What bothers me more than anything in that article is superficially smart people pouring all of their concentration onto stupidity of obviously stupid people.

What bothers me more than anything in that article is superficially smart people pouring all of their concentration onto stupidity of obviously stupid people. With my university educated 25 - 35-year-old social circle, I can easily generate boring conversation about Trump, climate change denialism, right wing activism, situation in Palestine or how facebook is cancer to regular people. 15 years ago my 15-year-old social circle would discuss climate change, US election system, nature of capitalism, future of internet and how to approach war in philosophic sense. Notice the difference? Those discussions were not too intelligent, but at least the subject matter was actually challenging. This piece seems symptomatic of the disease. The writer appears potentially capable brain user. But fails on several occasions to actually use that brain. And it seems like the culprit is again over concentration on the stupidity of the stupid people. Feels like wasted effort and the left leaning boogie mans he does offer as culprit don't seem to be at all believable. Where are the people looking to engage the smartest person they know of? (HN is quite solid, but also very coding specific.) Has there ever been a time when that was an actual thing? How could I do that?