Wei_Dai—thanks for sharing your post about the epistemic conditions in the American Left. I think you’re right, that epistemics have gotten notably worse compared to previous decades and cohorts.
When I was in college in the 1980s, the Left tended to have quite a bit of mistrust of government, corporate power, academia, and the media. Now, having ideologically captured all four institutions, they tend to distrust the common people and common sense. But that’s getting us somewhat off-topic, in terms of modeling ‘regime change’....
If epistemic conditions in the US weren’t always like this, could it be that on average liberal democracies still tend to have better epistemic conditions than authoritarian regimes? (And we just happen to live in an unlucky period where things are especially bad?)
Maybe it’s comparably important to model/understand “internal regime changes” (a term I just made up) where conditions for making scientific or intellectual progress (or other conditions that we care about) improve or deteriorate a lot due to institutional changes that don’t fit the standard definition of “regime change”?
I think on average, ‘liberal democracies’ have tended to have better epistemic conditions than other types of regimes. However, I also think there has been significant ‘internal regime change’ (to borrow your term) that has undermined this advantage, at least in the US. Specifically, the rise of the ‘censorship-industrial complex’ (in which the US government outsources censorship to Big Tech companies) seems to have significantly eroded the quality and reliability of public epistemics on social media.
Wei_Dai—thanks for sharing your post about the epistemic conditions in the American Left. I think you’re right, that epistemics have gotten notably worse compared to previous decades and cohorts.
When I was in college in the 1980s, the Left tended to have quite a bit of mistrust of government, corporate power, academia, and the media. Now, having ideologically captured all four institutions, they tend to distrust the common people and common sense. But that’s getting us somewhat off-topic, in terms of modeling ‘regime change’....
I have two thoughts that spring from this:
If epistemic conditions in the US weren’t always like this, could it be that on average liberal democracies still tend to have better epistemic conditions than authoritarian regimes? (And we just happen to live in an unlucky period where things are especially bad?)
Maybe it’s comparably important to model/understand “internal regime changes” (a term I just made up) where conditions for making scientific or intellectual progress (or other conditions that we care about) improve or deteriorate a lot due to institutional changes that don’t fit the standard definition of “regime change”?
Wei Dai: yes, I agree with both points.
I think on average, ‘liberal democracies’ have tended to have better epistemic conditions than other types of regimes. However, I also think there has been significant ‘internal regime change’ (to borrow your term) that has undermined this advantage, at least in the US. Specifically, the rise of the ‘censorship-industrial complex’ (in which the US government outsources censorship to Big Tech companies) seems to have significantly eroded the quality and reliability of public epistemics on social media.