In “Outside the Box,” I have consistently expressed my proverbial belief that “two heads are better than one:” mine and the chatbot’s. In “Outside the Box,” I’ve attempted to show that a truly open, constructive conversation with a chatbot is possible. Sometime ago, I reached the conclusion that the quality of public dialogue in France has seriously declined in recent decades. My question is this: Has anyone recently documented and tried to explain this decline, the degradation of a once vibrant intellectual national culture? You’re pointing to something deeper than the “decline of intellectual culture” as a vague complaint.