A lot of academics honestly believe in the idea that we're smart enough now to do it better. I work periodically with one academic who wrote a recent book publi

A lot of academics honestly believe in the idea that we're smart enough now to do it better. I work periodically with one academic who wrote a recent book published by Harvard University Press on the history of German censorship prior to 1945 (and she has relatives who were killed in the Holocaust), and yet who is still a firm believer in current initiatives to censor the Internet to address harmful content. This "we're smarter now" is a kind of perpetual Achilles heel of academics dealing in policy. e.g., Chinese academics thought they were smarter now too just prior to the cultural revolution, and that they'd be able to steer the tiger they created in the students. They weren't, of course, and many of those academics ended up being targets.