The marching morons
and other famous science fiction stories.
by Cyril M. Kornbluth · first published 1959
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Why HN recommends it
Short 1951 science fiction story with a simple, well-drawn premise: selection favors the less intelligent, and the consequences follow over time. It is a sharp
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…socio-economic status with Darwinian fitness. Plenty of people of quite modest intelligence and limited achievement are successfully passing their genes on to the next generation. Recommended reading: The Marching Morons by Cyril Kornbluth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons
on “Why highly intelligent people suffer from more mental and physical disorders” ↗From the article: "My favorite along these lines is a classic, Cyril Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons." It's the original version of "Idiocracy" — the basic idea is that selection now favors the stupid, and so if we go forward in time, that's what we'll see. The concept is simple and well-drawn; the consequences…
on “Six scientists tell us about the most accurate science fiction in their fields” ↗…management which try to simplify things into “anecdotal analytics”, e.g. preferring a persuasive narrative over reality...for a good cynical perspective from the ‘50s I recommend C.M. Kornbluth’s “The Marching Morons” (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons>).
on “SSD will fail at 40k power-on hours (2021)” ↗Or even Venus, as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons (Text here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51233/51233-h/51233-h.htm) Both involved Cyril Kornbluth, what a great talent, taken far too soon. Interestingly, Pohl wrote a sequel to The Space Merchants…
on “The internet is slipping out of our reach” ↗I would add that after reading The Machine Stops you should read Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons" from 1951. Talk about prescient! It reads like a meld of Idiocracy and the current U.S. administration. From the Wikipedia entry: "In 1988, real estate agent and con artist John Barlow is placed in…
on “In 1909 E.M. Forster wrote an eerily prescient short story about man vs. machine” ↗This reminds me of Kornbluth's story 'The Marching Morons' where cars are made noisy but slow so the morons will be stimulated but safe.
on “The rise of fake engine noise” ↗It's not actually a completely original premise: > "The Marching Morons" is a science fiction story by American writer Cyril M. Kornbluth, originally published in Galaxy in April 1951. > The story follows John Barlow, who was put into suspended animation by a freak accident…
on “Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future” ↗Relevant literary reference → https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51233 "The Marching Morons - C.M. Kornbluth"
on “Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future” ↗I'd love to learn more about this. I thought it was based on The Marching Morons by Kornbluth and the subsequent discussion between Niven and Asimov I read many years ago. It seemed true then. It seems more true today.
on “Newly discovered comet Nishimura could be visible to naked eye this weekend” ↗Some prior works that work as prequels include C.M. Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons" and "The Little Black Bag."
on “Recent AI model progress feels mostly like bullshit” ↗…have been using to dig their own grave for some time: people understand when you have contempt for them and they won't listen to you any more. Kornbluth who wrote the story it's largely based on (The Marching Morons) had the excuse of extreme youth and alienation for his intellectual elitism. His story is much more explicit about the solution: fire all the dummies into space. It's much more obvious in the story that…
on “Idiocracy” ↗The classic version is Kornbluth's 1951 story "The Marching Morons", itself pretty clearly the basis for Idiocracy. (You could argue that "The Time Machine" was the original example.)
on “Plunging test scores are a slow-moving catastrophe” ↗"The Marching Morons", Cyril M. Kornbluth
on “Scientist says cleaning indoor air could make us healthier and smarter” ↗…to the kind of lazy thinking that people are prone to anyway, that makes it all too easy to treat each other badly. Almost the exact same article could have been written about the original story "The Marching Morons" written in 1951 (with the much-smaller SF community of the time replacing the movie's audience). It makes similar lazy errors of casually mixing indicators of poverty with those of low intelligence,…
on “Idiocracy Is a Cruel Movie And You Should Be Ashamed For Liking It” ↗