I more or less agree with your reading of this essay, but it misses an important point that the edited version on Edge leaves out—in the original version, he compared the friends of Aaron Swartz with the friends of someone Michael knows.
Basically, when she was institutionalized against her will, her low-status, relatively poor friends helped break her out of the mental hospital and hide her until the police chase blew over. In contrast, when placed in a legal battle Aaron Swartz wasn’t able to rely on his much smarter, wealthier, and in almost every way better off friends to help him. The well-learned elites couldn’t really help protect him because they were too used to submitting.
With this in mind, the point of the essay is much more that we rely on non-social cognition for innovation, but that the culture of submission has destroyed our mechanisms for supporting self-actualizing innovators who come under fire. With this lack of support, our innovators are even worse off than they are just based on worse social skills and being less well understood.
Basically, it’s the same as the edge essay, but you should replace the last paragraph with...
Robert Altmeyer’s research shows that for a population of authoritarian submissives, authoritarian dominators are a survival necessity. Since those who learn their school lessons are too submissive to guide their own lives, our society is forced to throw huge wads of money at the rare intelligent authoritarian dominants it can find, from derivative start-up founders to sociopathic Fortune 500 CEOs. However, with their attention placed on esteem, their concrete reasoning underdeveloped and their school curriculum poorly absorbed, such leaders aren’t well positioned to create value. They can create some, by imperfectly imitating established models, but can’t build the abstract models needed to innovate seriously. For such innovations, we depend on the few self-actualizers we still get; people who aren’t starving for esteem. People like Aaron Swartz.
Aaron Swartz is dead now. He died surrounded by friends; the wealthy, the powerful and the ‘smart’. He died desperate and effectively alone. A friend of mine, when she was seventeen, was involuntarily incarcerated in a mental hospital. She hadn’t created Reddit, but she had a blog with some readers- punks, fan girls and street kids. They helped her to escape, and to hide until the chase blew over. Aaron didn’t have friends like that. The wealthy, the powerful, and the ‘smart’ tend not to fight back; they learned their lessons well in school.
To be fair, it might be easier to protect someone that the top authorities aren’t gunning for. Hiding Aaron Swatz under the federal case blew over wasn’t an option.
From my reading, this is the crux of the issue. “Well-educated” and “Successful” individuals submit quickly to the rule of law, or other ‘top’ authorities. They are stuck either feeling like they have too much at stake to break out of the obedient channels, or they don’t even consider the possibility that a protecting a friend’s life and well-being could warrant a violation of law. It seems like it isn’t an option, but that’s only because the rules they have submitted themselves to say it isn’t an option.
The “punks, fan girls and street kids” have NOT “learned their lessons well in school” and the the idea of breaking a friend out of a mental hospital becomes a no-brainer. The cops aren’t always right, and they definitely won’t look after us and our, so we have to do it ourselves. (Non-submission)
Compare this to “He’s being held by the FEDS? well then there’s nothing I can do” (Submission)
I more or less agree with your reading of this essay, but it misses an important point that the edited version on Edge leaves out—in the original version, he compared the friends of Aaron Swartz with the friends of someone Michael knows.
Basically, when she was institutionalized against her will, her low-status, relatively poor friends helped break her out of the mental hospital and hide her until the police chase blew over. In contrast, when placed in a legal battle Aaron Swartz wasn’t able to rely on his much smarter, wealthier, and in almost every way better off friends to help him. The well-learned elites couldn’t really help protect him because they were too used to submitting.
With this in mind, the point of the essay is much more that we rely on non-social cognition for innovation, but that the culture of submission has destroyed our mechanisms for supporting self-actualizing innovators who come under fire. With this lack of support, our innovators are even worse off than they are just based on worse social skills and being less well understood.
Can you link to the unedited essay? Or is it not available?
It’s in some weird-to-link-to facebook format.
Basically, it’s the same as the edge essay, but you should replace the last paragraph with...
To be fair, it might be easier to protect someone that the top authorities aren’t gunning for. Hiding Aaron Swatz under the federal case blew over wasn’t an option.
From my reading, this is the crux of the issue. “Well-educated” and “Successful” individuals submit quickly to the rule of law, or other ‘top’ authorities. They are stuck either feeling like they have too much at stake to break out of the obedient channels, or they don’t even consider the possibility that a protecting a friend’s life and well-being could warrant a violation of law. It seems like it isn’t an option, but that’s only because the rules they have submitted themselves to say it isn’t an option.
The “punks, fan girls and street kids” have NOT “learned their lessons well in school” and the the idea of breaking a friend out of a mental hospital becomes a no-brainer. The cops aren’t always right, and they definitely won’t look after us and our, so we have to do it ourselves. (Non-submission)
Compare this to “He’s being held by the FEDS? well then there’s nothing I can do” (Submission)