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Comment by jungturk | Hacker News Reader

I still think it will, but its also created opportunity for other innovators less devoted to liberalism.

In my area, every spring as the days get longer and the frost subsides my yard springs up weeds. Within a month the turf crowds it out despite its slow start. Every year the same thing - the weeds are just quicker on the draw than the grass.

I think we're in the spring dawning of massive global connectivity - the nodes are online but they aren't good at resisting infection, the networks are vast but not resilient to abuse, truth struggles against the speed and virality and appeal of propaganda - but humanity's good at inventing approaches and institutions to improve on those things.

Asteroids, pandemics, and climate change on the other hand....

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I hold a very similar view. It’s not a given however and we must fight tooth and nail for a good outcome.

Doubtful. Adoption of honest liberalism requires some baseline intelligence to understand the parameters. The internet has shown that most people are very very stupid.

Not to mention neither the right or the left which have the biggest voices seem to actually care about true liberalism. They both have very narrow world views that they want to force everyone else to behave by.

I agree with you - it doesn't seem like we're smart enough in aggregate to actually pull it off.

And the counterpoint of "but look how far we've come" isn't satisfying because we all advance due to the absurd excellence of the few (researchers, inventors, philosophers, organizers, etc...) and what you're talking about seems to require excellence from the many.

But I also believe that the internet can be the solution to that problem. A bigger bunch of the kids that come behind us are much much smarter than we are, and I think it'll be the same for them and those that follow.

Drowning in information, awareness, and interaction from such a young age is going to promote rapid and broader smartening and wizening. The nodes will have an opportunity to slide up the competence gradient now that its apparent and the resources to exploit it are abundant.

Youth won't be wasted on the young in an environment where the young are already wise.

> where the young are already wise.

Could you elaborate on this?

It's paraphrased from famous quotes that lament "when I had the energy/enthusiasm/optimism (of adolescence) I didn't have the wisdom/resources (of adulthood) to do anything consequential with it, and once I overcame the poverty of youth (in wisdom/resources) I was too spent/cynical/weary in adulthood".

It suggests a constraint on humans' impact - an inverse correlation between will & power that yields a flattened curve when plotted against time - and implies that we're restrained by nature.

But if that constraint were broken...

"The internet has shown that most people are very very stupid."

A extremely elitist and arrogant comment. Where is your evidence?

Witness the election of Donald J Trump, and his adulation by the Idiocracy.

You do realise elitism is one of the major reasons why Trump was elected, right? You guys are driving people apart by declaring them morons instead of thinking, critically about what drove them to a decision. Not cool.

I already know whay drove people to that decision. You have a guy who inherited his money so he doesn't need sponsorship, and thus doesn't need to worry about the repugnant things he says costing him his campaign. That means there's a candidate who's saying loudly on global television that it's okay to be a racist, sexist boor with no critical thinking skills. In fact he thinks people should be proud of that.

So of course the racists, the sexists, and those without the capacity for abstract thought voted for him in droves.

We're long past the point where there is benefit in pretending that all ideas are created equal, and that my uneducated belief is somehow on the same level as your educated, evidence-backed opinion. To support Trump is to support the anathema of civilized society.

If you believe that all of Trump's voters were racist and sexist, then you do not understand the plight of middle America.

I can see we're not going to have a productive conversation, here.

You're right I don't understand the plight of middle America, and I bet they don't understand a thing about the problems the coasts face. Maybe we should split up and go be separate countries. They can take the south with them while we're at it.

It's important to use inclusive language to maintain the forum where we learn and share ideas with one another, but if your shelter's erected on a tentpole of anti-intellectualism (whether a reaction to others' elitism or not), you've already aborted the dialectic, left or right.

Perhaps at that point it's more fruitful to name it and to confront it as a cancer on civil society than it is to recruit it or appease it.

If you're caught in a propagandist's net it would seem to do you better to reach your hand out to the folks who notice in hopes they could fight with you for your liberty rather than to compound your shame by insisting you're there for your own good.

Nonsense. People are not as stupid or illogical as you claim. The decisions the Trump-voting electorate made were not anti-intellectualism just because the end result (Trump being elected) wasn't a great option. From many people's PoV, he was the _least worst_.

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