Frederick Hollyer:
The children of Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Bt and William Morris
(1865)

"...as if I had become the genius I should have remembered I never was."

I was reading ‘my’ New Yorker over breakfast, when I encountered another especially glaring example of ReceivedWisdom. I found this instance particularly upsetting because the New Yorker has always been renowned for its scrupulous editing and fact-checking, yet here it passed off a popular prejudice as if it were a commonly understood fact. The article, Fools Rush In, was a lighthearted report from California’s new gold rush. With the price of gold hitting five thousand dollars, many had abandoned whatever their prior profession might have been, or after that profession had abandoned them, to work old abandoned placer mines in the Sierra Nevada. The author, Jennifer Wilson, was presenting a brief history of California’s State legislature’s attempt to regulate certain sorts of mining that dredges up long-buried mercury deposits that poison rivers and fish. She claims, “I wanted to dismiss that posture [miner protests against these regulations] as science denialism tinged with macho bravado. But then I imagined how I’d feel living near Silicon Valley, whose billionaire class shows up clean-shaven and well rested at Davos to pitch toxic, water-draining A.I. data centers.” I executed a full stop!

In the popular literature, A.I. data centers are almost always characterized as toxic and water-draining, as if these were undeniably uniform attributes of all data centers, when they are most certainly not. This description has entered the public consciousness as ReceivedKnowledge, unexamined and unquestioned because “everyone knows” it’s accurate, except it isn’t. Am I just being overly sensitive? I don’t believe so. Too much of the swirl of information accompanying these EndDays seems to have been reduced into an ever-increasing volume of ReceivedKnowledge. These might increase the efficiency of information transfer while also subtly poisoning the well. The media seems particularly attracted to stories that characterize data centers as evil, and any little opportunity that arises to reinforce that a priori notion seems altogether too attractive not to further amplify.

The bad billionaires and their evil data centers do not nearly define the whole genré. The good data centers far outweigh the bad, but, apparently, like apples, a few bad ones are plenty to spoil the whole barrel. Also, data centers represent an evolving technology. Mistakes made in early designs have been corrected with later ones. Unscrupulous actors emerge where big investments appear, and watchdogs often seem to lag in discovering what later seem like obvious shortcomings. Rather than characterize an industry learning where its limits lie, ReceivedKnowledge seems to hold data centers responsible for getting their technology right the first time, when such expectations have rarely been satisfiable in history. Over time, technology might evolve to seem infallible, if it ever manages to outgrow its initial characterization as wholly unworkable. We’re not really trying to solve The Gravity Problem.

The least generous interpretation gets attached to any negative ReceivedKnowledge. It’s as if these memes give us permission to turn off our critical thinking and let loose scathing criticism. Few expressions seem more deep-down satisfying for those aching for another conspiracy theory. Screw the theory portion. ReceivedKnowledge is never characterized as theoretical, political, or heretical; it’s received as obvious truth, pre-validated for convenience’s sake. We feel quietly grateful that whatever controversy might have been associated with that meme has been authoritatively brought to ground, once and for all. We might even mindlessly repeat the story. Then, like looking for red cars, everywhere we look, we find confirmation for holding our newly acquired prejudice. This sensation leaves us feeling smarter. How clever we feel to root out so much clear evidence of this latest evil doing! Damn the billionaires and their data centers! Social media hardly even notices the irony it encourages when everybody’s Facebook fills up with reinforcing data center-bashing blurbs.

Whatever wisdom and knowledge exists within that latest ReceivedKnowledge sits between the lines. Reading carefully, a reader might find that those landowners complaining about a data center exercising its legal easement right riled them because they refused to pay more than the normal and customary fee for exercising their privilege. This was not a story of bully billionaires capriciously stringing high tension lines for fun and profits, but a typical argument against public use of private property, with more than a little bit of unquestioned ReceivedKnowledge thrown in, perhaps unconsciously by another infected reporter. Objective reportage was never strictly possible, but attempting it when poisoned by a raft of ReceivedKnowledge truly renders it impossible to muster. I suspect that I’m unaware of the extent to which I’ve been poisoned by such spurious knowledge. I figure I need others to help me identify my blind spots, especially those I’m preternaturally proud of possessing. ReceivedKnowledge doesn’t just make me stupid. It also makes me proud of my stupidity, as if I had become the genius I should have remembered I never was.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz