Greg Lukianoff

And I do worry that there are attempts in states to pass things to try to put the genie back in the bottle.

Like if we ban TikTok or we say that nobody under 18 can be on the internet unless they have parental permission, we're going at something that

And no amount of sort of top-down is going to be able to fix it.

We have to culturally adapt to the fact of it in ways that make us wiser and allow it potentially to be that wonderful engine for disconfirmation that we're nowhere near yet, by the way.

But think about it.

Additional millions of eyes on problems, thanks to the printing press, helped create the scientific revolution, the enlightenment, the discovery of ignorance.

We now have added billions of eyes and voices to solving problems, and we're using them for cat videos and canceling.

It seems like the collective unconscious of the species.

It's one of these things where the tendency to want to see patterns in history sometimes can limit...

the actual batshit crazy experience of what history actually is.

Because yes, we have these nice comforting ideas that it's going to be like last time.

We don't know.

It hasn't happened yet.

And I think how unusual Twitter is because I think of it as like the – because people talk about –

you know writing and um mass communications and uh as being expanding the size of our collective brain but now we're kind of looking at our collective brain in real time and it's filled just like our own brains with all sorts of like little crazy things that pop up and and and appear like virtual particles kind of all over the place of people um you know

Reacting in real time to things.

There's never been anything even vaguely like it.

And it can be, at its worst, awful to see.

At its best, sometimes seeing people just getting euphoric over something going on and cracking absolutely brilliant immediate jokes at the same time.

It can even be a joyful experience.