That's one path to take through life: it's called "engineer". They learn a little about every power of 10 of space and time.

Having a general understanding of how computer hardware and software works, how it’s built, and how it’s assembled is not the same thing as “fully understanding.” If you truly did fully understand, you’d be making a killing securing the OS and application stack, and the world would have far better software. That we still have constant issues with our hardware and software proves that you do not “fully understand” it.

I mean the full chain from every line of software to the arrays of semiconductors in my CPU to the cooling system in the fab in Taiwan. I have some understanding of these things, but my point was we can never understand every part anymore. I see we agree.

I in the book We Will be Jaguars by Nemonte Nenquimo the tribe in question has never seen a written word yet has a deeper understanding and respect for the world than even the smartest people around me, but I understand it may have come across the wrong way.

I'm not sure I agree on your next point.

How is examining and appreciating all around you any different? Still aligns with what Socrates said. We can examine in so many different ways.

It's not about understanding. The understanding part is a red herring.

It's about lack of agency. Because most people have very little actual freedom, and many have to deal with constant stressors, some of which are existential.

In the US freedom is defined as "the ability to earn money and buy things to consume." The advanced level is "the ability to play status games around money and ownership."

Neither of those are real freedom.

Absolute freedom means being able to do whatever you can imagine.

If your imagination is so constrained that goal collapses to "Make more money", a multibillionaire oligarch barely has more freedom than the peasants.

The West - for all of its flaws - used to be able to imagine a better future, and attempt to steer towards it.

At some point - I think it was around 9/11 - we lost that. The future stopped being an enticing place of possibility and started becoming a frightening place of threats and general diminishment.

Now we're in a churn phase where the old Cult of Tech is still running, and still has followers, but it's become increasingly clear that faith was never enough, and we're not going anywhere unless we develop true collective intelligence.

AI is a kind of attempted simulacrum of that, but it's a poor substitute for the real thing.