Asocial Media
Substack author and scientist Eric Hoel has won many awards, one of which was for an essay contest run by Scott Alexander. For those who don’t know, Scott Alexander (a pseudonym) has been a celebrity blogger for years among the philosophically inclined geeks going back to when he was writing his Slatestar Codex blog, where he has exhaustively tested a variety of sweeping ideas about human nature, psychology, and ideas for years. He was featured in an article in the New York Times which revealed his true identity, contrary to his terms with the reporter, and he disappeared for a while before returning as a Substack writer of the Astral Codex Ten newsletter.
It is Eric Hoel’s prize book review that is today’s topic. The book he chose was The Dawn of Everything, coauthored by a pair of anthropologists who wrote a condensed summary of what we think we know about humans’ 200,000 year past—much of which is shrouded in the mysterious realm of prehistory. Hoel’s review, while critical, makes a strong case for reading the book due to the review’s breadth and depth. He uses the review to pose the question as to why it took human civilization so long to develop.
There is no risk in asserting here that the essay is very long. I would warn of spoilers in this short treatment, except that Hoel already gives it all away in his title: “The gossip trap.”
Hoel takes the moderately apocalyptic position, that human civilization was slow to develop—over thousands of years—and that social media is now bringing that civilization to an end. The main case is that our facility for language as a social species enslaved our ancestors to the demands of gossip, and that modern smartphones paired with social media have unleashed gossip in its toxic glory once again, probably to end all of everything until we give up and move back into caves or something.
While it is a long read, it contains many rewarding tidbits and teaser details about our hypothesized prehistory. To be honest, I’m not sure if Hoel is playfully having us on, or is merely chipper and unperturbed by the foretold end of civilization. You be the judge.
Well, hopefully the A/C works in all the places and vehicles you have to be in.
Re tears: evaporative cooling?
Why the burning man drawing atop the substack this morning?