The dawn of the post-literate society – and the end of civilisation(jmarriott.substack.com)
jmarriott.substack.com
The dawn of the post-literate society – and the end of civilisation
https://jmarriott.substack.com/p/the-dawn-of-the-post-literate-society-aa1
131 comments
> (what is a "horse blinker"? "Michaelmas"?), etc. Why choose this type of subject matter to draw conclusions from?
Well for one thing it was topical for it's time, horses have these little black pad things that sit on their bridle (not 'face harness') to keep them from reacting to things in their field of vision that would be to the carriage driver's left and right (horses have a bigger field of vision than non-grazing non-prey animals like people who want them to go in a straight line without being scared). I had to look up Michaelmas (but am glad I did, it's a Christian religious tradition that likely isn't popular today in the US but probably was a bigger deal in Victorian England where they didn't have a quasi-replacement in Thanksgiving).
So there's all that history, a bit of sentiment on the present. And I didn't even touch on why the passage is good, it conveys a scene, mud splattered and smokey, so pretty much exactly what it intends. I'm not even a particular fan of Dickens or Jane Austen and don't go out of my way to read them. But I understand their value, it seems increasingly people do not and that shows their own gaping hole in worldly understanding.
Edit: Autocorrect
Well for one thing it was topical for it's time, horses have these little black pad things that sit on their bridle (not 'face harness') to keep them from reacting to things in their field of vision that would be to the carriage driver's left and right (horses have a bigger field of vision than non-grazing non-prey animals like people who want them to go in a straight line without being scared). I had to look up Michaelmas (but am glad I did, it's a Christian religious tradition that likely isn't popular today in the US but probably was a bigger deal in Victorian England where they didn't have a quasi-replacement in Thanksgiving).
So there's all that history, a bit of sentiment on the present. And I didn't even touch on why the passage is good, it conveys a scene, mud splattered and smokey, so pretty much exactly what it intends. I'm not even a particular fan of Dickens or Jane Austen and don't go out of my way to read them. But I understand their value, it seems increasingly people do not and that shows their own gaping hole in worldly understanding.
Edit: Autocorrect
We're currently in Michaelmas term in schools in the UK.
In the now forgotten past, it was a tradition to read books containing unknown words. It was as a way of teaching students to use a dictionary and enrich their own vocabulary. If people only read books that have known words, they're missing an opportunity to improve their command of the language.
People are not reading books anymore because their attention is oversaturated from everywhere else.
I would suggest you may be well read in certain areas, but not widely read. Blinkers are not an anachronism, and while Michaelmas may be less widely known than Christmas, it’s certainly still celebrated.
Agreed. The OP's declaration that this is a difficult read pretty much proves the point of the article.
Especially if you were entering university as an English major, it seems like table stakes to have a conceptual understanding that not all English is going to be in simple, modern terms. That is you're going to be reading books from a variety of time periods and cultural origins, you might need to develop an understanding of those sources.
Especially if you were entering university as an English major, it seems like table stakes to have a conceptual understanding that not all English is going to be in simple, modern terms. That is you're going to be reading books from a variety of time periods and cultural origins, you might need to develop an understanding of those sources.
> Why choose this type of subject matter to draw conclusions from?
Because they were English Lit students, and the paper was to see how modern students interpret and understand literary modes such as simile, metaphor and their underlying meaning.
Because they were English Lit students, and the paper was to see how modern students interpret and understand literary modes such as simile, metaphor and their underlying meaning.
Meanwhile, Dickens went to school for only about four years, with a break in the middle to work in the boot blacking factory.
This is more about relative decline of reading level.
Only 13% of adults read at PIAAC levels 4 or 5, so it's not like college degree means that you have maxed out at reading skills. When high reading levels decline, other levels decline as well.
Only 13% of adults read at PIAAC levels 4 or 5, so it's not like college degree means that you have maxed out at reading skills. When high reading levels decline, other levels decline as well.
I’m a well read individual, didn’t go to college. English isn’t even my primary language, and I find this paragraph to be fairly easy to read?
I agree. Today I learned Michaelmas is a christian thing happening on Mon, 29 Sept 2025 and "one legend from the British Isles holds that when St. Michael defeated Satan, he cast Satan into a particularly prickly blackberry bush".
I don't think people these days can be bothered with such nonsense. Though next time I see a blackberry bush I'll think of chucking Satan at it.
And I say that as someone who was forced to do Great Expectations in English Lit. I read the CliffsNotes and passed.
My main memory of the book is Pip was fooled into thinking he'd get off with Estella because he got some money from the convict who went to Oz and thought it was from Miss Havisham in error. And then Dickens spun that out into about a million words because he was basically paid by the word to fill newspaper space. Some of the old stuff wasn't actually that good and there's more competition for entertainment these days.
I don't think people these days can be bothered with such nonsense. Though next time I see a blackberry bush I'll think of chucking Satan at it.
And I say that as someone who was forced to do Great Expectations in English Lit. I read the CliffsNotes and passed.
My main memory of the book is Pip was fooled into thinking he'd get off with Estella because he got some money from the convict who went to Oz and thought it was from Miss Havisham in error. And then Dickens spun that out into about a million words because he was basically paid by the word to fill newspaper space. Some of the old stuff wasn't actually that good and there's more competition for entertainment these days.
English hardly my first language and I can read it without difficulties, so I'm not sure it's such a bad excerpt.
For me personally, and I've never read Dickens in original English, it reads quite well. It's perhaps showing its age, but with a definite character and recognizable style. I'd call it a good piece of literature, and frankly would make me read more of the author, if his general choice of subjects wouldn't be so anachronistic and uninteresting for me personally.
I think this is less about people's ignorance to these terms, but more about their resistance to actually learn new things. Since we live in a time that we can easily search up what any unknown term in that paragraph is, but we actively don't says volumes.
Honestly mate, you may be an example of what the article is talking about. As other people here have pointed out, the decline in reading skills begins with television not the smartphone. Same for the shorter sentences which make you find Dickens so hard.
I am particularly a fan of "flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun."
But even as somebody who likes Dickens' prose, I think his syntax is often a lot more complicated than it needs to be. In that sense I agree that it's slightly difficult at times.
Not "difficult" as in "this really took me a tremendous amount of effort to understand" but difficult as in "I think his syntax is a little more difficult than it needs to be."
(Of course, any sort of art should be understood in context. It wouldn't be reasonable to impose modern expectations on something written 150 years ago)
But even as somebody who likes Dickens' prose, I think his syntax is often a lot more complicated than it needs to be. In that sense I agree that it's slightly difficult at times.
Not "difficult" as in "this really took me a tremendous amount of effort to understand" but difficult as in "I think his syntax is a little more difficult than it needs to be."
(Of course, any sort of art should be understood in context. It wouldn't be reasonable to impose modern expectations on something written 150 years ago)
This is a very verbose essay that i don't feel quite says much. I want to put question the presented statistics a bit in particular.
The essay quotes studies showing the leisure-reading prevalence among teens and adults dropping. I do not see how this is relevant at all to "death of intellect and reason". Reading fiction can give a person new perspectives on life, but so could a movie or a manga or radio-show. It's a leisure activity. I'm far more worried about drop in reading and writing *proficiency* overall. Writing proficiently is dropping with LLMs in school, and reading proficiency is worse than the early 2000s. But i don't think this tells the whole story either.
I think the average person reads and writes as much as always thanks to the prevalence of technology. Keyboards, instant messaging, blogs, social media. Writing is easier than ever, and reading is more worthwhile than ever. But the *format* and media has shifted. This shift in format is not reflected when asking people "how often do you read" (people read constantly, but much fewer books).
And to question the very premise further; Reading isn't that brought the revolution in science and intelligence; better storage, spreading and access to knowledge is. That this came in the format of text should matter. If people engage with thought provoking reason through audio or visuals instead of text, what does that matter?
now, i AM worried about some of this. In particular the decline of news quality and consumption, rise in (seemingly) acquired ADHD, and a drop in writing proficiency (which i think is vital for deep thought and contemplation), but this article really does not discuss the issue fairly or well.
The essay quotes studies showing the leisure-reading prevalence among teens and adults dropping. I do not see how this is relevant at all to "death of intellect and reason". Reading fiction can give a person new perspectives on life, but so could a movie or a manga or radio-show. It's a leisure activity. I'm far more worried about drop in reading and writing *proficiency* overall. Writing proficiently is dropping with LLMs in school, and reading proficiency is worse than the early 2000s. But i don't think this tells the whole story either.
I think the average person reads and writes as much as always thanks to the prevalence of technology. Keyboards, instant messaging, blogs, social media. Writing is easier than ever, and reading is more worthwhile than ever. But the *format* and media has shifted. This shift in format is not reflected when asking people "how often do you read" (people read constantly, but much fewer books).
And to question the very premise further; Reading isn't that brought the revolution in science and intelligence; better storage, spreading and access to knowledge is. That this came in the format of text should matter. If people engage with thought provoking reason through audio or visuals instead of text, what does that matter?
now, i AM worried about some of this. In particular the decline of news quality and consumption, rise in (seemingly) acquired ADHD, and a drop in writing proficiency (which i think is vital for deep thought and contemplation), but this article really does not discuss the issue fairly or well.
>Keyboards, instant messaging, blogs, social media.
I've got a 29-year-old employee from whom I receive texts and emails every day. The grammar and auto-spell word substitutions are frequently so bad I have to respond "do you mean X or Y?", and sometimes so confusing I can't parse their message at all.
>I think the average person reads and writes as much as always
Perhaps, but the writing quality has definitely taken a dive.
I've got a 29-year-old employee from whom I receive texts and emails every day. The grammar and auto-spell word substitutions are frequently so bad I have to respond "do you mean X or Y?", and sometimes so confusing I can't parse their message at all.
>I think the average person reads and writes as much as always
Perhaps, but the writing quality has definitely taken a dive.
Isn't that just the new standard set by phones and instant messaging? Iterative instant commutation rather than "letters" of formatted text. I too write a lot of messages in a single pass and press *send*, only to "edit" any errors afterawrds. (or a with good old "*afterwards" message afterwards)
Phones are the new default, but they are terrible for long form writing. Moving a cursor to the middle of a section or moving a section around is frankly more effort than its worth. Just send it and clarify later. I'm not saying its a good thing, but i would call it more of a shift than a decline. If you ask them to write a report the writing may spectacular, since they're actually by a proper keyboard and in a format with more strict writing standards.
Phones are the new default, but they are terrible for long form writing. Moving a cursor to the middle of a section or moving a section around is frankly more effort than its worth. Just send it and clarify later. I'm not saying its a good thing, but i would call it more of a shift than a decline. If you ask them to write a report the writing may spectacular, since they're actually by a proper keyboard and in a format with more strict writing standards.
Having to question "do you mean x or y" because the sender is not clear is not iterating.
Rather than debating if it's iteration or not... isn't that potentially an improvement?
In Ye Olden Days, you don't think the same sorts of miscommunications happened? A look at history (or history viewed through the lens of classical literature) sure makes it seem like miscommunication levels were always pretty high
At least today you can get instant clarification on "do you mean x or y" instead of waiting weeks or months for dudes on horses to move pieces of paper back and forth between you and your penpal
In Ye Olden Days, you don't think the same sorts of miscommunications happened? A look at history (or history viewed through the lens of classical literature) sure makes it seem like miscommunication levels were always pretty high
At least today you can get instant clarification on "do you mean x or y" instead of waiting weeks or months for dudes on horses to move pieces of paper back and forth between you and your penpal
I'm not debating. I made a statement.
Right, right.
It was a very funny statement because it very much is iteration by any definition, and it's always a laugh when somebody embarrasses themselves by simultaneously doing the same thing they're criticizing. Yikes, right?
I think your meaning was clear, though. So that's what I responded to.
It was a very funny statement because it very much is iteration by any definition, and it's always a laugh when somebody embarrasses themselves by simultaneously doing the same thing they're criticizing. Yikes, right?
I think your meaning was clear, though. So that's what I responded to.
> Isn't that just the new standard set by phones and instant messaging?
No, plenty of twentysomethings can competently communicate in writing. There are just a lost more today who are functionally illiterate.
No, plenty of twentysomethings can competently communicate in writing. There are just a lost more today who are functionally illiterate.
Writing proficiently is dropping with LLMs in school,
and reading proficiency is worse than the early 2000s.
But i don't think this tells the whole story either.
It's very easy, but also lazy and simplistic, to look at the decline of writing proficiency and equate it with some kind of 1:1 decline in overall interpersonal communication.
People certainly struggle with communication in 2025. It's hard.
But if we are to believe that communication has somehow declined over time, then we must also accept that communication was somehow in some kind of amazing or at least superior state 100 or 200 or 1000 years ago. I see no evidence that is the case. The most casual look at history or classical literature shows those times were chock full of miscommunication foibles, both trivial and world-changing.
The author is not talking about reading in general, but reading books. Yes, reading and writing may be still practiced daily, but understanding of complex ideas, books, and even films is going down quickly.
Having read it (it's neither dense nor verbose), I don't understand which of your points isn't addressed in the essay?
Yes, this is an example of what the article is saying: calling this verbose and dense means that the person has a problem in understanding something that is just a little bit more complex than traditional spoken language.
Neither I nor the last commented called the text dense. I claim the article use a-lot of words to say very little, and arguments its points in a overly preachy way. That is *not* dense, that is verbose.
mm. Perhaps phrasing it like this would help; The article is written in away to appeal to those that already agree with the premise, and dissuade those that don't. 6000 words is on the long side for a blog-post, but not unreasonable for a good essay. This does not read as a good essay, it reads like a preach. Most people that don't agree with the article stopped half way and moved on, and who do we have left in this comment section?
I don't disagree with the conclusion nor the arguments. I disagree with how the authors has written and presented those arguments and conclusions. It could have been 3000 words and still said what it wanted, or it could have said much more at the same word-count.
mm. Perhaps phrasing it like this would help; The article is written in away to appeal to those that already agree with the premise, and dissuade those that don't. 6000 words is on the long side for a blog-post, but not unreasonable for a good essay. This does not read as a good essay, it reads like a preach. Most people that don't agree with the article stopped half way and moved on, and who do we have left in this comment section?
I don't disagree with the conclusion nor the arguments. I disagree with how the authors has written and presented those arguments and conclusions. It could have been 3000 words and still said what it wanted, or it could have said much more at the same word-count.
It's not that the article did or didn't address something. It's the way the article addresses is makes be roll my eyes. I don't disagree with the premise itself, nor necessarily the conclusion. But some of the statistics brought up are irrelevant (as i mentioned), and the article reads more like a preach than a essay.
To me it read like a rant monologue about the youth, saying about 4 things but repeated over and over with different words. It's an essay written in bad faith to essay writing.
To me it read like a rant monologue about the youth, saying about 4 things but repeated over and over with different words. It's an essay written in bad faith to essay writing.
I enjoy reading as much as anyone, but I find these kinds of posts to be very short-sighted.
First off, civilization precedes mass reading by millennia. To attribute the Enlightenment and modern industrial civilization to reading, and any counter-movement against the Enlightenment as anti-reading, is to fundamentally misunderstand most of history.
E.g., Romanticism was an explicitly anti-Enlightenment movement and arguably had more interest in poetry and literature than the forces it was reacting against. You could also probably make the argument that widespread reading via the printing press led to more anti-intellectualism culturally, as the onus of belief shifted from the elite priestly class to the popular individual.
Secondly, the vast, vast majority of people were not reading complex literature or scientific papers, they were reading the equivalent of Netflix series. Deep, intellectual reading has always been a niche thing reserved for a small percentage of the population.
Thirdly, and I think most importantly: reading is a historical technology. It's not the end-all greatest thing ever invented, never to be surpassed by anything new.
I personally think that audiovisual media is far, far superior to reading in many situations, especially for education - language learning, for example. The problem right now is that we're assuming that short clip-based media like TikTok is somehow the ultimate form of video. It's not, and short attention spans are more due to the economics of media consumption than anything inherent to the video format.
I think we're just very, very early in the development of a new media format that combines the best elements of text, audio, moving images, and other data in a way that is ultimately more compelling and effective than static words on paper. Video, like books, is ultimately a historical technology and not necessarily the end-all of future media.
First off, civilization precedes mass reading by millennia. To attribute the Enlightenment and modern industrial civilization to reading, and any counter-movement against the Enlightenment as anti-reading, is to fundamentally misunderstand most of history.
E.g., Romanticism was an explicitly anti-Enlightenment movement and arguably had more interest in poetry and literature than the forces it was reacting against. You could also probably make the argument that widespread reading via the printing press led to more anti-intellectualism culturally, as the onus of belief shifted from the elite priestly class to the popular individual.
Secondly, the vast, vast majority of people were not reading complex literature or scientific papers, they were reading the equivalent of Netflix series. Deep, intellectual reading has always been a niche thing reserved for a small percentage of the population.
Thirdly, and I think most importantly: reading is a historical technology. It's not the end-all greatest thing ever invented, never to be surpassed by anything new.
I personally think that audiovisual media is far, far superior to reading in many situations, especially for education - language learning, for example. The problem right now is that we're assuming that short clip-based media like TikTok is somehow the ultimate form of video. It's not, and short attention spans are more due to the economics of media consumption than anything inherent to the video format.
I think we're just very, very early in the development of a new media format that combines the best elements of text, audio, moving images, and other data in a way that is ultimately more compelling and effective than static words on paper. Video, like books, is ultimately a historical technology and not necessarily the end-all of future media.
>I personally think that audiovisual media is far, far superior to reading
From my personal experience, reading is the closest humankind as ever got to holodecks. There is nothing except reading that provides that level of immersion, and there will not be until we _actually_ invent the holodecks.
From my personal experience, reading is the closest humankind as ever got to holodecks. There is nothing except reading that provides that level of immersion, and there will not be until we _actually_ invent the holodecks.
I'm not so sure. I live in a reality with more detail and fidelity than a holodeck, and I still often find books to be more immersive.
If I had a holodeck I'd probably use it to sit somewhere nice and well lighted and read a book.
If I had a holodeck I'd probably use it to sit somewhere nice and well lighted and read a book.
to be fair, I was simplifying my point a bit: by holodeck I actually meant the immersive VR from The Culture.
100 years of pro-reading propaganda. Like nukes dropped on our culture. It will take time for those craters to fade. Until then expect everybody you meet to suffer from an irrational compulsion to read and venerate readers.
Sorry, you'll have to send that as an audio clip, I can't read, I'm too cultural.
Your shallow sarcasm does nothing to mask your abject indoctrinatedness.
Hey, I don't venerate readers, I hate it when people read Sense and Sensibility or War and Peace or Moby Dick out of worthiness. I read what I want, and I read a lot of trash, not important works of literature. Though Moby Dick has a chapter that's all about sailors lovingly holding hands in a bucket of warm sperm, and another one about a priest wearing a whale's penis as a coat, so it's not all bad. But I don't think old Herman really intended it as reading matter, to be honest, it seemed to me more like a hostile act, a 200,000 word prank. But I like reading adventure stories and gumshoe pulp, and I don't want it all converted to videos.
It's not the end-all greatest thing ever invented, never to be surpassed by anything new.
I don't know, I think that a video of someone doing X thing is vastly more inheritable than a description of it in a book. For raw data or information though, sure, text is better.
> I personally think that audiovisual media is far, far superior to reading.
I'd be very interested to know why you think this.
I personally prefer reading as a way to intake information, because I'm faster and more at least reading a bunch of stuff than I am watching a bunch of youtube videos.
I'd be very interested to know why you think this.
I personally prefer reading as a way to intake information, because I'm faster and more at least reading a bunch of stuff than I am watching a bunch of youtube videos.
Sorry I edited my comment and expanded it.
I think audiovisual media is better for most educational things, especially languages and skills. If you're learning Spanish or how to fix your car, I think a video (with audio) is better than a book most of the time. To be fair, there are definitely things better taught via book, but I do wonder if part of the reason why is 1) books have a longer history and 2) watching video is still kind of an awkward experience; I can't easily grab text from inside it or view the entire contents at once, like I can with text.
But more generally, I think audiovisual media just more closely matches the human experience of the world. Sitting hunched over an object looking at symbols is a learned activity, whereas watching and hearing something is more "natural" to people – see for example, how most languages were spoken-only for a long, long time before anyone wrote them down.
I think audiovisual media is better for most educational things, especially languages and skills. If you're learning Spanish or how to fix your car, I think a video (with audio) is better than a book most of the time. To be fair, there are definitely things better taught via book, but I do wonder if part of the reason why is 1) books have a longer history and 2) watching video is still kind of an awkward experience; I can't easily grab text from inside it or view the entire contents at once, like I can with text.
But more generally, I think audiovisual media just more closely matches the human experience of the world. Sitting hunched over an object looking at symbols is a learned activity, whereas watching and hearing something is more "natural" to people – see for example, how most languages were spoken-only for a long, long time before anyone wrote them down.
> Sitting hunched over an object looking at symbols is a learned activity, whereas watching and hearing something is more "natural" to people
Isn’t this the benefit? It’s conducive to abstract thought in a way recorded media is not. (The historical alternative is in-person rhetoric. As we all know, the online version is not substitute for debate.)
Isn’t this the benefit? It’s conducive to abstract thought in a way recorded media is not. (The historical alternative is in-person rhetoric. As we all know, the online version is not substitute for debate.)
> civilization precedes mass reading by millennia
The elites were always voracious readers. Mass reading isn’t necessary for civilisation, but it probably is if we’re going to treat the masses like elites.
The elites were always voracious readers. Mass reading isn’t necessary for civilisation, but it probably is if we’re going to treat the masses like elites.
>The elites were always voracious readers
Since when? All the elites I know spend their time taking expensive vacations and doing too much drugs.
Since when? All the elites I know spend their time taking expensive vacations and doing too much drugs.
Those are not elites but wealthy, if completely irrelevant people.
Elites would be powerful politicians, advisors, or big-scale investors that pull actual strings. And these people are pretty universally voracious readers.
Elites would be powerful politicians, advisors, or big-scale investors that pull actual strings. And these people are pretty universally voracious readers.
I don’t disagree that the decline is there and that TikTok is really bad influence, but I also think reading has moved to online writing since books offer a much slower feedback mechanism (especially if others around you are not reading them). Books offered much more than not having information to those with initiative or enough push by educators. Now information is a lot more abundant and has faster (not necessarily better) delivery methods that don’t need involve cost before getting it. The problem with free is that it’s also likely influenced / paid by others. Social Media speeds up the delivery so much with visuals and audio that everything else seems far less attractive. The lazy consumer what’s easy and emotionally entertaining. Those who have more rigor and also enjoy faster flow, may get audiobooks and listen to them T 2x speed. Yet others now use AI to drill into areas that would take a lifetime of hunting down hard to find books. Information is more liquid now. The key is ensuring smart people know how to get what is real and helpful vs stuff that just showers them if they are lazy.
I'm sympathetic to the concerns motivating this essay, but the charts related to test scores are ridiculous. The y-axis is so compressed it makes it look like performance has dramatically plummeted over the least 20-25 years, but the actual declines are basically 1-5%.
This. I follow John Burns Murdoch on social media & normally find his work great so I was really surprised that the most egregious "graph crimes" shown in this article were visualisations created by him.
I'm risking engaging in similar hyperbole, so I must stress that they're not too egregious, just mildly misleading in their significance, but it does still put the article into some question.
The x-axes are also over relatively short time periods, presumably to deemphasize massive upward trends in previous decades.
I'm risking engaging in similar hyperbole, so I must stress that they're not too egregious, just mildly misleading in their significance, but it does still put the article into some question.
The x-axes are also over relatively short time periods, presumably to deemphasize massive upward trends in previous decades.
But we don’t really know what the scale is. Like, a 100% reduction would presumably be very serious, completely unfit for skilled labour? so what does a 5% reduction mean?
The results, from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), found that, on average, reading scores for 12th graders were 10 points lower in 2024 than they were in 1992,
But the point remains the same, we shouldn’t be seeing a decline at all…
The "point" the article is trying to make is that there is a decline in literacy so severe that it means "the end of civilization" -- a strong claim, to say the least, and one that demands rather stronger evidence than a 1-5% decline in various measures of literacy/thinking. (Granted, test scores are not the only evidence he has marshaled.)
It's simply the end of the the symbolic era's low meaning load. The sentence is dead. The metaphor. Whatever low-grade semantics we suffered under is coming to a close and a new form/format of meaning-units are needed.
What a sobering indictment of our screen-obsessed world. It seems all roads lead back to the introduction of the smartphone —the mid-2010s, a critical turning point:
> "Never before has there been a technology like the smartphone. Where previous entertainment technologies like cinema or television were intended to capture their audience’s attention for a period, the smartphone demands your entire life. Phones are designed to be hyper-addictive, hooking users on a diet of pointless notifications, inane short-form videos and social media rage bait."
> "The average person now spends seven hours a day staring at a screen. For Gen Z the figure is nine hours. A recent article in The Times found that on average modern students are destined to spend 25 years of their waking lives scrolling on screens."
> "Never before has there been a technology like the smartphone. Where previous entertainment technologies like cinema or television were intended to capture their audience’s attention for a period, the smartphone demands your entire life. Phones are designed to be hyper-addictive, hooking users on a diet of pointless notifications, inane short-form videos and social media rage bait."
> "The average person now spends seven hours a day staring at a screen. For Gen Z the figure is nine hours. A recent article in The Times found that on average modern students are destined to spend 25 years of their waking lives scrolling on screens."
Seven hours is the average person. I'm closer to 12 hours a day. The rest is sleeping / driving / walking / cooking. And during those times, I'm usually listening to something.
It's hard to know how seriously to take this article when it doesn't even get this basic fact right. The iPhone was introduced in 2007, which is notably not the mid-2010s.
Prior to the smartphone people used to stare seven hours a day at the TV which wasn't much better. At least the internet is two way - you can write as well as take in info.
I've read a bunch of these types of takes (though this is definitely one of the better referenced & more comprehensive ones) & there's an aspect I haven't seen raised in the context of the correlation of modern trends/changes with declines in literacy, IQ, etc.
The immediate goto is always either smartphones (as in this piece) or the world wide web. Other pieces looking at longer term trends might even reference TV (the dawn of media entertainment consumption without intentionality).
These are all focused on leisure: what we do in our spare time, presumably because we mostly read for pleasure in our spare time. What I rarely see highlighted is the growth of the so-called "knowledge economy" & the shift of common "workers" being employed in physically skilled jobs to common workers being employed in sedentary jobs requiring the application of (basic) literacy for most of our days.
Given we spend a lot more time in work than we do at leisure activities this contrast of an increase in (relatively mindless, unstimulating) "literate" activity in work with the decline in (focused, stimulating) literature-oriented leisure activities seems relevant in my mind.
The immediate goto is always either smartphones (as in this piece) or the world wide web. Other pieces looking at longer term trends might even reference TV (the dawn of media entertainment consumption without intentionality).
These are all focused on leisure: what we do in our spare time, presumably because we mostly read for pleasure in our spare time. What I rarely see highlighted is the growth of the so-called "knowledge economy" & the shift of common "workers" being employed in physically skilled jobs to common workers being employed in sedentary jobs requiring the application of (basic) literacy for most of our days.
Given we spend a lot more time in work than we do at leisure activities this contrast of an increase in (relatively mindless, unstimulating) "literate" activity in work with the decline in (focused, stimulating) literature-oriented leisure activities seems relevant in my mind.
>Numerous studies show that reading is in free-fall. Even the most pessimistic twentieth-century critics of the screen-age would have struggled to predict the scale of the present crisis.
Marshall McLuhan, the media theorist, began his academic career as a scholar of Medieval history, but his attention soon turned to the Gutenberg press and the rise of literacy (over 3 centuries), and how it changed the way we think. He then applied his theories to radio, film, TV etc.
In the 1960s McLuhan was invited to tour the skunkworks at IBM, Xerox Parc, and Bell Labs where they were working on the early iterations and basic building blocks of what would become the internet we know today.
They showed him their vision for "Peer to peer electronic media", and McLuhan applied his theory of media to the not-yet-realized notion of social media.
He definitely saw it as something that would bring a death knell to the literary age, and recognized that social media was inherently tribalistic. According to McLuhan we would all be "marching to the beat of the tribal drums". And that brings us to today, wherein America is officially under the spell of state sponsored tribalism, and reading in the literary sense no longer holds court as the driver of our discourse and thinking.
The dude skated to the puck a good 30 years before it arrived, and he was extremely pessimistic. Mark Zuckerberg has claimed to be a McLuhan fan, but if he actually understands what McLuhan was saying, that's scary:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/amnesty-report-finds-face...
Marshall McLuhan, the media theorist, began his academic career as a scholar of Medieval history, but his attention soon turned to the Gutenberg press and the rise of literacy (over 3 centuries), and how it changed the way we think. He then applied his theories to radio, film, TV etc.
In the 1960s McLuhan was invited to tour the skunkworks at IBM, Xerox Parc, and Bell Labs where they were working on the early iterations and basic building blocks of what would become the internet we know today.
They showed him their vision for "Peer to peer electronic media", and McLuhan applied his theory of media to the not-yet-realized notion of social media.
He definitely saw it as something that would bring a death knell to the literary age, and recognized that social media was inherently tribalistic. According to McLuhan we would all be "marching to the beat of the tribal drums". And that brings us to today, wherein America is officially under the spell of state sponsored tribalism, and reading in the literary sense no longer holds court as the driver of our discourse and thinking.
The dude skated to the puck a good 30 years before it arrived, and he was extremely pessimistic. Mark Zuckerberg has claimed to be a McLuhan fan, but if he actually understands what McLuhan was saying, that's scary:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/amnesty-report-finds-face...
He didn't grasp that speech and text were the same in terms of arbitrariness, and he couldn't see that narratives are basically illusions in terms of their meaning-load. We know from neurosci any event has two dimensions of meaning, where it carries in past memories already formed, and how it creates local memory in formation. Both are probably limitless, yet narratives ascribe intent and cause and effect to essentially turn us into meaning zombies, forever revisiting the same unidimensional intents and meanings as if they are applicable to real events. They simply aren't. Literacy is dead for reasons McLuhan could not have imagined. He never reached the leading edge of demythologization, which is where we are, and how literacy dies.
I recommend The Image by Daniel Boorstin. Smart phone is not the dawn at all but I guess more like high noon. The world is replaced by graphics (more generally , images) for a century at least. Books by "digests", heroism by celebrity and so forth. A little bit of media theory goes a long way to making the world "legible" again. Since we are absolutely steeped in media culture.
Fahrenheit 451 didn't get as embedded into popular culture as 1984, but does a good job depicting a society brain rotted on reality TV and war propaganda.
"the world has been replaced by graphics (more generally, images)"
Humankind started to record its history by images (google for instance about the city of Sefar, Algeria). Nowadays, even in tech we use graphics (diagrams and so on)
This is not my field but even the first letter of the latin alphabet is simply the image of the head of a cow rotated a bit to the left.
Humankind started to record its history by images (google for instance about the city of Sefar, Algeria). Nowadays, even in tech we use graphics (diagrams and so on)
This is not my field but even the first letter of the latin alphabet is simply the image of the head of a cow rotated a bit to the left.
I think the most optimistic future we could hope for now is some kind of Star Wars like future where incredible technology could be all around us but the vast majority of people do not participate much in its creation or maintenance, so the technology just becomes part of nature and we see people use it in illogical or anachronistic ways, because they don’t know any better. Life becomes something like the Middle Ages but with shiny tech instead of iron and stone. People can’t read because they just talk to their interfaces or communication devices. Most people have menial subsistence type jobs. And ruling over everything is some vast empire that is cartoonishly evil, because the people running it are as simple minded as the people they govern.
What's coming: Spatial intel (not Apple spatial computing) is a top-down/bottom-up direct perception that everyone participates in. It bypasses binary, renders it obsolete. Makes AI look puny and overbuilt, needs only analog and only partially. Wipes away the symbolic interruption we've been addicted and dumbed down inside.
In high school debate, I found a killer piece of evidence to counter any given doomsday argument.
From Eric Zencey:
There is seduction in apocalyptic thinking. If one lives in the Last Days, one’s actions, one’s very life, take on historical meaning and no small measure of poignance.
From Eric Zencey:
There is seduction in apocalyptic thinking. If one lives in the Last Days, one’s actions, one’s very life, take on historical meaning and no small measure of poignance.
That's not evidence.
You just used a type of Ad hominem fallacy called appeal to motive fallacy.
You just used a type of Ad hominem fallacy called appeal to motive fallacy.
Not to mention it’s an assumed motive at that.
Well, it was high school.
List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_ap...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_ap...
And yet many doomsdays have occurred.
Yes, but...
There is a bit of arrogance in the assumption "literate thinking is the best kind of thinking". Knowledge disseminates through different channels today.
The "non-reading kids of today" are, among other things, having far less unprotected sex, consuming less alcohol and tobacco (although more amphetamines), taking less unnecessary risks (driving, firearms, etc), and being more tolerant of differences in ethnicity, gender, etc.
This article is an example of these alternative channels. Fifty years ago, it was in Postman's book ("Amusing Ourselves to Death", excellent reading b.t.w.). Today, it is read by many people around the world without even being printed and sold in bookstores. Besides, it is a collective experience: its arguments don't just reach individual minds, they also reverberate in this thread.
This post is basically a rehash of Postman's book. I strongly recommend that you read that book. It is a much more solid explanation, although the book predates smartphones by decades.
There is a bit of arrogance in the assumption "literate thinking is the best kind of thinking". Knowledge disseminates through different channels today.
The "non-reading kids of today" are, among other things, having far less unprotected sex, consuming less alcohol and tobacco (although more amphetamines), taking less unnecessary risks (driving, firearms, etc), and being more tolerant of differences in ethnicity, gender, etc.
This article is an example of these alternative channels. Fifty years ago, it was in Postman's book ("Amusing Ourselves to Death", excellent reading b.t.w.). Today, it is read by many people around the world without even being printed and sold in bookstores. Besides, it is a collective experience: its arguments don't just reach individual minds, they also reverberate in this thread.
This post is basically a rehash of Postman's book. I strongly recommend that you read that book. It is a much more solid explanation, although the book predates smartphones by decades.
If you look at the actual ranges on his graphs, the conclusion is a little bit exaggerated, but the basic point is valid.
Education systems need to have very strong curriculum about AI use and the necessity of just not using it to some degree to be able to obtain any level of actual literacy or other competency.
Actually education should be redesigned to properly incorporate personalized AI tutoring and as part of that effort provide a supportive environment where students don't feel the need to go around it to cheat.
If the goal is to communicate and solve problems, the technologies will probably be a huge improvement if we can manage them properly.
I definitely do not have the depth of vocabulary that some 18th century readers had, but I am a good problem solver. Probably a more effective problem solver with AI. But kids do need to be trained that they will lose it if they don't use it.
If you look at the extreme amount of video content these days and combine that with the increasing abilities of AI video generation, there may be a trend towards more visual (and often more literal) communication.
I often find that screenshots or screencasts are important for technical communication.
But of course we don't have any visual replacement for the abilities of natural language so I hope we can keep that.
We need a deliberate and effective effort in education.
But we are rapidly approaching the era where your access to AI and robotics determines your labor productivity. So it increases the existing inequalities.
It comes down to the topology of the social networks and how the built environment and belief systems shape that. But the belief systems mostly serve the social groups rather than the other way around. So maybe what happens is determined by group dynamics.
Thank you to anyone who read my ramble.
Education systems need to have very strong curriculum about AI use and the necessity of just not using it to some degree to be able to obtain any level of actual literacy or other competency.
Actually education should be redesigned to properly incorporate personalized AI tutoring and as part of that effort provide a supportive environment where students don't feel the need to go around it to cheat.
If the goal is to communicate and solve problems, the technologies will probably be a huge improvement if we can manage them properly.
I definitely do not have the depth of vocabulary that some 18th century readers had, but I am a good problem solver. Probably a more effective problem solver with AI. But kids do need to be trained that they will lose it if they don't use it.
If you look at the extreme amount of video content these days and combine that with the increasing abilities of AI video generation, there may be a trend towards more visual (and often more literal) communication.
I often find that screenshots or screencasts are important for technical communication.
But of course we don't have any visual replacement for the abilities of natural language so I hope we can keep that.
We need a deliberate and effective effort in education.
But we are rapidly approaching the era where your access to AI and robotics determines your labor productivity. So it increases the existing inequalities.
It comes down to the topology of the social networks and how the built environment and belief systems shape that. But the belief systems mostly serve the social groups rather than the other way around. So maybe what happens is determined by group dynamics.
Thank you to anyone who read my ramble.
> we are rapidly approaching the era where your access to AI and robotics determines your labor productivity
Some of the wealthiest, most powerful and yes, most productive people of the last decades had no clue how to use a computer or phone, interacting with it through staff.
Remember the folks who were teaching their kids to code ten years ago? How relevant is that today (beyond as a cognitive exercise)? Access to AI and robotics are secondary to other factors. Not the determinative ones, certainly not at the individual level.
Some of the wealthiest, most powerful and yes, most productive people of the last decades had no clue how to use a computer or phone, interacting with it through staff.
Remember the folks who were teaching their kids to code ten years ago? How relevant is that today (beyond as a cognitive exercise)? Access to AI and robotics are secondary to other factors. Not the determinative ones, certainly not at the individual level.
Please parse that sentence more carefully. I said "labor productivity".
> Please parse that sentence more carefully. I said "labor productivity"
Yes. Unless we’re redefining labour to fit a square peg into a round hole, this remains true.
Access to the latest technology is never a sole determinant of productivity in any technological revolution. If anything, it having any relation to productivity is a modern phenomenon.
(Most kids who had a computer in the 80s or internet in the 90s didn’t become wildly more productive for it. They just found new ways to entertain themselves.)
Yes. Unless we’re redefining labour to fit a square peg into a round hole, this remains true.
Access to the latest technology is never a sole determinant of productivity in any technological revolution. If anything, it having any relation to productivity is a modern phenomenon.
(Most kids who had a computer in the 80s or internet in the 90s didn’t become wildly more productive for it. They just found new ways to entertain themselves.)
> Actually education should be redesigned to properly incorporate personalized AI tutoring and as part of that effort provide a supportive environment where students don't feel the need to go around it to cheat.
I have no idea what is this magical AI capable of tutoring that you're talking about. It is certainly not any of the AI models we see in the market, which hallucinate systematically and are only able to output remotely valid content if they are subjected to tight feedback loops.
I have no idea what is this magical AI capable of tutoring that you're talking about. It is certainly not any of the AI models we see in the market, which hallucinate systematically and are only able to output remotely valid content if they are subjected to tight feedback loops.
I have built such a tutoring system.
This is another magical thinking we have in our age. AI will do nothing good for education, because to be educated you need to do the hard work of understanding things. This is just the opposite of getting a machine to provide you with quick facts, summaries, and conclusions. In fact I would say that if you introduce AI to classrooms it would be better to take a good number of $100 bills and incinerate, because the end result will be less expensive.
Can you try to read my comment more carefully?
Here's the preface to Bleak House by Dickens, in case anybody is interested: "A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not laboring under any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the judge's eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate. There had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the "parsimony of the public," which guilty public, it appeared, had been until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed — I believe by Richard the Second, but any other king will do as well. This seemed to me too profound a joke to be inserted in the body of this book or I should have restored it to Conversation Kenge or to Mr. Vholes, with one or other of whom I think it must have originated. In such mouths I might have coupled it with an apt quotation from one of Shakespeare's sonnets: "My nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand: Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed!" But as it is wholesome that the parsimonious public should know
what has been doing, and still is doing, in this connexion, I mention here that everything set forth in these pages concerning the Court of Chancery is substantially true, and within the truth. The case of Gridley is in no essential altered from one of actual occurrence, made public by a disinterested person who was professionally acquainted with the whole of the monstrous wrong from beginning to end. At the present moment (August, 1853) there is a suit before the court which was commenced nearly twenty years ago, in which from thirty to forty counsel have been known to appear at one time, in which costs have been incurred to the amount of seventy thousand pounds, which is a friendly suit, and which is (I am assured) no nearer to its termination now than when it was begun. There is another well-known suit in Chancery, not yet decided, which was commenced before the close of the last century and in which more than double the amount of seventy thousand pounds has been swallowed up in costs. If I wanted other authorities for Jarndyce and Jarndyce, I could rain them on these pages, to the shame of — a parsimonious public. There is only one other point on which I offer a word of remark. The possibility of what is called spontaneous combustion has been denied since the death of Mr. Krook; and my good friend Mr. Lewes (quite mistaken, as he soon found, in supposing the thing to have been abandoned by all authorities) published some ingenious letters to me at the time when that event was chronicled, arguing ...
Fuck, I just realized I overuse commas, like Dickens.
Hey, why did you cut it there, was it getting too interesting?
... arguing that spontaneous combustion could not possibly be. I have no need to observe that I do not wilfully or negligently mislead my readers and that before I wrote that description I took pains to investigate the subject. There are about thirty cases on record ...
... arguing that spontaneous combustion could not possibly be. I have no need to observe that I do not wilfully or negligently mislead my readers and that before I wrote that description I took pains to investigate the subject. There are about thirty cases on record ...
> A study of English literature students at American universities found that they were unable to understand the first paragraph of Charles Dickens’s novel Bleak House — a book that was once regularly read by children.
First, I think this is overly crediting "children" and unnecessarily harsh to the university students. The first sentence of the book proper is, "LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall." It seems perfectly reasonable for an average person today to not know what "Michaelmas" is, but otherwise that's a fairly simple sentence. So I assume the above refers to the first sentence of the preface, which is:
> A CHANCERY Judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the Judge's eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate.
That's not a simple sentence: ~60 words, with multiple interjections splitting up the actual point: "A CHANCERY Judge once informed me that the Court of Chancery was almost immaculate."
Further, English has wandered substantially over the intervening ~175 years. This criticism seems akin to complaining that college students of 1800 had a hard time reading Shakespeare, when any contemporary child in 1600 could have understood his work (had they been able to read it at all).
Finally, this ignores the advance of technology. Books were, in their day, a huge technological advance. People could only read more because of moveable type and mass printing. Someone in 1600 might have lamented the mass standardization of printed material, saying that it depersonalized the communication of information.
Today, if someone finds Bleak house challenging, an LLM can modernize, simplify, or summarize as needed. We're on the verge of being able to turn it into a graphic novel on demand.
All to say: there's a point to be made about what information people choose to consume, but focusing on how they consume it misses the point.
First, I think this is overly crediting "children" and unnecessarily harsh to the university students. The first sentence of the book proper is, "LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall." It seems perfectly reasonable for an average person today to not know what "Michaelmas" is, but otherwise that's a fairly simple sentence. So I assume the above refers to the first sentence of the preface, which is:
> A CHANCERY Judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the Judge's eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate.
That's not a simple sentence: ~60 words, with multiple interjections splitting up the actual point: "A CHANCERY Judge once informed me that the Court of Chancery was almost immaculate."
Further, English has wandered substantially over the intervening ~175 years. This criticism seems akin to complaining that college students of 1800 had a hard time reading Shakespeare, when any contemporary child in 1600 could have understood his work (had they been able to read it at all).
Finally, this ignores the advance of technology. Books were, in their day, a huge technological advance. People could only read more because of moveable type and mass printing. Someone in 1600 might have lamented the mass standardization of printed material, saying that it depersonalized the communication of information.
Today, if someone finds Bleak house challenging, an LLM can modernize, simplify, or summarize as needed. We're on the verge of being able to turn it into a graphic novel on demand.
All to say: there's a point to be made about what information people choose to consume, but focusing on how they consume it misses the point.
This is why it's called literature, instead of a social network post. Until recently it used to be normal for someone to learn more complex forms of writing, including literature, as part of becoming a more educated person.
I think Emma qualifies as literature. This is much clearer than Bleak House:
> Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
Moby Dick -- of course the first sentence is about as simple as possible. But extending to the second:
> Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
Again, that is much clearer. N=3 and selection bias and all, but Bleak House appears to be the outlier here.
> Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
Moby Dick -- of course the first sentence is about as simple as possible. But extending to the second:
> Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
Again, that is much clearer. N=3 and selection bias and all, but Bleak House appears to be the outlier here.
Ok, let me tie this using a beautiful sentence from Marcel Proust:
But I had seen first one and then another of the rooms in which I had slept during my life, and in the end I would revisit them all in the long course of my waking dream: rooms in winter, where on going to bed I would at once bury my head in a nest, built up out of the most diverse materials, the corner of my pillow, the top of my blankets, a piece of a shawl, the edge of my bed, and a copy of an evening paper, all of which things I would contrive, with the infinite patience of birds building their nests, to cement into one whole; rooms where, in a keen frost, I would feel the satisfaction of being shut in from the outer world (like the sea-swallow which builds at the end of a dark tunnel and is kept warm by the surrounding earth), and where, the fire keeping in all night, I would sleep wrapped up, as it were, in a great cloak of snug and savoury air, shot with the glow of the logs which would break out again in flame: in a sort of alcove without walls, a cave of warmth dug out of the heart of the room itself, a zone of heat whose boundaries were constantly shifting and altering in temperature as gusts of air ran across them to strike freshly upon my face, from the corners of the room, or from parts near the window or far from the fireplace which had therefore remained cold — or rooms in summer, where I would delight to feel myself a part of the warm evening, where the moonlight striking upon the half-opened shutters would throw down to the foot of my bed its enchanted ladder; where I would fall asleep, as it might be in the open air, like a titmouse which the breeze keeps poised in the focus of a sunbeam — or sometimes the Louis XVI room, so cheerful that I could never feel really unhappy, even on my first night in it: that room where the slender columns which lightly supported its ceiling would part, ever so gracefully, to indicate where the bed was and to keep it separate; sometimes again that little room with the high ceiling, hollowed in the form of a pyramid out of two separate storeys, and partly walled with mahogany, in which from the first moment my mind was drugged by the unfamiliar scent of flowering grasses, convinced of the hostility of the violet curtains and of the insolent indifference of a clock that chattered on at the top of its voice as though I were not there; while a strange and pitiless mirror with square feet, which stood across one corner of the room, cleared for itself a site I had not looked to find tenanted in the quiet surroundings of my normal field of vision: that room in which my mind, forcing itself for hours on end to leave its moorings, to elongate itself upwards so as to take on the exact shape of the room, and to reach to the summit of that monstrous funnel, had passed so many anxious nights while my body lay stretched out in bed, my eyes staring upwards, my ears straining, my nostrils sniffing uneasily, and my heart beating; until custom had changed the colour of the curtains, made the clock keep quiet, brought an expression of pity to the cruel, slanting face of the glass, disguised or even completely dispelled the scent of flowering grasses, and distinctly reduced the apparent loftiness of the ceiling.
But I had seen first one and then another of the rooms in which I had slept during my life, and in the end I would revisit them all in the long course of my waking dream: rooms in winter, where on going to bed I would at once bury my head in a nest, built up out of the most diverse materials, the corner of my pillow, the top of my blankets, a piece of a shawl, the edge of my bed, and a copy of an evening paper, all of which things I would contrive, with the infinite patience of birds building their nests, to cement into one whole; rooms where, in a keen frost, I would feel the satisfaction of being shut in from the outer world (like the sea-swallow which builds at the end of a dark tunnel and is kept warm by the surrounding earth), and where, the fire keeping in all night, I would sleep wrapped up, as it were, in a great cloak of snug and savoury air, shot with the glow of the logs which would break out again in flame: in a sort of alcove without walls, a cave of warmth dug out of the heart of the room itself, a zone of heat whose boundaries were constantly shifting and altering in temperature as gusts of air ran across them to strike freshly upon my face, from the corners of the room, or from parts near the window or far from the fireplace which had therefore remained cold — or rooms in summer, where I would delight to feel myself a part of the warm evening, where the moonlight striking upon the half-opened shutters would throw down to the foot of my bed its enchanted ladder; where I would fall asleep, as it might be in the open air, like a titmouse which the breeze keeps poised in the focus of a sunbeam — or sometimes the Louis XVI room, so cheerful that I could never feel really unhappy, even on my first night in it: that room where the slender columns which lightly supported its ceiling would part, ever so gracefully, to indicate where the bed was and to keep it separate; sometimes again that little room with the high ceiling, hollowed in the form of a pyramid out of two separate storeys, and partly walled with mahogany, in which from the first moment my mind was drugged by the unfamiliar scent of flowering grasses, convinced of the hostility of the violet curtains and of the insolent indifference of a clock that chattered on at the top of its voice as though I were not there; while a strange and pitiless mirror with square feet, which stood across one corner of the room, cleared for itself a site I had not looked to find tenanted in the quiet surroundings of my normal field of vision: that room in which my mind, forcing itself for hours on end to leave its moorings, to elongate itself upwards so as to take on the exact shape of the room, and to reach to the summit of that monstrous funnel, had passed so many anxious nights while my body lay stretched out in bed, my eyes staring upwards, my ears straining, my nostrils sniffing uneasily, and my heart beating; until custom had changed the colour of the curtains, made the clock keep quiet, brought an expression of pity to the cruel, slanting face of the glass, disguised or even completely dispelled the scent of flowering grasses, and distinctly reduced the apparent loftiness of the ceiling.
If literacy is what prevents monarchy / dictatorship, what explains China and Russia?
According to Wikipedia, Soviet Russia promoted literacy specifically to make propaganda more effective
> After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Anatoly Lunachersky, the Soviet People's Commissariat for Education made a conscious effort to introduce political propaganda into Soviet schools, particularly the labour schools that had been established in 1918 under the Statute on the Uniform Labour School.[20] These propaganda pamphlets, required texts, and posters artistically embodied the core values[21] of the Soviet push for literacy in both rural and urban settings, namely the concept espoused by Lenin that "Without literacy, there can be no politics, there can only be rumors, gossip and prejudice."[22] This concept, the Soviet valuing of literacy, was later echoed in works like Trotsky's 1924 Literature and Revolution, in which Trotsky describes literature and reading as driving forces in the forging of a New Soviet Man.[23]
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likbez
Soviet Russia also obviously killed people in large numbers if they disagreed with the party line, starting immediately after the revolution. If you kill people who disagree with you while promoting specific state-approved propaganda then literacy is indeed not enough.
That's why free speech and in particular the freedom to criticize and disagree with the government is fundamental.
What matters is that (1) people are able to read, (2) people are free to read what they want, and (3) people have access to cheap nonfiction reading material that is likely to be true and accurate. You can attack at any of these points and reduce the ability of literacy to prevent dictatorship.
> After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Anatoly Lunachersky, the Soviet People's Commissariat for Education made a conscious effort to introduce political propaganda into Soviet schools, particularly the labour schools that had been established in 1918 under the Statute on the Uniform Labour School.[20] These propaganda pamphlets, required texts, and posters artistically embodied the core values[21] of the Soviet push for literacy in both rural and urban settings, namely the concept espoused by Lenin that "Without literacy, there can be no politics, there can only be rumors, gossip and prejudice."[22] This concept, the Soviet valuing of literacy, was later echoed in works like Trotsky's 1924 Literature and Revolution, in which Trotsky describes literature and reading as driving forces in the forging of a New Soviet Man.[23]
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likbez
Soviet Russia also obviously killed people in large numbers if they disagreed with the party line, starting immediately after the revolution. If you kill people who disagree with you while promoting specific state-approved propaganda then literacy is indeed not enough.
That's why free speech and in particular the freedom to criticize and disagree with the government is fundamental.
What matters is that (1) people are able to read, (2) people are free to read what they want, and (3) people have access to cheap nonfiction reading material that is likely to be true and accurate. You can attack at any of these points and reduce the ability of literacy to prevent dictatorship.
A bit of clarification, this isn't according to Wikipedia, but to those sources cited in the references [20], [21], etc.
Wikipedia isn't a source in and of itself, but a good Wikipedia article will be well sourced.
Wikipedia isn't a source in and of itself, but a good Wikipedia article will be well sourced.
yes fair enough, thanks
A followup: If literacy is key, how to explain the democracies in Ancient Greece and Rome?
Count me a skeptic of this reductionist article.
Count me a skeptic of this reductionist article.
The analysis feels quite wrong just based on pure physics. Where has that curiosity, interest, and engaged thought gone? It has not simply vanished into the screen without heat loss, it is transformed energy. The mind's eye may no longer be fixed on glyphs on paper but it certainly has not closed. Kids these days are fluent in languages of memes and rich with visual experience. Just because tiktoks are a few seconds long doesn't mean there is nothing in them. Perhaps the vogue visual learning of today is more in common with "trashy pulp fiction" but there isn't nothing at all there as the article suggests.
There will be some challenge in adapting to this new format but attention remains. We are just not converting this new medium into the best educational content as seen in the declining graphs. People are still hungry for knowledge and information about the world, they are just getting it in a more convenient form and who can blame them? I personally do not engage in any of the endless scroll feeds available today and despise social media. I read books both in digital and physical form and I graduated right near the peak of that literacy chart around 2009.
We just need to find better incentives for content creation and the rest will follow on it's own. Often this can only be done with regulation but what regulation can improve the quality of short form media? It will likely take those who grew up steeped in it to imagine the best way to change it for their own children.
There will be some challenge in adapting to this new format but attention remains. We are just not converting this new medium into the best educational content as seen in the declining graphs. People are still hungry for knowledge and information about the world, they are just getting it in a more convenient form and who can blame them? I personally do not engage in any of the endless scroll feeds available today and despise social media. I read books both in digital and physical form and I graduated right near the peak of that literacy chart around 2009.
We just need to find better incentives for content creation and the rest will follow on it's own. Often this can only be done with regulation but what regulation can improve the quality of short form media? It will likely take those who grew up steeped in it to imagine the best way to change it for their own children.
> We just need to find better incentives for content creation
Media is sold in a free market. Are you planning to abolish that? if not, how will you deal with the fact that people are addicted to crap?
Media is sold in a free market. Are you planning to abolish that? if not, how will you deal with the fact that people are addicted to crap?
We're symbol sleepwalkers, their arbitrariness is a meaning sink. Literacy is essentially mind-control by severely limiting the semantic resources words and narratives provide. Literacy makes us into minions. Post-literacy should have arrived with Chinese or Mayan glyphs (900BC/800AD) and conformed the West's sense of individualism with the concatenation capabilities of the East/MesoaAm, but the West's valuation of the arbitrary extractive processes and potentials of symbols and metaphors for economic and political control were much too addictive and sedative. Our only chance is to overthrow symbols and literacy to engage in direct perception of reality. This is a postcard from the edge by a medieval scribe.
..at some point a direct contact must occur between knowledge and reality. If we succeed in freeing ourselves from all these interpretations – if we above all succeed in removing the veil of words, which conceals the true essence of things, then at one stroke we shall find ourselves face to face with the original perceptions..
Ernst Cassirer The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms
..when the tools for creating the content of the virtual world become good enough, all of a sudden you have a new, shared objective world where people can co-create the interior with a facility similar to language. And this is what I call post-symbolic communication, because it means that instead of using symbols to refer to things, you are simply creating reality in a collaborative conversation, a waking-state, intentionally shared dream. You're going directly to the source, avoiding the middleman of the symbol and directly apprehending the craftsmanship of that other person combined with your own, without the need for labels.
Jaron [interview with Jaron Lanier] Wired 1.02 1993
..at some point a direct contact must occur between knowledge and reality. If we succeed in freeing ourselves from all these interpretations – if we above all succeed in removing the veil of words, which conceals the true essence of things, then at one stroke we shall find ourselves face to face with the original perceptions..
Ernst Cassirer The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms
..when the tools for creating the content of the virtual world become good enough, all of a sudden you have a new, shared objective world where people can co-create the interior with a facility similar to language. And this is what I call post-symbolic communication, because it means that instead of using symbols to refer to things, you are simply creating reality in a collaborative conversation, a waking-state, intentionally shared dream. You're going directly to the source, avoiding the middleman of the symbol and directly apprehending the craftsmanship of that other person combined with your own, without the need for labels.
Jaron [interview with Jaron Lanier] Wired 1.02 1993
I worry that as the tools for creating virtual worlds improve they will continue to be used for creating opportunities for child exploitation (Roblox) or general profit from the sale of user privacy to the businesses and demagogues with the most money to spend (whatever Meta's doing).
Not a proponent of virtual. The virtual is a mistaken path to reach the brain's topology, it's inherently 2-D. So the path is probably a hybrid between post-symbol and topological integration, ie 2-D screens.
This essay attributes rather too much to literacy. The end of feudalism, for example, started with the Black Death, and the journey to modern democracies involved centuries of concessions by kings to the emerging middle classes. Sure, mass literacy was key to enabling universal suffrage, but the end of absolute monarchy started long before that.
The present decline in literacy is probably the consequence in a temporary prestige given to other forms of media. We are very much heading into a great crisis, but the old social order where knowledge is valued by the elites will re-emerge once the crisis is resolved. The Second World War emerged from the chaos of the 1920s and 1930s, and the reason why so many people who lived through the war said they enjoyed it was the common purpose that swept away the prior disorder. This is why the 1950s were so socially conservative and repressive.
We live in interesting times, but the world will again be boring.
The present decline in literacy is probably the consequence in a temporary prestige given to other forms of media. We are very much heading into a great crisis, but the old social order where knowledge is valued by the elites will re-emerge once the crisis is resolved. The Second World War emerged from the chaos of the 1920s and 1930s, and the reason why so many people who lived through the war said they enjoyed it was the common purpose that swept away the prior disorder. This is why the 1950s were so socially conservative and repressive.
We live in interesting times, but the world will again be boring.
I took a mandatory college requirement in environmental studies. The class argues that a lot of the big changes we remember in human history came from environmental changes. The medieval started the growth and end of feudalism, the little ice age started the enlightenment period and industrial revolution.
>The class argues that a lot of the big changes we remember in human history came from environmental changes.
Of course it's going to argue that, it's an environmental studies class. But those environmental changes were global, while changes like the enlightenment and the industrial revolution only happened in a small number of countries that had the political and economic systems to support them.
Of course it's going to argue that, it's an environmental studies class. But those environmental changes were global, while changes like the enlightenment and the industrial revolution only happened in a small number of countries that had the political and economic systems to support them.
Both statements could be right, no? The environmental changes could have been necessary (or greatly probability-increasing) for the human history changes but not by themselves sufficient to trigger those without the right societal context. Most changes like the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution have multiple causes or prerequisites.
… And one of the others might have been literacy?
> political and economic systems to support them
This is circular reasoning. How developed political and economic systems could arise before educational and economic development? They both rose at the same time.
This is circular reasoning. How developed political and economic systems could arise before educational and economic development? They both rose at the same time.
More than that, it seems pretty clear that big events in history are moved by a relative minority of usually privileged individuals who then harness the will of the masses. Major achievements were accomplished while most people in the world did not know how to read and had never traveled more than 20 miles from where they were born. That isn’t to say these achievements were aimed at the most good for the most people. Genghis Khan’s conquest of Asia and Eastern Europe was not to bring peace and prosperity to the conquered. But literacy played little role in that huge endeavor. In 1928, when Alexander Fleming first identified penicillin in his lab, the worldwide adult literacy rate was around 20%.
The only thing we seem to be forgetting is that the intellectual capability of a group of people is measured by the intellectual capability of the smartest person there, not the average of all the people.
The only thing we seem to be forgetting is that the intellectual capability of a group of people is measured by the intellectual capability of the smartest person there, not the average of all the people.
That seems like the ‘great man’ model of history (unless I’ve misread you). It is one of the models that was used to interpret history, but it isn’t “pretty clear” that it is true at all, there are plenty of competing models.
I don’t subscribe to one specific model but the thing is that you very rarely if ever see a group of average people achieving something great without a few outliers mixed in. In some situations the greatness of some was exactly enabled by others simply not getting in the way.
You might bring up something like Bell Labs as a counter example but my point would be that it was a large group of exceptional people and you got synergies out of putting them together but compared to the society in which they existed they were each individually outliers too.
You might bring up something like Bell Labs as a counter example but my point would be that it was a large group of exceptional people and you got synergies out of putting them together but compared to the society in which they existed they were each individually outliers too.
I think to really inspect this idea we’d have to nail down what are outliers and great achievement. It is hard to judge people by anything other than their achievements (plenty of highly credentialed and well-testing people don’t accomplish much in life, right?). But, if we say an outlier is somebody who’s accomplished great things, then the idea that they show up in groups they accomplish great things becomes a bit circular.
> the intellectual capability of a group of people is measured by the intellectual capability of the smartest person there, not the average of all the people.
Nonsense. The capacities of an organized group of people are very different from the capacities of any individual in it or the averaged capacities of its members. Even an absolute dictatorship where the dictator is resident genius.
Your claim is only correct if it's a dictator with an army of automatons. The claim you want to refute is just as wrong, unless the people follow a strict algorithmic decision procedure, which even the stodgiest bureaucracy only loosely approximates.
Agents and groups have fundamentally different dynamics. An anthill does things no ant can conceive of. Many human organizations filled with smart, well-intentioned people do incredibly stupid things. Etc.
Nonsense. The capacities of an organized group of people are very different from the capacities of any individual in it or the averaged capacities of its members. Even an absolute dictatorship where the dictator is resident genius.
Your claim is only correct if it's a dictator with an army of automatons. The claim you want to refute is just as wrong, unless the people follow a strict algorithmic decision procedure, which even the stodgiest bureaucracy only loosely approximates.
Agents and groups have fundamentally different dynamics. An anthill does things no ant can conceive of. Many human organizations filled with smart, well-intentioned people do incredibly stupid things. Etc.
I am not discounting the importance of the group being able to recognize the smartest person or people. But of the hundreds of thousands of Athenians we only recognize several dozens to maybe a couple hundred individuals as having moved the needle.
You can also think of it as “the maximum intellectual capability of the group is limited by the intellectual capability of its smartest members”.
You can also think of it as “the maximum intellectual capability of the group is limited by the intellectual capability of its smartest members”.
Ignoring the difficulty of defining such a needle in a general sense, I still think the point is disproved by the fact that groups can do things no individual member can conceive of, let alone do, alone.
If it's true of ants, who we likely agree have not so large a cognitive lightcone as us, surely it is of us. The only way I see for it not to be true of us is to posit a hard cap on intelligence which we are closer to.
There are also forms of intelligence which resist formalization and do not equate to cleverness. For instance, wisdom.
If it's true of ants, who we likely agree have not so large a cognitive lightcone as us, surely it is of us. The only way I see for it not to be true of us is to posit a hard cap on intelligence which we are closer to.
There are also forms of intelligence which resist formalization and do not equate to cleverness. For instance, wisdom.
I am specifically talking about intellectual capability. No one person can build an aircraft by themselves. But also if you take 10,000 people of IQ of exactly 100 (which is always defined as a median IQ for a population), you will not get a carrier either. You also wouldn’t get calculus or general relativity or genetic engineering.
I'm not sure what to make of the point about 1 or 10,000 people. 1 person can definitely build a primitive aircraft with time, money and perseverance. No 10,000 random people, whether IQ 100 or 1000, will build an airliner, but Airbus will, more or less reliably regardless of the exact IQ of any particular employee. The ability to build one is distributed over hundreds of thousands of people and millions of machines at Airbus, and millions of people and billions of machines in the industrial civilization behind the whole endeavor.
If your point is just that different people have different capacities, then sure, that's true enough. But even so, it's an extremely coarse summary of an enormously complex and detailed landscape.
If your point is just that different people have different capacities, then sure, that's true enough. But even so, it's an extremely coarse summary of an enormously complex and detailed landscape.
I am talking about building one of these: https://cdn.britannica.com/34/94834-050-16DB7EEB/USS-Carl-Vi...
I think I am not being clear in what I am saying. My point is that if you have a group of 10k average individuals their collective intelligence will not let them design something like this even though they will have the manpower and presumably the raw materials to build it. But if you add a small handful of much smarter than average individuals with expertise in the relevant engineering fields and they would not only be able to conceive of it as a concept but also design and it and lead the larger group to building it.
This does not absolve the group of needing to recognize those who are the most intellectually capable amongst them and put them into a leadership role. But the opposite is true because you cannot by definition imagine someone who is significantly smarter than you and you cannot emulate it. Collective intelligence of a group is bounded by the smartest person there. Adding more average intelligence to a group will not make it smarter, just larger, and potentially get in the way of the group recognizing the intelligence of its smartest members.
I think I am not being clear in what I am saying. My point is that if you have a group of 10k average individuals their collective intelligence will not let them design something like this even though they will have the manpower and presumably the raw materials to build it. But if you add a small handful of much smarter than average individuals with expertise in the relevant engineering fields and they would not only be able to conceive of it as a concept but also design and it and lead the larger group to building it.
This does not absolve the group of needing to recognize those who are the most intellectually capable amongst them and put them into a leadership role. But the opposite is true because you cannot by definition imagine someone who is significantly smarter than you and you cannot emulate it. Collective intelligence of a group is bounded by the smartest person there. Adding more average intelligence to a group will not make it smarter, just larger, and potentially get in the way of the group recognizing the intelligence of its smartest members.
If your point is that competent people must direct the activities of a group in order to accomplish a complicated task, sure. That's almost always true.
> Collective intelligence of a group is bounded by the smartest person there.
I maintain this is false. Who was the smartest person in the Vienna circle? A group of competent, well aligned people is potentially a much more capable thing than the one member with the highest IQ score alone. Collective intelligence is no simple combination of the capacities of its constituents. That is what the anthill demonstrates. The capacities of individuals do limit the capacities of the whole in some way, but it is nowhere near as simple as "bounded by the smartest person". This has a lot to do with the fact that "smartest person in the room" is not a particularly meaningful title absent a precise definition of what intelligence/competence means in your context of interest.
I agree with your point that adding people to an organization does not necessarily improve its capacities. Collective intelligence is not simply additive, nor is it simply bounded by the best individual on any particular dimension
> Collective intelligence of a group is bounded by the smartest person there.
I maintain this is false. Who was the smartest person in the Vienna circle? A group of competent, well aligned people is potentially a much more capable thing than the one member with the highest IQ score alone. Collective intelligence is no simple combination of the capacities of its constituents. That is what the anthill demonstrates. The capacities of individuals do limit the capacities of the whole in some way, but it is nowhere near as simple as "bounded by the smartest person". This has a lot to do with the fact that "smartest person in the room" is not a particularly meaningful title absent a precise definition of what intelligence/competence means in your context of interest.
I agree with your point that adding people to an organization does not necessarily improve its capacities. Collective intelligence is not simply additive, nor is it simply bounded by the best individual on any particular dimension
Ok let me reframe it like this: the collective intelligence of a random group of people is bounded by the collective intelligence of its top N% members, ranked by intelligence, where N is some relatively small number.”
If you assume a bell curve for intelligence, then it is primarily the people who are two standard deviations and up from median that are driving innovation, assuming the group allows such individuals to do so. In a small group this might be just one person, in a nation of hundreds of millions it would be single digits of millions, etc.
If the whole group is actively hostile towards this or there is a systematic barrier to it, such as the intelligentsia purge under Stalin, then there is probably going to be another factor that is much stronger at bounding the maximum intelligence.
I postulates that this holds true for any group where the average intelligence is close to 100 IQ or any other metric you want to use to designate the median intelligence in the human population overall.
If you get together a group of people who are already all over two standard deviations up from the overall median you will probably get a different calculation for the upper bound because higher order terms will become more significant, such as specialities, age, experience, etc. But when we are talking about societies, you are always talking about comparing to the median. As far as I know something like a median intelligence slowly trends up in humans over centuries but it is slow enough that there aren’t societies where their median intelligence is a lot lower or higher than any other society in existence at the same time.
Ants are a terrible example due to using a completely different intelligence model. They are incapable of recognizing innovation, so even if you throw in a group of Fermat ants into the mix, they will still end up working as just slightly more efficient drones. This fits into the model above as the society being set up with an active barrier to allowing its smartest members to innovate.
If you assume a bell curve for intelligence, then it is primarily the people who are two standard deviations and up from median that are driving innovation, assuming the group allows such individuals to do so. In a small group this might be just one person, in a nation of hundreds of millions it would be single digits of millions, etc.
If the whole group is actively hostile towards this or there is a systematic barrier to it, such as the intelligentsia purge under Stalin, then there is probably going to be another factor that is much stronger at bounding the maximum intelligence.
I postulates that this holds true for any group where the average intelligence is close to 100 IQ or any other metric you want to use to designate the median intelligence in the human population overall.
If you get together a group of people who are already all over two standard deviations up from the overall median you will probably get a different calculation for the upper bound because higher order terms will become more significant, such as specialities, age, experience, etc. But when we are talking about societies, you are always talking about comparing to the median. As far as I know something like a median intelligence slowly trends up in humans over centuries but it is slow enough that there aren’t societies where their median intelligence is a lot lower or higher than any other society in existence at the same time.
Ants are a terrible example due to using a completely different intelligence model. They are incapable of recognizing innovation, so even if you throw in a group of Fermat ants into the mix, they will still end up working as just slightly more efficient drones. This fits into the model above as the society being set up with an active barrier to allowing its smartest members to innovate.
> [ants] are incapable of recognizing innovation, so even if you throw in a group of Fermat ants into the mix, they will still end up working as just slightly more efficient drones.
And yet the anthill does very complex things even though its Fermats might feel their unique talents go unused. This strengthens the case unless you posit that humankind is so close to a universal intelligence limit that we can see its precise contours and can therefore know exactly what can be known and done, and how, exhaustively.
Separately, everything you say needs an operationalization of intelligence. I understand IQ is your proxy of choice. Presumably this measure correlates to innovation in such things as physics and mathematics. Presumably also to innovation in speculative financial vehicles, elaborate social schemes, weapons of mass destruction, and success in the war against nature. Will you adjust your definition when some of its manifestations come into tension with others, or stick with it come what may?
There is no intelligence absent context. Intelligence is a relation between an agent and everything else relevant, with respect to a goal.
And yet the anthill does very complex things even though its Fermats might feel their unique talents go unused. This strengthens the case unless you posit that humankind is so close to a universal intelligence limit that we can see its precise contours and can therefore know exactly what can be known and done, and how, exhaustively.
Separately, everything you say needs an operationalization of intelligence. I understand IQ is your proxy of choice. Presumably this measure correlates to innovation in such things as physics and mathematics. Presumably also to innovation in speculative financial vehicles, elaborate social schemes, weapons of mass destruction, and success in the war against nature. Will you adjust your definition when some of its manifestations come into tension with others, or stick with it come what may?
There is no intelligence absent context. Intelligence is a relation between an agent and everything else relevant, with respect to a goal.
I will grant you that intelligence is very difficult to quantify in absolute terms and is very context dependent. If it was easy I would give you a mathematical proof instead of hand waving hypotheticals. IQ is not a great measure of it either and you also have to account for intelligence as in the ability to learn new things, create new concepts, recognize patterns, connect the dots, and having the wisdom when to do and not do certain things. In the context of this conversation we were talking about a society’s ability to innovate. I postulated that innovation in a society is not bounded by the median intelligence (or perhaps more accurately ability to innovate) of its members but by the intelligence/ability to innovate of its top members as ranked by intelligence/ability to innovate. I have not seen anything so far that disputes this hypothesis. A corollary to this hypothesis is that the median for a society can be, in theory, dumb as an ant and that society can still produce innovation at an impressive rate. Think of it as min-maxing your D&D party if that helps.
Ants do not feel so it doesn’t matter what the smartest ants feel. A CPU is infinitely more complex than an ant hill in its function, and is equally as predicable. Ants do not innovate any more than a laser etched chunk of silicon. They are a bad analogy to a conversation about innovation.
But I am also explicitly saying that there are ways a society can hamper its ability to innovate. One such way is to not create the organizational structure to set up its most able innovators for success. Another is to try to systematically eliminate them. A third is to separate them so that you do not get the synergistic effects of multiple experts in different fields being able to cooperate. All of these can happen in a society with a low median ability to innovate as well as a high ability to innovate.
The only truly unique thing you get in a society with low literacy in terms of innovation is that someone of very high intelligence as defined not by education but by ability to learn, would not be able to find the education they need to proceed. Before Fermat was a genius of his age he had to learn from some perfectly average people +/- one deviation. If there are no average teachers then your geniuses cannot be recognized as such. You see this same phenomenon in sports. Countries that do not have kids playing soccer for fun produce fewer world class soccer player per capita because there are fewer opportunities for the most talented players to get the experience and recognition. But even so, you can get exceptions. In basketball you still get Yoa Ming out a country that does not emphasize basketball in the same way the US does.
Ants do not feel so it doesn’t matter what the smartest ants feel. A CPU is infinitely more complex than an ant hill in its function, and is equally as predicable. Ants do not innovate any more than a laser etched chunk of silicon. They are a bad analogy to a conversation about innovation.
But I am also explicitly saying that there are ways a society can hamper its ability to innovate. One such way is to not create the organizational structure to set up its most able innovators for success. Another is to try to systematically eliminate them. A third is to separate them so that you do not get the synergistic effects of multiple experts in different fields being able to cooperate. All of these can happen in a society with a low median ability to innovate as well as a high ability to innovate.
The only truly unique thing you get in a society with low literacy in terms of innovation is that someone of very high intelligence as defined not by education but by ability to learn, would not be able to find the education they need to proceed. Before Fermat was a genius of his age he had to learn from some perfectly average people +/- one deviation. If there are no average teachers then your geniuses cannot be recognized as such. You see this same phenomenon in sports. Countries that do not have kids playing soccer for fun produce fewer world class soccer player per capita because there are fewer opportunities for the most talented players to get the experience and recognition. But even so, you can get exceptions. In basketball you still get Yoa Ming out a country that does not emphasize basketball in the same way the US does.
"The only thing we seem to be forgetting is that the intellectual capability of a group of people is measured by the intellectual capability of the smartest person there, not the average of all the people."
Looking at various intellectual and artistic hotspots in history, be it Bell Labs or ancient Athens or Florence in the Renaissance or even Silicon Valley today, what seems to matter is the ability to find the smartest people, put them together and let them stimulate one another.
And plenty of such people come from the peripheries. How many Ramanujans lived and died at Fleming's time while not being discovered?
Looking at various intellectual and artistic hotspots in history, be it Bell Labs or ancient Athens or Florence in the Renaissance or even Silicon Valley today, what seems to matter is the ability to find the smartest people, put them together and let them stimulate one another.
And plenty of such people come from the peripheries. How many Ramanujans lived and died at Fleming's time while not being discovered?
>the journey to modern democracies involved centuries of concessions by kings to the emerging middle classes
Eh, sort of disagree. The journey to modern democracy started with centuries of concessions by kings, first to other nobles (Magna Carta, etc.) Then, to other local power brokers like large landowners, business elites, etc. None of these parties wanted one single figure to have absolute power over their affairs & finances, mostly because they tended to make terrible decisions (random wars, taxation, and so on). Early proto-parliamentary systems in the UK, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Japan in the 19th century etc. were just a council of local, powerful elites who wanted to check the power of the king. The 'middle class' part came absolutely last
Eh, sort of disagree. The journey to modern democracy started with centuries of concessions by kings, first to other nobles (Magna Carta, etc.) Then, to other local power brokers like large landowners, business elites, etc. None of these parties wanted one single figure to have absolute power over their affairs & finances, mostly because they tended to make terrible decisions (random wars, taxation, and so on). Early proto-parliamentary systems in the UK, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Japan in the 19th century etc. were just a council of local, powerful elites who wanted to check the power of the king. The 'middle class' part came absolutely last
I live in the UK, so for me, 'middle class' means those large landowners and business elites who aren't part of the nobility.
The US is very generous with its use of the labels of privilege.
The US is very generous with its use of the labels of privilege.
>Welcome to the post-literate society
I dispute the basic thesis. Quoting from Our World in Data:
>While only one in ten people in the world could read and write in 1820, today, the share has reversed, with only one in ten remaining illiterate https://ourworldindata.org/literacy#all-charts
I think recently with smartphones and the like people have switched to new forms of information - youtube, or mucking about on HN rather than reading Dickens but I don't think it's worse.
(Typed funnily enough from the How The Light Gets In philosophy festival where yesterday we had "Roger Penrose - From the Big Bang to the fabric of spacetime and the nature of consciousness..." I don't really see this post literate thing.)
I dispute the basic thesis. Quoting from Our World in Data:
>While only one in ten people in the world could read and write in 1820, today, the share has reversed, with only one in ten remaining illiterate https://ourworldindata.org/literacy#all-charts
I think recently with smartphones and the like people have switched to new forms of information - youtube, or mucking about on HN rather than reading Dickens but I don't think it's worse.
(Typed funnily enough from the How The Light Gets In philosophy festival where yesterday we had "Roger Penrose - From the Big Bang to the fabric of spacetime and the nature of consciousness..." I don't really see this post literate thing.)
And yet thousands of people have liked (and presumably read) his long article and hundreds have replied. Substack provides levels of information sharing that a book can't provide.
With books, some small amount of people read difficult works while most people read beach lit. With phones, some small amount of people are learning at rates never possible before, while most people consume Tik Tok.
I agree that social media may be causing a collapse in society, but not that a lack of book reading is causing societal collapse.
With books, some small amount of people read difficult works while most people read beach lit. With phones, some small amount of people are learning at rates never possible before, while most people consume Tik Tok.
I agree that social media may be causing a collapse in society, but not that a lack of book reading is causing societal collapse.
I only wish that Substack were a good substitute for books.
I’m off social media. I don’t even have Safari on my phone usually. I consume Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, and Substack essays.
It turns out I’m just as able to mindlessly consume this media for hours a day, and although it is not as superficial, emotive or corrosive as X, it is still no substitute for the deep book-length reading I used to do and now do increasingly less.
Literate intellectuals are stuck in the shallows too.
I’m off social media. I don’t even have Safari on my phone usually. I consume Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, and Substack essays.
It turns out I’m just as able to mindlessly consume this media for hours a day, and although it is not as superficial, emotive or corrosive as X, it is still no substitute for the deep book-length reading I used to do and now do increasingly less.
Literate intellectuals are stuck in the shallows too.
>With books, some small amount of people read difficult works while most people read beach lit. With phones, some small amount of people are learning at rates never possible before, while most people consume Tik Tok.
Same with gen-AI. A small amount of people have become autodidacts like never before, while others just use it to replace their own reasoning capabilities, which atrophy as a result. I know someone who self-taught graduate-level math courses using ChatGPT as a personal tutor, and I can confirm they actually learned the material well. I also know college students for whom gen-AI wrote every single word of every assignment.
Any social collapse will be caused by technology further accentuating this bifurcation. The exponential increase of information readily available to us, whether gold or slop, means that the motivated will get exponentially smarter and knowledgeable while the less-motivated get exponentially more distracted, which will lead to unprecedented levels of social inequality.
Same with gen-AI. A small amount of people have become autodidacts like never before, while others just use it to replace their own reasoning capabilities, which atrophy as a result. I know someone who self-taught graduate-level math courses using ChatGPT as a personal tutor, and I can confirm they actually learned the material well. I also know college students for whom gen-AI wrote every single word of every assignment.
Any social collapse will be caused by technology further accentuating this bifurcation. The exponential increase of information readily available to us, whether gold or slop, means that the motivated will get exponentially smarter and knowledgeable while the less-motivated get exponentially more distracted, which will lead to unprecedented levels of social inequality.
Would writers please get to the point faster?
"LONDON. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas, in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest."
I'm a college-educated, reasonably well-read person and this is a rough paragraph to get through. Old idioms, excessively lengthy sentences, anachronisms (what is a "horse blinker"? "Michaelmas"?), etc. Why choose this type of subject matter to draw conclusions from?