Thread

1. JumpCrisscross · 1790445947 · focus · HN ↗

   Is there a good science fiction story where humanity discovers it’s unalterably getting dumber? As in within a fixed number of generations tool use will cease?

   1. Footprint0521 · 1790446958 · focus · HN ↗

      WALL·E

      1. vinni2 · 1790452025 · focus · HN ↗

         I don’t know in WALL.E they are not so dumb as they are lazy l, infact they are smart enough to do space travel at scale.
   2. mindcrime · 1790450731 · focus · HN ↗

      Idiocracy?
   3. progval · 1790456022 · focus · HN ↗

      It's a major plot point in one of the books in the Bobiverse series, though it's a civilisation humanity meets instead of humanity itself (not saying anything more to avoid spoilers).
   4. pretzellogician · 1790458158 · focus · HN ↗

      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.)

   5. m_fayer · 1790461046 · focus · HN ↗

      In Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Children Of Time", there's a generation ship wandering space that's a marvel of human engineering, whose inhabitants are getting dumber every generation and losing the capacity to maintain or even respect the incredible environment into which they were born. Certainly rings a bell.
   6. kris_golden · 1790527025 · focus · HN ↗

      Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. A multigenerational ship's population is losing its ability to maintain the complex mechanisms needed to keep everything functioning.

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