Bad ideas had a harder time scaling and reproducing, so lots of stupidity stayed local, and everyone else could happily overestimate the average person’s intelligence because they saw less of it. But then we connected everyone on the planet and gave them each the equivalent of their own printing press, radio station, and TV network. Now, even those

consolidated corporate control of any system leads to worse outcomes, and this is no less true for our information and education ecosystems than it is for our food system or housing system or transportation system.

A world built via hypercapitalism is a world that creates increasing inequality, and increasing inequality is bad for everything, including our brains. The phones, the schooling, the discourse—all of it is part of the same rot at the root of our society.