>> I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
Not really. His prediction actually seems pretty off-base, with only some bits that are coincidentally correct. For instance, he seems to attributing the cause of that decline to superstition, when it was really capitalism infected by the shareholder-theory-of-value and financialization pursued by really smart and rational people focused on pursing their narrow self-interest.
I don't know the full context of that passage, but my read comports with my understanding of Sagan's biases.
For those who aren't inside the club, those are superstitions.
> For those who aren't inside the club, those are superstitions.
Come on, they are not. One is a value system, the other is a technology/practice.
As economist Stevie Wonder once said, "When you believe in things that you don't understand Then you suffer Superstition ain't the way"
I think it's too much of a stretch to label anything "irrational" as superstition.
I think both the purported benefits of the shareholder-theory-of-value and fictionalization rely on plausible-but-false belief in the outcomes created by the 'invisible hand'/selfishness-at-scale, but I wouldn't call it superstition, just wrong.
Also, I think the connotations of words are pretty important, and there are a lot of words that for the most part mean the same thing with different connotations. If I had to describe the connotation of superstition, its an action believed to have an effect, but that effect is a total non-sequitur. At least with what we're talking about, there's at least a plausible basis for believing the effect will happen, even it that basis is wrong.
That's one factor, sure. Another factor is the widespread rejection of mainstream science and consensus reality in favor of conspiracy theories that feed into populism and authoritarianism.
For all of capitalism's faults, you can at least have an educated society with technological and scientific progress under it. You can't have any of that when people who don't believe germs or real or who do believe wildfires are caused by Jewish space lasers are allowed anywhere near positions of power. When belief in imaginary satanic pedophile cults swing elections but actual pedophiles face no consequences. It doesn't seem entirely wrong to me.
> That's one factor, sure. Another factor is the widespread rejection of mainstream science and consensus reality in favor of conspiracy theories that feed into populism and authoritarianism.
I think you (and Sagan) are getting the causality backwards. Unrestrained capitalism doesn't serve people, it serves money. "Widespread rejection of mainstream science and consensus reality in favor of conspiracy theories that feed into populism and authoritarianism" is a reaction to an economic system that doesn't serve the common person and is very resistant to change.
I think it's also worth dilating on this notion of "unrestrained capitalism". Capitalism is after all a product of restraints, namely the enforcement of property, contracts, and the validity of money.
Capitalism doesn't work to satisfy the wants and needs of the people in a society, generally. It works to satisfy the wants and needs of the people who have money, in proportion to the amount of money they have. If you don't have money but need something, Capitalism says "kindly FOAD." If you desperately need something, but a rich guy kinda-sorta wants it, rich guy gets it if he's willing to pay more.
So as inequality increases and wealth gets concentrated, a capitalist ceremony (without more restraints that we have) will increasingly neglect the needs of a large fraction of the people in society.
A lot of capitalism apologists assert capitalism is there to meet people's needs, generally (usually just lazily generalizing from US vs. USSR circa 1980), but that's only true under certain conditions which are not guaranteed. That goal is not part of its programming.
An apologist here. "Capitalism" is a legion - a near continuum of systems - some of them can meet people's needs quite well.
> but that's only true under certain conditions which are not guaranteed. That goal is not part of its programming.
It's not an intrinsic part of its popular tradition but there's noting preventing us from adding it to the program in some sensible manner. The lack of guarantees isn't mandatory either, such can be added within the framework of capitalism.
I share this concern about access to scarce goods, though I'm not sure what these scarcity catastrophes look like in practice. To generalize your example, if there is some scarce resource, at most some number N of the wealthiest demanders (which can include corporations such as unions or communes, not just individuals) can access it. I certainly agree that this is a failing of a capitalism, but it's not clear to me how you would propose adjusting it's tenets to recover these drawbacks, and at what additional cost. Like, if the issue is we want to ensure everyone can get what they need to survive, I imagine you can't allow buyers and sellers to negotiate prices, there has to be some neutral third party to do this. And if this modification to prices disincentivizes extraction, production, or delivery of these goods how you would force people to do those jobs.
I hope this doesn't sound like a strawman, I'm just honestly unclear on what should replace what are seemingly basic and natural rights, namely property, physical autonomy, contracts, whatever. I won't pretend that in e.g. the US these rights haven't been abridged whilst the sky remains suspended above us, but my imagination fails me on the question what it looks like when we shave away more of those rights, versus restoring them. Though I'd also imagine that your policy prescriptions would probably include both abridgements and restorations of these rights, so don't let me speak for you.
The answer to that question lies in the bottom of a cup of hemlock.
I can sit right in front of them and describe the problems I'm now dealing with and point out the exact legislative changes that caused them and it's like their brains turn off until the subject changes. More than happy to pray for me, though.
The idea is to have political policy that minimizes harm and maximizes benefit, for the most people.
Is it possible that this is the way they are viewing it, and that perhaps you are the one who isn't thinking critically because you're being directly negatively affected?
"This isn't what I voted for" is a common utterance. They can't help themselves, so I do my best to help, while they undercut my options to help them.
In 1980, Asimov famously wrote The Cult of Ignorance[0], criticizing the rise of anti-intellectualism. Where there was a strong political push of "don't trust the experts". He criticizes claims that sound familiar today "America has a right to know" on the basis of this being meaningless without literacy. He clarifies that literacy is far more than being able to actually read words on a page, but to interpret and process them. Asimov isn't being pretentious, his definition is consistent with how we determine reading levels[2] and his critique would be that most people do not have that of a Freshman in High School. Hell, it is even in his fiction! It is even in The Foundation and is literally the premise of Profession[3].
Feynman is a bit more scattered, but I think his discussion about the education system in Brazil (in the 50's) says a lot[4]. He talks a lot about how the students could recite the equations, ace all the tests, and achieve everything that looks to be, at least on paper, perfectly academic; but how the students did not really have the deeper understanding of the equations. It is a discussion about literacy. Were he around today I'm sure he'd use the phrase "metric hacking". Anyone that knows Feynman may also be thinking about his Cargo Cult Science[5](a commencement speech at Cal Tech (1974)). This is where his famous quote
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that.
[0] Note: 1980 was an election year, and one with a sweeping victory...[1] https://people.bath.ac.uk/mnsbr/papers/Asimov-Newsweek-Janua...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_presidentia...
[2] https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/reading/achieve.aspx
[3] Profession has been in discussion lately, directly relating to this topic. If you haven't read it I'll say it is one of my favorite's of his. Not as good as Foundation but up there with Nightfall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession_(novella)
[4] https://enlightenedidiot.net/random/feynman-on-brazilian-edu...
[5] https://sites.cs.ucsb.edu/~ravenben/cargocult.html
[Edit]
I wanted to add Asimov's The Relativity of Wrong. Sometimes I feel it should be required reading before arguing on the internet. I find myself coming back to read it at least once a year
> I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
https://www.openculture.com/2025/02/carl-sagan-predicts-the-...