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A good bit of banter gentle(wo)men. Thanks for the interesting links posted. Sorry I missed that thread while working. We at least agree, party politics aside,

A good bit of banter gentle(wo)men. Thanks for the interesting links posted. Sorry I missed that thread while working. We at least agree, party politics aside, that anti-intellectualism is on the rise. That should be worrying not just because of the horror it historically leads to, but because we are now in a technological society that cannot tolerate it without collapse. I believe the seeds of the collapse of the Soviet Union were sown much earlier, in Stalin's purges against the engineers and experts. The fact that China "got away" with the Leap Forward as a pre-industrial nation may mean someone is stupid enough to think it's worth trying again for a neo-primitivist course. I keep saying to fellow hackers, all you "Silicon Valley" types - don't think that the machine you're building wont turn against you. Who will be the first in line? Programmers and engineers who understand how it all works, and are therefore the greatest threat. Building resistance to tyranny into technology should be a number-one priority. A big part of that is educating people to treat it as the miracle of intellect it is, instead of being dumb, ungrateful, cargo-cult consumers.

rob_c 4y ago
> Building resistance to tyranny into technology should be a number-one priority. A big part of that is educating people to treat it as the miracle of intellect it is, instead of being dumb, ungrateful, cargo-cult consumers. I do think unfortunately the conversation is often dominated with "So therefore terminator?..." when dealing explaining advanced computing concepts to the public. I do wonder how much success is had in demonstrating core computing concepts with bright colours and zero code. It would have to work as science outreach does with bright colours/concepts and no equations or data despite the messy reality of research.

rob_c 4y ago

> Building resistance to tyranny into technology should be a number-one priority. A big part of that is educating people to treat it as the miracle of intellect it is, instead of being dumb, ungrateful, cargo-cult consumers. I do think unfortunately the conversation is often dominated with "So therefore terminator?..." when dealing explaining advanced computing concepts to the public. I do wonder how much success is had in demonstrating core computing concepts with bright colours and zero code. It would have to work as science outreach does with bright colours/concepts and no equations or data despite the messy reality of research.