Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson explores the concept of 'cultural drift,' where selection pressures become weaker, leading to fragmentation and detachment from traditional ideals in art and culture. Modernism, he argues, emerged as a response to rapid societal changes like industrialization, reflecting a sense of alienation and disillusiousness. Postmodernism further embraced ambiguity, skepticism, and subversion of expectations. Hanson sees this trajectory as a manifestation of cultural drift, where innovation is celebrated but lacks authentic adaptation to underlying selection pressures, resulting in growing disillusionment within elite cultural spheres.