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Towards a more Elvish vision for Technology

212 points by georgestrakhov 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Robotbeat 5y ago
His explanation of Human Magic reminds me of this monologue from Prometheus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygRNEy8mPjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygRNEy8mPjk
rognjen 5y ago
Quite an interesting read, thank you. I particularly liked: "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature". I don't entirely agree that nature is efficient by our definition of the word. It takes A LOT of wrong turns, it's just that it has infinite time to correct them. A side note on the CSS of your site: I found the text entirely too dense. I had to zoom in to 175% and then go into the CSS and manually change the line-height from 1.15 to 2 to make the text readable. (And I've OK vision.)
- shandor 5y ago
  I got the feeling from the styling of the text that the author had purposefully chosen a presentation that closely mimics that of a dead-tree book. I thought it was a nice touch, and fit well with the overall atmosphere of the piece. ...but yes, it was also rather heavy on the eyes on my 4K display.
- georgestrakhov 5y ago
  Thank you so much for your kind words. To be clear, I stole the "indistinguishable from nature" thing from Karl Schroeder, as marked in the footnotes. You should check out his talk, it's great. Also sorry for the css and readability. I just used the default Google docs html export formatting which is a bit shit... Will try to get something better next time.
- _Microft 5y ago
  I have to do the opposite on some pages that are posted here. This page looked so much better than most others on the iPhone and still ok with Firefox on Windows. Are you familiar with reader mode by the way? In Firefox it is available via an icon that resembles a text document in the address bar (or if it is stubborn and does not show the button, by directly going to about:reader?url= + the url you want to view). The customizations are available from an unobtrusive menu on the page and include font-size, line height, serifs or not and light, dark and a sepia mode.
- blamestross 5y ago
  "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature" Yeast, Chickens, and Dogs are the most developed technologies we have. (Brassica oleracea gets a runner up) Everything else we have is an unsustainable fad by comparison. Should something even count as technology if it can't reproduce almost without bound in the care of the average person? (settlements and factories count as reproducing technology!). I worry that production of computers is too complex and requiring of rare resources to be long term sustainable, but then I think the same of everything invented past the Bronze Age.
mdrachuk 5y ago
I’ve never thought like this, but I definitely acted like this. Feels like these two approaches are both part of human nature. From what I understand before agriculture people actually considered themselves as animals, being part of the bigger system.
Animats 5y ago
When humans develop longer lifespans, we will have a real problem getting political leaders out of office.
- bopbeepboop 5y ago
  We already do. Human lifespans exceed their ability to be rational leaders in touch with the modern world.
- Fordec 5y ago
  Basically the glass half empty view of "So long as men die, liberty will never perish.".
davidivadavid 5y ago
Pretty fun read, didn't go in the direction I thought it would (guess an essay can only be good if it goes off the rails like that at some point). Often get similar trains of thoughts but relying on slightly different concepts. "Power"/Agency/Technology vs. "Understanding"/Meaning/Purpose is definitely an interesting dynamic dichotomy/2x2 to explore.
shandor 5y ago
This was a refreshing write-up. I admit I went in being ready to cringe at some bad metaphors, but the author pulled it off. Overall, the whole piece gave me quite systems thinking vibes. For example, this part (well, and also the other 2 of the "three high-level features" the author lays out) towards the end: > But in a more “Elvish” paradigm, however, the moment the house is built is not the end. How will this building grow? What other purposes will it satisfy in the future? When and how will it be deconstructed? What would happen with the earth on which it is built? All these “Elvish” questions[20] (and many more) can help develop a deeper understanding of both the problem and the solution spaces, and reframe (re-timeframe) both. The moment when the house is needed is not the end, but it is also not the beginning. How did the need for the house emerge? Where did the materials for it come from? Edit: actually, on second read this hits so close it's almost spooky: > the relationship between action and understanding is more symmetrical: we act so that we can learn, as much as we learn so that we can act I've lost the count how many times I've had the discussion in my organization lately about "starting the implementation already so that we can learn more, as currently we know less about the problem than we will ever know". Granted, to maximize learning there must be some, usually non-trivial amount of effort at understanding and learning before the initial direction is sufficiently correct for the "act" part to provide actual learning and insight. But in my experience that's most of the time much easier to achieve than one would initially think. The amount of effort also tends to scale rather well with experience, so more experienced engineers are able to start acting into the broadly right direction with much smaller initial effort (which, in essence, is probably the definition of "experience").
- galaxyLogic 5y ago
  There's multiple types of learning: intellectual and muscular. Latter often called "training". Former is "understanding". You learn chess by playing chess. You learn riding by riding. You learn from mistakes when you learn by doing. But you can also learn by listening to a teacher or reading a book. So perhaps the big dichotomy is self-acquired-learning vs. passed-on-learning.
visualradio 5y ago
> The first kind of magic, which we shall call “Human”, is driven by the desire to extend one's power over the world, while simultaneously minimizing one's dependence on the world ... The second kind of magic, which we shall call “Elvish”, is driven by the desire to extend one's understanding of the world, while simultaneously minimizing one's intentional interference with the ways of the world. Both of these ideas seem based on the assumption that consciousness is separate from the material conditions which give rise to it. The classical philosophy of the stoics, that humans are the means by which the universe observes and understands itself, seems to resolve the dilemma. If we subscribe to the philosophy that humans are both part of the natural world and are interested in understanding the natural world, this might lead us to conclude it is in our interest to pursue capital intensive advanced research projects such as building orbital telescopes or high energy super colliders to probe the deeper mysteries of the universe. If that is the case, then it is self-evident that we also need to possess a large mastery over the environment in order to understand the environment, to pursue progress towards such ends in a sustainable and resilient manner. Household, industrial capital, shared infrastructure, and common environmental stocks have a physical cost of maintaining and replacing. A low surplus society which is incapable of generating a net product or economic surplus above the cost of maintaining itself or keeping its population from starving is not going to be able to sustainably fund such advanced projects. So understanding the environment requires interacting with the environment and shaping it in a manner which maximizes our ability for future understanding.
- nine_k 5y ago
  In the same vein, if you want to help the poor and the weak, be rich and mighty — else you won't have the resourced to share with the poor, or strength to help the weak.
  - danybittel 5y ago
    The poor need an environment they can thrive in, not handout from the rich.
    - asjfkdldlg 5y ago
perihelions 5y ago
"...the first Emperor of China, who died as a result of drinking what his alchemists thought was the elixir of immortality..." Oh wow this checks out -- there's a entire wikipedia article about it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_alchemical_elixir_poisoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_alchemical_elixir_pois... >"In Chinese alchemy, elixir poisoning refers to the toxic effects from elixirs of immortality that contained metals and minerals such as mercury and arsenic. The official Twenty-Four Histories record numerous Chinese emperors, nobles, and officials who died from taking elixirs in order to prolong their lifespans. The first emperor to die from elixir poisoning was likely Qin Shi Huang (d. 210 BCE) and the last was Yongzheng (d. 1735 AD). Despite common knowledge that immortality potions could be deadly, fangshi and Daoist alchemists continued the elixir-making practice for two millennia."
fragmede 5y ago
Offtopic: What sites are good for discovering this type of content?
- svilen_dobrev 5y ago
  i you haven't yet, check MoQ (metaphisics of quality), starting with Pirsig's Zen&art.. and Lila . The www.moq.org seems functional again.
Fordec 5y ago
Why does there have to be a dichotomy? There can be a diverse range of optimizations of technology visions. What is a Hobbit vision for technology? Or an Orchish one? Why is a United States view of technology the "Human" technology? Is this the same approach taken by Native tribes? Dare I say, portraying this as a one or the other, to follow the authors analogy, a "human" way of thinking about this. It doesn't have to be a this vs that narrative. We can pick and choose our optimizations. Not everything must be about power and purist intellectual pursuit. Where would a long term legacy focus while lowering of dependency lay? Or a long term desire to increase power, but reducing an impact on nature? In an era where knowledge is power, how do you distinguish the two? Is a deep knowledge of the inner workings of nuclear science, or the biology of pathogens elvish?
zer0gravity 5y ago
I'd say that this is a romanticized holistic vs reductionist exploration. Interesting nonetheless.
- TuringTest 5y ago
  Possibly, but having a good story or metaphor is way better for spreading an idea than having abstract terms defining it with utter precision; so this kind of "romantization" is valuable for debate.
  - zer0gravity 5y ago
    Absolutely! Should have said interesting and valuable.
rini17 5y ago
Sooner or later, every beauty-builder and oneness-seeker will run into fundamental unpredictability of nature. You laboriously grow a house only for it to suddenly vanish in earthquake, flood or fire. Were you immortal, or at least in a timeframe of thousands of years, this is going to happen often. "Don't be attached to outcome" or "just stay in oneness with everything" feels like philosophical cop-outs here. Is it possible for such a mind to exist that can stoically shrug off everything for thousands of years?
- TuringTest 5y ago
  > Is it possible for such a mind to exist that can stoically shrug off everything for thousands of years? That's the Human-centric way of thinking as described in the essay, where you care about the outcome of the solution - "having a house as shelter". If you care about the understanding, then seeing how natural processes reclaim everything will increase the knowledge on the mechanisms of nature, so it feeds the "elvish" side of solutions/magic.
  - rini17 5y ago
    Provided the mechanisms are discernible. Maybe it's possible to do it in thousands of years of pure observation without resorting to hypotheses and experiments. But I doubt human mind is capable of discerning individual variables and relationships behind natural phenomena just so, without seriously disrupting them.
    - TuringTest 5y ago
      A single human mind won't do it, but now that we have computers and the scientific method, we can build models to study how those variables behave; and reduce intervention to well chosen interventions to check the quality of the model.
      - rini17 5y ago
        But there's the paradox, the more accurate model we have, the more bigger interventions we do. Because we can and because there's too many of us. Also, our models, no matter how accurate, tend to exhibit butterfly effect and can't account for external influences. These can swamp out minor interventions.
gumby 5y ago
By the author’s definition, medicine is quite elvish as intervention is typically done to help the body heal itself (consider “setting” a bone).
apatters 5y ago
At the end of this piece you say we are much more like Elves than we used to be, but that's not really true. Elvish magic works the way it does because in classical/Tolkien-esque fantasy, the natural world is friendly to elves: they live forever, they're immune to disease, they heal quickly from injuries, they bound effortlessly across treetops or walk over snow banks, etc. They develop a symbiotic relationship with nature because it's kind to them. Nature isn't kind to humans. Sure, we've acquired many of these elvish capabilities: we can live longer if we use fire to scare away hungry bears, we can heal faster if we have some bandages or build a hospital, we can travel fast if we sit in a vehicle. But our relationship is fundamentally with our technology, not with nature. We've developed a symbiotic relationship with technology. Nature is still a deadly Other. So unless we someday genetically engineer ourselves to be more elf-like and resilient out in the forest, I don't think we'll ever adopt an Elvish outlook. We fundamentally improve ourselves via that which we create, and defend ourselves from the hostile environment which existed before us. In fantasy everyone's made by a benevolent creator, in reality we've evolved under the rule of survival of the fittest. The elves didn't dominate their environment because they didn't need to. (PS: In Tolkien, there actually is someone who's out of harmony with the natural order from day one, and has to go engineer his own world as a response. Complete with orcs and trolls and enormous fortresses that keep nature out. He's known as Morgoth and when they finally catch up with him they throw him in eternal jail!)
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  The world isn't unrelentingly hostile to us though and we have a much closer symbiotic relationship as the world is both the cause of our existence and our life support mechanism. So in that sense we should care a lot more about looking after it. Whereas Elves live apart from it and have no reason to care necessarily which we see in other depictions of Elves in fiction as malevolent forces. The problem is that we much prefer convenience now in our comparatively short personal lives than thinking about the long-term consequences. The view that our relationship is with tech rather than the world and the view of the world as basically a negative thing is a strong part of that.
- mellavora 5y ago
  What do you mean, Nature isn't kind to humans? Because we aren't immortal? Humanity has spent much more of its time on earth living with a very low technology level than that we enjoy today. If Nature wasn't kind, how did we make it for those hundreds of thousands of years? It is really only since the industrial revolution that we have become crazy-reliant on tech. Tolkien's works were very much about the 'war' between the pre- and post- industrial revolution worlds. Hint: the bad guys are the industrialists (Morgoth being one example).
ivoras 5y ago
I've just read a great and trippy book which resonates a lot with this kind of thinking, Geometry for Ocelots (https://amzn.to/3jQeVxt https://amzn.to/3jQeVxt), it's a sci-fi which basically attempts to deal with how intelligent species accelerate their demise by owerusing, and over-spending resources in their natural environment. A big part of a proposed solution was "moderation" -- but never specified how it would be done. This article kind of starts thinking about that "moderation" bit in real-world terms.
- stryan 5y ago
  Exurb1a is great, and if you haven't yet you should check out his youtube channel[0] as well. He doesn't talk that much about this sort of systems thinking but he does talk about many other interesting things. [0] https://www.youtube.com/c/Exurb1a/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/Exurb1a/videos
syn0x 5y ago
cool article. here's to the people that see the first paragraph tilted thanks to the tilting of the initial plots ;P
syn0x 5y ago
nice read! here's to the people seeing the first paragraph tilted, illuded by tilting of the two first plots :)
black_puppydog 5y ago
I'm a bit sad to see (nearly) no discussion of indigenous peoples in this article. I think it would have fit in quite nicely, and added a less fantasy-world based angle. The author hints at them twice though, but very lightly: > Both kinds of magic are partially known to humans [...] and > Humans (at least, us in the modern West) are obsessed with their own sense of agency. I'm personally about as far from "indigenous" as can be, but from what I've learned through various readings & watching interviews, the idea of "becoming one with" or "being inseparable from" ones surroundings is very much part of many indigenous peoples' lives. Not to romanticize them, but this angle could really serve as a reminder in this particular discussion: the "elvish" notion of thinking is not limited to the fantasy world; some of it is very much anchored in real humans' world views.
- bsanr2 5y ago
  One thing I've taken to - to spur thought, mostly - is likening the fire situation in California to the difficulties of securing the detritus of nuclear power generation. We have evidence to suggest that Californian Native Americans practiced a sort of semi-passive land management, including controlled burns, which helped to prevent large fires and kept natural areas sufficiently cleared for their uses. This practice would have steered the ecological evolution of those areas towards requiring such maintenance. Then those caretakers died (admittedly, this is putting that situation VERY shortly), took the knowledge of how to maintain their land properly with them, and European pioneers settled the same areas. And now, California suffers from massive wildfires every year (worsened, of course, by climate change). Essentially, modern Californians are living in a sort of post-apocalypse, suffering from ancient technology run amok, which they do not understand and so which afflicts them with impunity.
  - NeuNeurosis 5y ago
    Just a note, the fire management techniques were employed by indigenous people to mimic how the world already worked with natural fires. Your not wrong in saying it was a technology but it was not the cause of the current situation as they did not practice that tech long enough to impact the ecosystems reliance on it. All the species in that environment already relied oh fires. Small example, sequoia trees who's seeds only germinate after a fire. This evolution occurred millions of years before indigenous peoples where even around. Not to take away from the brilliance of the tech but it was discovered from how the world already worked it did not create a new niche.
svilen_dobrev 5y ago
elvish sounds to me like a lot like that Lao-Tsu thing: Do nothing and nothing will be left undone. p.s. Where "nothing" in above isn't absence of any things, but "what is not a thing" i.e. probably everything: https://web.archive.org/web/20190319105206/http://www.alangullette.com/essays/philo/nothing.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20190319105206/http://www.alangu...
ladyattis 5y ago
Nice article. I think part of the reason why things are the way they are in this 'human v elvish magic' dichotomy is largely due to our capitalistic society where there's always a boss to bully others into accumulating more wealth for the boss even if it hurts the land and the people under them. Capitalism with its absentee ownership norm always is at odds with Nature whereas you can compare the more communal/mutualistic lifestyle of the Hobbits in Tolkien's work as the more sustainable/healthy lifestyle comparable to that of the Elves who've master that lifestyle from just living longer as a race. I bring this up because Tolkien always seemed like someone on the edge of saying they were a Christian Anarchist by the way he spoke of power and leaders (being that Aragorn didn't have to bully the people of Gondor to follow him, he simply led by example).
okareaman 5y ago
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan (1967) I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky. I like to think (right now, please!) of a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics where deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms. I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.
- bsanr2 5y ago
  Final Fantasy XIII (As per, I suppose the machines' conception of grace is important in this regard.)
hosh 5y ago
This is part of something I had been thinking about and looking around for a while. In my own search for this, I found that there is a flaw in this kind of thinking. It likens “Human” and “Elvish” as to the degree of interference with the world, as if interference is the only way to interact with the world. But I do not think that human “interference” is the issue. Rather, it is the worldview in which we come to this dichotomy that is the problem. That worldview is one where the world is understood in terms of inert, non-living mechanisms. That things happen from clear causal chains. That actions undertaken to change something in the system are forces to act upon components within that system. So of course, from that worldview, the only way _not_ to unduly interfere is by withdrawing actions that perturbs the system. However, this is not the only worldview. In a different worldview, the world is comprised of living systems. The whole cosmos is alive, as are every human, animal, plants, organization, polity, etc. Living systems are wholes unto themselves, capable of growing on their own, adapting, participating in their ecosystem (which in turn forms a greater living system). Change doesn’t occur by applying force into a component within a dead, mechanical system. Rather, changes already happens within the living system because it is inherently capable of change and growth. Rather, improvements come in the form of helping the living system to grow and participate in its unique niche within the ecosystem. Within a living systems world view, technology is either synergistically a part of a living system, or it is itself a living system. It is not something separate from the ecosystem. From this worldview, there is no such dichotomy of “Human” vs “Elvish”, or even a notion of minimizing “interference”. Rather, it is living systems participating within and contributing towards an ecosystem. This is drawn mainly from Carol Sanford’s work on regenerative paradigms and living systems worldview. Most of her work is applied towards business organizations, but it is applicable to technology’s place in our civilization.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

His explanation of Human Magic reminds me of this monologue from Prometheus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygRNEy8mPjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygRNEy8mPjk

rognjen 5y ago

Quite an interesting read, thank you. I particularly liked: "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature". I don't entirely agree that nature is efficient by our definition of the word. It takes A LOT of wrong turns, it's just that it has infinite time to correct them. A side note on the CSS of your site: I found the text entirely too dense. I had to zoom in to 175% and then go into the CSS and manually change the line-height from 1.15 to 2 to make the text readable. (And I've OK vision.)

shandor 5y ago
I got the feeling from the styling of the text that the author had purposefully chosen a presentation that closely mimics that of a dead-tree book. I thought it was a nice touch, and fit well with the overall atmosphere of the piece. ...but yes, it was also rather heavy on the eyes on my 4K display.
georgestrakhov 5y ago
Thank you so much for your kind words. To be clear, I stole the "indistinguishable from nature" thing from Karl Schroeder, as marked in the footnotes. You should check out his talk, it's great. Also sorry for the css and readability. I just used the default Google docs html export formatting which is a bit shit... Will try to get something better next time.
_Microft 5y ago
I have to do the opposite on some pages that are posted here. This page looked so much better than most others on the iPhone and still ok with Firefox on Windows. Are you familiar with reader mode by the way? In Firefox it is available via an icon that resembles a text document in the address bar (or if it is stubborn and does not show the button, by directly going to about:reader?url= + the url you want to view). The customizations are available from an unobtrusive menu on the page and include font-size, line height, serifs or not and light, dark and a sepia mode.
blamestross 5y ago
"sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature" Yeast, Chickens, and Dogs are the most developed technologies we have. (Brassica oleracea gets a runner up) Everything else we have is an unsustainable fad by comparison. Should something even count as technology if it can't reproduce almost without bound in the care of the average person? (settlements and factories count as reproducing technology!). I worry that production of computers is too complex and requiring of rare resources to be long term sustainable, but then I think the same of everything invented past the Bronze Age.

mdrachuk 5y ago

I’ve never thought like this, but I definitely acted like this. Feels like these two approaches are both part of human nature. From what I understand before agriculture people actually considered themselves as animals, being part of the bigger system.

Animats 5y ago

When humans develop longer lifespans, we will have a real problem getting political leaders out of office.

bopbeepboop 5y ago
We already do. Human lifespans exceed their ability to be rational leaders in touch with the modern world.
Fordec 5y ago
Basically the glass half empty view of "So long as men die, liberty will never perish.".

davidivadavid 5y ago

Pretty fun read, didn't go in the direction I thought it would (guess an essay can only be good if it goes off the rails like that at some point). Often get similar trains of thoughts but relying on slightly different concepts. "Power"/Agency/Technology vs. "Understanding"/Meaning/Purpose is definitely an interesting dynamic dichotomy/2x2 to explore.

shandor 5y ago

This was a refreshing write-up. I admit I went in being ready to cringe at some bad metaphors, but the author pulled it off. Overall, the whole piece gave me quite systems thinking vibes. For example, this part (well, and also the other 2 of the "three high-level features" the author lays out) towards the end: > But in a more “Elvish” paradigm, however, the moment the house is built is not the end. How will this building grow? What other purposes will it satisfy in the future? When and how will it be deconstructed? What would happen with the earth on which it is built? All these “Elvish” questions[20] (and many more) can help develop a deeper understanding of both the problem and the solution spaces, and reframe (re-timeframe) both. The moment when the house is needed is not the end, but it is also not the beginning. How did the need for the house emerge? Where did the materials for it come from? Edit: actually, on second read this hits so close it's almost spooky: > the relationship between action and understanding is more symmetrical: we act so that we can learn, as much as we learn so that we can act I've lost the count how many times I've had the discussion in my organization lately about "starting the implementation already so that we can learn more, as currently we know less about the problem than we will ever know". Granted, to maximize learning there must be some, usually non-trivial amount of effort at understanding and learning before the initial direction is sufficiently correct for the "act" part to provide actual learning and insight. But in my experience that's most of the time much easier to achieve than one would initially think. The amount of effort also tends to scale rather well with experience, so more experienced engineers are able to start acting into the broadly right direction with much smaller initial effort (which, in essence, is probably the definition of "experience").

galaxyLogic 5y ago
There's multiple types of learning: intellectual and muscular. Latter often called "training". Former is "understanding". You learn chess by playing chess. You learn riding by riding. You learn from mistakes when you learn by doing. But you can also learn by listening to a teacher or reading a book. So perhaps the big dichotomy is self-acquired-learning vs. passed-on-learning.

visualradio 5y ago

> The first kind of magic, which we shall call “Human”, is driven by the desire to extend one's power over the world, while simultaneously minimizing one's dependence on the world ... The second kind of magic, which we shall call “Elvish”, is driven by the desire to extend one's understanding of the world, while simultaneously minimizing one's intentional interference with the ways of the world. Both of these ideas seem based on the assumption that consciousness is separate from the material conditions which give rise to it. The classical philosophy of the stoics, that humans are the means by which the universe observes and understands itself, seems to resolve the dilemma. If we subscribe to the philosophy that humans are both part of the natural world and are interested in understanding the natural world, this might lead us to conclude it is in our interest to pursue capital intensive advanced research projects such as building orbital telescopes or high energy super colliders to probe the deeper mysteries of the universe. If that is the case, then it is self-evident that we also need to possess a large mastery over the environment in order to understand the environment, to pursue progress towards such ends in a sustainable and resilient manner. Household, industrial capital, shared infrastructure, and common environmental stocks have a physical cost of maintaining and replacing. A low surplus society which is incapable of generating a net product or economic surplus above the cost of maintaining itself or keeping its population from starving is not going to be able to sustainably fund such advanced projects. So understanding the environment requires interacting with the environment and shaping it in a manner which maximizes our ability for future understanding.

nine_k 5y ago
In the same vein, if you want to help the poor and the weak, be rich and mighty — else you won't have the resourced to share with the poor, or strength to help the weak.
- danybittel 5y ago
  The poor need an environment they can thrive in, not handout from the rich.
  - asjfkdldlg 5y ago

perihelions 5y ago

"...the first Emperor of China, who died as a result of drinking what his alchemists thought was the elixir of immortality..." Oh wow this checks out -- there's a entire wikipedia article about it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_alchemical_elixir_poisoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_alchemical_elixir_pois... >"In Chinese alchemy, elixir poisoning refers to the toxic effects from elixirs of immortality that contained metals and minerals such as mercury and arsenic. The official Twenty-Four Histories record numerous Chinese emperors, nobles, and officials who died from taking elixirs in order to prolong their lifespans. The first emperor to die from elixir poisoning was likely Qin Shi Huang (d. 210 BCE) and the last was Yongzheng (d. 1735 AD). Despite common knowledge that immortality potions could be deadly, fangshi and Daoist alchemists continued the elixir-making practice for two millennia."

fragmede 5y ago

Offtopic: What sites are good for discovering this type of content?

svilen_dobrev 5y ago
i you haven't yet, check MoQ (metaphisics of quality), starting with Pirsig's Zen&art.. and Lila . The www.moq.org seems functional again.

Fordec 5y ago

Why does there have to be a dichotomy? There can be a diverse range of optimizations of technology visions. What is a Hobbit vision for technology? Or an Orchish one? Why is a United States view of technology the "Human" technology? Is this the same approach taken by Native tribes? Dare I say, portraying this as a one or the other, to follow the authors analogy, a "human" way of thinking about this. It doesn't have to be a this vs that narrative. We can pick and choose our optimizations. Not everything must be about power and purist intellectual pursuit. Where would a long term legacy focus while lowering of dependency lay? Or a long term desire to increase power, but reducing an impact on nature? In an era where knowledge is power, how do you distinguish the two? Is a deep knowledge of the inner workings of nuclear science, or the biology of pathogens elvish?

zer0gravity 5y ago

I'd say that this is a romanticized holistic vs reductionist exploration. Interesting nonetheless.

TuringTest 5y ago
Possibly, but having a good story or metaphor is way better for spreading an idea than having abstract terms defining it with utter precision; so this kind of "romantization" is valuable for debate.
- zer0gravity 5y ago
  Absolutely! Should have said interesting and valuable.

rini17 5y ago

Sooner or later, every beauty-builder and oneness-seeker will run into fundamental unpredictability of nature. You laboriously grow a house only for it to suddenly vanish in earthquake, flood or fire. Were you immortal, or at least in a timeframe of thousands of years, this is going to happen often. "Don't be attached to outcome" or "just stay in oneness with everything" feels like philosophical cop-outs here. Is it possible for such a mind to exist that can stoically shrug off everything for thousands of years?

TuringTest 5y ago
> Is it possible for such a mind to exist that can stoically shrug off everything for thousands of years? That's the Human-centric way of thinking as described in the essay, where you care about the outcome of the solution - "having a house as shelter". If you care about the understanding, then seeing how natural processes reclaim everything will increase the knowledge on the mechanisms of nature, so it feeds the "elvish" side of solutions/magic.
- rini17 5y ago
  Provided the mechanisms are discernible. Maybe it's possible to do it in thousands of years of pure observation without resorting to hypotheses and experiments. But I doubt human mind is capable of discerning individual variables and relationships behind natural phenomena just so, without seriously disrupting them.
  - TuringTest 5y ago
    A single human mind won't do it, but now that we have computers and the scientific method, we can build models to study how those variables behave; and reduce intervention to well chosen interventions to check the quality of the model.
    - rini17 5y ago
      But there's the paradox, the more accurate model we have, the more bigger interventions we do. Because we can and because there's too many of us. Also, our models, no matter how accurate, tend to exhibit butterfly effect and can't account for external influences. These can swamp out minor interventions.

gumby 5y ago

By the author’s definition, medicine is quite elvish as intervention is typically done to help the body heal itself (consider “setting” a bone).

apatters 5y ago

At the end of this piece you say we are much more like Elves than we used to be, but that's not really true. Elvish magic works the way it does because in classical/Tolkien-esque fantasy, the natural world is friendly to elves: they live forever, they're immune to disease, they heal quickly from injuries, they bound effortlessly across treetops or walk over snow banks, etc. They develop a symbiotic relationship with nature because it's kind to them. Nature isn't kind to humans. Sure, we've acquired many of these elvish capabilities: we can live longer if we use fire to scare away hungry bears, we can heal faster if we have some bandages or build a hospital, we can travel fast if we sit in a vehicle. But our relationship is fundamentally with our technology, not with nature. We've developed a symbiotic relationship with technology. Nature is still a deadly Other. So unless we someday genetically engineer ourselves to be more elf-like and resilient out in the forest, I don't think we'll ever adopt an Elvish outlook. We fundamentally improve ourselves via that which we create, and defend ourselves from the hostile environment which existed before us. In fantasy everyone's made by a benevolent creator, in reality we've evolved under the rule of survival of the fittest. The elves didn't dominate their environment because they didn't need to. (PS: In Tolkien, there actually is someone who's out of harmony with the natural order from day one, and has to go engineer his own world as a response. Complete with orcs and trolls and enormous fortresses that keep nature out. He's known as Morgoth and when they finally catch up with him they throw him in eternal jail!)

meheleventyone 5y ago
The world isn't unrelentingly hostile to us though and we have a much closer symbiotic relationship as the world is both the cause of our existence and our life support mechanism. So in that sense we should care a lot more about looking after it. Whereas Elves live apart from it and have no reason to care necessarily which we see in other depictions of Elves in fiction as malevolent forces. The problem is that we much prefer convenience now in our comparatively short personal lives than thinking about the long-term consequences. The view that our relationship is with tech rather than the world and the view of the world as basically a negative thing is a strong part of that.
mellavora 5y ago
What do you mean, Nature isn't kind to humans? Because we aren't immortal? Humanity has spent much more of its time on earth living with a very low technology level than that we enjoy today. If Nature wasn't kind, how did we make it for those hundreds of thousands of years? It is really only since the industrial revolution that we have become crazy-reliant on tech. Tolkien's works were very much about the 'war' between the pre- and post- industrial revolution worlds. Hint: the bad guys are the industrialists (Morgoth being one example).

ivoras 5y ago

I've just read a great and trippy book which resonates a lot with this kind of thinking, Geometry for Ocelots (https://amzn.to/3jQeVxt https://amzn.to/3jQeVxt), it's a sci-fi which basically attempts to deal with how intelligent species accelerate their demise by owerusing, and over-spending resources in their natural environment. A big part of a proposed solution was "moderation" -- but never specified how it would be done. This article kind of starts thinking about that "moderation" bit in real-world terms.

stryan 5y ago
Exurb1a is great, and if you haven't yet you should check out his youtube channel[0] as well. He doesn't talk that much about this sort of systems thinking but he does talk about many other interesting things. [0] https://www.youtube.com/c/Exurb1a/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/Exurb1a/videos

syn0x 5y ago

cool article. here's to the people that see the first paragraph tilted thanks to the tilting of the initial plots ;P

syn0x 5y ago

nice read! here's to the people seeing the first paragraph tilted, illuded by tilting of the two first plots :)

black_puppydog 5y ago

I'm a bit sad to see (nearly) no discussion of indigenous peoples in this article. I think it would have fit in quite nicely, and added a less fantasy-world based angle. The author hints at them twice though, but very lightly: > Both kinds of magic are partially known to humans [...] and > Humans (at least, us in the modern West) are obsessed with their own sense of agency. I'm personally about as far from "indigenous" as can be, but from what I've learned through various readings & watching interviews, the idea of "becoming one with" or "being inseparable from" ones surroundings is very much part of many indigenous peoples' lives. Not to romanticize them, but this angle could really serve as a reminder in this particular discussion: the "elvish" notion of thinking is not limited to the fantasy world; some of it is very much anchored in real humans' world views.

bsanr2 5y ago
One thing I've taken to - to spur thought, mostly - is likening the fire situation in California to the difficulties of securing the detritus of nuclear power generation. We have evidence to suggest that Californian Native Americans practiced a sort of semi-passive land management, including controlled burns, which helped to prevent large fires and kept natural areas sufficiently cleared for their uses. This practice would have steered the ecological evolution of those areas towards requiring such maintenance. Then those caretakers died (admittedly, this is putting that situation VERY shortly), took the knowledge of how to maintain their land properly with them, and European pioneers settled the same areas. And now, California suffers from massive wildfires every year (worsened, of course, by climate change). Essentially, modern Californians are living in a sort of post-apocalypse, suffering from ancient technology run amok, which they do not understand and so which afflicts them with impunity.
- NeuNeurosis 5y ago
  Just a note, the fire management techniques were employed by indigenous people to mimic how the world already worked with natural fires. Your not wrong in saying it was a technology but it was not the cause of the current situation as they did not practice that tech long enough to impact the ecosystems reliance on it. All the species in that environment already relied oh fires. Small example, sequoia trees who's seeds only germinate after a fire. This evolution occurred millions of years before indigenous peoples where even around. Not to take away from the brilliance of the tech but it was discovered from how the world already worked it did not create a new niche.

svilen_dobrev 5y ago

elvish sounds to me like a lot like that Lao-Tsu thing: Do nothing and nothing will be left undone. p.s. Where "nothing" in above isn't absence of any things, but "what is not a thing" i.e. probably everything: https://web.archive.org/web/20190319105206/http://www.alangullette.com/essays/philo/nothing.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20190319105206/http://www.alangu...

ladyattis 5y ago

Nice article. I think part of the reason why things are the way they are in this 'human v elvish magic' dichotomy is largely due to our capitalistic society where there's always a boss to bully others into accumulating more wealth for the boss even if it hurts the land and the people under them. Capitalism with its absentee ownership norm always is at odds with Nature whereas you can compare the more communal/mutualistic lifestyle of the Hobbits in Tolkien's work as the more sustainable/healthy lifestyle comparable to that of the Elves who've master that lifestyle from just living longer as a race. I bring this up because Tolkien always seemed like someone on the edge of saying they were a Christian Anarchist by the way he spoke of power and leaders (being that Aragorn didn't have to bully the people of Gondor to follow him, he simply led by example).

okareaman 5y ago

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan (1967) I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky. I like to think (right now, please!) of a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics where deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms. I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.

bsanr2 5y ago
Final Fantasy XIII (As per, I suppose the machines' conception of grace is important in this regard.)

hosh 5y ago

This is part of something I had been thinking about and looking around for a while. In my own search for this, I found that there is a flaw in this kind of thinking. It likens “Human” and “Elvish” as to the degree of interference with the world, as if interference is the only way to interact with the world. But I do not think that human “interference” is the issue. Rather, it is the worldview in which we come to this dichotomy that is the problem. That worldview is one where the world is understood in terms of inert, non-living mechanisms. That things happen from clear causal chains. That actions undertaken to change something in the system are forces to act upon components within that system. So of course, from that worldview, the only way _not_ to unduly interfere is by withdrawing actions that perturbs the system. However, this is not the only worldview. In a different worldview, the world is comprised of living systems. The whole cosmos is alive, as are every human, animal, plants, organization, polity, etc. Living systems are wholes unto themselves, capable of growing on their own, adapting, participating in their ecosystem (which in turn forms a greater living system). Change doesn’t occur by applying force into a component within a dead, mechanical system. Rather, changes already happens within the living system because it is inherently capable of change and growth. Rather, improvements come in the form of helping the living system to grow and participate in its unique niche within the ecosystem. Within a living systems world view, technology is either synergistically a part of a living system, or it is itself a living system. It is not something separate from the ecosystem. From this worldview, there is no such dichotomy of “Human” vs “Elvish”, or even a notion of minimizing “interference”. Rather, it is living systems participating within and contributing towards an ecosystem. This is drawn mainly from Carol Sanford’s work on regenerative paradigms and living systems worldview. Most of her work is applied towards business organizations, but it is applicable to technology’s place in our civilization.