Guide on ANTON

beliefs

2024-08-26 · 00:00 UTC ·2 min read

Brief

Troy Nikov's 'beliefs' (published 2024-08-26, 380 words) asserts technological progress is the principal engine of human flourishing and social change, argues demographic, technological, and socio-cultural forces are driving a period of instability, and warns 20th-century political models are failing. He cites Kuhn-style punctuated equilibrium, criticizes science's managerialization, and highlights elite focus and widespread cognitive delusion.

Why it matters

Troy Nikov (published 2024-08-26; 380 words) argues technological progress is the primary driver of human flourishing and social change, with demographic, technological, and socio-cultural shifts pushing the world toward instability and claiming 20th‑century political formulas are “running on fumes.”

Key details

  • He contends scientific progress follows Kuhn-style punctuated equilibrium, rejects the 'low hanging fruit' hypothesis, warns science suffers from managerialization, and emphasizes elite performance (sustained obsessive focus) versus widespread human cognitive delusion.
Source evidence

title: beliefs
contenttype: article
publication: Guide on ANTON
published: 2024-08-26T00:00:00+00:00
sourceurl: https://troynikov.io/notes/beliefs/

word_count: 380

some beliefs: technological progress is the most important and perhaps sole driver of human flourishing apparent shifts in social norms, political systems, etc. are ultimately driven by technological change the world is undergoing enormous change, driven by demographic, technological, and socio-cultural factors fundamental historical forces are driving the world toward a period of instability 20th century political formulas are running on fumes, nothing has yet emerged to conclusively replace them instability creates both risk and opportunity some of the main players are already on the board, others are yet to appear intra-elite competition sets the direction of change civilization is not guaranteed our current era of economic surplus is predicated on facts which can change previous historical eras were horrific beyond imagining for most people who ever lived some social structures and cultures are more likely to preserve civilization and are better to live under than others people are mostly insane people confuse fiction and reality all the time; e.g. most people’s understanding of the second world war is from movies by presenting historical events in the same medium as popular fiction, the events become fictionalized in people’s minds it’s really easy to be delusional, thinking is hard people easily delude themselves into believing they’re rational the ‘low hanging fruit’ hypothesis regarding scientific progress is obviously wrong in every era of scientific progress, the ‘low hanging fruit’ are the easy problems that are solved first kuhn’s model of puctuated equilibrium fits the historical facts science is mainly suffering from managerialization more opportunity exists for more people than they are aware of absent illness or obligation, many people would be much happier doing something completely different than what they’re doing now reasonably intelligent people can learn how most things work the world is much wilder than you think elite is better than non-elite is really capable of understanding a large fraction of elite performance is the ability to sustain obsessive focus for a very long time ‘everyone is winging it’ is cope, but most people will never experience elite performance so don’t believe it exists human cognition is very weak relative to the complexity of the physical world mathematics is far from universal we have enormous gaps in our understanding of even basic, classical physical phenomena somewhat inspired by nat friedman