4 ms·

it's no more a mental illness than being a luddite

• byrneseyeview 19y ago
  It's possible to wish that things were different, or to want to have a closer connection to the results of one's labor by avoiding automation and seceding from impersonal organizations. But I don't think Luddites advocate smallpox or other debilitating, disfiguring, fatal diseases. Aging is a disfiguring, debilitating, fatal disease, and so as far as the scope of this discussion is concerned, the difference between it and smallpox is that it's not contagious and it's taken longer to cure.
  • xlnt 19y ago
    i agree about what aging is, but people aren't trying to advocate diseases like that, they are usually just skeptical or ignorant about technology and what is possible, and bad at changing their minds to keep up with progress.
    • byrneseyeview 19y ago
      It would be fine for them to argue that it's implausible, just as it would almost make sense to say "I don't see how smallpox could be cured. So I intend to rot to death." But the argument I was responding to was, basically, "I accept that it could be possible to cure smallpox, but the idea of not dying that way is repulsive to me."