If Thanos had, instead of randomly wiping out 50% of all living things, he had instead in each species wiped out only the dumbest 50% what would the reaction of each avenger have been?

Thief@lemmy.myserv.one to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 155 points –

Would they have all still fought against him?

143

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Maybe it should be split for every age group, I guess that would make it fair

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

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%.

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I always wondered if your goal is to reduce population. Why not just make half the people infertile?

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.

Yep. That's actually what at least one version of Reed Richards does with the gauntlet.

I don't think the hulk would have reacted at all, since he'd be gone. But does that mean Banner would stay somehow?

Hulk is not dumb, he just was born 30 years later than Banner.

We know that given the time Hulk also proves to Bea genius of his own.

That leaves an interesting situation for Bruce banner/the hulk

What would make this question more interesting is can you think of any metric where they would flip, or at least consider it. For example, all the members of Hydra (a bad example, would never make 50%, but you get the idea).

Ant-Man: Well come on, wait, you know, there are different kinds of intelligence, right? Please someone tell me I'm not making that up.

Would they all still exist?

I can't think of an Avenger or even sidekick who I would put in the bottom 50% of the earth's population. Even the dumbest are probably in the top 10-15%.

Edit: I didn't really think of GotG as "Avengers", but yeah, Drax and Mantis are probably gone, unless they're somehow smart for their species. Or unless emotional intelligence is enough to save Mantis. I don't know if we ever find out enough about Groot to know, but I'd assume he's in the top of his species. I still think everyone else survives (Hulk survives via Banner, or at least Banner survives).

Draxx believed he was invisible if he stood still, he even thought he was invisible while eating a bag of chips. I'm not sure he's gonna make it.

naw I'd say Drax, Starlord maybe, and Hulk if he was in Hulk mode are all written to be comically stupid

but yeah that's probably it, most would survive

There's a lot of generosity toward Thor in this thread. And I think that's great.

Even though he's going to rule Asgard someday, while his brother is clearly more qualified. /s

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@pwnicholson@lemmy.world

Banner is still around, but Hulk is gone.

Maybe Thor, too.

Quinn definitely is gone. So is Drax and many characters from GOTG.

There are plenty of dumb avengers, though a lot of them have not been featured in the movies yet.

Drax isn't stupid, he's just hyper-literal. If it comes off as stupidity, it might be poor writing or some assumptions made.

He’s not just hyper-literal, he is slow to adapt, rarely displays any strategy beyond direct attack (which gets them into trouble repeatedly) and, you know, thinks he can’t be seen because he’s very still. Drax is loyal and courageous, but intelligence is not among his gifts.

Yeah. The interesting money seems to be on Thor. Could break either way. Place your bets everyone.

It wouldn't shock me if Hawkeye disappeared. But then again who'd notice?

Clint isn't a stupid guy. In the show, he's hard of hearing, which some people might mistake for being dumb if they saw him on the street, for example. But remember how scary he was in The Avengers. Guy could shoot an arrow into the wind and knew it would blow up an engine. You know there's some crazy subconscious math going on there. Also, his counter-terrorism rampage in Endgame wouldn't have been nearly as successful if he wasn't a great planner and tactician.

Also, his counter-terrorism rampage in Endgame wouldn’t have been nearly as successful if he wasn’t a great planner and tactician.

I hadn’t considered this. You’re right. This is a man with no powers whatsoever. Meticulous preparation was essential. A mindless killing spree would have been suicidal.

This makes that scene much more unsettling.

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Thanos could have literally chosen 1000 other options that were better than killing 50% of all living things, and I'm sure nobody would have disagreed!

If anything, I’d say eco terrorism is a far more defensible motivation than eugenics.

Avengers would have been much better prepared. T'challa, Hank, Janet, Dr Strange could have all helped plan the response. Bucky, Sam, Hope, Peter Parker could have all helped execute the plan.

Also Scott since he wouldn't have been trapped in the QR.

Drax and Quill are still goners. The rest probably aren't snapped.

Vision, Gamora, Loki, Heimdall unchanged since they died before the snap.

would’ve still fought him because their job isn’t to stop evil, it’s to maintain the status quo

See this is why I hate when people are like "just watch this 20 minute long video!" The video just restates what you said in one sentence that took me 5 seconds to read. It states it over and over again, slowly, interspersed with reading long quotes, slowly, for 20+ minutes.

Thanos was a fucking stupid character in the MCU. The human population is currently doubling every 61 years with a growth rate of about 1.14%. Assuming similar numbers across the galaxy, he didn't do anything except cause suffering. He's a very poorly written villain.

I guess to stay on topic, they would have looked at population growth, and determined that his plan was moronic, and fought him.

I agree that Thanos is dumb, but he's well written. He's supposed to be stupidly short sighted; that's his whole deal. He experienced a problem with his own society, and invented an idiotic solution that was readily rejected (rightly) by his own people. He saw the downfall after that and said to himself that the cause was that they didn't listen to him.

When he grew powerful enough to do it, wanting nobody else to suffer the loss of their entire society like he did, forces the universe to participate in his little exercise with little to no regard for the losses people suffer, nor the long term consequences of his plan.

He has no ability to think beyond the small scope of time that encompasses his plan.

Sure, resources will be far less scarce for people in the short term, but, as you've correctly pointed out, in the long term, he's simply delaying the inevitable, which is why his statement near the end of endgame is so poignant: "I am inevitable". Then he snaps, and nothing happens because Tony stole the infinity stones, proving he's not inevitable and underneath it all, he's not thinking of the inevitable outcome of his plan (which is only delaying things at best, and is an actual war crime).

He's convinced himself so throughly that his way is the only way that he refuses to even entertain the idea that there may be other solutions, which bluntly, other solutions may have an actual effect in the long run (more than 100 years out).

He's meant to be fanatical about it being the only option and unable to be convinced otherwise. He's written perfectly for that role.

Other means of population control should be considered, but he'll have none of it. I see it as analogous to so many humans in real life that deny long term damages to the planet and to future generations because of short sighted "freedoms" or benefits that they may reap in their lifetime. A whole "fuck the distant future for immediate gains" kind of mentality; something that, quite bluntly, is the prevailing mindset of most capitalist businesses. It's all about maximizing the present and damn the consequences.

Thanos is a literary tool to describe problems we have right here and right now, on a fundamental level. People do convinced that their way is the only way that they will do immense harm to their fellow humans (and/or other living beings) just to do what they think is in the best interest of themselves and others, without considering evidence or any discourse that may prove that their way may not work out long term.

That's because they tried to make him some sort of noble villain in the movies when he was just horny for Death in the comics and wanted to impress her

Can we please not hypothesise about eugenics and people's reactions to eugenics, with the current global climate?

Entertaining how to react to fictional atrocities is useful in shaping our real-world responses to actual atrocities.

Entertaining for the people who are certain that they're not a member of an arbitrarily defined group. Whether their certainty is well-placed is a different problem, I guess.

I'm using the word entertaining as a verb. It's a synonym of considering.

My mistake, I misread.

I agree that discussion is important in deciding responses, but discussions like these are also used as testing grounds for gauging acceptability. It's how places like 'active clubs' recruit and promote far-right extremism, they start with gauging the response to lower-level discrimination and slowly escalate to larger acts.

I don't want to live in a world where we can't engage in thought experiments.

And I'm sick of living in a world where thought experiments are used to casually label people as dumb, disposable, but they're ok because they mention superheroes and that makes the whole thing outlandish. Until the atrocities occur, again and then it's "why didn't someone do something sooner?".

OP didn't perform a snap. No one irl did.

You have to be able to discuss hypotheticals if you want to know what kind of person you are.

The fact that this hypothetical makes you uncomfortable is ok, it just means you have compassion and that's valid.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't participate. I'm sure Steve Rogers felt the same way. He participated.