#neoluddites

[teledyn]

Fully Automated Theft

Meanwhile, twenty some years ago…

https://www.jalahq.com/flemingltd/commentary/Gary%20Murphy.htm

[slavicafire]

not to dare share an unpopular take on the buzzword-led neoluddite website that will sweetly force me to turn anons off again but. I actually love machine learning and I love AI models and I think we are living in a very technologically astounding moment. I believe it is not only possible but also necessary to have a leveled approach to this: yes, recognise the danger of any tool under capitalism but without needless fear mongering when it comes to the tool itself. educate yourself, focus on the advancements and their incredibly wide application, and commit to legislation and regulation instead of yelling for bans on boogeyman technology you think sprouted up randomly a year ago and starts and ends with stolen artwork and shitty chatgpt essays

[queen-mabs-revenge]

found 'the way' a really interesting piece of speculative fiction exploring the idea of anti-migrant xenophobic violence being turned inwards towards 'legitimate citizens' when interests of capital are threatened by struggle, but this sequence in the last episode def stood out to me as a neoluddite.

feels connected to this quote from dan mcquillan's 'resisting ai - an anti-fascist approach to artificial intelligence':

Bergson argued that if one accepts a ready- made problem in this way, "one might just as well say that all truth is already virtually known, that its model is patented in the administrative offices of the state, and that philosophy is a jig- saw puzzle where the problem is to construct with the pieces society gives us the design it is unwilling to show us." (Deleuze, 2002, cited in Coleman, 2008) In other words, however sophisticated or creative AI might seem to be, its modelling is stuck in abstractions drawn from the past, and so becomes a rearrangement of the way things have been rather than a reimagining of the way things could be. AI has, in effect, an inbuilt political commitment to the status quo, in particular to existing structures that embed specific relations of power. The absence of different concepts leaves out the possibility of conceiving that things could be arranged differently.

[randomnumbers751650]

I finally have time to talk about Lone Trail. I will be focusing on its depiction of science, technology and its progress. Will get a bit political, but funnily enough less than I imagined.

The thing that called my attention most in Lone Trail were the discussions on the nature of scientific progress. This is a theme that’s dear to me and the stuff I research about. It’s easy to think of scientific progress like an inevitable march forward, like an escalator. After all, we are much richer than we were before, right? Go to OurWorldInData dot org to play around with economic statistics in time – make sure to check the World GDP chart, from year 0 to 2000 and see it taking off like a rocket from year 1700.

What kind of Uncle Ted fan or neoluddite would go against that? Haha…hah…

Truth is that, although its effects are there, it’s not a clear if this is the little, neat process techbros want us to believe. It’s new and produces more, therefore it’s good, right? I could be writing this as a new wave of AI-generated NFTs pollute my algorithm.

That’s what makes the storytelling in Arknights so effective: it mashes together fantasy and sci-fi to really tell stories on the role of beliefs, technology, science and religion. The Rhine Lab saga is definitely an exploration of technology, with focus on the equivalent of the United States. During the period before the First World War, 1870-1913 (which is the one that Arknights draws most from), the world underwent through the so-called Second Industrial Revolution and I’ve read economic historians considering it the most innovative period in human history. I mean, obviously, there is an absolute number of inventions in our current age, but in relative terms 1870-1913 experienced a much larger number relative to the previous one.

The escalator narrative constructs scientific achievements as work of daring people (mostly men, but there were women like Marie Cuire), that combined science and technology to help mankind, like Prometheus giving mankind fire from the gods (in fact, one of these books is even named “Prometheus Unbound”); more than often they have to fight against the establishment. Remember Ignaz von Semmelweis? He just wanted doctors to wash their hands. Even I learned this standard narrative in the university. But that’s not the entire story.

The positivistic paradigm – of a science free of value judgements, made with the power of math – has actually helped build this escalator narrative. In reality, some scientists and scholars are horrible people. Later, I learned that Semmelweis, as much as he campaigned for the right thing, was a very arrogant person, who abused everyone around him, to the point few people went to his funeral.

Narratives focusing on one single hero are easy to sell and the ones building them are always on the lookout. Remember how ten years ago, a lot of people tried to push the narrative Elon Musk was going to create a new industrial revolution? Nowadays he’s just an arrogant loser who keeps dragging on his midlife crisis. The 1880s also had similar people like that, such as Thomas Edison.

Kristen Wright is definitely better than them both, because she is actually an engineering genius. But she’s also just like them, in the sense of unethical experiments, collusion with the military-industrial complex and being an overall superficially charismatic, but rotten to the core person. And she’s surrounded by a lot of people like Parvis and Ferdinand.

Breaking this line of reason, I have to say how much I hate Nietzsche’s ubermensch and master-slave morality, I hate Great Men theory, I hate Ayn Rand; these people are sheep who think themselves wolves. And before you say that Nietzsche didn’t consider himself an ubermensch, well, neither did Parvis and his reasoning was the same. For every person fancying themselves ubermensch, there’s a lot of those whom he’d call untermensch to clean up their messes. You have no idea of how times I stumbled upon people (especially libertarians) that advocate lower barriers to regulations that were written in blood, so that progress can happen quicker. Creative destruction works, as long as some people get “creative” and others clean the “destruction”. Deaths and injuries? Acceptable, just give them a pension (but fight tooth and nail in the court to not do it beyond the barest of the bare minimum, because it’ll lower the shareholder profit in 0.01%). Increase in inequality? Nobody will care in a few years, it’ll make everything cheaper anyway (look up Baumol’s cost disease to see how wrong that statement is, without being incorrect). I’m not exaggerating, sometimes the people saying that don’t even bother lacing it in politically correct language.

Because Lone Trail showed it “worked” – Kristen Wright broke off the ceiling over Terra and that will have consequences (especially with Endfield coming closer). The data from her experiments will advance science, the sight of a broken ceiling will inspire artists and prompt politicians to act. Was it worth it? Well, it will depend on who you ask (like, Ifrit or Rosmontis would have strong feelings), but it’s just there now. Serious history isn’t kind on this question as well – many technologies have a lot of transgressions, both legal and ethical, in their supply chain (both the American and Soviet space program come to my mind – guess who helped them); the difference between an entrepreneur and a criminal are contextual, because both are finding new opportunities of profit and both interlock frequently.

In the end, anyone can put an equation that has its uses, not mattering if it’s a good person or not. But that is no excuse to find good ethical practices. Silence saw everything with her own eyes and I’m really glad she’s leading the initiative for a more ethical science in Columbia – especially because people who are willing to break moral rules tend also to be willing to break research rules (this is why the “research” made in concentration camps is actually useless, it didn’t respect experimental rules). So I’m really glad for the Arknights writers for understanding these nuances and communicating them to the audience through one of the best stories of the game.

[loving-n0t-heyting]

Political horseshoe on humans and technology from deep ecology voluntary human extinctionists to lefty neoluddites to normies to ai safety doomers to self effacing tech founders embracing the prospect of human genocide at the hands of our robot successors

[teddykaczynski]

being a kaczynskipilled neoluddite is hard when you put your phone away and try to make conversation with your family but they all just keep staring at their phones and saying nothing

[holdoncallfailed]

i generally agree with this website's neoluddite attitude but i'm pro wireless headphones and tbh i don't understand how you couldn't be. you LIKE worrying about keeping your phone/ipod on your person in a bag or pocket or having to hold it in your hand and the wires getting tangled in your hair or scarf or earrings or jacket collar and them generally getting in the way while you're dancing or cooking or otherwise moving around? you don't like being able to keep listening to music while going into another room without carrying your phone with you? idgi

[dieletztepanzerhexe]

im very annoyed right now bc the grocery store closest to me has installed those stupid tiny automatic gates in the self checkout section that let you out only after you scan uour receipt. and I dont like it at all. people shouldn't have to scan their receipts to prove that they aren't shoplifting or something to be allowed out from the store. I've only seen this system in lidl before and those 3 times this year I stumbled into lidl i never complied with that stupid rule. i hate technology. wish i was a fucking hunter gatherer in the primeval european forest. feel like a neoluddite ready to commit acts of violence.

[darkswagamerpiratecowboyclown]

heres my prediction:

artists fight ai under the grounds that it steals their intelectual property

they win and databases get scrapped

ai companies start going through the process of getting consent for training data

eventually they can produce quality images and video again

companies see ai as less expensive and use it more

digital art qualifies as something you buy artisanal as a personal choice

i think thats sort of what happened with textiles thanks to industrial revolution. careers gonna get displaced eventually because more tool means less cost. and given that tech advances exponentially i doubt this takes more than 5 years.

oh well you arent gonna catch me turning into some sort of neoluddite anyways. even if in its current state ai uses unethical means i believe its here to stay and we should adapt to it. and if it takes our jobs (it may take mine i know im not delusional) thats more of an issue with lack of universal basic income.

[kapitaali]

Tang ping (Chinese: 躺平; pinyin: tǎng píng; lit. 'lying flat') is a lifestyle and social protest movement in China beginning in April 2021. It is a rejection of societal pressures to overwork, such as in the 996 working hour system, which is often regarded as a rat race with ever diminishing returns. Those who participate in tang ping instead choose to "lie down flat and get over the beatings"[citation needed] via a low-desire, more indifferent attitude towards life.

Novelist Liao Zenghu described "lying flat" as a resistance movement, and The New York Times called it part of a nascent Chinese counterculture. It has also been compared to the Great Resignation, a surge of resignations that began in the United States and much of the Western world at roughly the same time. The National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center, an institution affiliated to Education Ministry of China, listed the word as one of the 10 most popular memes for 2021 in Chinese Internet. Chinese search engine Sogou also listed the word at the top of its list of most trending memes for 2021.

Unlike the hikikomori in Japan who are socially withdrawn, these young Chinese people who subscribe to "lying flat" are not necessarily socially isolated, but merely choose to lower their professional and economic ambitions and simplify their goals, still being fiscally productive for their own essential needs, and prioritize psychological health over economic materialism.

Another newer related phrase is bai lan (Chinese: 摆烂; lit. 'let it rot').

The movement began in April 2021 with a post by Luo Huazhong (username "Kind-Hearted Traveler") on the internet forum Baidu Tieba, in which he discussed his reasons for living a low-key, minimalist lifestyle. In 2016, 26-year-old Luo quit his factory job because it made him feel empty. He then cycled 2,100 km (1,300 mi) from Sichuan to Tibet, and now back in his home town Jiande in eastern Zhejiang Province, spends his time reading philosophy, and gets by doing a few odd jobs and taking US$60 a month from his savings. He only eats two meals a day.

Luo's post, entitled with "Lying Flat is Justice", illustrates:

I can just sleep in my barrel enjoying a sunbath like Diogenes, or live in a cave-like Heraclitus and think about 'Logos'. Since there has never really been a trend of thought that exalts human subjectivity in this land, I can create it for myself. Lying flat is my wise movement, only by lying down can humans become the measure of all things.

Luo's post and story quickly gained a following on social media, being discussed and soon becoming a buzzword on Sina Weibo and Douban. The idea was praised by many and inspired numerous memes, and has been described as a sort of spiritual movement. Business magazine ABC Money claimed it resonated with a growing silent majority of youth disillusioned by the officially endorsed "Chinese Dream" that encourages a life of hard work and sacrifice with no actual life satisfaction to show for it, spawning the catchphrase "a chive lying flat is difficult to reap" (躺平的韭菜不好割, Tǎng píng de jiǔcài bù hǎo gē).

Response from Communist Party

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) moved quickly to reject the idea. The CAC internet regulator ordered online platforms to "strictly restrict" posts on tang ping and had censors remove Luo's original Tieba post while a discussion group of nearly 10,000 followers on Chinese social media site Douban is no longer accessible. Selling tang ping-branded merchandise online is forbidden.

In May 2021, Chinese state media Xinhua published an editorial asserting that "lying flat" is shameful. In May, a video clip of CCTV news commentator Bai Yansong criticizing the low-key mindset circulated on the popular video-sharing website Bilibili, and had attracted thousands of mockeries and slurs on the danmu commentaries in response. The same month, a commentary of Hubei Radio and Television Economic Channel said, "you can accept your fate, but you mustn't lie flat." An October article by CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, published in the Communist Party journal Qiushi, called for "avoiding 'involution' [nei juan] and 'lying flat'".

However, there were official voices offering more empathic opinions on the tang ping phenomenon. Beijing's party-affiliated Guangming Daily newspaper added that tang ping should not be discounted without reflection—if China wants to cultivate diligence in the young generation, it should first try to improve their quality of life. Huang Ping, a literature professor who researches youth culture at East China Normal University, told Sixth Tone that official media outlets may be concerned about the tang ping lifestyle because of its potential to threaten productivity, but "humans aren't merely tools for making things... when you can't catch up with society's development—say, skyrocketing home prices—tang ping is actually the most rational choice".

[marvelman901]

Amazing Spider-Man Super Special 1 (1995) . Planet of the Symbiotes part 1 . The Far Cry . Written by David Michelinie Penciled by Dave Hoover Inked by Ralph Cabrera Colors by Tom Smith Lettered by Bill Oakley Edited by Danny Fingeroth and Tom Brevoort Cover by Steve Lightle and Pedi . Spider-Man nad Venom fought Neo-Luddites and Eddie Brock was beginning to doubt his relationship with the Symbiote. Eventually he wanted a break from the alien entity in order to think the situation over... . #spiderman #venom #thing #thething #fantasticfour #marvel #stevelightle #pedi #davehoover #ralphcabrera #planetofthesymbiotes #symbiote #avengers #90s #neoluddites (at New York City, N.Y.) https://www.instagram.com/p/ChxXGqNsven/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[canisvesperus]

Listen 2 this over and over and try not to Lose My Gotdam Mind…..

[trexboy76]

#디지털미니멀리즘 #digitalminimalism #calnewport #translated #번역 본 #翻訳 本 #kimtaehoon #세종서적#neoluddites #quntifiedself #digitaldeclutter #streaks #월든 #소로우 #walden #amish #lonliness #고독 #산책 #글쓰기 #연락 #대화 #공예 #wod #attentionengineering #dunbarnumber 이 책의 목적은 온라인 도구의 중독성과 문화적 압력을 이기지 못하는 사람에게 성숙한 도구 활용 철학을 제공하는 것이다 この本の目的は、オンラインツールの中毒性と文化的圧力に耐えられない者に成熟したツール活用哲学を提供することである 나는 자기 실현의 구체적인 목표와 과정을 SNS에 기록하며 최대한 적절히 기술 활용을 하고 있기에 이 책에서 그다지 배울 건 없겠지라 생각하며 첫 장을 열었지만 많은 소득이 있었다 私は自己実現の具体的な目標とプロセスをSNSに記録し、最大限適切に技術を活用しているので、この本ではあまり学ぶことはないのだろうと思いながら、最初の章を開いたが、多くの収穫があった 나 역시 디지털 정돈이 필요했고 많은 웹을 정리했으며 생산적인 고독을 즐기기 위해 제대로 된 산책과 글쓰기를 하겠다고 다시 다짐해 봤다 私もデジタル整頓が必要で、多くのappを整理し、生産的な孤独の楽しむためにしっかりとした散歩と書くことをすると再び心に刻んで見た https://www.instagram.com/p/B04btWyAwUk/?igshid=e1m0fdqfqbkq

[musingsofabooklover]

Doctor Who: Kerblam!

Finally got round to watching this on iPlayer after my hectic weekend, and I’d say it’s my favourite episode yet! While I loved the character-driven historical plotlines of Rosa and Demons of the Punjab, this episode did the type of action-driven mystery plot that I loved from the RTD era, and it did it beautifully. Spoilers below the cut.

Wasn’t expecting Doctor Who to do an episode with an anti-automation spin, given its usual love of all things techno-utopian. As something of a Neoluddite, I found myself really agreeing with the initial message up until the last section, when we discovered the twist.

On that note, the only thing I DIDN’T like about this episode was THAT DAMN TWIST, where we discovered that instead of it actually being the machines malfunctioning, it was actually all down to Charlie, who in this context was some kind of future space Unabomber. Seriously, the cultural thoughts surrounding sensible moderation of technology are already contaminated by that very real idiot who thought it’d be a good idea to blow actual people up, we didn’t need yet another fictional copycat. I was hoping it’d be, like, war of the AIs or something, with the core AI of the server having become disconnected from some of the robots due to an accidental malfunction. Then the episode could have been a proper anti-automation aesop.

The warehouse, as basically über-Amazon, looks like it sucks to work in even more than actual Amazon currently allegedly does, and if I had to work there I would have almost certainly got as frustrated as the Doctor did just as quickly. If the techno-utopians get their way, and climate change and associated resource depletion issues don’t halt the advancement of technology, this is our future, people! A world where only 10% of people have a job, and those had to be mandated by law, because everything became automatable. Intellectual jobs are no safer than manual labour jobs, once AI advances enough. Unless we can get the political will to introduce universal basic income or something similar, we as a society need to halt the advancement of automation in order to actually have jobs left for people to do. When the lorries drive themselves, AI diagnoses patients, tax calculations and even detailed advice can all be automated when a single person inputs the data, factories need a team of no more than 3 people to check none of the robots are broken, what will be left for people to do? Robot programmer? With sufficiently advanced AI, even that will be automated. All remaining jobs that pay actual money will be incredibly boring, and people will be lucky to have one of those.

I did think the bubble-wrap thing was pretty ingenious - I wasn’t expecting it at all. Poor Kira! She was so sweet. And poor Dan, who was clearly kind and hard-working and whose daughter will miss him greatly.

The mystery plotline was well done, I thought, which is to say that I consistently failed to predict how the episode would turn out from the part that I’d already seen, so that’s good.

I’m glad the two executives are going to return the company to majority people rather than robots at the end. I hope that goes well for them, and I hope they learned some lessons about how to treat their workers, too.

So, uh, yeah, apparently I had a lot to say on the politics of this episode. It’s true that I’m definitely quite anti-technology for this generation. I often deliberately “forget” to charge my smartphone, and only use it to contact people when I’m already travelling to their house to say “I’m nearly there” or whatever. I refuse to even consider getting a smart watch, even though I run regularly, instead using my analogue watch. If it wasn’t for Doctor Who, and I lived by myself instead of other people, I wouldn’t bother having a TV. I love languages and I hope nobody invents a proper Babel fish. Unfortunately the internet has drawn me in with its addictive tendencies, but I like to try doing things the low-tech way every so often, just to prove I can. And as for VR: I wouldn’t use a realistic VR even if I could, because all it will do is cause people to forget about the wonders in the real world. 

We don’t have to do everything by hand, of course. There is a place for tools which genuinely make our lives better, without taking away what it means to be human. But every technology has its downside to consider, and if everything is done automatically, the world will feel like a much poorer place. 

And as for Doctor Who, I look forward to watching it again next week.

[vapor-capitalist]

Made up another new ideology for kicks. 

[drivenoutside]

So this small post-mounted hand drill followed me home from Swaptoberfest…. I saw it an thought, “I can clean that up and make a buck or two…” I started looking for the right place to mount it in the forge today. I guess I now forever own a new tool. This sort of thing happens to me around old tools: I lie to myself, earnestly, about reselling. Never happens. It is a sickness. #oldiron #drillpress #blacksmithforge #lyingtomyself #newtool #newtometool #neoluddite (at West Seattle) https://www.instagram.com/p/CVds1snByxG/?utm_medium=tumblr