The promise of bright people connecting on social media

Here is the internet and social media delivering a little on its promise of borderless intelligence. The instigating issue is the publication of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Stephen Pinker.

I view Pinker's book as one small part of a broader strategy to push back on the dark hand of authoritarianism, anarchy, and Marxism in its disparate forms (Social Justice, postmodernism, Frankfurt School, Deconstructionism, etc.) which have handicapped some of our best universities and has seeped into various sectors (government policy debates, mainstream media, some K-12, entertainment industry, etc.). Other initiatives in this effort to reestablish our heritage of freedom include FIRE and Heterodox Academy for example. Each of these efforts seeks to restore free discourse and balance against the forces of authoritarianism and totalitarianism which are seeking to concentrate power, strip people of their rights, impose centralized planning and control.

Pseudoerasmus, in contrast, is critiquing the argument of the book. A review of the book rather than the overall review of the strategy. Fair enough. He raise a lot of good issues.

More to the point, he starts a long conversation among intelligent, well-read people around a large portfolio of issues. It does not reach any conclusion but it is impressive to see the erudition as well as the cross-pollination going on. This is much closer to the promise of an interconnected world than the noise and hysteria which is more prevalent.

Recent rhetoric about “The Enlightenment” is bizarre. A major strand of the Enlightment was about the Perfectibility of Man through Reason. The revolutionary reconstruction of society. The French Revolution is a child of the E & the Bolshevik Revolution one of its grandchildren.

— Pseudoerasmus (@pseudoerasmus) February 10, 2018