Cultural change is typically filtered through a very small set of communicators selected for persuasiveness and platform access rather than for systematic, systems‑level analysis. That selection mechanism makes rapid, large‑scale norm changes more likely to be rhetorically compelling than robustly adaptive.
— Recognizing that culture shifts are persuasion‑filtered highlights leverage points (platform governance, elite incentives, public‑interest vetting) for improving how societies evaluate and adopt large normative changes.
Robin Hanson
2026.01.13
100% relevant
Robin Hanson’s central claim that a handful of writers, creators and platformed communicators act as the bottleneck for norm change (essay/talk authorship, youth movement diffusion) concretely exemplifies this selection mechanism.
← Back to All Ideas