I suspect that you are correct when you suspect that the rise of foolish influencers is a reflection of the “new information environment.” When I struggle to understand how a U.S. society that not long ago could be counted on as having a broadly sensible populace from the center-right to the center-left could recently have “gone off the rails” to this extraordinary degree, it is at least somewhat consoling to remind myself that the current stage of the “digital revolution” will probably be looked back upon (in future centuries) as one of the most profound challenges in the history of human civilization. Perhaps far more disruptive than the agricultural and industrial revolutions.
The story I find most compelling for explaining this disconnect is a Yuval Levin / Martin Gurri story. From Levin we see that formative institutions are being outcompeted by performative ones. One of the main problems with this is that formative institutions impart wisdom, whereas performative institutions are at best indifferent to it and often hostile. From Gurri, we see that modern technology has awakened the masses to the fact that even the relatively wisest, and a fortiori the *apparently* wisest, screw up a lot and lie about it. They have responded by devaluing wisdom altogether. Combine those two trends and you get a drastic reduction in both opportunity and incentive to gain wisdom.
I think those who blame social media or wokism have got the causation backwards. The Levin and Gurri trends have been in full swing since the 1960s. They are accelerating now, and making the excesses and toxicities of Facebook and DEI more powerful, because with the passing of the Greatest Generation, almost no one left alive has any personal experience of any world but a performative-centered, antinomian one. This means that the traditional correlation between wisdom and age no longer holds: it is common for even 80-year-olds to have never encountered a wisdom-imparting formative institution in their entire lives, and Trump is only the most florid and notorious example of this. That also ironically contributes to our gerontocracy, the old of today being no longer wise enough to know when to pass the torch.
If this story is correct, it is futile to try to put the genie back in the bottle by reimposing pre-1960s institutions or mores. For one thing, the obsolescence of those is probably itself an inevitable product of the now 200-year-old Great Enrichment. Instead we must rebuild forward. That means
1. building new formative institutions that offer tangible functional appeal to 21st century WEIRD people;
2. shaping a new appreciation of wisdom's value that does not obfuscate the fallibility of the wise.
Those two things are complementary and neither is sufficient on its own. Fantasy Intellectual Teams could, maybe with a bit of reprioritization, help with (2), but it needs some partnership with (1) to have a big impact.
People do not agree on what reason or wisdom is. It depends on their priors. Moral reasoning exists within communities having shared values. In our hyper-individualistic age given over to self-expression above all else, that does not exist. Alasdair MacIntyre brilliantly analyzed this in After Virtue.
In Arnold’s first 15 member team version, Alasdair was one of my picks, but wise people don’t score many points due to limited output. I think he was rapidly traded for Bari Weiss. The new Neo, my other favorite/ most read blogger is careful, analytic, and accurate—true. Also chosen (#14) but also few points despite many, many posts.
Many wise folk look for a better method of cooperation than Tit for Tat, but don’t find one.
A striking thing about the American founders was their sense of being judged by history. Elitism, ego and status games were partly sublimated through that historical lens. Now status competition has a contracted time lens, probably related to the info environment and the intensity of competition for attention.
Can't agree that George Washington and the other fomenters of the American Revolution were particularly wise at the time they committed to war against Great Britain. Without the influence of Franklin in France, they would not have prevailed, and history would have remembered them as the Hamas of their da: a gang of insane hotheads whose greed for property west of the Alleghenies drove them to unleash the dogs of murder, rape and theft not only against the British, but against their own neighbors and the Indians. Their grievances (as can be read in the Declaration of Independence) were exaggerated, short-sighted, and trivial compared to the gains they might have enjoyed as members of the coming British Empire. Washington was a killer who enjoyed war, and had blood on his hands from having helped launch the French-Indian War.
The Founders appear wise in the light of the Constitutional Convention and their writings around it, and by the efforts of historians, politicians, lecturers, etc., down through the 19th century, who scrubbed their crimes against humanity out of history.
Very good analysis of our current core problems facing our country. I’m not a fan of either the extreme left or extreme right, but it is equally important to allow them to speak. If we limited or restrict free speech as defined in our first amendment, it limits our ability to find genuine truth.
When I think of our politics and our polarization today, it seems we have lost the importance of debate, of arguing with reason and principle. In defense of arguing it is necessary to understand that by not questioning, or debating issues or policies, we become a simple statistic to those who seek our compliance. In pursuit of not comforting half-truths but genuine truth, willingness to argue is a critical trait. We push back against assertations and authority because we value the truth of an idea more than its emotional agreeableness. One person advances an idea, others criticize or question it, and very often a refined idea emerges. Occasionally someone turns out to be wrong. “The value of being wrong is undersold by a society that penalizes mistakes. When you’re wrong, you get an opportunity to learn and improve your thinking. Mistakes are inherently valuable, even if they’re not desirable.
I would happily give money to a fund that is focused on funding this and would happily consume the fruits of these labors. However I have no time nor ability to assist but I hope to be able to enjoy the Fantasy League some day.
“During the era of the American founding, influential people included George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and other men who had great wisdom.” Great wisdom? Having rid themselves of one centralised Government riddled with bribery and corruption and which in practical terms might as well have been on the dark side of the Moon, was it wise to inflict another one on themselves right on their own doorstep?
They tried with The Articles of Confederation, a mostly better long term limit on central government, but it had the huge flaw of allowing states to have tariffs on between state trade.
The Civil Rights Act, which seems to now be destroying our country, as Goldwater warned against, seemed needed to stop Jim Crow type illegal segregation (by Democrats).
Most current problems have been created or increased due to govt laws passed to reduce other problems. That’s inevitable. Wise solutions minimize the unintended problems created. But all solutions involve multiple trade offs.
The lack of discussions about trade offs is the least wise thing our media and edu org do.
Would it not have been an easy matter to make bi-lateral or multi-lateral, inter-state trade agreements - trade is always two-way to the advantage of each party? We have been doing that for some time now between Countries, globally. You have NAFTA too, so it doesn’t seem beyond the competence of the people back then to come up with deals, without having to inflict Leviathan upon themselves.
There are no solutions, just trade-offs, but as you say there is a lack of proper public discussion. Trade-offs benefit the political class and their clients and cronies, not us.
Well, be fair, it worked out pretty well for quite some time. There are a few points they probably should have foreseen and fixed, but really what were they going to write that would survive the early 20th century progressives and New Dealers saying "Eh, why even pay attention to that document? Let's do whatever."
Saying the British government might as well have been on the moon, regardless of side, is not quite accurate as well. Remember that British governors were appointed, and British troops were stationed to enforce their rulings. While I agree that the Brits weren't so bad all told, they were definitely a relevant concern, not some abstract and distant administration that was of little practical concern.
You raise interesting points. Is it not so that the 13 British Colonies had their own legislative assemblies with tax raising powers, judiciary, law enforcement and militias? They were self-governing and independent in all but name, not so? Greater autonomy than now in fact. British Governors were the King’s representative (Canada still has one) and were mostly Americans, I believe - and made a nice penny too.
The Red Coats were there for protection of British territory and its colonists, not the enforcement of British Government. They manned a line of forts stretching South from the Great Lakes ostensibly to keep the Indians and their mischief-making French allies out, but also to keep the colonists in to stop them encroaching on Indian lands protected by Royal Proclamation and Treaty. Dark side of the Moon: I was referring to temporal distance which for practical purposes is more important than physical distance. You can go to the Moon and back in six days - if you borrow one of Elon’s rockets - it took nearly six weeks for news of the Declaration of Independence to reach London. A twelve week - at best - communication line makes effective government impossible. The Virginia Assembly passed legislation making slave ownership legal... not supported in English Common Law and in contravention of the policy and wishes of the British Government. So much for the effective government from London and Red Coats enforcing it.
So, in my view, the original plan of a loose confederation would have been the wise option, rather than in effect moving the Government from London to Albany. As for written documents. The wise founders based the US Constitution on Magna Carta which was the English Constitution whereby John (it actually was a surrender document) ceded sovereignty to the People, and had tax raising powers removed - no taxation without consent. That is why the Founders gave tax raising powers to Congress not the President. But... they would have known that John started ignoring Magna Carta almost immediately. His Plantagenet successors too, so much so that there were, I think seven redrafts with additions over the next couple of centuries or so, and finally ignoring the provisions of the charter led to the Wars of the Roses. Why therefore the Founders thought their document would last much longer than it took the ink to dry, never mind be adhered to in centuries to come, is strange.
By 1776, the British Monarchy was a Constitutional Monarchy, and the Monarch had lost nearly all executive powers - save some reserve powers, such as to dissolve Parliament, declare war but to be exercised only on the advice of Ministers. Having got rid of one alleged tyrant King with no powers, what logic and reason to create their own ‘tyrant’ absolute monarch - the Imperial Presidency? Constrained by the Constitution? Like the Kings of England were until finally, the message was underlined by cutting off Charles I’s head then reinforced in 1688 by dethroning James II. The signs were all there. I don’t think the Founders were ‘wise’. Clever, well learned, right to want rid of the Westminster Government - but they lost an opportunity to keep government exclusively local, where it always best serves the people. Wasn’t the argument for a federation rather than confederation that a federation would give central government more power and control? Ah! There it is, power and control, not wisdom.
To answer your second question: no, it is not quite so. The colonies had a fair bit of independence it is true, but also quite a bit of rule from afar mixed in. The first few points in the Declaration of Independence specifically point out that the local legislatures were not allowed to pass laws without approval, approval that often never came down one way or the other, along with being dissolved because the crown did not like their decisions. One might wonder why there were British regulars in Boston if they were only there for protecting the colonists, when the fighting against the French and their allies was much further west. Those Great Lakes are a pretty fair march from eastern Massachusetts.
In fact, pardon me for asking, but have you read the Declaration? It pretty much addresses all your points, such that it is confusing that you would state what you did in light of having read it.
Now, I would be sympathetic to the argument that the Articles of Confederacy might have been a better version than the Constitution, or an argument that with the benefit of hindsight the Constitution could have been a lot better written. This argument that the Americans threw off a good government for a bad one, however, that's just silly, as is the claim that the colonies were all but independent already. If a twelve week round trip from London makes government impossible you are left conceding that the entire British Empire was impossible to be governed by the British, as the Americas were one of the closer parts. In fact they sent out their governors and administrators to the localities, setting up local governments to fulfill the wishes of the center. It was a pretty loose joint by modern standards, sure, but that was just the reality of the technology at the time. It doesn't mean that empires never existed, or a people couldn't be ruled by a distant government.
Pre-mass media, pre-internet, having an opinion - even a half-baked one - on something beyond your own direct experience was quite hard work. Now 'opinions' and 'expertise' are two-a-penny.... click of a button.
I’m still a big fan of the Fantasy Intellectual Teams, and can even imagine limited versions on either substack or X. “Who should we believe (and why)?”
Wouldn’t it be nice to have some semi-objective reasons for believing wise folk?
Arnold, why not have a Monday night call to try some brainstorming about possible rules and scoring with the expanded AS Kling readers?
I have lots of ideas, probably others do as well, I’m sure Arnold does.
"I suspect that the rise of foolish influencers reflects the new information environment. The Internet rewards tribalism, not wisdom."
I want to buy what you're selling, but is there a technology that decreases social and/or psychological distance and increases coordination that doesn't reward tribalism and often times fools and not wisdom? Cities? The Printing Press? Radio? TV?
I think we have to first come to grips with the fact that we are getting collectively less intelligent. I am hoping that genetic engineering can fix this, but I am doubtful that the technology becomes capable enough before the point of no return is reached.
Grievance studies - what a perfectly descriptive term. LOL. love it.
As for wise people today vs the past, I think you are making an unfair comparison. Whether it's worse today than in the past or not, I'm certain that one hundred years from now the wise people of today will become more prominent than they are in the moment.
You did. You wrote that the wise people of today will be more prominent a 100 years from now, so I asked which wise people of 100 years ago are prominent today but were not while they were alive. Support your case.
Regardless, the person obvious to me is Semmelweis. But you probably don't like that example so google "wise people who became more famous after death" and pick people yourself. I'm not going to argue about something this absurd.
Note: part of becoming more prominent is that people we now see as unwise have mostly become less prominent.
My whole point, though is this- you are just wrong- the wise people of today who are not prominent today will be unknown 100 years from now. That is how history works. If we know of them today, they were prominent when they were alive with very, very few counterexamples.
Now, you might be right that the unwise people of today who are prominent as I write this will be seen as unwise a hundred years from now or will be forgotten, but that also isn't generally true. At best, the unwise and prominent of today will be treated generously by history when they are remembered since that is what usually happens.
All in all, I find you far too naive in judging our present world, and it shows up in so many of the subjects you comment on that it becomes annoying.
In other words we should go back to competition and marking according to quality? Good idea! Let's stop with this - it's nobody fault, we can print enough for everyone and nobody can lose.
I was nodding along until the (now obligatory?) LLM part, which seemed to me to go off the rails, lending a certain irony to the post.
In much the same way, perhaps, that Jews face a turning point which could determine whether the modern world crashes and burns - I refer to the intellectual, even emotional commitment to the multicult - I think "wise" - even just smart - people generally must grapple with the uncomfortable idea that the internet does not ever "get better" - and withdraw, even if that feels like defeat.
Scoring FI team output by a single human is unsustainable. It needs to be some algo with humans who choose & rate the output of the intellectuals, and the LLM/ algorithm scores it in some way.
I suspect that you are correct when you suspect that the rise of foolish influencers is a reflection of the “new information environment.” When I struggle to understand how a U.S. society that not long ago could be counted on as having a broadly sensible populace from the center-right to the center-left could recently have “gone off the rails” to this extraordinary degree, it is at least somewhat consoling to remind myself that the current stage of the “digital revolution” will probably be looked back upon (in future centuries) as one of the most profound challenges in the history of human civilization. Perhaps far more disruptive than the agricultural and industrial revolutions.
The story I find most compelling for explaining this disconnect is a Yuval Levin / Martin Gurri story. From Levin we see that formative institutions are being outcompeted by performative ones. One of the main problems with this is that formative institutions impart wisdom, whereas performative institutions are at best indifferent to it and often hostile. From Gurri, we see that modern technology has awakened the masses to the fact that even the relatively wisest, and a fortiori the *apparently* wisest, screw up a lot and lie about it. They have responded by devaluing wisdom altogether. Combine those two trends and you get a drastic reduction in both opportunity and incentive to gain wisdom.
I think those who blame social media or wokism have got the causation backwards. The Levin and Gurri trends have been in full swing since the 1960s. They are accelerating now, and making the excesses and toxicities of Facebook and DEI more powerful, because with the passing of the Greatest Generation, almost no one left alive has any personal experience of any world but a performative-centered, antinomian one. This means that the traditional correlation between wisdom and age no longer holds: it is common for even 80-year-olds to have never encountered a wisdom-imparting formative institution in their entire lives, and Trump is only the most florid and notorious example of this. That also ironically contributes to our gerontocracy, the old of today being no longer wise enough to know when to pass the torch.
If this story is correct, it is futile to try to put the genie back in the bottle by reimposing pre-1960s institutions or mores. For one thing, the obsolescence of those is probably itself an inevitable product of the now 200-year-old Great Enrichment. Instead we must rebuild forward. That means
1. building new formative institutions that offer tangible functional appeal to 21st century WEIRD people;
2. shaping a new appreciation of wisdom's value that does not obfuscate the fallibility of the wise.
Those two things are complementary and neither is sufficient on its own. Fantasy Intellectual Teams could, maybe with a bit of reprioritization, help with (2), but it needs some partnership with (1) to have a big impact.
People do not agree on what reason or wisdom is. It depends on their priors. Moral reasoning exists within communities having shared values. In our hyper-individualistic age given over to self-expression above all else, that does not exist. Alasdair MacIntyre brilliantly analyzed this in After Virtue.
In Arnold’s first 15 member team version, Alasdair was one of my picks, but wise people don’t score many points due to limited output. I think he was rapidly traded for Bari Weiss. The new Neo, my other favorite/ most read blogger is careful, analytic, and accurate—true. Also chosen (#14) but also few points despite many, many posts.
Many wise folk look for a better method of cooperation than Tit for Tat, but don’t find one.
A striking thing about the American founders was their sense of being judged by history. Elitism, ego and status games were partly sublimated through that historical lens. Now status competition has a contracted time lens, probably related to the info environment and the intensity of competition for attention.
Can't agree that George Washington and the other fomenters of the American Revolution were particularly wise at the time they committed to war against Great Britain. Without the influence of Franklin in France, they would not have prevailed, and history would have remembered them as the Hamas of their da: a gang of insane hotheads whose greed for property west of the Alleghenies drove them to unleash the dogs of murder, rape and theft not only against the British, but against their own neighbors and the Indians. Their grievances (as can be read in the Declaration of Independence) were exaggerated, short-sighted, and trivial compared to the gains they might have enjoyed as members of the coming British Empire. Washington was a killer who enjoyed war, and had blood on his hands from having helped launch the French-Indian War.
The Founders appear wise in the light of the Constitutional Convention and their writings around it, and by the efforts of historians, politicians, lecturers, etc., down through the 19th century, who scrubbed their crimes against humanity out of history.
Very good analysis of our current core problems facing our country. I’m not a fan of either the extreme left or extreme right, but it is equally important to allow them to speak. If we limited or restrict free speech as defined in our first amendment, it limits our ability to find genuine truth.
When I think of our politics and our polarization today, it seems we have lost the importance of debate, of arguing with reason and principle. In defense of arguing it is necessary to understand that by not questioning, or debating issues or policies, we become a simple statistic to those who seek our compliance. In pursuit of not comforting half-truths but genuine truth, willingness to argue is a critical trait. We push back against assertations and authority because we value the truth of an idea more than its emotional agreeableness. One person advances an idea, others criticize or question it, and very often a refined idea emerges. Occasionally someone turns out to be wrong. “The value of being wrong is undersold by a society that penalizes mistakes. When you’re wrong, you get an opportunity to learn and improve your thinking. Mistakes are inherently valuable, even if they’re not desirable.
I would happily give money to a fund that is focused on funding this and would happily consume the fruits of these labors. However I have no time nor ability to assist but I hope to be able to enjoy the Fantasy League some day.
“During the era of the American founding, influential people included George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and other men who had great wisdom.” Great wisdom? Having rid themselves of one centralised Government riddled with bribery and corruption and which in practical terms might as well have been on the dark side of the Moon, was it wise to inflict another one on themselves right on their own doorstep?
They tried with The Articles of Confederation, a mostly better long term limit on central government, but it had the huge flaw of allowing states to have tariffs on between state trade.
The Civil Rights Act, which seems to now be destroying our country, as Goldwater warned against, seemed needed to stop Jim Crow type illegal segregation (by Democrats).
Most current problems have been created or increased due to govt laws passed to reduce other problems. That’s inevitable. Wise solutions minimize the unintended problems created. But all solutions involve multiple trade offs.
The lack of discussions about trade offs is the least wise thing our media and edu org do.
Would it not have been an easy matter to make bi-lateral or multi-lateral, inter-state trade agreements - trade is always two-way to the advantage of each party? We have been doing that for some time now between Countries, globally. You have NAFTA too, so it doesn’t seem beyond the competence of the people back then to come up with deals, without having to inflict Leviathan upon themselves.
There are no solutions, just trade-offs, but as you say there is a lack of proper public discussion. Trade-offs benefit the political class and their clients and cronies, not us.
I think there's both a tendency to conflate the Founders and e.g. the Sons of Liberty, and to minimize the major differences among the Founders.
Well, be fair, it worked out pretty well for quite some time. There are a few points they probably should have foreseen and fixed, but really what were they going to write that would survive the early 20th century progressives and New Dealers saying "Eh, why even pay attention to that document? Let's do whatever."
Saying the British government might as well have been on the moon, regardless of side, is not quite accurate as well. Remember that British governors were appointed, and British troops were stationed to enforce their rulings. While I agree that the Brits weren't so bad all told, they were definitely a relevant concern, not some abstract and distant administration that was of little practical concern.
You raise interesting points. Is it not so that the 13 British Colonies had their own legislative assemblies with tax raising powers, judiciary, law enforcement and militias? They were self-governing and independent in all but name, not so? Greater autonomy than now in fact. British Governors were the King’s representative (Canada still has one) and were mostly Americans, I believe - and made a nice penny too.
The Red Coats were there for protection of British territory and its colonists, not the enforcement of British Government. They manned a line of forts stretching South from the Great Lakes ostensibly to keep the Indians and their mischief-making French allies out, but also to keep the colonists in to stop them encroaching on Indian lands protected by Royal Proclamation and Treaty. Dark side of the Moon: I was referring to temporal distance which for practical purposes is more important than physical distance. You can go to the Moon and back in six days - if you borrow one of Elon’s rockets - it took nearly six weeks for news of the Declaration of Independence to reach London. A twelve week - at best - communication line makes effective government impossible. The Virginia Assembly passed legislation making slave ownership legal... not supported in English Common Law and in contravention of the policy and wishes of the British Government. So much for the effective government from London and Red Coats enforcing it.
So, in my view, the original plan of a loose confederation would have been the wise option, rather than in effect moving the Government from London to Albany. As for written documents. The wise founders based the US Constitution on Magna Carta which was the English Constitution whereby John (it actually was a surrender document) ceded sovereignty to the People, and had tax raising powers removed - no taxation without consent. That is why the Founders gave tax raising powers to Congress not the President. But... they would have known that John started ignoring Magna Carta almost immediately. His Plantagenet successors too, so much so that there were, I think seven redrafts with additions over the next couple of centuries or so, and finally ignoring the provisions of the charter led to the Wars of the Roses. Why therefore the Founders thought their document would last much longer than it took the ink to dry, never mind be adhered to in centuries to come, is strange.
By 1776, the British Monarchy was a Constitutional Monarchy, and the Monarch had lost nearly all executive powers - save some reserve powers, such as to dissolve Parliament, declare war but to be exercised only on the advice of Ministers. Having got rid of one alleged tyrant King with no powers, what logic and reason to create their own ‘tyrant’ absolute monarch - the Imperial Presidency? Constrained by the Constitution? Like the Kings of England were until finally, the message was underlined by cutting off Charles I’s head then reinforced in 1688 by dethroning James II. The signs were all there. I don’t think the Founders were ‘wise’. Clever, well learned, right to want rid of the Westminster Government - but they lost an opportunity to keep government exclusively local, where it always best serves the people. Wasn’t the argument for a federation rather than confederation that a federation would give central government more power and control? Ah! There it is, power and control, not wisdom.
To answer your second question: no, it is not quite so. The colonies had a fair bit of independence it is true, but also quite a bit of rule from afar mixed in. The first few points in the Declaration of Independence specifically point out that the local legislatures were not allowed to pass laws without approval, approval that often never came down one way or the other, along with being dissolved because the crown did not like their decisions. One might wonder why there were British regulars in Boston if they were only there for protecting the colonists, when the fighting against the French and their allies was much further west. Those Great Lakes are a pretty fair march from eastern Massachusetts.
In fact, pardon me for asking, but have you read the Declaration? It pretty much addresses all your points, such that it is confusing that you would state what you did in light of having read it.
Now, I would be sympathetic to the argument that the Articles of Confederacy might have been a better version than the Constitution, or an argument that with the benefit of hindsight the Constitution could have been a lot better written. This argument that the Americans threw off a good government for a bad one, however, that's just silly, as is the claim that the colonies were all but independent already. If a twelve week round trip from London makes government impossible you are left conceding that the entire British Empire was impossible to be governed by the British, as the Americas were one of the closer parts. In fact they sent out their governors and administrators to the localities, setting up local governments to fulfill the wishes of the center. It was a pretty loose joint by modern standards, sure, but that was just the reality of the technology at the time. It doesn't mean that empires never existed, or a people couldn't be ruled by a distant government.
Pre-mass media, pre-internet, having an opinion - even a half-baked one - on something beyond your own direct experience was quite hard work. Now 'opinions' and 'expertise' are two-a-penny.... click of a button.
If someone is wise, they learn to play the game according to the rules of their time.
I’m still a big fan of the Fantasy Intellectual Teams, and can even imagine limited versions on either substack or X. “Who should we believe (and why)?”
Wouldn’t it be nice to have some semi-objective reasons for believing wise folk?
Arnold, why not have a Monday night call to try some brainstorming about possible rules and scoring with the expanded AS Kling readers?
I have lots of ideas, probably others do as well, I’m sure Arnold does.
"I suspect that the rise of foolish influencers reflects the new information environment. The Internet rewards tribalism, not wisdom."
I want to buy what you're selling, but is there a technology that decreases social and/or psychological distance and increases coordination that doesn't reward tribalism and often times fools and not wisdom? Cities? The Printing Press? Radio? TV?
I think we have to first come to grips with the fact that we are getting collectively less intelligent. I am hoping that genetic engineering can fix this, but I am doubtful that the technology becomes capable enough before the point of no return is reached.
About that -- don't forget that humans will be doing the genetic engineering... so expect all the usual problems. Maybe even more so.
Grievance studies - what a perfectly descriptive term. LOL. love it.
As for wise people today vs the past, I think you are making an unfair comparison. Whether it's worse today than in the past or not, I'm certain that one hundred years from now the wise people of today will become more prominent than they are in the moment.
Who were the unknown wise people of 100 years ago?
???
Who said anything about unknown wise people?
You did. You wrote that the wise people of today will be more prominent a 100 years from now, so I asked which wise people of 100 years ago are prominent today but were not while they were alive. Support your case.
right. I said more prominent, not unknown.
Regardless, the person obvious to me is Semmelweis. But you probably don't like that example so google "wise people who became more famous after death" and pick people yourself. I'm not going to argue about something this absurd.
Note: part of becoming more prominent is that people we now see as unwise have mostly become less prominent.
My whole point, though is this- you are just wrong- the wise people of today who are not prominent today will be unknown 100 years from now. That is how history works. If we know of them today, they were prominent when they were alive with very, very few counterexamples.
Now, you might be right that the unwise people of today who are prominent as I write this will be seen as unwise a hundred years from now or will be forgotten, but that also isn't generally true. At best, the unwise and prominent of today will be treated generously by history when they are remembered since that is what usually happens.
All in all, I find you far too naive in judging our present world, and it shows up in so many of the subjects you comment on that it becomes annoying.
We disagree.
And I think you are mistaken on naivety. I think our differences here and some past cases align more strongly with optimism-pessemism.
Ok, so who is more prominent today than they were 100 years ago?
In other words we should go back to competition and marking according to quality? Good idea! Let's stop with this - it's nobody fault, we can print enough for everyone and nobody can lose.
I was nodding along until the (now obligatory?) LLM part, which seemed to me to go off the rails, lending a certain irony to the post.
In much the same way, perhaps, that Jews face a turning point which could determine whether the modern world crashes and burns - I refer to the intellectual, even emotional commitment to the multicult - I think "wise" - even just smart - people generally must grapple with the uncomfortable idea that the internet does not ever "get better" - and withdraw, even if that feels like defeat.
Scoring FI team output by a single human is unsustainable. It needs to be some algo with humans who choose & rate the output of the intellectuals, and the LLM/ algorithm scores it in some way.
I should have been more clear: the game seemed to me silly, while possibly fun for some.