Dwarkesh Patel

So, two different reasons.

One, I think it's useful to think about

For new ideas to flourish and new ways of running the world to happen, you need a fertile environment in the same way that for forests to grow, you need enough topsoil, right?

And it takes a while to get that topsoil.

It takes a while to get enough books, right?

You need to have enough books for a bunch of people to be reading and thinking.

You also need to have networks of information moving the stuff back and forth so that they can have discourses of ideas with each other.

You can't publish a scientific journal until there are journals.

You need to have developed this ecosystem of information and knowledge.

People talk about it sometimes in terms of increasing literacy rates as if higher literacy makes there be more books instead of the other way around.

And in fact, there's a lot of more literacy than people imagine in even medieval Italy.

Florence has a male literacy rate of 90%.

As of the 12th century.

Because everybody's in the merchant world.

So you have to be able to send letters.

You have to be able to read account books.

You have to be able to calculate your tab at a restaurant.

But of those people, how many have read a book?

Very few.

They've read letters.