So Alexey,

While I can certainly hear the angst in your monologue (I have shared it at times in the past) and, while all the things you mention could be taken to be important in the context you’ve given (contemporary society) I’ll have to stick with the wisdom an old acquaintance of my childhood stated: “You cain’t fix stupid!”

IMO most of what your proposing is emerging organically, where the Internet is readily available, ie: informative websites, free education, neutral fact based analyses of many kinds of things, and in its absence, the raw information to draw your own conclusions from….

But evaluating things logically, making informed decisions, constantly adding to your understanding are traits that not everyone possesses or desires.

Anti-intellectualism stems from the intelligent people who focus on manipulation as their primary advantage over others. They breed distrust of “fancy thinking” (something we’d call expertise) and propose deceptively simple solutions to complex problems. The only channel that can reach a broad enough audience to affect the outcome of mass decisions is the media, and the media relies heavily on deception.

Effective deceptions are not carried out by ignorant people, since you must understand an issue well enough to know what parts to enhance, distort, or omit.

This societal phenomenon in turn stems from cultural factors that allow people believe they need to have an advantage over others, i.e competition.(Competition is mostly counterproductive in a wealthy, machine enhanced societies)

So while I agree with your observations in the context thier presented, I see them more as inherent properties of cultural inertia, tradition, and human nature.

Things ARE changing for the better, despite whatever the current crisis looks like, people on the whole, make much more careful decisions than their parents and grandparents made due to much broader access to (mis)information, but progress is slow, and in any place you can strike up a conversation and find viewpoints so radically different from your own as to be nearly incomprehensible. (example: lets elect drumpf!)

I am much more in favor of disruption as a tool to reshape society, simply by rendering the concentration of control impossible.

This of course means decentralizing core elements of society.

If your awareness is broad, you may think I’m about to go off into Bitcoin and finance direction, since this “decentralization” is frequently discussed.

But I’m more inclined to see Bitcoin (and altcoins) as a transitional phase between “traditional” commerce and a moneyless future.

If you changed the means used to produce goods to be local, run on locally generated power, operating under automation and employing primarily recycled materials, you end up with the “Circular Economy” or what I have always called a closed loop society,

A transition to this model would utterly transform society: about 20% of all annual economic activity, worldwide, is shipping, much of it unnecessary, and carried out for stupid reasons (labor arbitrage, etc) local materials loops would shrink this by roughly 85%, local power would breed an autonomy, since macroeconomic influence would cease to exist i.e. the “economic stability” of your purchasing power would no longer revolve around an interest rate on something you’ve never heard of in a foreign city you’ll never see), labor inequality drives much of the class separation that fuels conflict within a society, automated local production, entirely eliminates the need for money AT ALL, money (a totally artificial creation) is a primary focus in much of modern life, but when you really examine it, its a terrible idea, that has some (mostly imputed) benefits but is at the root of more social and political problems than it solves, (inequality for instance is an inherent property of money) there are NO actual shortages, of anything! example: the US discards 250 million tons of household waste annually, while recycling does occur, up to 9% of the waste that ends up in landfills is metals!

At scrap prices this represent $40 billion worth of materials being buried annually, and this is only the US.

So a closed loop society could be adopted in a very short period of time (<10 years) if the mechanism to implement it met a short list of criteria:

Affordable — so anyone can obtain it (individuals, small communities).

Modular — so each innovation can be widely adopted, and it has general utility

Self extending (i.e. Recursive) — you can make more machines on the ones you already have.

Open — all the core elements designs must be readily available.

As partially shown by the spread of 3D Printers, these qualities can make for rapid propagation of any new concept.

Rational behavior is both required to implement a system such as this, and profoundly rewards those who adopt it.

With a closed loop society, we as a species could choose to move beyond the structural limitations inherent in our old political systems (in a society of abundance and local production, what would a politician provide?)

As you may have guessed by now, I am working on something to bring this about.

Its a project called CubeSpawn. The project is reasonably mature, we have Machines and Software that work. And a strategy to get these in circulation (it will be good to produce “profit” initially, but if it works, this becomes irrelevant within a decade, or less.

As before, I agree with your concerns, but I do not think an incremental change to one institution in the framework of society-as-it-currently-exists will counter anti-intellectualism or have a dramatic social impact, given the rate of the rate of change is accelerating geometrically.

Just my (Rather large) 2 cents ;-)