The Knowledge Devolution

The Great Library of Alexandria was one of the most significant libraries in the ancient world, part of a larger research institution called the Mouseion. It amassed a vast collection of papyrus scrolls, estimated to be between 40,000 and 400,000 at its peak. Alexandria became renowned as a center of knowledge, attracting many influential scholars who worked on various projects, including standardizing Homer’s works, creating the first library catalog, and making significant scientific discoveries.

In his epic trilogy, “Foundation”, Issac Asimov describes a galactic empire dwindling into oblivion. The main reason for its demise is deeply rooted in how it treats research and knowledge gathering. No new knowledge is created, and empirical research is abandoned and considered old-fashioned. Scholars compare previous works (by past scholars) and write new research papers based on older texts.

It would seem that we are halfway from Alexandria to Foundation.

Elders (part one)

In Cicero’s “De Senectute” (On Old Age) treatise, Cicero presents a profound and positive perspective on old age, challenging prevailing negative stereotypes. He argues that aging is not merely a period of decline but a stage of life rich with unique virtues unavailable in youth. Central to his argument is the idea that wisdom, a product of extensive life experience, is the primary gift of old age.

Cicero contends that the elderly possess enhanced judgment and a deeper understanding of life’s complexities. He refutes the notion that aging diminishes one’s capacity for prudent decision-making. Instead, he posits that the years of navigating human endeavors, successes, and failures equip the elderly with invaluable insights and wisdom.

The treatise also addresses and counters common societal prejudices against the elderly. Cicero portrays older individuals as pillars of counsel within communities, emphasizing their role as guides for younger generations. He celebrates their function as custodians of tradition and bearers of collective knowledge, arguing against views that label the elderly as obsolete or irrelevant.

But we are not at 44 BC anymore.

The elderly, especially elders’ wisdom, is considered stale and irrelevant by younger generations. People who are educating themselves on TikTok and Instagram where algorithms and bot networks are dictating what (mostly false) information would be echoed and amplified. The ones who claim to be modern and unbiased by past generations have willfully abandoned common sense and accumulated life experience, merrily cutting down the branches of knowledge and factual and empirical data upon which the world they comfortably live in was built.

It’s a process of intended large-scale dummyfication, and it’s driven by power and money.

Dummification

To understand the root causes for dummyfication one must look beyond the tools (i.e. social networks, generative AI, etc. – we’ll get to those later) and into the underlying interests, and benefactors of the age of organized stupidity. Politicians and corporations.

The first are trying to control public opinion, in their own constituency or other countries (e.g. Russia’s attempt to sway the US elections), while the latter are simply there for the money regardless of the consequences. While heads of state such as Putin, and Khamenei are allegedly messing with Western public opinion, trying to generate chaos and seed divide, the corporates who provide the tools for the former are enjoying an ever-growing cash flow. An unholy matrimony.

But those complicit to this demise of truth and knowledge are as much to blame as the perpetrators. Once the pillars of scientific research and generation of knowledge, Academia has gone blank. Well, most of it. Ivy League schools are fermenting in their DEI (diversity, inclusion, and equality) which trumps meritocracy, while students are quick to follow. Shallow thinking is congratulated, and past wisdom acquired throughout the years is scorned. A generation of know-it-alls who know nothing is being sent out into the world armed with self-centered echo-chambered sound-byte-long “facts” and “feelings”.

It seems Asimov rightfully predicted the downfall of civilization as a result of the decline in the ability and willfulness of people to search for truth and well-founded knowledge.

Elders (part two)

Many Native American cultures, such as the Cherokee, Lakota, and Navajo, traditionally viewed elders as sources of wisdom and spiritual guidance. Elders often held leadership roles and were consulted on important decisions.

In Bedouin culture, for instance, the clan leaders form a council of elders, chosen by its members to represent the Aela (clan).  These chosen elders are powerful, and rarely contested, but have no absolute authority. In major affairs, they must consult with the tribal leader. On top of their role as mediators, elders pass down tradition and culture from one generation to the next, tradition built on past experience, and survival in harsh desert conditions.

The Inuit of the Arctic elders are considered the bearers of important knowledge about survival, tradition, and stories of the past. They impart knowledge about hunting, shelter building, and spiritual concepts. The elders guide the community, especially in matters related to ecology, climate, and local wisdom.

Aboriginal Australians follow similar traditions where elders are highly respected and play crucial roles in passing down knowledge, traditions, and laws through oral history and storytelling. The same goes for many African cultures, such as the Yoruba in Nigeria and the Kikuyu in Kenya, which have traditionally held elders in high esteem, valuing their life experience and judgment in governance and dispute resolution, and Japanese culture (which has a special day for respecting elders, the Keiro No Hi), Chinese Filial piety, and Hawaiian Kūpuna, just to name a few.

Why?

The answer is that lacking any other source of long-term knowledge storage, the elders’ minds were the only trusted source of past experience, experience that may have been life-saving in ancient cultures. A knowledge store tested and approved via real-life experience and survival.

But we are so far along now, aren’t we? Not really.

Highly accessible knowledge storage was supposed to allow humanity to grow better informed, enabling rational thinking, and boosting both individual and large-scale decision-making. We were supposed to rely on aggregated knowledge far beyond elders’ experience, a body of facts and know-how so vast no human or even a group of such could ever hope to comprehend.

In reality, we ended up with a large-scale knowledge junkyard pitted with falsehood and “multiple truths” up to a point where nothing is certain or factual anymore, and every opinion (regardless if you are a prominent scientist or a popular Instagram model that just feels something is right) is equally weighted. And the process is accelerating.

The Knowledge Junkyard

Once upon a time, there was Google, a search engine that boasted correct and reputable information (most of the time) at each of our fingertips. We quickly learned to trust it, leaving behind elder experiences and past sources of information (remember books?). Fast-forward to 2024, and the same Google is replacing its trusted search with AI that “answers questions”. Instead of getting several reputable sources you can cross-reference, Google is now generating an answer based on Large-Language Models (LLMs) which consumed the entire Internet and can generate an answer much as a human does. Well, not exactly.

The generated answer is indeed based on the full knowledge store of the Internet, however, it suffers from what is known as “hallucinations”. Much like a person who has studied every bit of knowledge, however, is sometimes a bit delusional. Moreover, this imaginary person cannot tell you how he got the answer and may revise it if you ask the same exact question again.

But that is just one example. The realm of generative AI (ChatGPT, Midjourney, Claude, and many more online agents) enables individuals as well as governments to seed the Internet with falsehoods and fallacies. Those in turn are fed back into the training set (i.e. the “books they learn from”) of the above-mentioned LLMs further skewing the “knowledge” stored in them. A vicious misinformation circle drowning facts, data, and verifiable empirical evidence in a tidal wave of half-truths, falsities, and conspiracy theories.

What do you trust when nothing can be trusted?

The (Painful) Return of Common Sense

The answer is simple, in the most literal sense of the word. You go with simple, gut feeling, common sense if you’d like, (where the common in common sense is actually the aggregated knowledge passed down from one generation to the other based on life experience and resulting traditions that followed). A good old-fashioned way to live in a world gone insane.

Sounds good? it depends.

While the comeback of common sense is essentially a good thing, its commonality is not assured. A right-wing individual may have a very different sense vs. a left-winger, a Southerner may hold different convictions than his compatriot living up north, and some biological males may think differently than biological women. Doesn’t sound common now, doesn’t it?

As common sense is basically the aggregation of prior knowledge and experience, it should be “common” enough within a small group of people sharing a mutual past. It may even extend to cultures, or states (as long as those states represent a coherent culture), but not much further. A problematic sub-optimal mechanism to say the least, however, its the only one we are left with for any practical purpose.

If you agree to the above premise, you’ll have to acknowledge the evident comeback of elders’ wisdom. Moreover, elders’ wisdom in the context of small groups of culturally coherent people. Tribes, if you’d like. Humanity, outgrowing its ability to handle too-big-data, is ironically reduced to a tribal culture. Not by choice, but rather as a coping mechanism.

Or as a great poet once phrased it: “The world is too much with us”, to which I wholeheartedly agree. As things stand, I’d rather be a pagan suckled in a creed outworn.