5 ms·

Claims like the one that "we" want what we cannot possibly have at the price "we" are willing to pay are tiresome. Who is this "we"? I'm perfectly willing to p

Claims like the one that "we" want what we cannot possibly have at the price "we" are willing to pay are tiresome. Who is this "we"? I'm perfectly willing to pay the price of living the way I do, and so are a great many people here. Most of us have given the technologies we use some thought and selected the ones we use to maximize benefit and minimize cost. There's no data presented in the article, just some guy's some informal impression that he can get away with accusing most people of hypocrisy. I dunno... I don't feel like a hypocrite. Do the majority of people here? My informal impression is they don't, but that's worth about as much as the informal impression in the article. A more plausible reality is that we all have doubts that we've chosen well, when making choices of technology etc, and we're aware that both costs and benefits can be hidden and only show up at a later time. But that latent concern is quite different from what's being imputed by the article, which doesn't even get the Amish right: their rejection of many modern technologies is driven not by any consequentialist cost-benefit analysis, but by a deontological desire for plainness, self-effacement and submission to the rule or order of their anabaptist religion.

avz 12y ago
It seems to me that the Amish approach starts with prejudice and outright rejection and leaves no scope for experimentation and trial dry runs of new tech. The author of the article urges reflection, but completely misses the importance of experimentation.
- gumby 12y ago
  > It seems to me that the Amish approach starts with prejudice and outright rejection This statement seems extraordinary and contrary to their practice. They simply see everything through the lens of their extremist faith. I think they are nuts but I respect their approach. For example, they often do have telephones. Many villages have one phone in a phone booth in the middle of the town. So everyone can see you use it. You can't hang out and impersonally communicate -- instead you stop by and visit in person. But if they need an ambulance, or to do a business deal with someone outside their community, they can. They also will use some power tools, though they don't want them to be electric. I don't quite understand the reasoning, but whatever. Apparently there was a lot of experimentation, and not everybody chose the same solution. They also let their teen agers leave the community and get drunk crash cars etc. Amazingly to me a majority decide to go back into the fold. Every adult has made a conscious choice to be observant. In a small way many of use use the same process (though hopefully from a different starting point and with different parameters). I love my MBP but the app I run most is Emacs. I know what an IDE is but don't see the point. I laugh when I see reviews of iOS apps that are described as "visually stunning" -- typically they have a low information density and slow interface, which makes them unpleasant to me. This doesn't make me a luddite nor does it make IDE (for instance) fans nitwits -- we simply find different local optima in the possibility space.
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    They let their teens, with no education or real introduction, jump into all sorts of problems. Then they threaten complete shunning from the community, totally cutting them off from everyone they know. How is it surprising people end up coming back under those conditions? If your first and only introduction to the Internet was just 4chan/b/, you might conclude the whole place is just for cp, gore, and other nonsense. The Amish approach is harmful, unfair, essentiality wicked, to force children into such things. Unfortunately, I'm unaware of a principled alternative.
jal278 12y ago
> Claims like the one that "we" want what we cannot possibly have at the price "we" are willing to pay are tiresome. Who is this "we"? This "we" encompasses nearly everyone living in modern society as a consumer. Recall a past motto of McDonald's: "Have it your way." Whether we're aware of it our not, this sort of message seeps into one's psyche. We become accustomed to convenience and adept at ignoring uncomfortable truths. As a result we don't often undertake the dramatic life changes required for us to live in a way that agrees with our root moral beliefs. For example, it is difficult to morally defend factory farms if one is against needless suffering and would rail against someone kicking a puppy. Imagine that whenever you wanted to eat an egg you first walked through where that egg came from, observing whether it was a relatively content free-range chicken, or one so crowded by other chickens that it is caked in filth. The suffering would be in your face, and so difficult to ignore that you might actually change your purchasing behavior to alleviate your own discomfort. However, just because such suffering is out of sight -- hidden by the neat packaging we encounter at the supermarket -- does not mean (of course) that it goes away. In truth, most of us are aware of the contradictions in how we live (myself included) but do not change our behavior. At our core we want convenience and comfort, and also to minimize our own suffering and that of others. But too often we focus only on what is easier (convenience and comfort) and ignore suffering that would require us to surrender even a bit of that comfort.
- avz 12y ago
  I wonder if this apparent contradiction can't be explained by re-examination of one the assumptions we're making. Namely, we assume human being is a singular, consistent self with a coherent set of goals. Perhaps, we're not. Perhaps, we're a bunch of more or less independent modules evolved for different purposes and activated in different circumstances. One module seeks to maximize convenience and pleasure. Another one to pass moral judgements. By eliminating direct exposure to the way chicken are treated we keep the moral unit offline while the convenience-seeker in us gets the best deal. Vast literature from ancient Greece till modern day describe inner struggles that suggest humans may not actually have a coherent set of values and goals at all.
  - foolrush 12y ago
rwallace 12y ago
Deontology is a good idea from a consequentialist viewpoint. An omniscient being with infinite computing power, capable of accurately calculating from first principles the consequences of every action, could operate as a pure consequentialist. We are not such beings, and therefore we necessarily adopt packages of deontological rules that have turned out on balance to lead to good consequences when other people have followed them.

avz 12y ago

It seems to me that the Amish approach starts with prejudice and outright rejection and leaves no scope for experimentation and trial dry runs of new tech. The author of the article urges reflection, but completely misses the importance of experimentation.

gumby 12y ago
> It seems to me that the Amish approach starts with prejudice and outright rejection This statement seems extraordinary and contrary to their practice. They simply see everything through the lens of their extremist faith. I think they are nuts but I respect their approach. For example, they often do have telephones. Many villages have one phone in a phone booth in the middle of the town. So everyone can see you use it. You can't hang out and impersonally communicate -- instead you stop by and visit in person. But if they need an ambulance, or to do a business deal with someone outside their community, they can. They also will use some power tools, though they don't want them to be electric. I don't quite understand the reasoning, but whatever. Apparently there was a lot of experimentation, and not everybody chose the same solution. They also let their teen agers leave the community and get drunk crash cars etc. Amazingly to me a majority decide to go back into the fold. Every adult has made a conscious choice to be observant. In a small way many of use use the same process (though hopefully from a different starting point and with different parameters). I love my MBP but the app I run most is Emacs. I know what an IDE is but don't see the point. I laugh when I see reviews of iOS apps that are described as "visually stunning" -- typically they have a low information density and slow interface, which makes them unpleasant to me. This doesn't make me a luddite nor does it make IDE (for instance) fans nitwits -- we simply find different local optima in the possibility space.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  They let their teens, with no education or real introduction, jump into all sorts of problems. Then they threaten complete shunning from the community, totally cutting them off from everyone they know. How is it surprising people end up coming back under those conditions? If your first and only introduction to the Internet was just 4chan/b/, you might conclude the whole place is just for cp, gore, and other nonsense. The Amish approach is harmful, unfair, essentiality wicked, to force children into such things. Unfortunately, I'm unaware of a principled alternative.

jal278 12y ago

> Claims like the one that "we" want what we cannot possibly have at the price "we" are willing to pay are tiresome. Who is this "we"? This "we" encompasses nearly everyone living in modern society as a consumer. Recall a past motto of McDonald's: "Have it your way." Whether we're aware of it our not, this sort of message seeps into one's psyche. We become accustomed to convenience and adept at ignoring uncomfortable truths. As a result we don't often undertake the dramatic life changes required for us to live in a way that agrees with our root moral beliefs. For example, it is difficult to morally defend factory farms if one is against needless suffering and would rail against someone kicking a puppy. Imagine that whenever you wanted to eat an egg you first walked through where that egg came from, observing whether it was a relatively content free-range chicken, or one so crowded by other chickens that it is caked in filth. The suffering would be in your face, and so difficult to ignore that you might actually change your purchasing behavior to alleviate your own discomfort. However, just because such suffering is out of sight -- hidden by the neat packaging we encounter at the supermarket -- does not mean (of course) that it goes away. In truth, most of us are aware of the contradictions in how we live (myself included) but do not change our behavior. At our core we want convenience and comfort, and also to minimize our own suffering and that of others. But too often we focus only on what is easier (convenience and comfort) and ignore suffering that would require us to surrender even a bit of that comfort.

avz 12y ago
I wonder if this apparent contradiction can't be explained by re-examination of one the assumptions we're making. Namely, we assume human being is a singular, consistent self with a coherent set of goals. Perhaps, we're not. Perhaps, we're a bunch of more or less independent modules evolved for different purposes and activated in different circumstances. One module seeks to maximize convenience and pleasure. Another one to pass moral judgements. By eliminating direct exposure to the way chicken are treated we keep the moral unit offline while the convenience-seeker in us gets the best deal. Vast literature from ancient Greece till modern day describe inner struggles that suggest humans may not actually have a coherent set of values and goals at all.
- foolrush 12y ago

rwallace 12y ago

Deontology is a good idea from a consequentialist viewpoint. An omniscient being with infinite computing power, capable of accurately calculating from first principles the consequences of every action, could operate as a pure consequentialist. We are not such beings, and therefore we necessarily adopt packages of deontological rules that have turned out on balance to lead to good consequences when other people have followed them.