I think that the evidence you cite for âcareening towards Venezuelaâ being a significant risk comes nowhere near to showing that, and that as someone with a lot of sway in the community youâre being epistemically irresponsible in suggesting otherwise.
Of the links you cite as evidence:
The first is about the rate of advance slowing, which is not a collapse or regression scenario. At most it could contribute to such a scenario if we had reason to think one was otherwise likely.
The second is describing an all-ready existing phenomenon of cost disease which while concerning has been compatible with high rates of growth and progress over the past 200 years.
The third is just a blog post about how some definitions of âdemocraticâ are theoretically totalitarian in principle, and contains 0 argument (even bad) that totalitarianism risk is high, or rising, or will become high.
The fourth is mostly just a piece that takes for granted that some powerful American liberals and some fraction of American liberals like to shut down dissenting opinion, and then discusses inconclusively how much this will continue and what can be done about it. But this seem obviously insufficient to cause the collapse of society, given that, as you admit, periods of liberalism where you could mostly say what you like without being cancelled have been the exception not the rule over the past 200 years, and yet growth and progress have occurred. Not to mention that they have also occurred in places like the Soviet Union, or China from the early 1980s onward, that have been pretty intolerant of ideological dissent.
The fifth is a highly abstract and inconclusive discussion of the possibility that having a bunch of governments that grow/âshrink in power as their policies are successful/âunsuccessful, might produce better policies than an (assumed) status quo where this doesnât happen*, combined with a discussion of the connection of this idea to an obscure far-right wing Bay Area movement of at most a few thousand people. It doesnât actually argue for the idea that dangerous popular ideas will eventually cause civilization regression at all; itâs mostly about what would follow if popular ideas tended to be bad in some general sense, and you could get better ideas by having a âfree market for governmentsâ where only successful govs survived.
The last link on dysgenics and fertility collapse largely consist of you arguing that these are not as threatening as some people believe(!). In particular, you argue that world population will still be slightly growing by 2100 and itâs just really hard to project current trends beyond then. And you argue that dysgenic trends are real but will only cause a very small reduction in average IQ, even absent a further Flynn effect (and âabsent a further Flynn effectâ strikes me as unlikely if we are talking about world IQ, and not US.) Nowhere does it argue these things will be bad enough to send progress into reverse.
This is an incredibly slender basis to be worrying about the idea that the general trend towards growth and progress of the last 200 years will reverse absent one particular transformative technology.
*It plausibly does happen to some degree. The US won the Cold War partly because it had better economic policies than the Soviet Union.
The second is describing an all-ready existing phenomenon of cost disease which while concerning has been compatible with high rates of growth and progress over the past 200 years.
I want to add further that cost disease is not only compatible with economic growth, cost disease itself is a result of economic growth, at least in the usual sense of the word. The Baumol effectâwhich is what people usually mean when they say cost diseaseâis simply a side effect of some industries becoming more productive more quickly than others. Essentially the only way to avoid cost disease is to have uniform growth across all industries, and thatâs basically never happened historically, except during times of total stagnation (in which growth is ~0% in every industry).
I think that the evidence you cite for âcareening towards Venezuelaâ being a significant risk comes nowhere near to showing that, and that as someone with a lot of sway in the community youâre being epistemically irresponsible in suggesting otherwise.
Of the links you cite as evidence:
The first is about the rate of advance slowing, which is not a collapse or regression scenario. At most it could contribute to such a scenario if we had reason to think one was otherwise likely.
The second is describing an all-ready existing phenomenon of cost disease which while concerning has been compatible with high rates of growth and progress over the past 200 years.
The third is just a blog post about how some definitions of âdemocraticâ are theoretically totalitarian in principle, and contains 0 argument (even bad) that totalitarianism risk is high, or rising, or will become high.
The fourth is mostly just a piece that takes for granted that some powerful American liberals and some fraction of American liberals like to shut down dissenting opinion, and then discusses inconclusively how much this will continue and what can be done about it. But this seem obviously insufficient to cause the collapse of society, given that, as you admit, periods of liberalism where you could mostly say what you like without being cancelled have been the exception not the rule over the past 200 years, and yet growth and progress have occurred. Not to mention that they have also occurred in places like the Soviet Union, or China from the early 1980s onward, that have been pretty intolerant of ideological dissent.
The fifth is a highly abstract and inconclusive discussion of the possibility that having a bunch of governments that grow/âshrink in power as their policies are successful/âunsuccessful, might produce better policies than an (assumed) status quo where this doesnât happen*, combined with a discussion of the connection of this idea to an obscure far-right wing Bay Area movement of at most a few thousand people. It doesnât actually argue for the idea that dangerous popular ideas will eventually cause civilization regression at all; itâs mostly about what would follow if popular ideas tended to be bad in some general sense, and you could get better ideas by having a âfree market for governmentsâ where only successful govs survived.
The last link on dysgenics and fertility collapse largely consist of you arguing that these are not as threatening as some people believe(!). In particular, you argue that world population will still be slightly growing by 2100 and itâs just really hard to project current trends beyond then. And you argue that dysgenic trends are real but will only cause a very small reduction in average IQ, even absent a further Flynn effect (and âabsent a further Flynn effectâ strikes me as unlikely if we are talking about world IQ, and not US.) Nowhere does it argue these things will be bad enough to send progress into reverse.
This is an incredibly slender basis to be worrying about the idea that the general trend towards growth and progress of the last 200 years will reverse absent one particular transformative technology.
*It plausibly does happen to some degree. The US won the Cold War partly because it had better economic policies than the Soviet Union.
I want to add further that cost disease is not only compatible with economic growth, cost disease itself is a result of economic growth, at least in the usual sense of the word. The Baumol effectâwhich is what people usually mean when they say cost diseaseâis simply a side effect of some industries becoming more productive more quickly than others. Essentially the only way to avoid cost disease is to have uniform growth across all industries, and thatâs basically never happened historically, except during times of total stagnation (in which growth is ~0% in every industry).
Thanks for writing this up, I was skeptical about Scottâs strong take but didnât take the time to check the links he provided as proof.