Holy shit, I never thought it would be possible to miss the point of Neuromancer before. It’s wild that this guy sees himself as an intellectual.

Am I crazy, or is this post literally: I read Asimov a lot growing up and that made me a better general intelligence, while dumdum kids these days read memes and don’t even understand what learning is.

On top of that, the biasless Yud manages to ignore:

• Asimov and Heinlein did not literally change how people thought in the 1960s. They were a small part of a culture that included all sorts of garbage.
• In the 60s they also assassinated people for their beliefs all the time. How this squares with his implication that we don’t know how to talk intelligently about issues anymore, I don’t know.
• General intelligence is not easily mutable. People today are not any less worse at learning chess or biochemistry or poetry writing than before, precisely because, as Yud points out, human intelligence comes from human biology, not from reading science fiction.
• By many measures, people are actually way better at learning how to do things now. Today’s best chess players and biochemists learn more faster as the techniques and technology behind learning basically anything is far superior.
• Even IQ scores, the rationalist holy grail, is higher in modern tests compared to those from earlier decades, as more people are engaged in abstract thought.
• He thinks Twelve Virtues of Rationality is a substitute for Stranger in a Strange Land. My eyes have rolled out of my skull.

I’ve gotten the sense for awhile that he’s seriously worried about his declining relevance.

But if you consider me to be more than usually intellectually productive for an average Ashkenazic genius in the modern generation

What if I don’t, though?