Here’s an idea of how random drift of epistemic norms and practices can occur. Beliefs (including beliefs about normative epistemology) function in part as a signaling device, similar to clothes. (I forgot where I came across this idea originally, but a search produced a Robin Hanson article about it.) The social dynamics around this kind of signaling produces random drift in epistemic norms and practices, similar to random drift in fashion / clothing styles. Such drift coupled with certain kinds of competition could have produced the world we have today (i.e., certain groups happened upon especially effective norms/practices by chance and then spread their influence through competition), but may lead to disaster in the future in the absence of competition, as it’s unclear what will then counteract future drift that will cause continued deterioration in epistemic conditions.
Another mechanism for random drift is technological change that disrupts previous epistemic norms/practices without anyone specifically intending to. I think we’ve seen this recently too, in the form of, e.g., cable news and social media. It seems like you’re envisioning that future humans will deliberately isolate their deliberation from technological advances (until they’re ready to incorporate those advances into how they deliberate), so in that scenario perhaps this form of drift will stop at some point, but (1) it’s unclear how many people will actually decide to do that, and (2) even in that scenario there will still be a large amount of drift between the recent past (when epistemic conditions still seemed reasonably ok, although I had my doubts even back then), which (together with other forms of drift) might never be recovered from.
Here’s an idea of how random drift of epistemic norms and practices can occur. Beliefs (including beliefs about normative epistemology) function in part as a signaling device, similar to clothes. (I forgot where I came across this idea originally, but a search produced a Robin Hanson article about it.) The social dynamics around this kind of signaling produces random drift in epistemic norms and practices, similar to random drift in fashion / clothing styles. Such drift coupled with certain kinds of competition could have produced the world we have today (i.e., certain groups happened upon especially effective norms/practices by chance and then spread their influence through competition), but may lead to disaster in the future in the absence of competition, as it’s unclear what will then counteract future drift that will cause continued deterioration in epistemic conditions.
Another mechanism for random drift is technological change that disrupts previous epistemic norms/practices without anyone specifically intending to. I think we’ve seen this recently too, in the form of, e.g., cable news and social media. It seems like you’re envisioning that future humans will deliberately isolate their deliberation from technological advances (until they’re ready to incorporate those advances into how they deliberate), so in that scenario perhaps this form of drift will stop at some point, but (1) it’s unclear how many people will actually decide to do that, and (2) even in that scenario there will still be a large amount of drift between the recent past (when epistemic conditions still seemed reasonably ok, although I had my doubts even back then), which (together with other forms of drift) might never be recovered from.