The cultural throughline of America, all the way back to the Puritans, is the ability to believe in weird stuff.
- The cultural throughline of America, all the way back to the Puritans, is the ability to believe in weird stuff.
- Sometimes that weird stuff is bad.
- Sometimes it's great.
- But it allows things different from the status quo to accumulate and be selected over.
- If you have a selection function, the entity with more variance will tend to be more innovative.
- The departure point for this observation is apparently the central thesis of Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen.