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The title itself and the fact that it's posted here almost implicitly contains every comment within its seed. > "Your 'little men,' your Nazi friends, were not

The title itself and the fact that it's posted here almost implicitly contains every comment within its seed. > "Your 'little men,' your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better." I have since about 2010, sensed better. Snowden helped me trust my instincts. At this time I am left with no moral choice whatsoever but to speak up about the direction of technology and what we are helping to create. It now seems like a Pascal's wager. If I'm wrong it won't matter and I'll simply look like a fool. I am really, really praying that I end up looking a fool.

new_stranger 5y ago
The sad thing is that most often, the actual villains trick everyone into thinking it's a different party. When bad people rise to power, they often do so vilifying one or more other groups. The odds are not in our favor, collectively, we will be tricked as well.
- teddyh 5y ago
  Yes, of course, that’s what it’s like for the other side. Those people are all bad. We on the correct side don’t have that problem.
  - Jiro 5y ago
    You're being sarcastic, but I can think of a number of cases where someone could have expressed that opinion seriously and been pretty much correct, including Jews under the Nazis, and the Ukrainians now. You can't reduce politics to a game of pattern-matching where every time someone says something which pattern-matches to "you called someone bad people!" you should react just like the last time someone said it. Sometimes people are bad, sometimes they're not, and there's no shortcut to figuring it out other than by taking the time and effort to actually figure it out, (Which isn't really a shortcut at all.)
    - cortesoft 5y ago
      Of course, no one is arguing that all sides are equally bad or that when one side says that that the other side is evil they are always wrong… the problem is that it is hard to know if you are being tricked or told the truth.
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      >I can think of a number of cases where someone could have expressed that opinion seriously and been pretty much correct, including Jews under the Nazis, and the Ukrainians now. The problem is that if you place yourself in a random time and party, you are more likely to be a Nazi than a Jew, because a crucial element of evil is the power to do it, which is associated with having greater numbers, and that rigs the odds so that your random insertion will be among them rather than their heroic enemies.
      - michaelmrose 5y ago
        In early 30s the Nazis only got 33-37% of the vote not too much unlike the portion of the electorate who support ending democracy in favor of our own would be dictator. "Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. Hitler was not appointed chancellor as the result of an electoral victory with a popular mandate, but instead as the result of a constitutionally questionable deal among a small group of conservative German politicians who had given up on parliamentary rule. They hoped to use Hitler's popularity with the masses to buttress a return to conservative authoritarian rule..." https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nazi-rise-to-power https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nazi-r... If you place yourself at a random time of trouble you will 2 to 1 find yourself behind the eyes of someone indifferent or scared neither victim nor victimizer.
    - teddyh 5y ago
      You seem to be arguing in favor of the ability to declare one side entirely bad, while I (using sarcasm) argued against it. I am still not entirely convinced that the ability to completely denounce one side as entirely evil is somehow an important freedom which must be preserved, even if it is sometimes true. Regarding your examples, I couldn’t possibly comment, for obvious reasons.
- Natsu 5y ago
  I think that when it becomes culty and reality-denying is where the real problems come in. For example, 47 years ago the city of Phenom Penh was forced at gunpoint to march into the wilderness to farm rice because of how some people interpreted Marx. Those that weren't simply marched off to be killed--often beaten to death to save on bullets--were made to farm rice despite not knowing how and with no plans made to actually feed them. So most of the rest worked 16+ hour days and simply starved, because you could get shot for high crimes like catching a fish to eat when it was swimming between your legs.
  - nonrandomstring 5y ago
    > I think that when it becomes culty and reality-denying is where the real problems come in. For example, 47 years ago the city of Phenom Penh was forced at gunpoint to march into the wilderness to farm rice because of how some people interpreted This! Absolutely. Technological backlash is one of the grave dangers I address in Digital Vegan. Anti-intellectualism lies just beneath the surface in a technological society that is out of touch with itself and has alienated its members through the very technology that could unite it. It grows prone to regressive catastrophes like Mao's brutal projects and of the Khmer Rouge you mention. "Strong Leaders" attach themselves easily to ruralism, "back to basics" and other regressive ideologies. In many ways I think Putin may be one of them. Technological cults beget anti-technological cults. A problem is that nuanced (but 'inconvenient') tech critique gets labelled as precisely that regressive anti-intellectualism by those who profit from technologically mediated alienation. Simply count the allusions to Luddism in responses to my comments. That "shutting down" and trying to place reasoned technological critique as beyond discussion is mentioned elsewhere in this thread, and is the road to trouble.
- qiskit 5y ago
  > When bad people rise to power, they often do so vilifying one or more other groups. No. When times get tough, everyone is naturally drawn to their own. Visit any prison. > The odds are not in our favor, collectively, we will be tricked as well. Nobody is tricked. The person who appeals to the masses' self-interest will become leader.
boppo1 5y ago
What do you sense about technology? Can you describe what you're worried we are creating? Obviously there are unintended negative effects, but I think it's not certain how they'll play out.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  That's literally the point of the quote and their statement, I think. Any specific thing can be convincingly shot down in a forum of relative experts like this one. We don't know where it's going or how it'll play out. But we can feel that it is already bad and is going to get worse. Some day people will try to say "we didn't know" but that will be a lie. Some of us did and tried to convince y'all. But because we aren't able to convincingly predict the future in minute detail we've been ignored.
  - ls65536 5y ago
    The worst part is whenever bringing up such points others are often quick to dismiss them as wacky "conspiracy theories" or even just unfounded pessimism about the state of things as they are today. Merely bringing up comparisons of certain observations about society today to those of Nazi Germany (or other reprehensible regimes throughout history) risks getting oneself cancelled or targeted in other ways. "How dare you compare the horrors of World War II with the relative ease of things today! It's nowhere near as bad today as it was back then!", cry the detractors. And they may be right about that in some sense, but those who don't learn from history and apply its lessons to the present are doomed to repeat certain mistakes, or at least to make history rhyme, as the saying goes. The chilling effect caused by the stifling of open discussion about how things are today and where they could risk going wrong in the future is how we all end up sleepwalking into the well-known horrors of the past that we'd otherwise all wish to avoid.
    - BlueTemplar 5y ago
      We can thank Snowden for giving us a pretty good example of what has gone wrong and how conspiracy theories cannot all be dismissed - all the more effective, probably, because of the discontinuity it represented in this slow "boiling the frog" business.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
paganel 5y ago
> but to speak up about the direction of technology and what we are helping to create Shot in the dark here, but maybe it's worth asking: how exactly are you managing your (remaining) relation with technology going forward? How do you see it (in the future, that is)? I'm asking because I assume (this being HN) that you're somehow employed in a technology-related field and, as such, you can't/didn't just "quit" technology cold-turkey. I'm also asking because I'm sensing that I'm in the same both as you, i.e. I'm a computer programmer that has started to see more and more clearly the way technology is going and what bad things it does to our society (for me it started about 4-5 years ago, when I actually got to read Ellul first-hand, and before anyone starts asking, no, I'm definitely not a fan of what Ted Kaczynski did). Later edit: Seen your other comments on this thread after I had written down my comment above, saw that you also mentioned Ellul and some other very interesting stuff/authors that I didn't know about, so thanks a lot "from a distance" for all those suggestions, comments/inputs like yours is what still keeps me active on this website.
- nonrandomstring 5y ago
  > how exactly are you managing your (remaining) relation with technology going forward? How do you see it (in the future, that is)? Thanks for asking. Definitely one for a personal email which I'd be delighted to chat about (follow my book site).

new_stranger 5y ago

The sad thing is that most often, the actual villains trick everyone into thinking it's a different party. When bad people rise to power, they often do so vilifying one or more other groups. The odds are not in our favor, collectively, we will be tricked as well.

teddyh 5y ago
Yes, of course, that’s what it’s like for the other side. Those people are all bad. We on the correct side don’t have that problem.
- Jiro 5y ago
  You're being sarcastic, but I can think of a number of cases where someone could have expressed that opinion seriously and been pretty much correct, including Jews under the Nazis, and the Ukrainians now. You can't reduce politics to a game of pattern-matching where every time someone says something which pattern-matches to "you called someone bad people!" you should react just like the last time someone said it. Sometimes people are bad, sometimes they're not, and there's no shortcut to figuring it out other than by taking the time and effort to actually figure it out, (Which isn't really a shortcut at all.)
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    Of course, no one is arguing that all sides are equally bad or that when one side says that that the other side is evil they are always wrong… the problem is that it is hard to know if you are being tricked or told the truth.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    >I can think of a number of cases where someone could have expressed that opinion seriously and been pretty much correct, including Jews under the Nazis, and the Ukrainians now. The problem is that if you place yourself in a random time and party, you are more likely to be a Nazi than a Jew, because a crucial element of evil is the power to do it, which is associated with having greater numbers, and that rigs the odds so that your random insertion will be among them rather than their heroic enemies.
    - michaelmrose 5y ago
      In early 30s the Nazis only got 33-37% of the vote not too much unlike the portion of the electorate who support ending democracy in favor of our own would be dictator. "Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. Hitler was not appointed chancellor as the result of an electoral victory with a popular mandate, but instead as the result of a constitutionally questionable deal among a small group of conservative German politicians who had given up on parliamentary rule. They hoped to use Hitler's popularity with the masses to buttress a return to conservative authoritarian rule..." https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nazi-rise-to-power https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nazi-r... If you place yourself at a random time of trouble you will 2 to 1 find yourself behind the eyes of someone indifferent or scared neither victim nor victimizer.
  - teddyh 5y ago
    You seem to be arguing in favor of the ability to declare one side entirely bad, while I (using sarcasm) argued against it. I am still not entirely convinced that the ability to completely denounce one side as entirely evil is somehow an important freedom which must be preserved, even if it is sometimes true. Regarding your examples, I couldn’t possibly comment, for obvious reasons.
Natsu 5y ago
I think that when it becomes culty and reality-denying is where the real problems come in. For example, 47 years ago the city of Phenom Penh was forced at gunpoint to march into the wilderness to farm rice because of how some people interpreted Marx. Those that weren't simply marched off to be killed--often beaten to death to save on bullets--were made to farm rice despite not knowing how and with no plans made to actually feed them. So most of the rest worked 16+ hour days and simply starved, because you could get shot for high crimes like catching a fish to eat when it was swimming between your legs.
- nonrandomstring 5y ago
  > I think that when it becomes culty and reality-denying is where the real problems come in. For example, 47 years ago the city of Phenom Penh was forced at gunpoint to march into the wilderness to farm rice because of how some people interpreted This! Absolutely. Technological backlash is one of the grave dangers I address in Digital Vegan. Anti-intellectualism lies just beneath the surface in a technological society that is out of touch with itself and has alienated its members through the very technology that could unite it. It grows prone to regressive catastrophes like Mao's brutal projects and of the Khmer Rouge you mention. "Strong Leaders" attach themselves easily to ruralism, "back to basics" and other regressive ideologies. In many ways I think Putin may be one of them. Technological cults beget anti-technological cults. A problem is that nuanced (but 'inconvenient') tech critique gets labelled as precisely that regressive anti-intellectualism by those who profit from technologically mediated alienation. Simply count the allusions to Luddism in responses to my comments. That "shutting down" and trying to place reasoned technological critique as beyond discussion is mentioned elsewhere in this thread, and is the road to trouble.
qiskit 5y ago
> When bad people rise to power, they often do so vilifying one or more other groups. No. When times get tough, everyone is naturally drawn to their own. Visit any prison. > The odds are not in our favor, collectively, we will be tricked as well. Nobody is tricked. The person who appeals to the masses' self-interest will become leader.

boppo1 5y ago

What do you sense about technology? Can you describe what you're worried we are creating? Obviously there are unintended negative effects, but I think it's not certain how they'll play out.

giraffe_lady 5y ago
That's literally the point of the quote and their statement, I think. Any specific thing can be convincingly shot down in a forum of relative experts like this one. We don't know where it's going or how it'll play out. But we can feel that it is already bad and is going to get worse. Some day people will try to say "we didn't know" but that will be a lie. Some of us did and tried to convince y'all. But because we aren't able to convincingly predict the future in minute detail we've been ignored.
- ls65536 5y ago
  The worst part is whenever bringing up such points others are often quick to dismiss them as wacky "conspiracy theories" or even just unfounded pessimism about the state of things as they are today. Merely bringing up comparisons of certain observations about society today to those of Nazi Germany (or other reprehensible regimes throughout history) risks getting oneself cancelled or targeted in other ways. "How dare you compare the horrors of World War II with the relative ease of things today! It's nowhere near as bad today as it was back then!", cry the detractors. And they may be right about that in some sense, but those who don't learn from history and apply its lessons to the present are doomed to repeat certain mistakes, or at least to make history rhyme, as the saying goes. The chilling effect caused by the stifling of open discussion about how things are today and where they could risk going wrong in the future is how we all end up sleepwalking into the well-known horrors of the past that we'd otherwise all wish to avoid.
  - BlueTemplar 5y ago
    We can thank Snowden for giving us a pretty good example of what has gone wrong and how conspiracy theories cannot all be dismissed - all the more effective, probably, because of the discontinuity it represented in this slow "boiling the frog" business.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

paganel 5y ago

> but to speak up about the direction of technology and what we are helping to create Shot in the dark here, but maybe it's worth asking: how exactly are you managing your (remaining) relation with technology going forward? How do you see it (in the future, that is)? I'm asking because I assume (this being HN) that you're somehow employed in a technology-related field and, as such, you can't/didn't just "quit" technology cold-turkey. I'm also asking because I'm sensing that I'm in the same both as you, i.e. I'm a computer programmer that has started to see more and more clearly the way technology is going and what bad things it does to our society (for me it started about 4-5 years ago, when I actually got to read Ellul first-hand, and before anyone starts asking, no, I'm definitely not a fan of what Ted Kaczynski did). Later edit: Seen your other comments on this thread after I had written down my comment above, saw that you also mentioned Ellul and some other very interesting stuff/authors that I didn't know about, so thanks a lot "from a distance" for all those suggestions, comments/inputs like yours is what still keeps me active on this website.

nonrandomstring 5y ago
> how exactly are you managing your (remaining) relation with technology going forward? How do you see it (in the future, that is)? Thanks for asking. Definitely one for a personal email which I'd be delighted to chat about (follow my book site).