Incompetence is the existential threat

Consider the failing systems - after years of reliability and stable operation, suddenly legacy systems are breaking - transportation, logistics, product quality, public health, banking, general government oversight...all falling victim to eroding competence. Not that people have become lazy or apathetic - thought in many cases, that applies, or are any less "educated" - again, though many suffer from chosen ignorance, but from knowledge and skillset erosion from generation to generation - a natural causal effect from the legacy teaching/training methods - also failing in spectacular ways. The one mentor to many pupil approach - in all its forms - suffers from an inherent lack of specificity and blurred clarity as modern human attention drifts from boring linear information delivery. What can we expect from the future when this volcano of incompetency erupts? Will A.I. be ready to "take charge" of critical systems and services in-time to save humanity from devolving into impulsive, animalistic, survivalists driven by instinct rather than rational thinking? What is the cataclysmic outcome of this trend if not reversed? Can we adopt new methods for knowledge exchange that undo this? Are we able to graduate from linear thought and communications to something more efficient? What evolution needs to happen - physically, intellectually, biologically, spiritually...in order to rise above this? Are there innovations emerging now that might converge to provide that world?

Transcript

Welcome back to the deep dive.

Great to be here.

So, if you're someone who is, you know, intensely curious about how the machinery of modern life actually works and uh maybe more urgently why that machinery sometimes seems to be grinding to a halt, exactly why it just inexplicably stops. Well, then you are definitely in the right place.

Today, we are doing a deep dive into a really provocative set of sources all centered on Sheridan Forg's obser vations from the eroding competence and the evolution of knowledge systems.

And it is a genuinely unnerving hook.

It is. Our mission here is to unpack his diagnosis of what he sees as a rapidly worsening global problem. Yeah.

I mean, for decades, these huge systems we rely on, they just worked with this kind of uh boring predictability.

And now they're not. They're breaking down all of a sudden. And not because of old equipment, but because of what he calls an erosion of competence.

So, we need to understand not just what's failing, but why. Why is knowledge transfer itself breaking down and what the absolute worst case scenario looks like if we don't adapt. It gets pretty dark.

It does. It's a chilling premise, especially because the failures he points to aren't, you know, isolated, right?

He really sets the scene by listing these formerly reliable systems that are now just buckling.

And we're talking about the big stuff here.

Oh, yeah. The core pillars. Largecale transportation, global logistics, product quality, public health, our banking systems.

Yeah. even just general government oversight.

And the paradox is the really fascinating part.

It is. These systems were resilient. I mean, they worked for years, some of them before computers even.

They relied on people and processes.

Exactly. Well doumented processes, experienced people. But Forge argues that the foundational knowledge that made them reliable, it's just slipping away.

So, it's not one big event.

No, not a hack, not a meteor strike. It's a slow generational decay that seems to have suddenly hit this critical tipping point.

And when you see these things happen like a huge air traffic control glitch or the supply chain nightmares we've all seen, right? The knee-jerk reaction is to blame laziness to say, you know, the current generation just doesn't care. But Forge argues that diagnosis is well, it's too simple and it completely misses the structural crisis.

Right?

Okay. So, let's unpack that. He's careful to say, yes, of course, there are cases where people are apathetic or lazy.

He has that great phrase, chosen ignorance. chosen ignorance. Yeah. The willful decision not to learn.

But he stresses that's just a symptom, not the disease itself, not the core driver.

The real engine of the crisis, he says, is structural. It's knowledge and skill set erosion from generation to generation.

So the problem isn't the student, it's the quality of what they're being taught.

Precisely.

And if you connect that to the bigger picture, the mechanism for this decay is located right in our old legacy methods of training of teaching.

Okay. Forge calls it a natural causal effect from the legacy teaching training methods. So it's an inherent flaw in the system that was sort of masked for a long time.

And what system is he talking about specifically?

He takes aim at what he calls the one mentor to many people approach.

So a classroom or a workshop, a classroom, a seasoned engineer training new recruits, a master mechanic with an apprentice, even just a specialized manual being passed down. He says this method just suffers from an inherent lack of specificity. ity and blurred clarity.

But how does that blurring happen? I mean, if the mentor knows the critical details, why would they just stop passing them down?

It's subtle, but it's insidious. So, imagine a complex maintenance protocol for, say, a specialized braking system on a train.

Okay.

The first generation manual, the original, might have 50 essential steps, torque settings, environmental checks, all of it.

The full picture.

The full picture. Now, the first mentor who relies on muscle memory might only pass down 45 of those steps because the other five just seem obvious to him or they're handled by some new gadget.

Exactly. So the next generation of mentors, they only learned 45 steps. So maybe they passed down 40 and so on and so on.

And over just three generations, critical safety checks, the things that guarantee long-term reliability, they've just vanished. They're gone from the oral tradition. And they might not even be flagged in the, you know, simplified digital checklist.

So that's the erosion. Specific competence just blurring and fading. way and it feels less like negligence and more like a kind of systemic organizational forgetfulness.

Right. And that slow process is one thing, but Forge says it's being sped up exponentially by the person on the receiving end, the trainee.

Mhm.

He highlights this key behavioral context.

Mhm.

Modern human attention drifts because this legacy knowledge is packaged as boring linear information delivery.

And that's the key.

We're being asked to absorb this blurry simplified linear info.

You know, reading a dry manual, a 2-hour lecture at a time when our brains are wired for the exact opposite, right? For nonlinear, high-speed interactive stuff, screen strains, instant feedback, that linear delivery is the crucial point of friction.

And that's a powerful insight and it's relevant for everyone listening. You are constantly processing information interactively all day.

So, if the knowledge you need to run a nuclear plant is still delivered like it's 1985 while everything else in your life is a dynamic visualization then that competence gap becomes unavoidable. It has to happen.

It really raises a question for you the learner. If the very method we use to transfer competence is failing to capture modern attention, how robust is any field that still relies on it?

It suggests competence isn't this reliable inheritance? It's a resource that needs constant superefficient renewal.

And that tension between a decaying knowledge base and modern minds That leads us directly into the really cataclysmic stakes he lays out.

Yeah, it does. If the diagnosis wasn't serious enough, he introduces some uh pretty dramatic imagery.

He does.

He says, "The future is threatened by this volcano of incompetency that is erupting right now."

It's a volcano. It's strong language.

It is. But hold on, I have to challenge that a bit. It sounds incredibly dramatic. Does he offer any counter arguments or is he just all in on the existential threat?

Well, he does address that. The reason he argues it's existential is precisely because the erosion is hitting such fundamental systems.

So, it's not just an inconvenience.

No. If your banking systems fail or your food logistics collapse, better software isn't going to save you if the people running the backup systems don't have that granular knowledge to fix it.

Okay, that makes sense.

And here's where it gets really interesting because he forces us to look at the absolute worst case scenario. This isn't just about delayed flights.

It's about the nature of humanity itself.

Exactly. He details this truly cataclysmic outcome. If the trend isn't reversed, humanity risks devolving into impulsive animistic survivalists driven by instinct rather than rational thinking.

Wow. Okay, that's a huge claim.

Mhm.

How does losing competence lead directly to losing rational thought? That feels like a massive jump.

It's about complexity collapse. So rational thinking in a complex society is supported by predictable systems, right?

You rationally choose to save money because you trust the banking system will be there tomorrow.

You plant a crop because you trust that trucks will get it to market.

Exactly. If that underlying infrastructure, which is maintained by specific inherited knowledge, if that collapses due to incompetence, those rational choices vanish.

They're gone. When the food stops, when the power grid fails for good, the structures that support long-term planning and trust, they disappear.

So, humanity reverts to immediate instinctual impulsive survival mode.

The cataclysmic outcome is losing the very knowledge that sustains modern rational civilization, we just revert to primal responses which makes solving any complex problem totally impossible.

Impossible.

It's a terrifying link. Blurred training leads to lost knowledge which leads to infrastructure collapse which leads to the end of rational civilization.

It transforms a management failure into an existential threat.

So if we accept this um incredibly dire diagnosis, the natural next step is solutions, right? What do and today when we see competence itself collapsing. The first place we look is technology of course, and Forge immediately brings up the AI question which is so central right now. Will AI be ready to take charge of these critical systems in time to be save us?

The urgency is everything right? Is the technical savior going to show up before that knowledge volcano completely detonates.

And his findings suggest that just you know plugging in an AI might not be enough.

Why not?

Because if the AI inherits a fundamentally broken, incomplete or corrupted knowledge base, what Is it managing garbage in garbage out?

On a civilizational scale, we can't just outsource competence. We have to fix the knowledge flow itself. So if we want to undo this erosion, we need new methods for knowledge exchange.

A deep cognitive shift.

Yes. He proposes that we need to graduate from linear thought and communications to something more efficient.

Changing how we think and communicate knowledge entirely. So instead of a manual, imagine a fully interactive 3D dynamic simulation that adapts to a student's attention span.

And it delivers information in these layered nonlinear ways that require you to actually apply it, not just absorb it.

Exactly. From reading to integrating.

That's a profound shift. If the problem is that modern attention is wired for nonlinear input, then the solution has to embrace that. You can't fight a cognitive tide.

You can't.

But even if we achieve that, Ford says it's only one piece of a much, much bigger evolutionary mandate.

It's not just a technical or a pedagogical fix. He says it requires a radical change in the human condition itself.

What evolution needs to happen to rise above this threat? He lists four domains that need to change all at once.

All at once. This is where the paper gets really speculative and really demanding.

So the four domains are physically, intellectually, biologically, and spiritually.

Yeah. This suggests technology alone is not going to bridge the gap. Humanity itself has to upgrade.

Okay. So let's start with the intellectual and physical. Those seem a bit more straightforward. I think so intellectually we have to graduate from that linear thought develop new cognitive frameworks that can handle simultaneous inputs immense complexity without the mental friction of old school learning right and physically this might relate to how we interface with information if knowledge doubles every few years maybe we need enhanced physical interfaces like augmented reality direct neural links or sensory expansions just to interact with the sheer volume of data without being overwhelmed

I can see the need for those those driven by the information age, but the next two are far more radical. What on earth does he mean by a necessary biological evolution?

He frames it as a necessary adaptation to handle the exponential growth and complexity our current biology is struggling with.

So our brains are the bottleneck...

...essentially. Yes. If the old slow blurred clarity method of training worked for a slower world and now we have to absorb vastly more complex information faster then the biological hardware as the next point of failure.

He's implicitly suggesting that some form of biological enhancement or alteration might be required just to handle the cognitive load and maintain clarity.

Wow, that really drives home this shift from a management problem to an existential dilemma.

It does either simplify society, which may be impossible, or upgrade the operating system.

And the last one, the spiritual domain. This is the one that's easy to overlook.

It is, but he sees the erosion of competence as tied to a crisis of attention and meaning. So the spiritual evolution he's talking about is a shift away from distraction and apathy and that chosen ignorance. Yes. It implies a renewed deep focus on stewardship, mastery, a sense of long-term responsibility for the systems we build.

Without that commitment to competence, any other fix is temporary.

Any tech fix, even a biological enhancement, would eventually suffer the same generational decay. Without that, that spiritual commitment to clarity and precision over or just ease and distraction.

So just updating a few corporate training videos is hilariously insufficient.

It's a four-pronged revolution we need and all at the same time.

Exactly. And that's his closing thought on solutions. He asks us to consider if the innovations emerging right now in AI, nonlinear learning, biotechnology, if they might converge to provide that new world.

It would require simultaneous breakthroughs across all those domains.

Technology, biology, intellect, and commitment all to rebuild competence faster. than it's currently degrading.

So what does this all mean? Let's try to synthesize. Forge's core argument seems crystal clear. The legacy systems we all rely on are failing, not because people are less intelligent, but because the very foundation of competence is structurally crumbling.

The old model of linear knowledge transfer is just incompatible with modern attention spans.

And this failure threatens to push us toward an instinctual, irrational existence as our complex world collapses.

The central tension he leaves us with is whether radical four-domain human evolution, physical, intellectual, biological, and spiritual, or the timely emergence of some kind of super competent AI can save us. The clock, he says, is ticking down to the eruption of that volcano.

And building on that, let's leave you with one final thought to explore on your own, please.

Forge is very clear that the one mentor to many pupil model is failing today because of blurred clarity and linear delivery.

Right?

Yet that same model created the highly competent world we've relied on for decades. It was successful until recently.

It's a good point.

So, if we are going to create these new nonlinear, attention respecting knowledge systems he's calling for, the ones we need to survive, what specific characteristics must they have to make sure they don't suffer the exact same generational decay 50 years from now?

How do you design a learning system that not only grabs your attention now, but is fundamentally resistant to that natural human tendency to simplify, to blur, and to let critical competence erode over time.

That maybe is the ultimate design challenge for the next generation of civilization.