2020-12-18 13:30:57

hi to all!
in the last period I have been interesting in the idea of ludism, and the abolition of technology.

The main idea  is that technology will in the end destroy us.  Something that seems trivial, and whooever you can name may agree in principle.  In principle only because in truth to accept it would have a  different implications that we are not ready to face.


Does anyone know any writings that are anti-technological in tone and scoap?

---
"A good ruler gives the goblet to his servants. He never drinks from it himself. The servants need his glory. He does not cary the flame alone.
For a spark does not lit the flame, but the spirit holds it in place. Forgeting that leads one to destruction.
(Enhemodius before the Altar of the Broken)"

2020-12-18 19:32:11 (edited by defender 2020-12-18 19:32:42)

It sounds like you didn't take any of our advice in the last thread to heart, which begs the question, why are you asking for it again?

2020-12-18 21:23:06 (edited by wing of eternity 2020-12-18 21:24:09)

@2 what do you mean?  I am actually curious to know if this idea called neo ludism  has any implications, fro what I can tell they are antitech proponence, but I am not really knowledgable on how can one really give up technology in the current infrastructure?
This topic has nothing to do with the previous one , why did you think it does?
I didn't even mention it.

---
"A good ruler gives the goblet to his servants. He never drinks from it himself. The servants need his glory. He does not cary the flame alone.
For a spark does not lit the flame, but the spirit holds it in place. Forgeting that leads one to destruction.
(Enhemodius before the Altar of the Broken)"

2020-12-18 21:49:00

Have you looked into the Amish, as one example? They don't do much writing on the subject, I don't think, but they don't really use a ton of modern technology either, though more than you might think at first. There are also the off the grid or homesteading people, who basically try to go back to the land, some preppers do that kind of thing too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Luddism

That should give you some writers to chase down.

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2020-12-18 22:44:00 (edited by defender 2020-12-18 22:48:17)

In the last thread many people suggested that you stop taking a tour of different perspectives because it doesn't seem to be helping you, and just either pick something already or find your own happiness without someone else's ideas guiding you.
From past posts, it doesn't seem like your really capable of stopping at curiosity alone, otherwise I wouldn't have said anything.
My dad did the same thing and it never brought him anything but confusion and a bunch of random bits of knowledge.

2020-12-18 23:09:04 (edited by wing of eternity 2020-12-18 23:09:36)

@4 your father did that too?  Inyteresting indeed!
I should pick something.  Very hard for me to do really.  I am in a constant flux of thinking.  As the axiom suggests to exisyt is to think, now the question is  what should you think?  And with all his rationalism M.R Descartes couldn't really say.
Oh, I am going in to it again,
and did your father change?
@3  I am going to check it, thanks.

---
"A good ruler gives the goblet to his servants. He never drinks from it himself. The servants need his glory. He does not cary the flame alone.
For a spark does not lit the flame, but the spirit holds it in place. Forgeting that leads one to destruction.
(Enhemodius before the Altar of the Broken)"

2020-12-19 00:40:28

To be fair, I at least wasn't telling anybody not to explore things. Saying you should pick a thing that gets you out of your head for a while isn't the same thing as saying never explore things. There's a lot to be said for exploring things. But there's also a lot to be said for not exploring things until you have some sort of solid grounding, so you're not pulled this way and that way by each new thing you come across. Allow me to illustrate with a sort of neo-Luddite example.

There are a lot of people who insist that modern devices are screwing up students. They're distracting, studies have shown you "learn more" from print books rather than a device, you remember more if you write stuff down, and so on. So you'll read these stories, Professor Crankypuss bans laptops, phones, and tablets from his classes! Now I know, and everybody here does too, that you can learn in other ways, e.g. hearing an audio book. So right there, I question their basic idea that books, by which I mean physical printed books, and handwriting and so on are the only real way to learn.

So let's move on to the technology itself. Again, I've used phones to read books, indeed for a while that's literally all I was doing with one. So again, we know from experience that you can turn off Twitter and email notifications and all manner of other distractions, and use your phone to read Plato or whatever. So to my mind, what makes more sense than banning technology is to have classes on teaching students how to use technology responsibly.

Books and writing and all are great things, and I'm not one of these futurist idiots on the other side of things claiming all of that stuff is going to disappear and it will be the greatest thing in the whole history of forever! But let's be honest, the technology isn't going away either. And we know, from different segments of the population, blind folks like us for instance, that you can learn equally well from other forms of technology, unless you'd like to argue that I haven't learned well in which case, I'll happily punch you in the face, because I'm smart like that.

Now obviously, we can still debate the roll of technology. An obvious reply would be that the majority of sighted people learn through sight, though you could argue that this is changing with the popularity of audio books, and therefore all of the studies that show that books and writing your own notes by hand and such are the best way to learn are the most broadly applicable. That's fine, and a great debate to have. But my point is, looking at some practical experiences and the realities of the situation can help to bring a different perspective, as opposed to something that's just anti-new technology. And it's not just things from different people's heads either, we've got some real stuff to chew on here, not just some what if thoughts we both had at three in the morning one night when we were drunk.

So fine. Explore away. But if it's just stuff that's driving you around in circles and getting you nowhere, it's time to try something else, I say. Otherwise, I'm just going to assume you enjoy going nowhere inside of your own head and get bored. Because honestly, that kind of stuff gets pretty boring after a while. It's like all those songs about weed. Yes, we got it, you love pot and you think it's super amazing. Shut the hell up, nobody else cares. See also:  NYC and/or California, you just had a baby, and so on. I wrote up a list somewhere, of songs we don't need to hear anymore. I should find it and post it.

_____________________________
"rabbid dog  aggressive  attitude" since 3035. THE SYSTEM IS TRAP!

2020-12-19 04:59:40

Maybe you shouldn't be asking what (should) you think.  That could be the problem.
And as far as I know, my dad never figured it out.

2020-12-19 05:05:12

I disagree with primitivism like ideologies. Just no. That is a romanticized view of the past.
And you don’t have to go all the way with a line of thought. Make decisions based on the individual things you agree and disagree with, and see where that takes you.

I would rather listen to someone who can actually play the harmonica than someone who somehow managed to lose seven of them. Me, 2019.

2020-12-19 07:31:02 (edited by Mayana 2020-12-19 07:32:17)

Ah, you are at this again. FFS. Makes me bother why we even bothered to respond to your last topic. But fine, since I'm bored, let's see ...

You remember that anti-knowledge poem you posted a while back? Which I criticized because the author being so knowledgeable is what allowed them to write the poem in the first place? Well, same thing here. If not for technology, you wouldn't be able to ask this question here. We wouldn't be able to answer. You couldn't read all these philosophy texts you want to read, because they likely aren't as easily available in braille.
Then again, perhaps not having so many options would help you finally settle on one ... damn it, I just found a good anti-tech argument here.

Look, Wing, nothing is black and white. For example, just look at all the flat-earthers, the racists, the conspiracy spreaders on YouTube, to see how much bad it has brought us. But do not do so without also looking at the Left Tube (hBomberguy, Contrapoints, Shaun, Shonalika, etc.) standing on the other side. And do not look at both of those without looking at the education part of YouTube (SciShow, Journey to The Microcosmos, Kurzgesagt, etc.), all the channels teaching people that learning isn't just something you do at school, but can actually be fun. And then, while at it, watch a Baby Shark video ...
That's just one website on the vast, vast internet, but I think you'll be able to get my point. Technology is as varied in uses as the people who make it. It has brought me communities and education I could otherwise never dream of, and it has brought you a lot of confusion. It has changed us, without a doubt, in ways both good and bad. Which one wins out is up to individual choice.
Will technology destroy us? If we let it. wink
But of course, it is much easier to just follow someone else's words. Thinking, but never thinking *on your own*.

Yes, I definitely left the forum. Mhm. Why would you have any doubt?
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Don't forget to be awesome!

2020-12-19 08:47:18 (edited by sunshine 2020-12-19 08:52:13)

You impose pessimism on technology now. Why do you need to do this? No need at all.

2020-12-21 22:20:45 (edited by wing of eternity 2020-12-21 22:38:58)

the world the world  seing itself in lenses of  black and white but coloured by gray was at least uniformised in it's self.

Now, as the advent of so called relativism is growing, we are  distancing ourselfs from all that we were before .  To really really do it, means to fall in to ages of frivolity.
The world discusted by it's own relativity and the increase of it's tendency in all aryas will push the world tword finding another absolute.

Another beatification with a new beliefe.  Saturated by to uch bordom for the relativity of things like realists against romantics we will be in search of a new absolute for ourselvs.  Now as much as I liked the profundetty of relativismmy spirit must with all vehements repiuteate it. 
Often my beliefes morf in to me, and I can't really distinguish them all over again.
And to end all of it I claim the oximoron as a high law .

---
"A good ruler gives the goblet to his servants. He never drinks from it himself. The servants need his glory. He does not cary the flame alone.
For a spark does not lit the flame, but the spirit holds it in place. Forgeting that leads one to destruction.
(Enhemodius before the Altar of the Broken)"

2020-12-21 22:29:38

I am tempted to ask for a translation ... but no, I don't even want to know. Because it's not just lack of spell checking that's the problem here. Your post doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Yes, I definitely left the forum. Mhm. Why would you have any doubt?
Code 7 tips: https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/4010 … or-code-7/
Don't forget to be awesome!

2020-12-21 22:44:35 (edited by wing of eternity 2020-12-21 23:50:51)

All I am saying is that the world will inevitably gravitate twords an absolute again, not being able to hold the relativism for long, and will contradict itself by doing so.
So, It will force itself back in to paralasis, not being able to contend with any Ideals, we will yet again shrink. Well, after so much information, people will, by instinct alone, grab for the absolute, maybe before or maybe after the complete relativisation of everything.
You see? We are contempt in our state of how the things are, finding just a mistery and putting it on the table as a trophy, something that we think was never done before in this civilisation's history.

---
"A good ruler gives the goblet to his servants. He never drinks from it himself. The servants need his glory. He does not cary the flame alone.
For a spark does not lit the flame, but the spirit holds it in place. Forgeting that leads one to destruction.
(Enhemodius before the Altar of the Broken)"

2020-12-22 14:23:13

Ah hmm. A lot of deep predictions there. But -- and forgive me for perhaps being foolish -- I still don't quite understand what this means.
And -- no need to forgive me this time -- I think you don't, either.

First, what do you even mean with "the world"? Silly question, I know. We all know what the word is, don't we? And yet, there are so many cultures out there, so many religions, morality systems, philosophies, ways of life ... don't you think you making predictions about the future of the entire humanity is a bit silly?

Just because you wish to gravitate towards an absolute, as you put it, that does not mean that others think the same way. Some hold to one of such absolutes (and there, I must repeat, are many), others do not. And you expect humanity will in the future be able to just ... agree on this? Humans, agreeing on a thing? We can't even all agree that you need food to survive!

I suppose that's what you mean with relativism? Not that we are all moral relativists, but that as a whole this is the case for humanity? But if so, please tell me how the hell you expect that to change in the future. Why will this "gravitation towards an absolute" happen, and how? Why must it? How is the world contradicting itself otherwise?
Because right now, this just seems like another brand of the "humanity is doomed" BS. And yeah, sure. We will be, eventually. But it is easy enough to say that the world is doomed because not everyone holds the same beliefs as you. Religions love that; that's why hell exists! But, instead of just can you back it up?

At this point I am probably a toxic enabler for continuing to engage with you, because any response only encourages you to keep going. But it is so difficult to resist, when you give this impression of seemingly questioning many things, yet not truly trying to answer any of them.

Yes, I definitely left the forum. Mhm. Why would you have any doubt?
Code 7 tips: https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/4010 … or-code-7/
Don't forget to be awesome!

2020-12-22 23:44:20

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
  H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"
 
Basically, replace science with relativism, and this is what he's trying to say. It doesn't make a lot of sense because he's a philosophical pessimist, and unless you accept philosophical pessimism, they tend not to make a lot of sense. But I'll try and explain it anyway. It sort of goes like this.

1. Right now, the world's a relativist.
2. But you can't maintain relativism for ever.
3. The opposite of relativism is absolutism.
4. Therefore, the world will eventually seek another form of absolutism.
5. But that's the opposite of relativism, so the world will contradict itself.

The underlying assumption that sort of makes it make sense is the philosophical pessimism. That's why it's not just the world changing its mind or just a natural cycle between more absolutism vs. more relativism. Philosophical pessimists tend to think in universals, and the universals are always horrible anyway. So even though there's no real reason to choose relativism over absolutism, because everything sucks so one's no better than the other, they tend to pick something and then say the other thing is bad. That's until the other thing happens, then it's good and the previous thing is bad.

The basic thrust of philosophical pessimism is that consciousness, because of meaning, is a problem. Well, and suffering. Buddhism deals this one way, philosophical pessimism just assumes that if there's suffering and a quest for meaning you'll probably never solve, existence itself is a problem. That's why it can talk about contradictions being a problem and why A is good now and B is bad because it contradicts A, but then when B comes, A is bad because it contradicts B.

Essentially, the contradictions, even if they're held by totally different groups of people, are one of the reasons philosophical pessimists believe we can't find meaning, because again, for them everything is in universals, so "meaning" isn't something I can find and you can find and somebody else can find in various things or ideologies, but *a thing* that we all either find or don't. For the pessimist, we don't, and that quest causes us pain, along with lots of other stuff. Personally I don't get philosophical pessimism at all, it seems ridiculous to me. That's partly because I disagree with it's basic ideas, we can find meaning, and partly because it overemphasizes stuff, if I'm playing a game, there doesn't need to be meaning in it beyond, I'm playing a game because I enjoy it. It's no great mystery in need of a solution, or a distraction from the sufferings of life, or whatever.

But our boy Wing is a philosophical pessimist, so all of this stuff is a problem for him. It's not for me because I like to keep things simple. Today we walked down to the Indian place an got Indian food for lunch because my wife decided she wanted samosas. Simple. No great mystery, no big rigmarole about suffering, we decided Indian food would be yummy, so we went and got some, brought it home, and ate it. In case anybody was wondering, yes, it was really yummy. So was the beer I had with it that had cardamom and ginger and stuff in it.

I'm not trying to suggest that there's no deeper meaning to stuff or anything. I'm not suggesting that people don't have questions, or shouldn't. I just don't agree with philosophical pessimism, you can include existentialism here too I think, that the fact that we exist poses some kind of fundamental issue. But then, I pretty much side with Shinto. The gods/spirits/powers gave us the world, and it's pretty awesome. We should thank them for it.

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2020-12-22 23:55:44

oh! my god, friend can i say something? so here goes!

be you the here and now.

Score.
enough of this mimimi.

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2020-12-23 01:19:14 (edited by Ethin 2020-12-23 01:23:09)

My problem with the idea of philosophical pessimism is that there is no such thing as an absolute. Absolutism is a myth. An absolute portrays the idea that something is true or false or insert whatever here and it will be so for eternity, at least from my understanding of it. The universe has this nasty habit of proving supposed "absolutes" not so absolute eventually. Add to that the fact that its pretty much impossible to "prove" an absolute and... Well...
Its something you can believe in, and I won't deny anyone that right. And you can philosophize about it all day. However, while those philosophies are interesting things to think about, don't look into them too deeply.
As for the world suddenly contradicting itself and leaping for absolutism? Doubtful. Some people might, but the entire human race will undoubtedly continue down the path of "relativism" that we've been going down for millennia, whatever relativism is. If relativism is, indeed, relative, then I'd say its relative to whomever is thinking about it. (Pun intended.)

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
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2020-12-23 02:10:41

@Ethin yap!  you are geting a grasp of it It may as we;;  be that we can never get out of this hole that we made out of relativism, insightful however is the fact that the power of myth is no longer active in those times, religions quite gon, gods gon, well we now play the game of questions essentially for no aperant reason , since I don't see a way out of the relativist perspective, be it metaphysical or epistemic.  By believeing in no metaphysical experience we are now limeted to a fragment, or just this temporary world, and by regecting any form of knowledge we basicly form our own conceptions.
A character from a play, a novel or a tragedy must hold to an ideal even if he or she won't reach it.  In this sence the thing is closer to reallity then we thought. 
now, I really understand why the romantic poets got in to dreams, and tryed to disciffer  the reality through feeling and experience.  They as well had a great passion for nature, and were opposed to traditional views.

There is a great german play called in english From the life of a good-for-nothing writen by the leeding romantic figure  Josef phon Eachendorff.  In many respects this character is one of the wisest persons you can meat in romantic literature.  What we need to understand is the sence of romantic wander idealism which was lost.
Well,  I believe even if I am a pessimist that poetry and literature should be a main guide to life, sommething that can show us new ways to live life more greatly with more intensity.   Also by accepting contradictions I learned we can coap better with reallity.  Far from being bad a pessimistic philosophy can counter suffering .  Much like the stoic sence of acceptance it can strengthen us more deeply.
That qwowt from Lovecraft shows truly the ideas I wanted to convay.  Yes , it shows much truth , it's not just history which has it's axsioms of decline, but also ideas.
There is one man who I admire very much that being Johan Woofgang phon Goethe .  A man who was able to reconcileate the problems of his life and his experiences and to make them sublime a friend of elements, someone with a highly esthetic sence, even though he was a clasic and the clasics see reallity and their works as a strate line.  He was capable of so much more.

I recommand Faust .   Faust is a very great introduction to the human condition .  I say.
May be who knows we will be able to find new myths and things that we make us strive for something greater though write now it's quite hard.
Well, may be it sounds stupede but it will make sence in the end I think.

---
"A good ruler gives the goblet to his servants. He never drinks from it himself. The servants need his glory. He does not cary the flame alone.
For a spark does not lit the flame, but the spirit holds it in place. Forgeting that leads one to destruction.
(Enhemodius before the Altar of the Broken)"

2020-12-23 08:24:57

@19, no, I'm not "getting it". I have absolutely no interest in understanding philosophic pessimism.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2020-12-23 09:10:34

Thank you, @khomus. By the start of your explanation, I was prepared to answer with "Well yes, but to be honest I didn't want an explanation as much as I wanted Wing to try and explain it in his own words", but now I realize that I actually didn't know what I wanted.

@Wing The world isn't binary. Not just 0 or 1, relativist or absolutist. If you look at its history, you'll see that you can't truly put any period of it into either side; and if you think you can, then you are oversimplifying history.
"well we now play the game of questions essentially for no aperant reason , since I don't see a way out of the relativist perspective, be it metaphysical or epistemic."
There doesn't have to be a way out. And just because there isn't a reason from your perspective, that does not mean it isn't one. Is learning for the sake of learning not enough? The thrill, the enjoyment, the advantages of seeing the world in a slightly different light?

We don't need to reach some ultimate form of understanding; we just need to get to a point we're comfortable with. I am pretty close, or at least enough that if asked what I believed the meaning of my life was, I could string a few inspirational-sounding quotes together and mean them. Gettin' there. I don't need your absolutes, and as you can see, nobody else in this topic is all that hyped about them either.

"Far from being bad a pessimistic philosophy can counter suffering ." Well yeah. Bad shit happening is less painful if you just constantly expect it. But I think I'll stick with my happier outlook on life and take the pain when it comes, thank you very much. You keep on being down there so you can't fall, wondering what is eventually going to doom us all. smile

I'm with @Ethin, and I promise this is my last post in this topic. Unfortunately likely not my last reply to you period; I don't have enough self control. But one can hope.

Yes, I definitely left the forum. Mhm. Why would you have any doubt?
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2020-12-23 20:38:55

To be fair, philosophical pessimism isn't really about expecting the worst. To take the Stoics, for example, assuming we can consider them to be philosophical pessimists which I'm uncertain about, they say things to the effect that if your spouse dies, you shouldn't get all freaked out, because you knew it was going to happen and they were in essence lent to you by the gods, and now they're being taken back. I forget if that's in Marcus Aurelius or somebody else at the moment.

I agree with Thomas Ligotti, who wrote a book about it. Philosophical pessimism or philosophical optimism are based in temperament, it's not a thing you argue for, you either have it or you don't, and the majority of people probably don't, have pessimism that is. So when I say it doesn't make sense to me, I don't mean that it's illogical, or a bad thing to believe, or anything like that. I mean when you start talking about, for example, consciousness as being a fundamental issue because it makes us want meaning, which we can never have, I don't understand that because I just don't have that feeling. I don't have a pessimistic temperament, philosophically speaking.

Though I don't agree with philosophical pessimists that pretty much everything you can think of is a distraction from this problem of meaning and/or death, I do agree with them that there's often a lot of stuff we overlook. As an example, if you've never met a futurist, count yourself lucky. I knew one a while back who was super into Second Life. OMG they're doing concerts and teaching university classes in it and OMG OMG OMG it's amazing and it's the future of everything! Not only did that not happen, there was no pause whatsoever to think about what would happen if something like Second Life became the future of everything. It was just totally awesome, end of story.

So to tie this back into the topic of neo-Luddism, while I don't think we need to be completely against technology and return to rural living, I absolutely think that we need to think about technology's potential downsides a lot more than we tend to do in practice. So I mean, I'm not trying to pick on philosophical pessimism here and say that it's dumb or has nothing to contribute or anything like that. I'm just not a philosophical pessimist, and I tend to think it goes to extremes, e.g. neo-Luddism. I'm generally against philosophical and ideological extremes, because I tend to find they're a distortion of the issues. A philosophy, for instance, that assumes that everything is unmitigated happiness seems just as wrong to me as a philosophy that assumes everything is an unmitigated horror show.

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