distributions of male to female. Could result in complete population collapse pretty quickly.
He also could have just created trillions more planets so that there wouldn’t be natural resource shortages. Nope. Gotta murder quadrillions of life forms.
Sorry that’s not exciting enough.
Yep. That’s actually what at least one version of Reed Richards does with the gauntlet.
