It's too bad the author hinges the article on the perceived lack of genius today, it is too hard to quantify. Genius, it's one of those things, you know it when

It's too bad the author hinges the article on the perceived lack of genius today, it is too hard to quantify. Genius, it's one of those things, you know it when you see it. The incremental progress on the margins that characterizes science today is just not that, requires smart people maybe, but not genius. I think that's the author's intuition (which I share fwiw). The typical hacker news reader seeing the headline is immediately pushing up their glasses up their nose, going, well, ecksjuwally, computers bleep bloop self driving cars, space, space, space, how's that for genius etc. But that's not really what is the article is about. It's about the loss of a value system, one in which education was valued in its own right, and not as a means for credentialing. Many examples of the superiority of personal tutelage over classroom education in it. The author draws parallels with a loss of quality in other domains (art, clothing, artisanship, ...). The author is at the vanguard. There is a spiritual shift happening this century. It is the rejection of modernism, the progressive ideology that life and society can (nay, must!) be completely mediated through technology, in order for it to be efficient, equitable, predictable, bureaucratic. In other words, modernism turned a person into a widget, that can be jiggered and manipulated to be useful. It is modernism that gave us pedagogics, the science on how to teach children useful skills with the least amount of money (which is not the same as education). It is modernism that razed our cities, so we can rebuild them for cars, because cars are high technology that moves things fast, and fast is better than slow. Modernism gave us the chronically medicated, because our bodies needs to be supplemented. The intuitive sense that modernism is a failure has existed for a long time, first real criticism were in the 70s. The difference now is we're seeing "regular" people making real changes now, it's not just the new age weirdos. Homeschooling is taking off, because it is better full stop for a child (as explained in the article). Walkable neighborhoods are the most expensive to live, clearly showing a preference. Fine arts and architecture are seeing a return to more classical ideals. These are individual families now, but this movement is in opposition to the current bureaucratic interests. It is also inherently elitist, since it's families with means making these choices. Curious how this will go, but it is a positive evolution, because it puts the human individual central again.