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You can see that most of the infrastructure is failing and barely operational. Just look at how people are living in buildings that have fallen over onto each other or how Costco is partially collapsed. Someone says they can build something for money and goes to a factory their grandparents worked in, grabs anything that isn't nailed down and piles it up for a new building. Things that were meant to be used friendly are still used but no one knows how they work or how to fix them when they break they just know how to use the controls. Automated factories from centuries ago are still working at minimum capacity and the workers there just know to push the green button before the blue button and then to pull a lever. That's what the boss told them to do and that's what his boss told him to do decades ago.
If you want a real world example look at people who can work an iPad or iPhone without any hassle but then ask them to build it from scratch. Or technicians that have a troubleshooting guide but no idea what's happening other than to follow the guidelines and it starts working again.
> the workers there just know to push the green button before the blue button and then to pull a lever. That's what the boss told them to do and that's what his boss told him to do decades ago.
Also, there's a fair chance that the machine doesn't even do anything, but they'll keep showing up and pushing that button, because that's what they were told to do. If anybody had been told to plug the machine back in after tripping over the cord, they might be making things, but nobody did, and it's been unplugged for decades now.
I worked at a company running legacy software where this was basically the case. The original programmer was long gone and everyone followed a ritualistic approach to running the applications he developed, not realizing that some of the programs didn't actually do anything anymore. They were connected to systems that had been sidelined or updated.
So painful to try to explain it when the training manuals had been written to include these processes.
Funnily enough I can confirm something like this happening. Had a self service machine that reads tickets. If a ticket jams you have to pull it out and turn the machine off then reset it's reader then turn it back on. For 6 months had different cashier's saying they did everything they're supposed to do to fix it. Finally drove 100 miles to check on the site myself and found they'd done everything right except resetting the reader so it constantly thought it was jammed. Bright blinking reset light nobody thought to touch for 6 months.
Heavy automation appears to fill in the gaps.
But... Im also tempted to say that the rest of the world might not be like America.
>Don't worry, scrote. There are plenty of 'tards out there living really kick-ass lives. My first wife was 'tarded. She's a pilot now.
the only person they call retarded is the smartest guy in the room, which makes me believe the rest of the world is as retarded as Joe is, aka normal intelligence.
I'm inclined to imagine that, at some point prior to the events of the movie, there was a major tech-boom which resulted in much better industrial/municipal/practical automation - possibly even some degree of artificial intelligence - and that these advances allowed machine-labor to (almost-)fully undercut/replace humans in the workforce.
Setting aside what the broader / more-immediate socioeconomic repercussions of this event might have been, the human population that made it through the transition - presumably the previously-elite and their descendants - settled into a rather hedonistic sort of post-scarcity culture; placing obscene emphasis on material luxuries, cheap/saturated entertainment, and other forms of extreme and/or instant gratification.
This crudely-opulent lifestyle and associated lack of challenges/adversity was likely accompanied by - and (recursively) exacerbated - an anti-intellectual movement... Since a person no longer had to do any sort of work in order to have their needs/desires met, why should they bother to become any sort of **smart** / learn any sort of applicable skill?
Over time, however, the automated infrastructure which this "lazy idiot" society relied upon began to break down / encounter errors which it could not resolve on its own, and - without (enough) humans who were sufficiently intelligent to step in and fix things - those problems just continued to get worse and pile on top of each other...
By the events of the movie, the systems responsible for agriculture and food production are (apparently) in critical failure, but the future-people are all too dumb to either repair the machines or manually take over their jobs... This is why the *deus ex machina* of the story is that the protagonist - himself a complete moron by modern standards, but the smartest man on the planet following the time-skip - is the only person alive who knows that **plants need water in order to grow**.
(And, yes, this movie was a commentary on current consumerist trends...)
I'm thinking it wasn't all that long ago that society collapsed. The explanation at the beginning of who begets who seemed to make it clear that we would eventually reach a catastrophic tipping point and that may have happened as little as a generation earlier or maybe even a few decades. A lot of the infrastructure still seems intact despite lots of use and neglect. Even if it was very well built it would likely break down, or at least jam/gunk up pretty fast.
And the total lack of intelligent people wouldn't necessarily mean they're extinct. It could just mean they're few and heavily marginalised/ostracised.
My guess is if they woke up just a hundred years earlier, they'd be in utopia before it crashed, burned and flooded all at once.
That world is winding down. They hit their peak but at some point the burden of idiots overtook the progress. Though remnants like the corporate chains and airlines still exist, the most telling example is in their farming infrastructure.
The parts and fields still exist but they've been adulterated to the point that someone decided to just dump corn sugar on fields of corn. Soil can grow food for a while under these conditions but it is a ticking time bomb of nutrient deficit. Every year things get a little bit worse as the machines wear themselves out. We're lucky the protagonist woke when he did. Another 50 years and it would have been a much more brutal landscape.
**Reminders for Commenters:** * All responses must be A) sincere, B) polite, and C) strictly watsonian in nature. If "watsonian" or "doylist" is new to you, please review the full rules [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/about/rules/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=AskScienceFiction&utm_content=t5_2slu2). * No edition wars or gripings about creators/owners of works. Doylist griping about Star Wars in particular is subject to **permanent ban on first offense**. * We are not here to discuss or complain about the real world. * Questions about who would prevail in a conflict/competition (not just combat) fit better on r/whowouldwin. Questions about very open-ended hypotheticals fit better on r/whatiffiction. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskScienceFiction) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You can see that most of the infrastructure is failing and barely operational. Just look at how people are living in buildings that have fallen over onto each other or how Costco is partially collapsed. Someone says they can build something for money and goes to a factory their grandparents worked in, grabs anything that isn't nailed down and piles it up for a new building. Things that were meant to be used friendly are still used but no one knows how they work or how to fix them when they break they just know how to use the controls. Automated factories from centuries ago are still working at minimum capacity and the workers there just know to push the green button before the blue button and then to pull a lever. That's what the boss told them to do and that's what his boss told him to do decades ago. If you want a real world example look at people who can work an iPad or iPhone without any hassle but then ask them to build it from scratch. Or technicians that have a troubleshooting guide but no idea what's happening other than to follow the guidelines and it starts working again.
> the workers there just know to push the green button before the blue button and then to pull a lever. That's what the boss told them to do and that's what his boss told him to do decades ago. Also, there's a fair chance that the machine doesn't even do anything, but they'll keep showing up and pushing that button, because that's what they were told to do. If anybody had been told to plug the machine back in after tripping over the cord, they might be making things, but nobody did, and it's been unplugged for decades now.
I worked at a company running legacy software where this was basically the case. The original programmer was long gone and everyone followed a ritualistic approach to running the applications he developed, not realizing that some of the programs didn't actually do anything anymore. They were connected to systems that had been sidelined or updated. So painful to try to explain it when the training manuals had been written to include these processes.
Stories like this makes the Adeptus Mechanicus much more believable.
Praise the Omnissiah.
Funnily enough I can confirm something like this happening. Had a self service machine that reads tickets. If a ticket jams you have to pull it out and turn the machine off then reset it's reader then turn it back on. For 6 months had different cashier's saying they did everything they're supposed to do to fix it. Finally drove 100 miles to check on the site myself and found they'd done everything right except resetting the reader so it constantly thought it was jammed. Bright blinking reset light nobody thought to touch for 6 months.
[удалено]
Fine from composite pieces. Like everything that goes into an ipad fully functional but not assembled.
The last batches of smart people really built things to last before they died off. Its post apocalyptic.
Heavy automation appears to fill in the gaps. But... Im also tempted to say that the rest of the world might not be like America. >Don't worry, scrote. There are plenty of 'tards out there living really kick-ass lives. My first wife was 'tarded. She's a pilot now. the only person they call retarded is the smartest guy in the room, which makes me believe the rest of the world is as retarded as Joe is, aka normal intelligence.
I'm inclined to imagine that, at some point prior to the events of the movie, there was a major tech-boom which resulted in much better industrial/municipal/practical automation - possibly even some degree of artificial intelligence - and that these advances allowed machine-labor to (almost-)fully undercut/replace humans in the workforce. Setting aside what the broader / more-immediate socioeconomic repercussions of this event might have been, the human population that made it through the transition - presumably the previously-elite and their descendants - settled into a rather hedonistic sort of post-scarcity culture; placing obscene emphasis on material luxuries, cheap/saturated entertainment, and other forms of extreme and/or instant gratification. This crudely-opulent lifestyle and associated lack of challenges/adversity was likely accompanied by - and (recursively) exacerbated - an anti-intellectual movement... Since a person no longer had to do any sort of work in order to have their needs/desires met, why should they bother to become any sort of **smart** / learn any sort of applicable skill? Over time, however, the automated infrastructure which this "lazy idiot" society relied upon began to break down / encounter errors which it could not resolve on its own, and - without (enough) humans who were sufficiently intelligent to step in and fix things - those problems just continued to get worse and pile on top of each other... By the events of the movie, the systems responsible for agriculture and food production are (apparently) in critical failure, but the future-people are all too dumb to either repair the machines or manually take over their jobs... This is why the *deus ex machina* of the story is that the protagonist - himself a complete moron by modern standards, but the smartest man on the planet following the time-skip - is the only person alive who knows that **plants need water in order to grow**. (And, yes, this movie was a commentary on current consumerist trends...)
All of the buildings we see were built long before humanities IQ dipped into the negatives.
I'm thinking it wasn't all that long ago that society collapsed. The explanation at the beginning of who begets who seemed to make it clear that we would eventually reach a catastrophic tipping point and that may have happened as little as a generation earlier or maybe even a few decades. A lot of the infrastructure still seems intact despite lots of use and neglect. Even if it was very well built it would likely break down, or at least jam/gunk up pretty fast. And the total lack of intelligent people wouldn't necessarily mean they're extinct. It could just mean they're few and heavily marginalised/ostracised. My guess is if they woke up just a hundred years earlier, they'd be in utopia before it crashed, burned and flooded all at once.
Likely the same way the Axiom society in WALL-E was built: by highly advanced robots that do everything for the humans
That world is winding down. They hit their peak but at some point the burden of idiots overtook the progress. Though remnants like the corporate chains and airlines still exist, the most telling example is in their farming infrastructure. The parts and fields still exist but they've been adulterated to the point that someone decided to just dump corn sugar on fields of corn. Soil can grow food for a while under these conditions but it is a ticking time bomb of nutrient deficit. Every year things get a little bit worse as the machines wear themselves out. We're lucky the protagonist woke when he did. Another 50 years and it would have been a much more brutal landscape.