Fantastic effort post and the necessary dose of fresh air to balance out hedonic skepticism.

The collapse in faith of institutions in various ways, for different reasons has created a vibe that gives any criticism of any institution has a whiff of plausibility, and these days that's all you need for some people to treat it as settled fact. That is basically what I think the poisoned and anti intellectual attitude of hedonic skepticism is all about.

The pace of technological advance over the past 5-10 years is staggering in so many ways. If our era weren't known for collapse of democracies and conflict, it could have been heralded as a major historical moment of technological advance on a number of levels.