Very good! Hoping to see—weakly intending to commit—a post list of his latest boom (fertility decline, which lead him to culture). I attended one of Robin’s Zoom meetings on culture, and I’m confident it is on par with his other great fixations thus far (prediction markets, signaling, ems and aliens) if not even bigger. Robin seems absolutely possessed by the phenomenon.
For those who do not follow him: Robin has begun seeing culture as broken/maladaptive, and he seems to think this is perhaps the key issue of our time, on par or bigger than climate change and AI. He thinks that cultural change is driven into directions which will eventually lead to population decline and nasty places, even though he remains optimistic on our species’ future in the long run.
Hanson seems to treat the global civilization as a cultural melting pot, but he does distinguish insular subcultures from that. I intuit he sees contemporary cultures on a gradient relative to global, hegemonic trends (which correlate with technological progress, increasing wealth and education) and thereby drifting pressures.
I wouldn’t equate Robin’s perspectives on culture with reactionary movements or conservatism. If anything, he seems quite open to radical transformations of society (e.g. futarchy to replace parlamentarism, bounty systems and vouching to replace policing, private insurance policies to replace welfare policies etc.).
Whereas (neo-)reactionary / conservative thought simply often intends to return some previous status quo, Robin does not confess to representing such views and has not proposed such solutions. In fact, as far as I’m aware he hasn’t proposed any solutions at all as of yet.
Very good! Hoping to see—weakly intending to commit—a post list of his latest boom (fertility decline, which lead him to culture). I attended one of Robin’s Zoom meetings on culture, and I’m confident it is on par with his other great fixations thus far (prediction markets, signaling, ems and aliens) if not even bigger. Robin seems absolutely possessed by the phenomenon.
For those who do not follow him: Robin has begun seeing culture as broken/maladaptive, and he seems to think this is perhaps the key issue of our time, on par or bigger than climate change and AI. He thinks that cultural change is driven into directions which will eventually lead to population decline and nasty places, even though he remains optimistic on our species’ future in the long run.
Could you clarify a bit here. Is Hanson talking about specific cultures or all of the instances of culture?
Hanson seems to treat the global civilization as a cultural melting pot, but he does distinguish insular subcultures from that. I intuit he sees contemporary cultures on a gradient relative to global, hegemonic trends (which correlate with technological progress, increasing wealth and education) and thereby drifting pressures.
Are you aware of anyone else working on the same topic?
This is not novel to Hanson, it’s been a staple of (neo)reactionary /conservative thought for millenia.
I wouldn’t equate Robin’s perspectives on culture with reactionary movements or conservatism. If anything, he seems quite open to radical transformations of society (e.g. futarchy to replace parlamentarism, bounty systems and vouching to replace policing, private insurance policies to replace welfare policies etc.).
Whereas (neo-)reactionary / conservative thought simply often intends to return some previous status quo, Robin does not confess to representing such views and has not proposed such solutions. In fact, as far as I’m aware he hasn’t proposed any solutions at all as of yet.