Discord Ravers
Off the top of your head, and without using a search engine, can you name a single author of the IPCC report? I am choosing this subject because, supposedly, global warming—or ‘climate change,’ a less dangerous formulation avoiding falsification—is the defining question of our time. You can’t. Scientific expeditions and the cultural reception of science have dramatically changed. This is another symptom of the digital revolution, and it is the subject of this piece.
Just another data point in the wall
Our modern era is the direct descendant of explorers and their expeditions. Exploring the globe was a pivotal part of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. The ‘Three Gs’ were instrumental: God, Gold, and Glory. The first explorers were soldiers and sailors seeking trade routes for spices and gold. They didn’t care about the botany of the lands they encountered; they cared about who owned them. Science came later.
The scientific expedition is a product of the Enlightenment. This is when the ‘Explorer’ as we imagine them—notebook in hand, measuring the stars—was born. The Enlightenment introduced the idea that knowledge itself was a treasure worth risking one’s life for.
Fast forward to the 21st century. Anyone can now explore the globe at the swipe of a finger using Google Earth. It is possible to zoom into any part of the remotest jungle; if your bandwidth is fast enough, you won’t even experience any lag. We have been told to ‘follow the science,’ but no one ever follows a scientist on their journey. Knowledge has become a commodity—it is now called ‘data’—and the only science that remains is statistics. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself why the public conversation revolves solely around AIs, which are, by design, statistical machines. The unknown no longer teases; it irritates. We have become like customers in a fast-food restaurant, impatiently waiting for our order to be served.
In the meantime, the ‘Eureka’ moment has vanished from the cultural landscape. At best, you have a technical gimmick in a movie that solves the plot and exterminates some evil alien. The spirit of discovery has been gamified, as more and more discoveries are now made by crunching data and experienced through screens.
Since data is churned out by a machine, an absence of data is viewed as a flat tire—a mere technical glitch. Maybe this is why things appear to stagnate, a constant Thielian riff. There is indeed this ‘1975 test’: if you were to enter a room in 1975 and then in 2025, except for the screens and digital devices, hardly any difference would be noted. However, if you transported a witness from 1925 to 1975, the story would be completely different. This perception has shifted the focus of curiosity: instead of being compelled by what we don’t know and drawn to alleviate the associated psychological discomfort, we have moved toward trying to understand why the machine doesn’t work. From exploring the universe to debugging a flawed app. Talk about a fulfilling evolution.
Humans are exploratory monkeys. But they are smart ones. It means that geographic exploration is not our only mode of discovery. More importantly we discover new ideas using conversations and thinking.
Relativity
The focus of online conversation moves fast. It contrasts sharply with the lifelong obsessions of past adventurers. In this dimension, too, the exploration ethos has been altered by digital technologies. Instead of digging deep into a question, the crux of the fight is now to surface on the ‘discussion du jour’ ahead of everyone else. Then, a new ‘thing of the day’ arrives.
This is a micro-level reflection of what occurs at the macro level: we still don’t know, at least officially, who sabotaged Nord Stream and why. Likewise, the bizarre drone events in New Jersey have never been explained—contrary to what Trump promised; he said it was a ‘day one’ priority. I could multiply the examples, but it is more interesting to note that this process is fractally true.
Take the war against Iran. The goal of the war shifts on a daily basis. The official narrative is always moving the target and reframing events, if not completely inventing them. One thing stands out: at the start of the conflict, Trump wasn’t saying a word about the Strait of Hormuz; now, there are multiple daily statements—’we will open it,’ ‘it is open,’ ‘we will close it,’ ‘we need help from allies,’ ‘our military is the best and can open it by itself.’
If we are generous, this could be seen as a new way to explore ideas. I, however, think it denotes a lack of commitment. The only persistence left is that of constantly shifting the conversation. This is achieved through the usual trick of switching scales—in this case, time scales—to make a real conversation impossible.
First, a timeframe is given in weeks; then, the war is declared finished; and now, we hear ‘it could be cleared in six months.’ Amidst these kinds of declarations, you have numerical data like ‘X thousand attacks have been performed in the last 24 hours.’ Likewise, the timeframe for a ceasefire is constantly shifting—and, by the way, it isn’t really a ceasefire at all, since the US Navy has started its own blockade, an act of war within its own ‘ceasefire.’
All scales are mixed: what happens today, what happened yesterday, and what might happen a few weeks from now or indefinitely. Notice how official statements jump from one time horizon to another. The main objective is to escape accountability. Just as AI slop is eye-catching but semantically void—and as I have noted, you don’t remember these AI productions for longer than a few minutes—the objective here is the same. The implication is direct: democracy cannot function without the exploration of ideas, which is rendered impossible by these tactics. It was clear from first principle thinking, here it appears clearly in a concrete way.
The Gloomy Spirit
Spiritus in Latin means wind, itself it comes from spirare, to breath. This is the wind that allows the explorers, whether in real life or in the world of ideas to navigate to new shores. In ancient times it was more or less synonymous with life: you were declared dead if you stopped breathing. Today you are declared dead if your ECG is a flat line. The proof of life has moved from the objective world to the world of ideas. Yet this move was not without consequences. In the world of ideas there is no physical wind nor feelings, physical needs helping the explorers to orient themselves. The role is filled by faith. And if there is another thing that is certain of our times it is that the most increasing religion is atheism. The global fertility rate is another second hand symptom. On the networks information moves at the speed of light, but humans are stalled lacking intent and hope. If you don’t move, or run in circles, it is functionally equivalent to be in jail. Yet the landscape surrounding you is free from obstacles. Maybe it is the reason why the zeitgeist is so frantic. This paradox has yet to be cracked.