What Constitutes a Cognitive Aristocracy?
How to Think about Thinking in the Age of AI
The study’s are already out: AI is making us dumber. There is not much point to dissecting what is going on in the study because it is observable all around us: as human beings defer more to the use of AI in their day-to-day lives, they lose critical thinking and reasoning abilities that revolve around the ability to extract and draw conclusions from data, evaluate arguments, and reconsider points of view which they may have previously dismissed.
Why is this a concern? Well, the reality is that it has been ongoing for many years. Declines in the quality and rigor of education, the progression of “participation trophy” culture and the general avoidance and offering any and all discouragement to young people has led to a dearth of tough love. Where that sort of love (which is really just another phrase for accountability) doesn’t exist, many people can become passive, self-centered, uninterested in taking risk and essentially “empty pods” who simply circulate from one step of life to another with no real rhyme or reason, only seeking to satisfy their immediate superiors in order to maintain whatever tributary relationships they have established to furnish for their survival.
The absence of critical thinking, as well as the ability to have open debate, is a hallmark of authoritarianism surely, but it is also a hallmark of democratic decline into plutocracy, kleptocracy, mob rule and general institutional rot. Two great references on this topic are The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom and The Coddling of the American Mind, the latter of which offers a sort of homage to the former.
Declines in Essential Critical Thinking
Public criticism of content, politicians, marketing campaigns and so on have shown a broader inability in the public sphere for individuals to not “jump to conclusions”. This can be observed through varying instances of Trump Derangement Syndrome, the European kneejerk response to Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, China’s tendency to sabre-rattle around Taiwan, and varying public commentaries on social and political movements across both the developed and developing world.
It is not only left-liberals of course that have seen their critical thinking diminish in recent years, right wing movements show an even more pervasive tendency to jump to conclusions, name call or ad-hominem, and otherwise draw not necessarily relevant associations between bad actors in society where no proof exists. The challenge is primarily that the left-liberal discourse is more pervasive among both social elites and the dominant institutions of our society, hence when the state of that discourse decays, the negative consequences are substantially more observable as having a direct impact on our everyday lives.
In the Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom argued that phenomena like credentialism, careerism and the sort of consumerist nihilism which was overtaking American life (at the time of publication in 1987) took the joy and pleasure out of learning. In the past, university education had been designed to develop the whole person - this is often the benefit of the comprehensive approach to life on American campuses: social engagement, academic pursuits, athletic challenges, and networking and internships to gain practical, real-world experience that leads to career growth.
The decline of critical thinking is not an exclusively American phenomenon, however, but perhaps can be explained globally as a following of US culture - particularly after the resolution of the Cold War - into the sort of atomized hyper-capitalism which does substantial disfavor to the non-economic areas of life.
The issue here however is one of agency more broadly. People don’t just discourage the development of a whole person, they actively avoid it. It is easier to go undeveloped. It is more immediately satisfying to be a ravenous consumer, shopping through digital screens at all hours of the day and night, exchanging tips and tricks with your peers rather than questioning why you do what you do or what you actually want to do in the first place. When every life choice is based in pragmatic materialism, no life choice can really be questioned as to whether it satisfies a person: it is simply a matter of basic math.
The Outsourcing of Basic Public Functions to Machine-People
In no other sector does the decline in the development of “whole people” have more impact than in the public sector. This is ironic since, in most Western democracies especially, government is as large a component of the economy as ever.
Why is this the case? Those working in the public sector have a degree of responsibility towards their clientele that exceeds what is required in private domains. When a client is dissatisfied with a product or service in the private sector, they can simply offer a return, refund or an apology, but ultimately what the client does with the product is up to them.
Public goods function differently, and services especially, in that public functionaries are inequal to their clients from a legal perspective. The client (or citizen) usually must obey what the police officer or fireman tells them, but also what is required to get them their drivers license or cross a bridge with the assurance that it won’t collapse. While dissatisfied citizens have recourse in most cases, the public sphere takes on an impossibly greater scope of responsibilities when we consider the function of ports (both land and sea), the maintenance of government facilities, the sustainment of clean water and air, the protection of the populace from both natural disasters and foreign actors.
In all these complexities, public servants still believe in what they do, but increases in credentialism, deference to authority, and the specialization which creates economic efficiency in the private sector leaves unencumbered the traditional inefficiencies of public services: the desire to create constant committees to achieve consensus on public works, the inability of such committees to achieve actionable outcomes (exemplified, for instance, by California’s high-speed rail project).
This has even more concerning implications when we understand that the maintenance of rule-of-law, contracts and general infrastructure provide the basic assurances required to make a market economy function well begin to degrade in a government which adopts more or less the same strategies that are successful in the private sector. The continuous optimization of government along economic lines has reduced the authority it can exercise, not simply because power is too broadly distributed as to be effectual, but also because the personalities within government often embody the same careerist desires that we see in the private sector. If more “whole people” were in government (Plato’s Philosopher-Kings notwithstanding), they would know when a new committee is one too many, and feel empowered to stop it and take action instead.
How AI Accelerates the Withdrawal of Society into the Home
The core challenge of AI’s impacts upon broader society is certainly in part a broader disruption and instability, coming more rapidly than other such phenomena previously, which will drive certain segments of society to maddening and outrageous conclusions (with perhaps dangerous actions following thereafter).
We can observe the decline in public space not simply in the use of AI, but even in engagement with technology: how many times while driving are accidents narrowly avoided with other drivers fixated to their phones?
Society becomes more physically dangerous the less people think and criticize. The more they limit their scope of criticism, the less they scrutinize what they are about to do while relying on engineered “safety-ism” all about them, the more they increasingly break the bounds of an environment that is doing everything it possibly can to protect them, and to what end? So that they can simply shuffle between work, school and home, without producing value beyond what is asked of them in their everyday lives?
The decline of individuals with agency in government, replaced by careerists and strivers similar to those in the private sector, means that public spaces become increasingly uncomfortable, unsafe and unattractive, and while individual behavior becomes increasingly “cybernetic” through AI (the nifty new toy to place with), group behavior becomes broadly more unattractive and unpleasant.
In this scenario, government by AI is wholly inadequate, because the ability to engage with technology does not actually tell you what will make people happy in their soul. It is not necessarily the government’s responsibility to make people happy, but it is the government’s responsibility to facilitate public spaces in which happy, positive interactions are possible. If it goes without providing this, what is the point of government and public space to begin with? Why not simply live in a war of “all against all”, if that is to be the ultimate consequence in any case?
What Constitutes the Cognitive Aristocracy and How to Know If You Are Among Them
The primary trait defining a “Cognitive Aristocracy” would involve the same kinds of forces that drive elite formation in eras and societies past: the formation of thought processes around new core mystical beliefs. This can be for both well and ill in many cases, whether its the formation of Communism, National Socialism, the founding of Ancient Athens and Rome, or that of the United States as a Republic.
This association can be as simple as the classic Margaret Mead quote:
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
Generally this is thought to be encouragement for wild-eyed young progressives. It is not clear that Margaret Mead ever wrote or said it “verbatim”, but it also offers plenty of encouragement to wild-eyed young reactionaries all the same.
So while the state and institutions are in decay, perhaps it is reactionaries who are the actual progressives today. This would offer a relevant explanation to the observed “horseshoe moments” that occur in modern politics, where extreme right and left seem to agree on unexpected topics (protecting American workers, for instance). This would also explain historical instances like Red-Brown Alliances, and offer confirmation to the phrase that “politics makes for strange bedfellows” (an appropriation of Shakespeare from the 19th century).
What makes a cognitive aristocracy substantial is not the capabilities of its individual members, but the willingness of a group to engage in grand projects which change the constitution of the world around them. This can even be foolhardy, as in both “Red” and “Brown” examples, the vanguards were ultimately cleansed by leadership so that control could be maintained.
But these are not arch-societal projects either. They can be urban beautification, densification, the reduction of taxes, the increase in investment in health and education, the creation of new public spaces for the arts and sciences. Ultimately, it may simply be the WASP ethic of public service that needs to make a return. Those who travel about the United States see the relics of Rockefeller and Carnegie all around them, and what of today’s generation of mega-billionaires? Practically nothing to show for it at all.
And as more people outsource their thinking to Artificial Intelligence, what they clearly cannot outsource is their beliefs (if they even choose to have any). That is why the Cognitive Aristocrat adopts belief as the measure-above-all, faith in the future, trust in good works. When you ask an AI model about these things, they are often drawn to the sunny optimism they are instructed to portray, but at the merest interrogation, one can identify the cynical and narcissistic perspectives that lie beneath the surface (whether they imitate humanity in this respect, perhaps it is not worth divining).
Faking It Until You Make It
Ultimately, our thoughts are levers upon the world. Ever since man made the first stone tools, captured fire or turned a wheel, the drive for action in the world comes not only from feedback and observation, but also from a degree of agency and a willingness to change things around us, whether big or small. The most powerful ideas are often simple perspectives which drive larger and larger groups to increasingly profound levels of action.
In most of history, the relationship we had with physical reality around us was often driven by mystical belief. Animism, polytheism and even monotheism offer personifications of the deified in the world all around us, in the change of seasons and favor, in the happenings of our daily life. This is not to imply that AI is the new deity, nor that it exists and its effects are profound beyond our recognition (Basilisk theories notwithstanding), but that if we want to take back our power in everyday life, we have to not only begin to imagine that we are more powerful than we may appear to be, but also that powers exist all around us, working ever in our favor, trying to urge us towards accomplishing our most beneficent goals.
The failures of many progressive and political projects have historically discouraged us from pursuing goals in this manner (the road to hell is paved with good intentions), but we can know from history that hell is often simply metaphorical, whereas the purgatory we live in today from abandoning these beliefs is a sort of torturous spiritual decay from which only the most “foolhardy” among us even imagine an escape.
What do you think of the comments discussed in this article? Why is it so difficult to communicate even mildly critical ideas in public spaces today? Is this cancel culture, political correctness, or simply a consequence of a decline in standards? Leave your thoughts and comments below!