Core Message
A long thought experiment about which of our current certainties will look mistaken to people 500 years from now. Klosterman asks it about music, science, literature, and television, and the real point is intellectual humility.
Key Ideas
The examples
- Which rock artist the future will remember, and why it is probably not the one we would guess
- Whether we misunderstand something as basic as gravity
- The Simpsons as the show that comes to stand for television as a medium
Humility as the point
The exercise is not meant to produce answers. It is meant to loosen the grip of present certainty. Much of what feels obvious today will look strange later, and the people who held those views were not stupid. They were in the middle of it.
Key Takeaways
- Plenty of what we are sure of will turn out wrong
- History usually remembers a few people and flattens the rest
- Holding views loosely is a form of intellectual honesty