5 ms·

>The Amish have the luxury of sitting back and evaluating after the fact. In fairness, I don't think the Amish really care if anything new does get invented, bu

>The Amish have the luxury of sitting back and evaluating after the fact. In fairness, I don't think the Amish really care if anything new does get invented, but they have effectively externalized the downsides of technology onto the rest of us while reaping the occasional upside. This reminded me of an Atlantic article making a similar point: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/camp-grounded-digital-detox-and-the-age-of-techno-anxiety/277600/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/camp-... >But Baldwin asks, "Where did you get your axe? And the slide camera and the stove, the flour, the nails, the books, the garden seeds, and the window glass?" While it seemed that they'd gotten farther away from a technological life, "they'd merely lengthened the umbilical cord." And here's the key part of the criticism: "By moving to the bucolic boondocks, that happy family dodged the undesirable effects of the technology that was supporting them even as they sneered," he concludes. I think we all need to be more engaged and thoughtful about our choices, how they affect our lives, and how they affect the lives of those around us, but we need to be alert for situations where we just push problems elsewhere instead of addressing them.

at_a_remove 5y ago
I am not sure the Amish have pushed problems away or externalized them. These problems would continue to exist without the Amish or any other tech-hesitant group. I view them as a variety of groups who have made some reasoned compromises as to how much they will allow their adoption of technology to change their way of life. They do not seem like the type who think they can do it all on their own and understood that they live inside of another country, etc. Technology shapes us even as we shape it. They are at least attempting to put in some care as to what shaping they allow.
bluGill 5y ago
For the most part everyone is like that. I have no clue how to make chips with a 3nm (um?) process. I saw a headline about IBM making progress on it a few weeks ago (or was it 2nm?) However I can sit back and enjoy the progress. In the mean time those people at IBM have no clue how to do the job I'm doing but they can enjoy it working. The people at IBM are smart, and I like to think I am: we could switch places and after a dozen years of training would be just as good - but at the expense of being behind in our current job.
zdragnar 5y ago
That is an absurdly facile take. All of those things predate modern technology, and they could happily buy them had they been made without. The argument misses the entire point of what it means to be Amish. Even the wording (in particular, the choice of "sneered") makes me think the whole thing was written in bad faith.
selfhoster11 5y ago
One thing that most of these items have in common is that you could reasonably recreate them from scratch if the modern manufacturing base disappeared: - Axe: The pole is made out of wood, and the blade out of metal that can be smelted from ore or scrap with some effort. - The stove: Same, or build one out of stone. - The camera: that one's more difficult, but optics or chemistry aren't that new. You may need specialised equipment to manufacture this, but it's still possible. - Nails: Smelt from ore or scrap into a mold. - Books: Wood pulp and printing presses, both of which are several centuries old. - Garden seeds: Literally will self-reproduce, bar any messing about with making them sterile via cross-contamination with commercial varieties. - Window glass: Melted sand, likely doable with a well-stocked workshop. It's more akin to a graceful degradation than lengthening the umbilical cord.
- kazen44 5y ago
  - The camera: that one's more difficult, but optics or chemistry aren't that new. You may need specialised equipment to manufacture this, but it's still possible. creating a functioning camera requires quite advanced machining to create parts with tolerances required. The same goes for most other items on the list, except for seeds and books. Creating an axe by hand is obviously possible, but getting the high-quality steel we use in the modern day is very hard without industrialization. Without a lathe and a way to power it, getting a camera is nearly impossible. Creating flat glass is also quite a difficult proces which requires melted lead or tin.
  - owenversteeg 5y ago
    I've given this a decent bit of thought, and in the unlikely situation that you're living a life with no access to modern materials, you're probably living a pretty busy life. Things you've never thought of, like gathering dry wood, finding potable water, stockpiling food, determining what's edible, constructing shelter and protecting yourself from danger will probably take up almost all your time in your first year, if you make it that long. This is of course very dependent on where you are - in many climates you'll be 24/7 trying to survive, but if you're in a fertile area with good weather, maybe some access to fish, you'll probably have a handful of extra hours here and there for fun projects. Hunter-gatherers in a tropical climate with abundant food, thousands of years of experience and a stable societal structure have around 4 hours per day of free time [0] - you will probably not have those things, so count on much less. What that means is that your time is the most valuable thing. (And materials, which take lots of time to obtain.) So if you begin to price out the time cost of acquiring all the materials to create a furnace and glass, it'll be enormous. The same goes for a steel axe, or books from wood pulp. In fact, anything from metal is an enormous amount of work, so I'd probably leave it aside. But that doesn't mean you can't have an axe, or paper, or glass - you simply have to look at what people used to do. Stone axes work fine [1], paper from birch bark is great, and mica makes a decent glass replacement. (If you get lucky, you'll find large mica sheets, which are clear as glass - if you're not, you can attach small ones together, but it won't be clear.) If you're in a cold enough climate, and you survive the winter, ice can be a replacement for glass and a weapon. As for the camera - no way you'll get a functioning "modern" camera with optics and an aperture and everything. I would simply build a camera obscura and use my birch bark - the biggest technical challenge there is getting a totally dark "room", which could probably be done the simplest by making a dirt hut with a wooden front and a pinhole made of birch bark coated in ash. (The thinner the hole material, the better.) If you had people to trade with, and plenty of time, I suppose it would be possible (if difficult) to make a photosensitive plate that you could use with your pinhole. [0] https://sci-hub.do/10.1038/s41562-019-0614-6 https://sci-hub.do/10.1038/s41562-019-0614-6 [1] They only take about 3-4 times longer to cut wood than steel: https://sci-hub.do/https://doi.org/10.2307/3772981 https://sci-hub.do/https://doi.org/10.2307/3772981
908B64B197 5y ago
I've always had the impression that this type of retreats were more a trend or status signaling than anything else.

at_a_remove 5y ago

I am not sure the Amish have pushed problems away or externalized them. These problems would continue to exist without the Amish or any other tech-hesitant group. I view them as a variety of groups who have made some reasoned compromises as to how much they will allow their adoption of technology to change their way of life. They do not seem like the type who think they can do it all on their own and understood that they live inside of another country, etc. Technology shapes us even as we shape it. They are at least attempting to put in some care as to what shaping they allow.

bluGill 5y ago

For the most part everyone is like that. I have no clue how to make chips with a 3nm (um?) process. I saw a headline about IBM making progress on it a few weeks ago (or was it 2nm?) However I can sit back and enjoy the progress. In the mean time those people at IBM have no clue how to do the job I'm doing but they can enjoy it working. The people at IBM are smart, and I like to think I am: we could switch places and after a dozen years of training would be just as good - but at the expense of being behind in our current job.

zdragnar 5y ago

That is an absurdly facile take. All of those things predate modern technology, and they could happily buy them had they been made without. The argument misses the entire point of what it means to be Amish. Even the wording (in particular, the choice of "sneered") makes me think the whole thing was written in bad faith.

selfhoster11 5y ago

One thing that most of these items have in common is that you could reasonably recreate them from scratch if the modern manufacturing base disappeared: - Axe: The pole is made out of wood, and the blade out of metal that can be smelted from ore or scrap with some effort. - The stove: Same, or build one out of stone. - The camera: that one's more difficult, but optics or chemistry aren't that new. You may need specialised equipment to manufacture this, but it's still possible. - Nails: Smelt from ore or scrap into a mold. - Books: Wood pulp and printing presses, both of which are several centuries old. - Garden seeds: Literally will self-reproduce, bar any messing about with making them sterile via cross-contamination with commercial varieties. - Window glass: Melted sand, likely doable with a well-stocked workshop. It's more akin to a graceful degradation than lengthening the umbilical cord.

kazen44 5y ago
- The camera: that one's more difficult, but optics or chemistry aren't that new. You may need specialised equipment to manufacture this, but it's still possible. creating a functioning camera requires quite advanced machining to create parts with tolerances required. The same goes for most other items on the list, except for seeds and books. Creating an axe by hand is obviously possible, but getting the high-quality steel we use in the modern day is very hard without industrialization. Without a lathe and a way to power it, getting a camera is nearly impossible. Creating flat glass is also quite a difficult proces which requires melted lead or tin.
- owenversteeg 5y ago
  I've given this a decent bit of thought, and in the unlikely situation that you're living a life with no access to modern materials, you're probably living a pretty busy life. Things you've never thought of, like gathering dry wood, finding potable water, stockpiling food, determining what's edible, constructing shelter and protecting yourself from danger will probably take up almost all your time in your first year, if you make it that long. This is of course very dependent on where you are - in many climates you'll be 24/7 trying to survive, but if you're in a fertile area with good weather, maybe some access to fish, you'll probably have a handful of extra hours here and there for fun projects. Hunter-gatherers in a tropical climate with abundant food, thousands of years of experience and a stable societal structure have around 4 hours per day of free time [0] - you will probably not have those things, so count on much less. What that means is that your time is the most valuable thing. (And materials, which take lots of time to obtain.) So if you begin to price out the time cost of acquiring all the materials to create a furnace and glass, it'll be enormous. The same goes for a steel axe, or books from wood pulp. In fact, anything from metal is an enormous amount of work, so I'd probably leave it aside. But that doesn't mean you can't have an axe, or paper, or glass - you simply have to look at what people used to do. Stone axes work fine [1], paper from birch bark is great, and mica makes a decent glass replacement. (If you get lucky, you'll find large mica sheets, which are clear as glass - if you're not, you can attach small ones together, but it won't be clear.) If you're in a cold enough climate, and you survive the winter, ice can be a replacement for glass and a weapon. As for the camera - no way you'll get a functioning "modern" camera with optics and an aperture and everything. I would simply build a camera obscura and use my birch bark - the biggest technical challenge there is getting a totally dark "room", which could probably be done the simplest by making a dirt hut with a wooden front and a pinhole made of birch bark coated in ash. (The thinner the hole material, the better.) If you had people to trade with, and plenty of time, I suppose it would be possible (if difficult) to make a photosensitive plate that you could use with your pinhole. [0] https://sci-hub.do/10.1038/s41562-019-0614-6 https://sci-hub.do/10.1038/s41562-019-0614-6 [1] They only take about 3-4 times longer to cut wood than steel: https://sci-hub.do/https://doi.org/10.2307/3772981 https://sci-hub.do/https://doi.org/10.2307/3772981

908B64B197 5y ago

I've always had the impression that this type of retreats were more a trend or status signaling than anything else.