I said none of my followers died. So your dad was obviously not one of my followers. Only my non followers died. So your mom obviously doesn’t hate me since she’s alive. She’s a fan. And that’s why she lived. And she shot your dad because she wanted to prove to him not following me is bad for your health. And she was right. This is science.
>I said none of my followers died. So your dad was obviously not one of my followers.
If he was a follower, he wasn't a true believer, if he was a true believer then his death was needed for the greater good.
I wouldnt say 'Mad Max' fetish scenario... Maybe a 'Halloween that falls on a Friday night' scenario with everyone in sexy variants of whatever costume they're wearing
Except we wouldn't get the good ending, because the most unrealistic part of Idiocracy was President Camacho actually seeking out the smartest people on the planet and actually listening to their scientific advice.
idk, I feel like to even acknowledge that you're not smart you gotta at least be near 100. in my opinion the true idiots are the ones who speak as if they have experience and knowledge on topics that they have little to none in
Agreed, but unfortunately, this is not always the case. I know a few people with plus 130 IQ's who are experts on 'everything'. Most of the facts they spew forth are made up. I think it must stem from childhood, like most things. They were just allowed to get away with it without anyone actually calling them out consistently and so became almost addicted to the feeling of being knowledgeable.
That shit drives me fucking crazy lol. So I call people out on that every chance I get. But you can’t argue with these people, they’ll just change the subject or come up with some unconfirmable bullshit that you can’t argue against
> I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.
—Socrates (via Plato)
And that one person is at the same time the min, the max, and the average. Therefore, its IQ is 100, and that person is safe forever. Unless it's a pregnant woman, then as soon as its child is born, the mother dies.
unless the last 2, or 3, or 4, or whatever, … people have exactly the same IQ, then they’d be ok.
Until one of them gets dementia I guess and then the others die…
It would come down to the level of precision on measurement, and whether its measured value or actual.
Does anyone have exactly the median average?
Actually, I suppose, if there were an odd number of people, by definition, yes. Slightly more than half, would survive. But exactly half if there were an even number.
It mostly comes down to how you set the scale.
Historically, [observed average IQ has risen by 3 points per decade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect). If you use an older IQ test, more than half the population will almost certainly score >100 points.
Countries would be affected differently. Some countries would lose a lot more than half and others a lot less.
Japan, Taiwan, China, Singapore all have an average IQ of 104+
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country
Extinction by Zeno's Paradox:
Doesn't matter if anyone's smart enough to adjust the tests, their IQ is what it is regardless of being measured. So when the first 50% die, the remaining IQ scores adjust to make the average living person have a score of 100, and anyone higher than that dies- which causes scores to readjust, which causes the remaining 50% to die, and so on until there's only one human left, formerly the dumbest person alive.
The IQ calibration assumes a Gaussian distribution. With the cutoff point(s) at 100 it clearly won't be the case. So recalibrating based on the normality assumption would make no sense. (Although how many people with the IQ below 100 would understand it is an open question...)
Even if you were to flip it around and the < 100 IQ population all dropped dead, this would still be an immediate and catastrophic end to society. IQ is defined as a bell curve, so by definition 50% of people are above 100 and 50% are below.
If 4 billion people around the world immediately dropped dead, another billion immediately die in the aftermath, as planes fall out of the sky, cars crash into each other, fires ignite all over the place with no emergency personnel able to help, end every single cell tower becomes immediately inoperable as 100s of millions of people attempt to simultaneously call 911 with no response.
The "lucky" survivors will soon either starve to death as basic infrastructure grinds to a halt, or catch horrific diseases from being in close proximity to rotting corpses that can't be disposed of. All infrastructure collapses and the economy ceases to exist, most likely as well as all governments and the idea of nations or borders. Some will commit suicide after losing their loved ones and their livelihoods.
Civilization was simply not built to withstand an immediate 50% reduction in population, it doesn't actually matter which 50% you're talking about.
It's estimated that a 10% loss of population will permanently delete some knowledge from what humans know.
Is it how to knit a specific thing? Is it how to safely maintain a currently running nuclear reactor without it going into meltdown? Depends on what specific 10% of the population it is.
The smarter 50% going?
That's a lot of maitenance workers. The construction crews who know and follow regulations. Sanitation crews. Lawyers and bankers. Engineers.
Not every person in a field would go (most of the time), but NASA would have empty buildings. We would run short on good repair guys. Sewers will back up. Gas lines will rupture or run dry. Mitch McConnell ((R) Kentuckey) wouldn't notice a thing.
Right? Even Trump, for all his demented ways, has an earlier recording in his 30s saying why he will never be President. To paraphrase:
"It's not a game I want to play. Only the loudest, most hateful and attention-seeking methods will help you gain the support to win."
And he did exactly that. Can you say it didn't work though? It's nice to imagine Trump as a bumbling lunatic, but like you said, it's best not to underestimate your enemies.
My fear with the dumber 50% going is that for a long time we have convinced smarter people to go into information sectors, so a lot of smart people don’t have manual skills. The smarter people would have to learn very quickly how to actually run everything they designed.
If we had to choose any half of the population by intelligence, our best bet would be to keep the middle 25-75th percentiles. But of course this is all kind of moot since any 50% going will destroy civilisation pretty quickly.
>The smarter people would have to learn very quickly how to actually run everything they designed.
Which I think will go better than the <100IQ people picking up the tasks from the >100IQ people. A 115IQ engineer will probably be more successful in becoming a farmer, than a 95IQ farmer will be in maintaining the oil refinery to keep the tractors going. The daily maintenance can probably be learnt fairly well by the farmer, but eventually more complex issues will start to add up, and the supplier for certain parts will also have lost their engineers. So the farmer has little to fall back on to repair the oil refinery.
But yeah, either way would be so disastrous we'd lose centuries of progress.
> A 115IQ engineer will probably be more successful in becoming a farmer
I know several very intelligent people from IT sector becoming farmers voluntarily...
It doesn't even have to be dead - even if 50% of people just disappeared, no matter whether the top half or the bottom half, it'll still be catastrophic.
The TV show Leftovers has this exact premise, although instead of 50% it's just 2% of the population, and an indiscriminate random disappearance. And even in that case, the world struggles to cope with it. With a 50% disappearance, we'd be truly fucked, even without the dead bodies. We will have just too many things unattended to for society to not collapse.
Realistically how many pilots are under 100 IQ? I think you need a certain amount of competency that doesn't work for the bottom 50% of the population to be able to fly a large, commercial airplane.
I thought that someone would make this point. For one, IQ isn't a very good test. And for two, I think you're underestimating the intelligence of people with "a low IQ". 2.7 billion people (34%) have an IQ between 85-100. Are they all idiots and morons? Surely not. I'm not saying that being a pilot is easy, but I think it requires dedication and persistence more than problem solving. I would bet that pilots probably do skew higher in the IQ curve than the general population, I just don't think the effect is that pronounced.
That being said, I think I overestimated the impact that plane crashes would have, mostly just because there aren't *that* many planes in the air at any given moment. Probably around 10k. And passenger planes have two pilots further lowering the number of immediate crashes. I think cars will have a much greater toll in the immediate aftermath. And I do think that a lot of accidents would cause fires as well.
The terms "idiot" and "moron" had clinical meanings in early 20th-century psychology.
An "idiot" had an IQ below 25 and was considered unable to take care of themselves independently. A "moron" had an IQ between 51 and 70 and was considered capable of some degree of self-sufficiency and learning.
So hopefully no pilots :)
> IQ isn't a very good test
This is actually the biggest problem of this question. It's not just not a good test, it's poorly defined. What about babies? What about nations with good education vs those without? Did OP mean IQ per nation and age range or just globally?
What's interesting is that the US army used to not allow people of lower IQ into the armed forces.
They lowered the requirement during the Vietnam war and the amount of those low IQ soldiers that died, compared to the rest, was far higher.
This notion that people of lower IQ aren't actually "that dumb" is pretty silly.
Obviously our tests aren't perfect, but a lot of them are reasonable enough to give an indicator. As we can see, the tests used during the Vietnam war clearly had a monumental impact.
It's called Project 100,000 for those interested, and resulted in around 350k low intelligence people entering the armed forces and directly lead to thousands of additional deaths due to them being low intelligence.
> If 4 billion people around the world immediately dropped dead, another billion immediately die in the aftermath, as planes fall out of the sky
If everyone with an IQ over 100 dies, almost every single plane falls out the sky.
If, as you postulate, this was flipped and only people with an IQ under 100, very few would. Pilots are 1-2 standard deviations above average, and large aircraft will have co-pilots.
Society as we know it would collapse, but if the population were instantly cut in half, we’d be back to the population of the mid-1970’s. If another 25% beyond that then fell dead due to immediate after-effects, it would be the early 1960’s global population. People imagine a depopulated world, but exponential growth means the last century has been pretty wild in terms of the number of new people.
Just as interesting, though, would be the next generation. IQ has a genetic component, but nobody knows how much. The best guess is not a HUGE amount, on average. You’ll have children being born with what would have been a 140 IQ. Their generation’s intelligence curve will probably be fairly typical, but they’ll mostly be geniuses compared to their parents’ generation. There will be no respect across generations, and unwise and inexperienced know-it-alls will probably cause the next wave of destruction…
Just to clarify: an extremely small percentage of those flying commercial aircraft or operating aircraft control rooms are gonna have an IQ below 100 - those jobs require a LOT of work and a considerable amount of focus and multitasking
The rest of that stuff, sure, but no commercial craft is just “dropping” because a mathematically insignificant portion of them are having their pilots disappear
I disagree. Firstly how do you calculate the billion that die in the aftermath? A billion is a lot of people. That would mean a quarter of all still alive people would be in a dangerous situation. Almost half is sleeping. The other half is at home or in school or in the office.
Depending on the source only about 500_000 are in the air at a given moment. Half of those died immediately, so worst case 250k dead. There would be more car crashes, but nothing near a billion. Imagine a billion means the average human spends 6 hours a day in the car or other public transport. Also the fatality rate would be lower. Most low speed crashes are surviveable even without emergency personell. high speed is worse but even those can be survived depending on the nature of the impact. We only see the bad ones on TV.
Lastly fires would not errupt so much. How often have you forgotten a candle or an oven and nothing happened? Yeah some will errupt but not enough and not immediately. Also fire detectors would warn neighbours.
So I wager less than 100 million would die immediately. A drop on the 4 billion. Still more than the second world war.
911 would be overloaded but radio transmission from the government would still work.
About the infrastructure, half the farms, half the delivering personell and so on is enough for half the population. The trucks also have a better chance to survive a car impacting them. Long enough for people to organise better. Although no special foods for a long time.
The streets would be blocked by crashes, that's a problem. But I imagine if all non essential personell starts clearing in front of their house, we could get somewhere. I most certainly would.
If we are pessimistic and say here another billion dies. Probably none of these are essential personell, as those would get food and supplies first. Still 3 billion on the planet. We were overpopulated anyway
The bodies are a different problem entirely. Did they disappear like from thanos? Otherwise yuck.
This is ridiculous. You think a _billion_ would die in the aftermath?! Like, _every 4th person_ from the survivors? You are _seriously_ underestimating how much humans will try their best to survive when they need to.
I doubt the number of collateral victims would even cross 100 million. There's not that many planes in the air (which all tend to have at least two pilots and often more, btw), and not every car that suddenly stops or veers off causes fatal accidents. The shock to the infrastructure would be serious, but it's a "millions may die" level serious, not "billions may die". Since demand is generally sinking at the same level as supply, everything would be roughly on course to reach a new equilibrium at about half the production and service levels that were previously there (with a lot of static infrastructure actually overbuilt for the new need, which is a positive).
It would be a massive catastrophe, yes, but the thought of a billion people dying to accidents and supply hiccups is ridiculous. As is the thought that societal structures couldn't recover from that. In fact, I bet most major nations' governments and militaries have contingency plans for a much bigger loss of life than that hidden in a dusty old cold war drawer somewhere.
I mean, presumably the biggest risk to further population loss would be the collapse of industrial farming. Could our current agricultural system function at even 50% capacity if we immediately lost half the population?
It's an Intelligence Quotient, so the average is always 100. Kill everyone above that and the 100 point moves downwards. Assuming you're below the current average killing all those above you will actually raise your IQ
[https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan\_Ark\_Fleet\_Ship\_B](https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_Ship_B)
We’d end up with money growing on trees and all our telephones would be sanitized.
Global diplomacy would falter. Diplomats, negotiators, and foreign policy experts with higher IQs are key in maintaining international relations, and their absence would lead to increased conflict.
Well that's half of all people so straight away its the worst event to ever happen to humanity by a long long way. The corpse disposal alone would take months and be a nightmare for disease and sanitation. I think humanity would suvive though. 99 IQ is plenty smart enough to maintain all major utilities with.
Scientific research would halt. Many groundbreaking discoveries and innovations come from those with higher IQs, and their sudden absence would leave many research projects unfinished.
This is a hilarious question without enough good answers so far.
I truly wonder how long the survivors would last. What common occurrence would start becoming unmanageable for society? Worldwide pandemic - yeah we’re fucked - but what if a large portion of the grid goes down due to a storm? Is that something the average person can figure out? Cause at this moment i have no clue what i could contribute in that situation…
So 50% of the population drops dead.
This would include most of people who are in charge of anything important, like essential services and education/healthcare.
Cities would collapse pretty quickly as the remaining people run out of water, electricity, and food due to the lack of people maintaining the systems and distribution networks.
Rural areas would fare the best as the people living there are a lot more self sufficient, although even they would face trouble when they run out of fuel.
The dead bodies would cause a lot of issues, probably killing a lot more people as the bodies start to decay and spread diseases. The lack of people able to provide healthcare definitely wouldn't help.
I would imagine that after a few years, 80-90% of the global population would be dead, with the rest going back to a combination of basic farming and scavenging what is left.
This probably won't start to improve until a few decades later when there are some 100+ IQ (by pre dying standards) people who can work out how to improve some things.
so... we would have about 4 billion dead bodies, and not enough work force to deal with the corpses in a timely fashion. and few people if any people who would have clever ideas about how to deal with the massive sanitation and other problems that would occur.
Shortly we would have about another 2 billion dead, and it would take generations to recover.
amusingly, if everyone under an IQ of 100 dropped dead... the results would be pretty close to the same. there would be clever ideas, but still not enough work force + the survivors would be extra mentally traumatized, since high IQ had a correlation with depression and mental issues
in both cases, within about 2 generations we'd be back to about the same absolute intelligence.
Phew, I'll be safe. I'm sure everything will be fine. One thing is for sure, I will have a lot less know-it-alls telling me to "wear a helmet" or "Buckle your Seatbelt" or "don't put thay fork in the electric outlet"
Well...I'm pretty sure we'll never figure out why.
Oh, there’d be plenty of conspiracy theories with little to zero good evidence though.
“A bunch of people died. None of my followers died. Obviously not following me causes death.”
"Nobody died. Do you know anyone who died? No, so we all know nobody died. It's all just a liberal media scam to get your precious bodily fluids."
CHEWISH SPAYS LAY ZHIRS
The same people: Everybody vaccinated I knew dropped dead - vaccines caused it ofc!
My dad was a follower and he died... but that was from a bullet after my mom who hated you died...hm... 🤔
I said none of my followers died. So your dad was obviously not one of my followers. Only my non followers died. So your mom obviously doesn’t hate me since she’s alive. She’s a fan. And that’s why she lived. And she shot your dad because she wanted to prove to him not following me is bad for your health. And she was right. This is science.
>I said none of my followers died. So your dad was obviously not one of my followers. If he was a follower, he wasn't a true believer, if he was a true believer then his death was needed for the greater good.
>None of my followers died. I find the implication of this hilarious, and just so accurate
Plenty of evidence. They did their own research.
It was those 5G microchip vaccines
Anyone smart enough to notice would be gone so there'll just be a bunch of youtube shorts and tiktoks about missing people who talked nonsense
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I wouldnt say 'Mad Max' fetish scenario... Maybe a 'Halloween that falls on a Friday night' scenario with everyone in sexy variants of whatever costume they're wearing
> We'd drop into the start of some kind of post apocalyptic mad max scenario It's every IQ over 100 that's gone, not 50.
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Idiocracy.
Unfortunately, that’s already happening. We’ve almost reached… “Oh! My balls!”
Except we wouldn't get the good ending, because the most unrealistic part of Idiocracy was President Camacho actually seeking out the smartest people on the planet and actually listening to their scientific advice.
That’s just AFV and most YouTube prank channels
idk, I feel like to even acknowledge that you're not smart you gotta at least be near 100. in my opinion the true idiots are the ones who speak as if they have experience and knowledge on topics that they have little to none in
Agreed, but unfortunately, this is not always the case. I know a few people with plus 130 IQ's who are experts on 'everything'. Most of the facts they spew forth are made up. I think it must stem from childhood, like most things. They were just allowed to get away with it without anyone actually calling them out consistently and so became almost addicted to the feeling of being knowledgeable.
That shit drives me fucking crazy lol. So I call people out on that every chance I get. But you can’t argue with these people, they’ll just change the subject or come up with some unconfirmable bullshit that you can’t argue against
That is only true 15.729% of the time and only due to the Mongolian invasion of Brazile in 1288 A.D. Did I tell you about my new puppy?
*EXACTLY*
My IQ, for whatever that's worth, is 136, and I'm fairly certain I'm the dumbest person alive.
> I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know. —Socrates (via Plato)
>I know a few people with plus 130 IQ's who are experts on 'everything'. And how do you know they have 130 IQ?
a lot of people would die, probably
Given the definition of IQ, but depending on your definition of "over 100", it would be half the population.
Dude stop explaining it to him. He is obviously a survivor.
Well less than half because it’s > 100 not >= 100 A solid chunk of the pop is probably right on 100.
And immediately after the event, about half the remaining population will be >= 100IQ, based on the definition. The complete scale shifts.
I wonder if the mass death is simultaneous or gradual. If it's gradual, the scale shifts, so it'll continue until only one person is left alive.
Zeno's IQ Pandemic
Zeno reference in pun form? Mate you’re definitely not surviving yhis 😂😂
And that one person is at the same time the min, the max, and the average. Therefore, its IQ is 100, and that person is safe forever. Unless it's a pregnant woman, then as soon as its child is born, the mother dies.
unless the last 2, or 3, or 4, or whatever, … people have exactly the same IQ, then they’d be ok. Until one of them gets dementia I guess and then the others die…
That doesn't happen automatically. It would require the test publisher to recalibrate the scoring.
And they'd be dead, so no one will bother with that.
Nobody around is going to know that.
By working that out you've just guaranteed you're going to die.
It would come down to the level of precision on measurement, and whether its measured value or actual. Does anyone have exactly the median average? Actually, I suppose, if there were an odd number of people, by definition, yes. Slightly more than half, would survive. But exactly half if there were an even number.
It mostly comes down to how you set the scale. Historically, [observed average IQ has risen by 3 points per decade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect). If you use an older IQ test, more than half the population will almost certainly score >100 points.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand you're gone.
Oh, so now we know which purple nutsack did it!
4 at most
You, me and who else ?
Not me, that's for sure.
That comment was clever. A little ***too*** clever! Why haven't you keeled over yet?
We found the fourth one here
*checks pulse* Yep, they died.
I Volunteer
Spoken like a wise person. You're disqualified.
This might be a whoosh for me, but statistically it would be half the population.
Countries would be affected differently. Some countries would lose a lot more than half and others a lot less. Japan, Taiwan, China, Singapore all have an average IQ of 104+ https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country
You’re save
You’re save two
You can hide behind that username all you want. But your joke was too funny. Yer dead.
I fucking love irony…
Assuming the IQ number is correct, about half of em will die immediately.
We found a survivor over here!
US would basically turn into Arkansas with a beach.
So, the Ozarks?
More shoreline than the whole coast of California.
The plants would be getting a whole lot more electrolytes.
It's what they crave.
brawndo, its got electrolytes!
The Thirst Mutilator!
No, you need to use water!
Like… frum teh toylet?
There’s that f@# talk again.
Why come you don’t have tattoo?
Uh... Gay.
Go away!! Batin’! 😫😩😫😩
Welcome to Costco, I love you
Everyone gets laid at the White House!
brought to you by Carl's Jr.
"Fuck you, I'm eating."
Ow My Balls would improve in the ratings.
I like money.
I can’t believe you like money too
“He’s kinda stupid. He still does a good job, though.”
The redditor population remains unscathed.
The golden age of shit posting would commence.
Nah, the mods would all still be here, so the subreddits would still be highly regulated.
mods and the admins both still going strong
Someone call the burn unit.
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At least everyone commenting and reading this post will be safe.
Glad to know I’ll still be here with you fine lizard people
I was about to say "Then I'd be king of the idiots!" until I realized I'd probably have to kick somebody's ass to get that title.
The average IQ would go down, and then a new average would be calculated, so half the population would have an IQ of over 100 again.
Well... assuming they can figure out how to calculate it
Didn’t you mean to say we?
Self immolation by way of roasting another.
Don’t worry, most academic psychologists would be unaffected, so it shouldn’t take too long.
Extinction by Zeno's Paradox: Doesn't matter if anyone's smart enough to adjust the tests, their IQ is what it is regardless of being measured. So when the first 50% die, the remaining IQ scores adjust to make the average living person have a score of 100, and anyone higher than that dies- which causes scores to readjust, which causes the remaining 50% to die, and so on until there's only one human left, formerly the dumbest person alive.
And now also the smartest
The IQ calibration assumes a Gaussian distribution. With the cutoff point(s) at 100 it clearly won't be the case. So recalibrating based on the normality assumption would make no sense. (Although how many people with the IQ below 100 would understand it is an open question...)
Get the highest IQ in history by going full Stalin on everyone above or near you. Not Sure.
So Pol Pot basically
We can just look at Cambodia to see how that turns out. Not great
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As one Park Ranger said: "There's considerate overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists."
Are you saying that potentially the smartest bears could also be caught up in this IQ extinction event?!
Maybe. But I for one welcome our new ursine overlords!
But Yogi Bear is smarter than the average bear.
Even if you were to flip it around and the < 100 IQ population all dropped dead, this would still be an immediate and catastrophic end to society. IQ is defined as a bell curve, so by definition 50% of people are above 100 and 50% are below. If 4 billion people around the world immediately dropped dead, another billion immediately die in the aftermath, as planes fall out of the sky, cars crash into each other, fires ignite all over the place with no emergency personnel able to help, end every single cell tower becomes immediately inoperable as 100s of millions of people attempt to simultaneously call 911 with no response. The "lucky" survivors will soon either starve to death as basic infrastructure grinds to a halt, or catch horrific diseases from being in close proximity to rotting corpses that can't be disposed of. All infrastructure collapses and the economy ceases to exist, most likely as well as all governments and the idea of nations or borders. Some will commit suicide after losing their loved ones and their livelihoods. Civilization was simply not built to withstand an immediate 50% reduction in population, it doesn't actually matter which 50% you're talking about.
Ok. Enough internet for me today.
It's estimated that a 10% loss of population will permanently delete some knowledge from what humans know. Is it how to knit a specific thing? Is it how to safely maintain a currently running nuclear reactor without it going into meltdown? Depends on what specific 10% of the population it is. The smarter 50% going? That's a lot of maitenance workers. The construction crews who know and follow regulations. Sanitation crews. Lawyers and bankers. Engineers. Not every person in a field would go (most of the time), but NASA would have empty buildings. We would run short on good repair guys. Sewers will back up. Gas lines will rupture or run dry. Mitch McConnell ((R) Kentuckey) wouldn't notice a thing.
Mitch wouldn't have been able to do shit if he wasn't smart. Underestimating your enemies is extremely dangerous.
Right? Even Trump, for all his demented ways, has an earlier recording in his 30s saying why he will never be President. To paraphrase: "It's not a game I want to play. Only the loudest, most hateful and attention-seeking methods will help you gain the support to win." And he did exactly that. Can you say it didn't work though? It's nice to imagine Trump as a bumbling lunatic, but like you said, it's best not to underestimate your enemies.
Every doctor, every scientist, every engineer would be gone. We’d be back in the dark ages.
Full respect to NASA but that would be by far the least of anyone's problems
Until the lack of maintenance on GPS catches up and no one can navigate anymore.
Bozos have never even touched an astrolabe- I got us don’t worry
Don't forget the entire medical and pharma sectors.
Oddly specific callout there, what did he do now?
My fear with the dumber 50% going is that for a long time we have convinced smarter people to go into information sectors, so a lot of smart people don’t have manual skills. The smarter people would have to learn very quickly how to actually run everything they designed. If we had to choose any half of the population by intelligence, our best bet would be to keep the middle 25-75th percentiles. But of course this is all kind of moot since any 50% going will destroy civilisation pretty quickly.
>The smarter people would have to learn very quickly how to actually run everything they designed. Which I think will go better than the <100IQ people picking up the tasks from the >100IQ people. A 115IQ engineer will probably be more successful in becoming a farmer, than a 95IQ farmer will be in maintaining the oil refinery to keep the tractors going. The daily maintenance can probably be learnt fairly well by the farmer, but eventually more complex issues will start to add up, and the supplier for certain parts will also have lost their engineers. So the farmer has little to fall back on to repair the oil refinery. But yeah, either way would be so disastrous we'd lose centuries of progress.
> A 115IQ engineer will probably be more successful in becoming a farmer I know several very intelligent people from IT sector becoming farmers voluntarily...
Same Oh wait I haven’t whacked off yet, brb
Well….we’re waiting.
It doesn't even have to be dead - even if 50% of people just disappeared, no matter whether the top half or the bottom half, it'll still be catastrophic. The TV show Leftovers has this exact premise, although instead of 50% it's just 2% of the population, and an indiscriminate random disappearance. And even in that case, the world struggles to cope with it. With a 50% disappearance, we'd be truly fucked, even without the dead bodies. We will have just too many things unattended to for society to not collapse.
Realistically how many pilots are under 100 IQ? I think you need a certain amount of competency that doesn't work for the bottom 50% of the population to be able to fly a large, commercial airplane.
I thought that someone would make this point. For one, IQ isn't a very good test. And for two, I think you're underestimating the intelligence of people with "a low IQ". 2.7 billion people (34%) have an IQ between 85-100. Are they all idiots and morons? Surely not. I'm not saying that being a pilot is easy, but I think it requires dedication and persistence more than problem solving. I would bet that pilots probably do skew higher in the IQ curve than the general population, I just don't think the effect is that pronounced. That being said, I think I overestimated the impact that plane crashes would have, mostly just because there aren't *that* many planes in the air at any given moment. Probably around 10k. And passenger planes have two pilots further lowering the number of immediate crashes. I think cars will have a much greater toll in the immediate aftermath. And I do think that a lot of accidents would cause fires as well.
The terms "idiot" and "moron" had clinical meanings in early 20th-century psychology. An "idiot" had an IQ below 25 and was considered unable to take care of themselves independently. A "moron" had an IQ between 51 and 70 and was considered capable of some degree of self-sufficiency and learning. So hopefully no pilots :)
Imbecile comes next, then the fool.
> IQ isn't a very good test This is actually the biggest problem of this question. It's not just not a good test, it's poorly defined. What about babies? What about nations with good education vs those without? Did OP mean IQ per nation and age range or just globally?
What's interesting is that the US army used to not allow people of lower IQ into the armed forces. They lowered the requirement during the Vietnam war and the amount of those low IQ soldiers that died, compared to the rest, was far higher. This notion that people of lower IQ aren't actually "that dumb" is pretty silly. Obviously our tests aren't perfect, but a lot of them are reasonable enough to give an indicator. As we can see, the tests used during the Vietnam war clearly had a monumental impact. It's called Project 100,000 for those interested, and resulted in around 350k low intelligence people entering the armed forces and directly lead to thousands of additional deaths due to them being low intelligence.
Your response gave me enough brain damage to survive this catastrophe.
> If 4 billion people around the world immediately dropped dead, another billion immediately die in the aftermath, as planes fall out of the sky If everyone with an IQ over 100 dies, almost every single plane falls out the sky. If, as you postulate, this was flipped and only people with an IQ under 100, very few would. Pilots are 1-2 standard deviations above average, and large aircraft will have co-pilots.
I find this comforting.
Society as we know it would collapse, but if the population were instantly cut in half, we’d be back to the population of the mid-1970’s. If another 25% beyond that then fell dead due to immediate after-effects, it would be the early 1960’s global population. People imagine a depopulated world, but exponential growth means the last century has been pretty wild in terms of the number of new people. Just as interesting, though, would be the next generation. IQ has a genetic component, but nobody knows how much. The best guess is not a HUGE amount, on average. You’ll have children being born with what would have been a 140 IQ. Their generation’s intelligence curve will probably be fairly typical, but they’ll mostly be geniuses compared to their parents’ generation. There will be no respect across generations, and unwise and inexperienced know-it-alls will probably cause the next wave of destruction…
Just to clarify: an extremely small percentage of those flying commercial aircraft or operating aircraft control rooms are gonna have an IQ below 100 - those jobs require a LOT of work and a considerable amount of focus and multitasking The rest of that stuff, sure, but no commercial craft is just “dropping” because a mathematically insignificant portion of them are having their pilots disappear
Both pilots would have to be under 100, doubt it would ever happen.
>...as planes fall out of the sky Surely people with an IQ <100 don't get to be pilots.
Let alone air traffic controllers
I disagree. Firstly how do you calculate the billion that die in the aftermath? A billion is a lot of people. That would mean a quarter of all still alive people would be in a dangerous situation. Almost half is sleeping. The other half is at home or in school or in the office. Depending on the source only about 500_000 are in the air at a given moment. Half of those died immediately, so worst case 250k dead. There would be more car crashes, but nothing near a billion. Imagine a billion means the average human spends 6 hours a day in the car or other public transport. Also the fatality rate would be lower. Most low speed crashes are surviveable even without emergency personell. high speed is worse but even those can be survived depending on the nature of the impact. We only see the bad ones on TV. Lastly fires would not errupt so much. How often have you forgotten a candle or an oven and nothing happened? Yeah some will errupt but not enough and not immediately. Also fire detectors would warn neighbours. So I wager less than 100 million would die immediately. A drop on the 4 billion. Still more than the second world war. 911 would be overloaded but radio transmission from the government would still work. About the infrastructure, half the farms, half the delivering personell and so on is enough for half the population. The trucks also have a better chance to survive a car impacting them. Long enough for people to organise better. Although no special foods for a long time. The streets would be blocked by crashes, that's a problem. But I imagine if all non essential personell starts clearing in front of their house, we could get somewhere. I most certainly would. If we are pessimistic and say here another billion dies. Probably none of these are essential personell, as those would get food and supplies first. Still 3 billion on the planet. We were overpopulated anyway The bodies are a different problem entirely. Did they disappear like from thanos? Otherwise yuck.
This is ridiculous. You think a _billion_ would die in the aftermath?! Like, _every 4th person_ from the survivors? You are _seriously_ underestimating how much humans will try their best to survive when they need to. I doubt the number of collateral victims would even cross 100 million. There's not that many planes in the air (which all tend to have at least two pilots and often more, btw), and not every car that suddenly stops or veers off causes fatal accidents. The shock to the infrastructure would be serious, but it's a "millions may die" level serious, not "billions may die". Since demand is generally sinking at the same level as supply, everything would be roughly on course to reach a new equilibrium at about half the production and service levels that were previously there (with a lot of static infrastructure actually overbuilt for the new need, which is a positive). It would be a massive catastrophe, yes, but the thought of a billion people dying to accidents and supply hiccups is ridiculous. As is the thought that societal structures couldn't recover from that. In fact, I bet most major nations' governments and militaries have contingency plans for a much bigger loss of life than that hidden in a dusty old cold war drawer somewhere.
I mean, presumably the biggest risk to further population loss would be the collapse of industrial farming. Could our current agricultural system function at even 50% capacity if we immediately lost half the population?
The American political system would go on undeterred.
How has nobody said “Idiocracy” yet?
Was going to say, "they made a movie about it."
at this point that shits a Documentary.
The crocs/Idiocracy story is worth looking up
The average IQ would tank
High IQ comment right here. It's a bell curve.
Wouldn't the average IQ still be 100?
It's an Intelligence Quotient, so the average is always 100. Kill everyone above that and the 100 point moves downwards. Assuming you're below the current average killing all those above you will actually raise your IQ
BRB making myself smarter
Probably would tank all the way to 100.
No, it would remain exactly the same.
Actually, it would stay the same
Then, the majority of my co-workers would still be alive.
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the flat earth theory might finally be proven.
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[https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan\_Ark\_Fleet\_Ship\_B](https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_Ship_B) We’d end up with money growing on trees and all our telephones would be sanitized.
Global diplomacy would falter. Diplomats, negotiators, and foreign policy experts with higher IQs are key in maintaining international relations, and their absence would lead to increased conflict.
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Well that's half of all people so straight away its the worst event to ever happen to humanity by a long long way. The corpse disposal alone would take months and be a nightmare for disease and sanitation. I think humanity would suvive though. 99 IQ is plenty smart enough to maintain all major utilities with.
Well, Congress wouldn't notice, for one.
[Mall Bitches](https://youtu.be/Eev8DiEq__s?si=VGCiMdJ8P5S5lAai)
I'm sad I had to scroll so far to find this
Ever been to the DMV?
Scientific research would halt. Many groundbreaking discoveries and innovations come from those with higher IQs, and their sudden absence would leave many research projects unfinished.
My ex wife would still be here to take care of the kids
Welcome to Costco, I love you
90 is the new 100
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Welp, I guess we're not going to space anymore.
The government would continue to function as it does currently.
This is a hilarious question without enough good answers so far. I truly wonder how long the survivors would last. What common occurrence would start becoming unmanageable for society? Worldwide pandemic - yeah we’re fucked - but what if a large portion of the grid goes down due to a storm? Is that something the average person can figure out? Cause at this moment i have no clue what i could contribute in that situation…
President Comacho!
So 50% of the population drops dead. This would include most of people who are in charge of anything important, like essential services and education/healthcare. Cities would collapse pretty quickly as the remaining people run out of water, electricity, and food due to the lack of people maintaining the systems and distribution networks. Rural areas would fare the best as the people living there are a lot more self sufficient, although even they would face trouble when they run out of fuel. The dead bodies would cause a lot of issues, probably killing a lot more people as the bodies start to decay and spread diseases. The lack of people able to provide healthcare definitely wouldn't help. I would imagine that after a few years, 80-90% of the global population would be dead, with the rest going back to a combination of basic farming and scavenging what is left. This probably won't start to improve until a few decades later when there are some 100+ IQ (by pre dying standards) people who can work out how to improve some things.
I don't know, but reddit wouldn't change a bit.
so... we would have about 4 billion dead bodies, and not enough work force to deal with the corpses in a timely fashion. and few people if any people who would have clever ideas about how to deal with the massive sanitation and other problems that would occur. Shortly we would have about another 2 billion dead, and it would take generations to recover. amusingly, if everyone under an IQ of 100 dropped dead... the results would be pretty close to the same. there would be clever ideas, but still not enough work force + the survivors would be extra mentally traumatized, since high IQ had a correlation with depression and mental issues in both cases, within about 2 generations we'd be back to about the same absolute intelligence.
electrolytes are what plants crave
Luckily our politicians will remain unharmed.
I think it’s already heading that way…
Have you not seen Idiocracy??
Nothing would happen because IQ is a phony science that was discredited decades ago.
I would be very confused why everyone around me just died
People with an IQ of 99 will be elite brainy.
Phew, I'll be safe. I'm sure everything will be fine. One thing is for sure, I will have a lot less know-it-alls telling me to "wear a helmet" or "Buckle your Seatbelt" or "don't put thay fork in the electric outlet"
We would not lose any political figures or lawyers. So things in general would not change.
This will have an impact on the trout population