5 ms·

Industry and in some sense "machinery" itself is largely seen as inherently negative, destructive, "unnatural", "against" by many today.

MichaelZuo 4y ago
Which is ironic as the vast majority of the human population, including the very same people with such views, are only alive because of substantial amounts of machinery. Such as those used in the Haber-Bosch process.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  lol this is literally that "and yet you participate in society. curious!" joke comic?
  - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
    No, not really though. Phones are not necessary for survival but food made more available and cheap is necessary.
    - giraffe_lady 4y ago
      Why yes, I do participate in society. Curious!
      - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
        Why, yes, I do moralize every time I get the chance without offering true alternatives! Who cares if poor people suffer? https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/15/23218969/sri-lanka-organic-fertilizer-pesticide-agriculture-farming https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/15/23218969/sri-la...
  - korroziya 4y ago
    [dead]
  - rtkwe 4y ago
    On an even more fundamentally ridiculous level too. The people being (Alanis Morissette) "ironic" here have absolutely no choice in the matter of literally being born. For those unfamiliar it's this comic that was simplified to the final panel [0]. It's a great send up of a whole arm of bad faith debate tactics that tries to invalidate any criticism of topic X because the person benefits from it. [0] https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342.png https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342...
    - HPsquared 4y ago
      Water is very destructive and yet, where would be be without it. Same goes for oil and gas.
      - rtkwe 4y ago
        Water isn't oil though, the former is biologically necessary and the latter is socially necessary. It also wasn't really what I'm talking about but I'll bite none the less. I'm not really saying we get rid of it fully but we don't need anywhere near the oil and gas industry we have. About 67% [0] of extracted oil used in the US goes into the transportation sector in one form or another and an additional 6% goes into power generation. We could eliminate a lot of that consumption through building things like nuclear plants and various green energy sources and by reducing the reliance on cars in the US. Unfortunately that latter option is going to be fighting against decades of culture and choices built into our cities, but we could also shift away from gas cars as well and it fortunately seems like we are at least headed that way though I'm betting we'll encounter a plateau in electric car adoption well before they outnumber gas vehicles. Even if we only shifted most consumer vehicles over to some gas alternative we could probably eliminate at least a third of all oil products consumed in the US. More if electric trucks pan out though that's a trickier proposition just due to how they're used. Those two changes don't even really require large changes to how we operate our world today just shifting the energy demand away from fossil fuel onto electric. [0] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/use-of-oil.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    Are you asking me a question about this 'joke comic'? I haven't heard of it, so you'll have to explain.
    - giraffe_lady 4y ago
      someone else posted it in this thread check it out https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342.png https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342...
    - teddyh 4y ago
      Real, canonical, link: https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
      - MichaelZuo 4y ago
        Huh according to popularity metrics that site doesn't even rank in the top 200000 globally, and only in the 70000s for just the U.S. If this was a top 1000 site I might get why there's an expectation to know about their 'joke comics', but when it's so obscure, I doubt even 1% of HN readers would know anything about this site. It seems odd giraffe_lady would phrase it in that way.
        weast 4y ago
        I think it would be far more engaging and interesting to respond to the point being made rather than the noteworthyness of the source? I think we can maintain a critical distance to the force that allow us to live the way we do, and i do not believe this reduces us to mere hypocrites. The ability to admire and admonish these practices is deeply human!
        dmreedy 4y ago
        Like many pieces of modern internet culture, this image has been detached from its real source and context, and propagated memetically through the various social media platforms.
  - mecsred 4y ago
    You could read this as "you can't say anything bad about the industrial complex because you participate in it", though I think that is pretty obviously bad faith. A more charitable interpretation I would take is "whatever misgivings you have about large scale industrial practices, it's important to remember that they also massively benefit society and are in some cases necessary." Pointing out the flaws is great, villanizing is counterproductive.
    - giraffe_lady 4y ago
      I think at this stage large scale for profit petroleum extraction is literally villainous, so I'm ok villainizing. Whether it's productive to is a question of tactics that I wouldn't expect to find consensus on even among like-minded people. There's potentially a nuanced and worthwhile conversation about what carefully ramping down fossil fuel use looks like, what responsibility we have to the people who haven't been able to take advantage of extraction yet, etc. But it's not like I'm interrupting that conversation to point this out here. This is straightforwardly admiring the artifacts of a destructive practice and preemptively shaming & dismissing people who would find that distasteful.
      - mecsred 4y ago
        A lathe can turn precise bores. Those can be used to make guns, which can be used to kill people. From my perspective, the analogy is you're anti-gun violence, but going after the people who admire the precision of the metalworking tools. If you want to move away from fossil fuels, yes that's great. I'm with you. You're going to want the people with an appreciation for this kind of engineering on your side, as it will be necessary for transitioning any advanced economy. If the problem is as bad as we all seem to agree it is, maybe we should cooperate to solve it instead of playing king of the hill for the moral high ground.
        giraffe_lady 4y ago
        Applying this metaphor to this case, you're admiring the weapon, not the tool that made the weapon.
  - emsy 4y ago
    It really is not. There’s a difference in seeking improvement in a system in which you participate and the current mainstream nihilism that demonizes our past achievements and seeks its destruction.
    - abnry 4y ago
      This puts it in a way I was struggling to do so. The "we are just saying we should improve society somewhat" counterclaim is disingenuous because the "we should improve society somewhat" is usually expressed in criticism and not solutions, and when solutions are suggested they are pretty vapid and full of wishful thinking.
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    Funnily enough, your response fits exactly these two memes: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/201/090/208.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/201/090/208... https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/222/974/b91.png https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/222/974/b91... Especially given the context of the thread, where your reply barely makes sense. There is a difference between criticizing extreme industrialism and rabid growth and villifying the very thing we all depend on. Which is totally different from just wanting to improve society somewhat ;) But westerners are so detached from everything that goes into sustaining their lives so there is oddly little awareness of the massive industry needed since it is all outsource over seas. Makes it very easy to dislike it from far away, especially when memes can be used to rationalize away the hypocrisy and pretend the privilege they enjoy doesn't exist (the meme basically amounts to "yes I'm privileged, but stop pointing it out! There's nothing I can do about my own privilege, I HAVE to own that iPhone too bad for the workers lol" and is the ultimate witty retort from privileged, usually white liberal people. Which is funny since those are the people who usually like to speak about privilege, but obviously not when they are called out on it themselves.)
  - friend_and_foe 4y ago
    No, I don't think you quite understand the implication. Something like 60% of the bioavailable nitrogen in the biosphere, including that in your human body, is created industrially via the haber-bosch process. Over half of all human beings and land biomass would be dead without it. Human beings and this industrial process produce more bioavailable nitrogen than all the nitrogen fixing microbes in the world combined. This process is a very important part of the earth's biosphere now with human presence taken into account, bioavailable nitrogen production is the bottleneck to biomass production. It is probably our only viable tool to actually reduce carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    I don’t think you understand the comic or you overlooked the thread above. It’s ironic because calling something as basic as “machinery” inherently evil has an inherently evil implication, which is that 95% of the population would need to die. This is nothing like “you participate, how curious”. This is “I’m against literally every piece of technology required to feed any non-negligible portion of the humans on earth”.
- CuriouslyC 4y ago
  If a slave owner has a forced breeding program, should the children of his slaves praise the institution of slavery for the gift of their lives?
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    That’s not a really good analogies. The real question is: are the people complaining about all industry ready to live in a world without industry? To which the answer is obviously no for most of them. It’s akin to asking: do you want 90% of the global population to die of starvation?
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 4y ago
      Well, perhaps the problem isn't where you think it lies. They may be willing to acknowledge your question and answer it with a whispered "yes", if you at least ask it in a way that cause them no excessive shame. Your denialism that the answer could be yes isn't quite the same thing as it being an "obvious no". We all wander through a landscape of horrific truths that we blind ourselves to just to remain sane.
    - RealityVoid 4y ago
      I feel there is an untold implication here that people somehow assume that the _other_ 90% would die of starvation. Surely not them!
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
      I don't think that's a good analogy either. It's not like a wish will be granted and we'll all still be here but suddenly without tractors. The alternative to consider is being born into a world where industrialization took off slower and culture had more time to understand the consequences before they got really severe.
scottyah 4y ago
Not very long ago the average human was David and Nature was Goliath. Vast swaths of land seemed to be unbreakable by mankind, yet now the tables have turned and for many it's cringe-worthy to watch the big Humans pummeling the land with ease at a rate where the land can put up no defense
_ph_ 4y ago
Well, I am certainly as far from techno-phobia as it might be possible, but oil rigs are examples of machinery which are connected to large damages to the environment. Not so much the machines themselves, but the oil they have been pumping. See also those - by themselves - magnificient excavators to dig for lignite. Great machinery, but if you consider the outcome, it is very dystropian. Nevertheless, they are engineering marvels and as such quite a view to behold.

MichaelZuo 4y ago

Which is ironic as the vast majority of the human population, including the very same people with such views, are only alive because of substantial amounts of machinery. Such as those used in the Haber-Bosch process.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
lol this is literally that "and yet you participate in society. curious!" joke comic?
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago
  No, not really though. Phones are not necessary for survival but food made more available and cheap is necessary.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    Why yes, I do participate in society. Curious!
    - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
      Why, yes, I do moralize every time I get the chance without offering true alternatives! Who cares if poor people suffer? https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/15/23218969/sri-lanka-organic-fertilizer-pesticide-agriculture-farming https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/15/23218969/sri-la...
- korroziya 4y ago
  [dead]
- rtkwe 4y ago
  On an even more fundamentally ridiculous level too. The people being (Alanis Morissette) "ironic" here have absolutely no choice in the matter of literally being born. For those unfamiliar it's this comic that was simplified to the final panel [0]. It's a great send up of a whole arm of bad faith debate tactics that tries to invalidate any criticism of topic X because the person benefits from it. [0] https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342.png https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342...
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    Water is very destructive and yet, where would be be without it. Same goes for oil and gas.
    - rtkwe 4y ago
      Water isn't oil though, the former is biologically necessary and the latter is socially necessary. It also wasn't really what I'm talking about but I'll bite none the less. I'm not really saying we get rid of it fully but we don't need anywhere near the oil and gas industry we have. About 67% [0] of extracted oil used in the US goes into the transportation sector in one form or another and an additional 6% goes into power generation. We could eliminate a lot of that consumption through building things like nuclear plants and various green energy sources and by reducing the reliance on cars in the US. Unfortunately that latter option is going to be fighting against decades of culture and choices built into our cities, but we could also shift away from gas cars as well and it fortunately seems like we are at least headed that way though I'm betting we'll encounter a plateau in electric car adoption well before they outnumber gas vehicles. Even if we only shifted most consumer vehicles over to some gas alternative we could probably eliminate at least a third of all oil products consumed in the US. More if electric trucks pan out though that's a trickier proposition just due to how they're used. Those two changes don't even really require large changes to how we operate our world today just shifting the energy demand away from fossil fuel onto electric. [0] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/use-of-oil.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  Are you asking me a question about this 'joke comic'? I haven't heard of it, so you'll have to explain.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    someone else posted it in this thread check it out https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342.png https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342...
  - teddyh 4y ago
    Real, canonical, link: https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      Huh according to popularity metrics that site doesn't even rank in the top 200000 globally, and only in the 70000s for just the U.S. If this was a top 1000 site I might get why there's an expectation to know about their 'joke comics', but when it's so obscure, I doubt even 1% of HN readers would know anything about this site. It seems odd giraffe_lady would phrase it in that way.
      - weast 4y ago
        I think it would be far more engaging and interesting to respond to the point being made rather than the noteworthyness of the source? I think we can maintain a critical distance to the force that allow us to live the way we do, and i do not believe this reduces us to mere hypocrites. The ability to admire and admonish these practices is deeply human!
      - dmreedy 4y ago
        Like many pieces of modern internet culture, this image has been detached from its real source and context, and propagated memetically through the various social media platforms.
- mecsred 4y ago
  You could read this as "you can't say anything bad about the industrial complex because you participate in it", though I think that is pretty obviously bad faith. A more charitable interpretation I would take is "whatever misgivings you have about large scale industrial practices, it's important to remember that they also massively benefit society and are in some cases necessary." Pointing out the flaws is great, villanizing is counterproductive.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    I think at this stage large scale for profit petroleum extraction is literally villainous, so I'm ok villainizing. Whether it's productive to is a question of tactics that I wouldn't expect to find consensus on even among like-minded people. There's potentially a nuanced and worthwhile conversation about what carefully ramping down fossil fuel use looks like, what responsibility we have to the people who haven't been able to take advantage of extraction yet, etc. But it's not like I'm interrupting that conversation to point this out here. This is straightforwardly admiring the artifacts of a destructive practice and preemptively shaming & dismissing people who would find that distasteful.
    - mecsred 4y ago
      A lathe can turn precise bores. Those can be used to make guns, which can be used to kill people. From my perspective, the analogy is you're anti-gun violence, but going after the people who admire the precision of the metalworking tools. If you want to move away from fossil fuels, yes that's great. I'm with you. You're going to want the people with an appreciation for this kind of engineering on your side, as it will be necessary for transitioning any advanced economy. If the problem is as bad as we all seem to agree it is, maybe we should cooperate to solve it instead of playing king of the hill for the moral high ground.
      - giraffe_lady 4y ago
        Applying this metaphor to this case, you're admiring the weapon, not the tool that made the weapon.
- emsy 4y ago
  It really is not. There’s a difference in seeking improvement in a system in which you participate and the current mainstream nihilism that demonizes our past achievements and seeks its destruction.
  - abnry 4y ago
    This puts it in a way I was struggling to do so. The "we are just saying we should improve society somewhat" counterclaim is disingenuous because the "we should improve society somewhat" is usually expressed in criticism and not solutions, and when solutions are suggested they are pretty vapid and full of wishful thinking.
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  Funnily enough, your response fits exactly these two memes: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/201/090/208.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/201/090/208... https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/222/974/b91.png https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/222/974/b91... Especially given the context of the thread, where your reply barely makes sense. There is a difference between criticizing extreme industrialism and rabid growth and villifying the very thing we all depend on. Which is totally different from just wanting to improve society somewhat ;) But westerners are so detached from everything that goes into sustaining their lives so there is oddly little awareness of the massive industry needed since it is all outsource over seas. Makes it very easy to dislike it from far away, especially when memes can be used to rationalize away the hypocrisy and pretend the privilege they enjoy doesn't exist (the meme basically amounts to "yes I'm privileged, but stop pointing it out! There's nothing I can do about my own privilege, I HAVE to own that iPhone too bad for the workers lol" and is the ultimate witty retort from privileged, usually white liberal people. Which is funny since those are the people who usually like to speak about privilege, but obviously not when they are called out on it themselves.)
- friend_and_foe 4y ago
  No, I don't think you quite understand the implication. Something like 60% of the bioavailable nitrogen in the biosphere, including that in your human body, is created industrially via the haber-bosch process. Over half of all human beings and land biomass would be dead without it. Human beings and this industrial process produce more bioavailable nitrogen than all the nitrogen fixing microbes in the world combined. This process is a very important part of the earth's biosphere now with human presence taken into account, bioavailable nitrogen production is the bottleneck to biomass production. It is probably our only viable tool to actually reduce carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere.
- kortilla 4y ago
  I don’t think you understand the comic or you overlooked the thread above. It’s ironic because calling something as basic as “machinery” inherently evil has an inherently evil implication, which is that 95% of the population would need to die. This is nothing like “you participate, how curious”. This is “I’m against literally every piece of technology required to feed any non-negligible portion of the humans on earth”.
CuriouslyC 4y ago
If a slave owner has a forced breeding program, should the children of his slaves praise the institution of slavery for the gift of their lives?
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  That’s not a really good analogies. The real question is: are the people complaining about all industry ready to live in a world without industry? To which the answer is obviously no for most of them. It’s akin to asking: do you want 90% of the global population to die of starvation?
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 4y ago
    Well, perhaps the problem isn't where you think it lies. They may be willing to acknowledge your question and answer it with a whispered "yes", if you at least ask it in a way that cause them no excessive shame. Your denialism that the answer could be yes isn't quite the same thing as it being an "obvious no". We all wander through a landscape of horrific truths that we blind ourselves to just to remain sane.
  - RealityVoid 4y ago
    I feel there is an untold implication here that people somehow assume that the _other_ 90% would die of starvation. Surely not them!
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
    I don't think that's a good analogy either. It's not like a wish will be granted and we'll all still be here but suddenly without tractors. The alternative to consider is being born into a world where industrialization took off slower and culture had more time to understand the consequences before they got really severe.

scottyah 4y ago

Not very long ago the average human was David and Nature was Goliath. Vast swaths of land seemed to be unbreakable by mankind, yet now the tables have turned and for many it's cringe-worthy to watch the big Humans pummeling the land with ease at a rate where the land can put up no defense

_ph_ 4y ago

Well, I am certainly as far from techno-phobia as it might be possible, but oil rigs are examples of machinery which are connected to large damages to the environment. Not so much the machines themselves, but the oil they have been pumping. See also those - by themselves - magnificient excavators to dig for lignite. Great machinery, but if you consider the outcome, it is very dystropian. Nevertheless, they are engineering marvels and as such quite a view to behold.