Good points on the article, this quoted part strucks me as too funny in an ironic way: on how he assumes it didn’t happen, all the while basing his argument on the very frame that the Enlightenment pushed globally with the new tools at the time, which is the “anti-monarchism” which is a staple of modernity framed exactly by the same methodology he fears:

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Imagine what the Enlightenment would have been like if the technology it depended upon could have been controlled forever — the language (printed word), medium (printed material) and tools (printing press). The controlling group could exert significant influence over others’ reasoning about the very world they exist within. They could introduce all sorts of biases, from selection bias, common source bias, confirmation bias, semmelweis reflex, and authority bias. Primarily, it would create an availability cascade — a self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse.

They could tell the world that the earth was flat, and every printed word on every printed material from every printed press would say the same. They would be the gatekeepers to reason.

They might not even do this consciously. They might have started with the most noble goal of creating guardrails to protect people from dangerous materials that might be printed.

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