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Huxley's world can only function if you remove all capability of imagination from man. At which point it really doesn't matter which dystopia you're shooting fo

by anon4 13y ago

Huxley's world can only function if you remove all capability of imagination from man. At which point it really doesn't matter which dystopia you're shooting for - each and every one would function just as well at governing machines. And given our advances with AI, I'm willing to bet we'll have reliable imaginationless smart robots long before anybody is able to reliably make imaginationless people.

emn13 13y ago
Can you explain how imagination figures into it? I don't see the link. Sure, if they couldn't imagine an alternative, that would make escape tricky, but just thinking of an alternative doesn't necessarily make it attractive or achievable. Also, looking at our history, I think we're not that good at thinking of alternatives. We've currently convinced ourselves (for instance) that democracy and capitalism are the one true way, but not too long ago there were people who quite seriously believed in communism. And there are lots of people who live(d) in monarchies, religious fundamentalist states, single-party power, or even dual-party power. What "the others" are doing feels so obviously wrong, the only reason you'd consider the alternative is because you're forced by it's actual existance to consider it - certainly not because of our intrinsic imagination. And when we do imagine alternatives (such as BNW), they don't really matter much because they aren't serious alternatives, if only because society is so large that it's almost impossible to imagine effecting such change. Also, that kind of thought doesn't come out of a vacuum - Huxley almost certainly built on the ideas of others, and "merely" crystallized it into a novel, including his own twist. So... I don't think imagination would affect the outcome, and I think the notion that we are very imaginative is deceitfully flattering, but not true. People are good at taking existing ideas and making small changes, and they're good at identifying the important bits of good ideas of others and then making them their own - so that in the end a little bit of imagination goes a long way.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  Well admittedly, the search space of possible ideas is too damn large to be very efficient about searching it. Real people search it roughly breadth-first, and that works pretty well for us considering the cost/benefit ratio of depth. Consider if people had been imaginative about, say, Stalinism.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
I'm not so sure. I think Brave New World is more about shaping people's desires and expectations of what is possible. If people are brought up to believe that, say, political discourse is not desirable nor ever worth having (because there's no possibility or desire for change), and the same for technology too, but sexual and interpersonal adventures are fascinating, exciting, and interesting, then people might end up like the people in Brave New World. I think we're already headed down a similar road right now. A lot of people have a very limited view of what is possible in their life. Look at the way that children are protected from the consequences of their own actions, discouraged from being on their own, discouraged from physical activities, discouraged from working with their hands. Think about how much less common it is for middle class kids to have the idea that working in a "trade" is worthwhile compared to earning a 4-year college degree and becoming a "professional". Think about how much less common it is for people to think about running their own (non-software) business. Or about how unusual it is for people to have lab space or a shop in their home. Fortunately some of those trends are turning around, but it wouldn't be so unusual to imagine a world were technology developed differently and people ended up as sort of the worst caricature of the "facebook generation". Concerned more with trivialities than anything of importance, spending their lives worrying about relationships and sex rather than politics and technology.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  >Look at the way that children are protected from the consequences of their own actions, discouraged from being on their own, discouraged from physical activities, discouraged from working with their hands. Think about how much less common it is for middle class kids to have the idea that working in a "trade" is worthwhile compared to earning a 4-year college degree and becoming a "professional". The very fact that you expect scorn for these memes to be common shows that, "We need to get back to manual-labor values" has itself become a meme. >Fortunately some of those trends are turning around, but it wouldn't be so unusual to imagine a world were technology developed differently and people ended up as sort of the worst caricature of the "facebook generation". Concerned more with trivialities than anything of importance, spending their lives worrying about relationships and sex rather than politics and technology. The actual problem with politics and technology is that only tiny minorities of the population can feasibly participate in them, under our current systems. I mean, hell, I'm in academia, and half the time other academics don't know what academics are publishing. You think of an idea that might be useful and eventually find it was published a decade ago under a name you hadn't thought of.

by anon4 13y ago

emn13 13y ago

Can you explain how imagination figures into it? I don't see the link. Sure, if they couldn't imagine an alternative, that would make escape tricky, but just thinking of an alternative doesn't necessarily make it attractive or achievable. Also, looking at our history, I think we're not that good at thinking of alternatives. We've currently convinced ourselves (for instance) that democracy and capitalism are the one true way, but not too long ago there were people who quite seriously believed in communism. And there are lots of people who live(d) in monarchies, religious fundamentalist states, single-party power, or even dual-party power. What "the others" are doing feels so obviously wrong, the only reason you'd consider the alternative is because you're forced by it's actual existance to consider it - certainly not because of our intrinsic imagination. And when we do imagine alternatives (such as BNW), they don't really matter much because they aren't serious alternatives, if only because society is so large that it's almost impossible to imagine effecting such change. Also, that kind of thought doesn't come out of a vacuum - Huxley almost certainly built on the ideas of others, and "merely" crystallized it into a novel, including his own twist. So... I don't think imagination would affect the outcome, and I think the notion that we are very imaginative is deceitfully flattering, but not true. People are good at taking existing ideas and making small changes, and they're good at identifying the important bits of good ideas of others and then making them their own - so that in the end a little bit of imagination goes a long way.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago
Well admittedly, the search space of possible ideas is too damn large to be very efficient about searching it. Real people search it roughly breadth-first, and that works pretty well for us considering the cost/benefit ratio of depth. Consider if people had been imaginative about, say, Stalinism.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

I'm not so sure. I think Brave New World is more about shaping people's desires and expectations of what is possible. If people are brought up to believe that, say, political discourse is not desirable nor ever worth having (because there's no possibility or desire for change), and the same for technology too, but sexual and interpersonal adventures are fascinating, exciting, and interesting, then people might end up like the people in Brave New World. I think we're already headed down a similar road right now. A lot of people have a very limited view of what is possible in their life. Look at the way that children are protected from the consequences of their own actions, discouraged from being on their own, discouraged from physical activities, discouraged from working with their hands. Think about how much less common it is for middle class kids to have the idea that working in a "trade" is worthwhile compared to earning a 4-year college degree and becoming a "professional". Think about how much less common it is for people to think about running their own (non-software) business. Or about how unusual it is for people to have lab space or a shop in their home. Fortunately some of those trends are turning around, but it wouldn't be so unusual to imagine a world were technology developed differently and people ended up as sort of the worst caricature of the "facebook generation". Concerned more with trivialities than anything of importance, spending their lives worrying about relationships and sex rather than politics and technology.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago
>Look at the way that children are protected from the consequences of their own actions, discouraged from being on their own, discouraged from physical activities, discouraged from working with their hands. Think about how much less common it is for middle class kids to have the idea that working in a "trade" is worthwhile compared to earning a 4-year college degree and becoming a "professional". The very fact that you expect scorn for these memes to be common shows that, "We need to get back to manual-labor values" has itself become a meme. >Fortunately some of those trends are turning around, but it wouldn't be so unusual to imagine a world were technology developed differently and people ended up as sort of the worst caricature of the "facebook generation". Concerned more with trivialities than anything of importance, spending their lives worrying about relationships and sex rather than politics and technology. The actual problem with politics and technology is that only tiny minorities of the population can feasibly participate in them, under our current systems. I mean, hell, I'm in academia, and half the time other academics don't know what academics are publishing. You think of an idea that might be useful and eventually find it was published a decade ago under a name you hadn't thought of.