What will it take to bootstrap a Golden Age?

In his latest Interintellect Salon, Visakan Veerasamy will lead a discussion about how we might be able to catalyze productive intellectual scenes in our modern age.

“Why are some periods and places so astonishingly more productive than the rest?” – in his 1997 essay “The problem of excess genius,” David Banks argued that this is the most important question that we can ask of historians. Well – what’s the answer?

Think of Athens in the age of Pericles. The Baghdad House of Wisdom in the era of Al-Khwarizmi. Florence in the time of Leonardo and Michelangelo. London in the time of Shakespeare and Bacon. 1900s Vienna. What made them so special? How were they funded? How was the culture developed and spread? And, frustratingly, how and why did the magic eventually fade?

Surely, the better we understand how it all happened, the better positioned we will be to make it happen again!

In this Salon, let’s ask and explore:

• What are the factors that determine these illustrious periods of history?
• Can we deliberately recreate such conditions for ourselves, and/or our successors? How?
• What are the constraints that keep us from achieving an unprecedented age of enlightenment?
• Are there any errors in the existing analysis of how these Golden Ages came to be?
• How can we get more people interested in these questions?

Our best work as a species is surely not behind us. ???? – Salon host Visakan Veerasamy

Recommended reading:

• The Problem of Excess Genius [1997], by David Banks
• Scenius, or Communal Genius [2008], by Kevin Kelly
• We Need A New Science of Progress [2019], by Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen
• [[scenes]] – additional notes from @visakanv’s public Roam

(Image source: Javier Romano)

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Time zones:

11pm in Singapore
7 am in San Francisco
10 am in New York
3 pm in London
4 pm in Berlin
830pm in Bangalore

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Free entry for community members. Donating is possible – see here.

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