1984 v. Brave New World
lettersofnote.com
lettersofnote.com
http://highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-v...
It's a pity the comic had to be removed from its original site citing copyright reasons. imho, it could have been considered as fair use. Sad.
I think the opposite of a trivial culture is a culture of self improvement, and at least four of those six examples are ostensibly doing something to improve themselves. One is a competitor in online gaming, one is debating online, the two are watching and debating current politics, one is improving his body. Those are all meaningful activities. I understand that they are not intended to be in the context of the comic, and the visual space is limited.
Great comic by the way. Our society seems to be going the way of pleasure, but I don't think it will ruin us.
your conditioning is complete... please report to the incinerator
The big irony being that this is not a willed construct, but a emergent phenomena.
Maybe they are "curated emergent phenomena?"
I'm pretty sure I saw the link to this essay on HN first, and it's still one of the more interesting ones I know. I'll quote a bit, but the whole thing is worth a read if not several:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
> There’s a passage in the Principia Discordia where Malaclypse complains to the Goddess about the evils of human society. “Everyone is hurting each other, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war.”
> The Goddess answers: “What is the matter with that, if it’s what you want to do?”
> Malaclypse: “But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it!”
> Goddess: “Oh. Well, then stop.”
> The implicit question is – if everyone hates the current system, who perpetuates it? And Ginsberg answers: “Moloch”. It’s powerful not because it’s correct – nobody literally thinks an ancient Carthaginian demon causes everything – but because thinking of the system as an agent throws into relief the degree to which the system isn’t an agent.
> Bostrom makes an offhanded reference of the possibility of a dictatorless dystopia, one that every single citizen including the leadership hates but which nevertheless endures unconquered. It’s easy enough to imagine such a state. Imagine a country with two rules: first, every person must spend eight hours a day giving themselves strong electric shocks. Second, if anyone fails to follow a rule (including this one), or speaks out against it, or fails to enforce it, all citizens must unite to kill that person. Suppose these rules were well-enough established by tradition that everyone expected them to be enforced.
> So you shock yourself for eight hours a day, because you know if you don’t everyone else will kill you, because if you don’t, everyone else will kill them, and so on. Every single citizen hates the system, but for lack of a good coordination mechanism it endures. From a god’s-eye-view, we can optimize the system to “everyone agrees to stop doing this at once”, but no one within the system is able to effect the transition without great risk to themselves.
> And okay, this example is kind of contrived. So let’s run through – let’s say ten – real world examples of similar multipolar traps to really hammer in how important this is.
EDIT: Taking a second look at this... Whenever I read things like this, I'm going through and hearing some assumptions stated up front that always seem off to me. "The history is written by the victors, and the victors are those who are the most ruthless."
The missing ingredient, as far as I can tell, is that reading history is an act of cooperation, not of competition, and that you can optimize for cooperation in a competitive context. You just need to find an appropriate context in which to compete to force people to cooperate to that end.
Which is also why I'm generally irate when people go on and on about the values of competition while only giving a a sentence or two about the values of cooperation, or how the values of these two behaviors can be intertwined in complex and productive ways.
Most of what was in both books required significant advances in biotech and automation. The advances we are seeing around crispr-cas9 and IoT may provide those tools.
I am not a Luddite and I think advancement of tech is almost always beneficial (who uses that tech and how is the question). However, it may be premature to say they both ended up far wrong. They are still very important books to demonstrate the wrong ways to use technology.
Edit: not that governments couldn't take the anti-roles back, but it would need a combination of increased technology and acceptance along with unfettered surveillance using that technology -- zero day Alexa bug for the NSA?
This was Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" theory that she developed post WW2 when everybody was trying to figure out what happened. Evil acts are perpetrated by dumb people "just doing their job".
Google, Facebook, Apple et al. are pushing an industry which (in my mind) has a very real potential to turn into mankind's most perversely decadent apogee so far, say, over the course of this century. I'd tend to set the bar a bit lower than that because a lot can happen in a single century, and the 20th has been pretty unprecedented in terms of stuff happening to humanity.
Anyhow, Cloudflare for example are enabling surveillance and legitimising it all at once by ssl-mitm'ing an increasingly large part of the public internet. CF makes it normal to stumble upon a page that you can't access because your connection is supposedly being used for nefarious purposes. Granted, that mostly happens to Tor users, but my point stands: non-proxied connections directly from home also get the CF treatment, but completely transparently. Which is worse, come to think of it. Also, by making browsing through Tor tedious, its use is discouraged for everyday Joe, making the haystack smaller, making it easier to target specific groups of people.
Why does half a dozen ad networks have to be there at every turn? I personally don't see them anymore, but the requests are still made. Very few people go through my hassle of continually adjusting umatrix, and that is perfectly understandable, but only underscores the issue: the surveillance infrastructure/apparatus that would have been so loved by the Stasi is already up and running, happily chugging snap after snap after like after tweet after brainfart after snap. The impression that the big Orgs aren't doing anything too nasty today is no guarantee that they still won't tomorrow. Skynet is ready for action, if you will, and flexing its muscles every now and then (newsfeed manipulation?).
Both Brave New World and 1984 ended up wrong in the sense that a truly global war would probably not work for very long and truly global peace is still way, way, way off. Still, BNW's peace of mind can be created artificially by just not telling people about stuff, which, incidentally, is very easy to do if you have complete control over what people look at 24/7 because they do so through your platform(s). As long as nothing is visibly wrong in somebody's day-to-day life and the guilty are always found, no point in looking for them any more, right?
My point being that while yes, 1984 and BNW have got it wrong with the government, I think the government should be seen as the source and sink of power over people regardless of its actual implementation as e.g. dictatorial state or capitalist corporate structures. That way, the books' ideas can still be applied to today's politics.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/12/george-orwe...
> Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible.
Remember when Saddam Hussein was a great guy when he was at war with Iran and gassed some people on the side, but then later was not such a great guy because he "used gas against his own people"? Or how Saudi-Arabia and the US funded Al-Quaeda, and the US bombed the Middle East to bits, where now IS flourishes, which is such a big problem that obviously, now Syria has to be regime-changed as well, to make it better? How people are so concerned about murder and terrorism they can't even fathom the idea of one's own war criminals being arrested and tried? How Obama got a peace nobel prize, then continued with his surveillance / kill lists drone stuff, which is made terribly cute with a mic drop? How stuff constantly gets advertised as being "new" or having "more X"? Slavery is freedom, just like drinking Coca-Cola ist being popular and good at sports. More advertising follows such patterns than not. And of course, there's plenty of telescreens and microphones to go around. You never know if anyone is watching or listening, but you know they always could, just like in the book. We live in a world where people claim "privacy is dead, get over it" and don't even blush.
vs today :
"Work less, enjoy more!"
---
Of course it is much more efficient to keep the subjects well fed and well hypnotized, rather than waste a lot of energy on keeping them subdued through violence. It is harder, but the returns are much worth it.
And that's not only what the "elites" who realize (they only gain a slightly higher standard of living), but also the mythical "AI singularity" which should one day spontaneously arrive.
Our fears of "the machine" which kills all humans because we are pests are unfounded - a hyper intelligent entity would quickly understand that violence is a very weak tool of control. Pleasure is much more powerful and achieves much more plus a thankful smile.
It is "efficiency", "pleasure", "less work", "more fun" that we should be wary about ... but not me , I like to enjoy myself. And I welcome whatever overlord (AI, aliens) that promises more pleasure and less pain any day.
I have to ask, do you see yourself as nothing more dignified than a pet or a slave? I don't mean to be rude, but you can't have your overlords without them ruling me as well, and I don't want them, at all, and you basically said you welcome "whatever" might force me and my offspring to live in what I would consider a golden cage and utter depravity. So this is a discussion, if not civil war, I'd rather have sooner than later :P
And besides, why would someone or something who sees you as pet or slave feel the need to control you past the point where you are no longer a threat or useful to them? Everything that makes you happy, they could simply take from you, cutting out the middleman. Who genuinely cares about a "thankful smile" from a drone?
It's a nice hypothesis, but here's mine: The pleasure stage comes before the non-existence stage, and the wide-eyed and shallow cheerleading we have now is a bit like the Nazis painting the red cross on the ad-hoc pits where they would kill people who were too weak for transport. By the time you find out what it is, it's too late. People and systems don't dissolve who you are and could have been as a person to ultimately look out for you.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Futurological_Congress
Fact is, the vast majority of people prefer pleasure over pain .. all time, although not-pleasure (or pain) is one of the few guaranteed things in life. Pleasure is optional, pain and suffering are guaranteed and unavoidable, because of our mortality.
Still, we want pleasure and not-pain and if possible - greater pleasure over "just pleasure", since, well, it's more scarce.
> do you see yourself as nothing more dignified than a pet or a slave
If there's a choice between being a pet and a factory farm animal, I guess being a pet is much nicer and desirable. I say this while my cat is purring ecstatically on my lap. Not bad to be loved and cared for by a omnipotent giant.
And I think in the end, this is the metaphor for "A brave new world" and "1984" - A society of pets vs a society of farmed animals.
Make your pick.
No parents would want their child to die, but if you offered grieving parents some happy drugs that made them forget they ever had a child, do you really think most would take them? Would you?
If someone offered you a drug that killed you, but somehow subjectively made it feel like a million years of bliss, would you take it? Sure, you'd make the people who love you sad, but you wouldn't notice that anymore, so why not, wouldn't that be the most efficient thing you could ever do in your life?
Pleasure is something that I generate in myself. Based on stimuli, sure, but those stimuli are not the pleasure. And I think it's not a stretch to say that pleasure and pain exist for reasons (I know it can go wrong in all sorts of ways, that there's plenty of pointless and chronical pain, but let's ignore that for the sake of simplicity). Pain warns of things that harm us, pleasure does the opposite, but this can be "hacked" and abused in all sorts of ways. Comparing it to the feeling of hunger, you could take drugs that make you not feel hunger and pain, then you'd simply starve happily, rather than also getting what "not feeling hungry" is supposed to mean. And I think the same would happen to people held as pets: yes, their bodies would still exist, they'd "be happy", but they would cease to exist as the person that happiness and pain as once a tool and advisor for. As they say, the lights are on, but there's nobody home. (In my hearts of hearts, I believe this may have long since happened, and that we might be the afterbirth of an afterbirth of an afterbirth of an abortion. But if that is true, I can't lose anything valuable by not giving up that I haven't lost already, and if it's not so, I could make it so by believing it, making it self-fulfilling prophecy.)
When you see, say, a religious fanatic or deranged person, who really believes in whatever floats their boat, and is happy 24/7, would you envy them? Or would you shudder? Wouldn't you at least think "I wish I was that happy, but not at that price"?
> If there's a choice between being a pet and a factory farm animal, I guess being a pet is much nicer and desirable.
Well, if. But those are not the only choices you have, and I'd even say being a pet is a choice you might never have. From you having a cat doesn't follow that you being the pet of someone will be an option for you. You're not your cat and your overlords are not you. Who would keep you as a pet? The people who sleep well while people starve? People who use fears and love to bring about more of the things people fear and destroy more of what they love? Machines ordered to be made by the same? Why would they, and what for? I'm sure you're a great person and all, but what makes you think you'd not rather be used as prey in hunting games, until more challenging prey is made? What makes and billions of other people so great that a few thousand square miles of private golf course or jungle wouldn't be more interesting?
When cars were invented, we didn't keep all the horses around to love and cuddle. Where's the children of the horses your grandgrandgrandparents owned? What's that, you never even thought about that? Welcome to your own role in the sight of your "overlords" :P
How are we treating the vulnerable so far? Last time I checked, every few seconds a child dies of thirst. And that's just one thing in a long list. So at what point would the drive for MORE power lead to LESS suffering, instead of more, as it does until now? Can you at least see how that might come across as a little kool-aid-ish, to believe it will suddenly change because that would be nicer? It would also be nice for the millions of people who suffer currently, but if they don't matter now, they won't matter then.
> I say this while my cat is purring ecstatically on my lap. Not bad to be loved and cared for by a omnipotent giant.
So you're thinking the cat is your pet, instead of the other way around? :)
But more importantly, you're a human, whatever turns you into a pet will be made by humans. As Erich Fromm wrote:
> The whole concept of alienation found its first expression in Western thought in the Old Testament concept of idolatry. The essence of what the prophets call "idolatry" is not that man worships many gods instead of only one. It is that the idols are the work of man's own hands -- they are things, and man bows down and worships things; worships that which he has created himself. In doing so he transforms himself into a thing. He transfers to the things of his creation the attributes of his own life, and instead of experiencing himself as the creating person, he is in touch with himself only by the worship of the idol. He has become estranged from his own life forces, from the wealth of his own potentialities, and is in touch with himself only in the indirect way of submission to life frozen in the idols. The deadness and emptiness of the idol is expressed in the Old Testament: "Eyes they have and they do not see, ears they have and they do not hear," etc. The more man transfers his own powers to the idols, the poorer he himself becomes, and the more dependent on the idols, so that they permit him to redeem a small part of what was originally his. The idols can be a godlike figure, the state, the church, a person, possessions. Idolatry changes its objects; it is by no means to be found only in those forms in which the idol has a so-called religious meaning. Idolatry is always the worship of something into which man has put his own creative powers, and to which he now submits, instead of experiencing himself in his creative act.
The only way that "overlord" can be "omnipotent" to you is by either lying to you, or by keeping you in check. (Why am I suddenly thinking of gardens and forbidden fruit? ^^) I had two cats, they were happy because they had a nice place to stay, food, humans who loved them, and each other.. any powers of mine beyond that they had no use for or interest in. A cat living on a farm catching its own food is also happy, no "omnipotence" required.
And we are, right now, sitting in the warm, gentle lap of the sun. We could be purring, too. The same motives that keep that from realizing now, will likely still be around when the technology is there to completely control everybody and everything. And I suspect that won't be for the purpose of making us happy as we are, but to either make us fit or make us gone. That is, everything else being the same, namely as it currently is and how it trends. I don't know the future but I know my contemporaries. So my pick would be kicking Big Brother in the dick, flirting with his sister and singing loudly as they drag me to the guillotine.
My comments are a reflection on the outside world. My own philosophy is very different.
Our (western) society is built on the premise of avoiding pain at all costs - even if it means exporting it to other countries or species.
That's why I'm saying that people will choose pleasure over pain - not just because it's convenient, but because we're constantly conditioned to do that - take the pill, pain will go away.
So I agree with Huxley - a society based on offering unlimited pleasure is even more insidious than a totalitarian state based on violence described in 1984. At least in a totalitarian state you can rebel...
---
The idea about the horses really took me by surprise - I haven't thought about that.
--
My personal belief is that "rebirth" is only possible by passing through the gates of suffering. By "rebirth" I mean "new, changed, evolved self" , rather then physical reincarnation.
Suffering is a necessary ingredient for stepping onto the next level of understanding. So I respect it and I accept it when it's unavoidable, although it's never easy.
There's the idea that "suffering and pain" are what makes us "feel alive", but if examined under a microscope, then the following can be observed: Life is the process of expending energy in order to avoid suffering and pain and optionally experience "pleasure".
To drift even further, I'd note that True human-like "AI" will only be possible when the concepts of pain, suffering and pleasure and love are somehow implemented into the AI's "brain"..
But to do that we'll have to somehow convince it that it's mortal.
And then you have the same game with the people involved in that, first there's how much they care for their children and are worried they might have to grow up without private jets, or how they're just trying to prevent a job someone would do anyway being done badly, and a whole host of other good reasons (maybe they simply operate a "business" and it "makes sense" to "make profit", no further questions). Then there's how they really just want power and fame, because we're all just apes and that's what apes want, and so on... but that they might simply be sociopath/narcissist and essentially stuck at some point in their childhood they built a shell around, that they might be merely a black hole chasing a fix they can never quite reach, now that is too much. Sure, we grant that it occurs here and there, but not as a major driving force, as the underlying pattern for a lot of things. No, of course it has to be more grandiose than that, if only because we're under the heel of and/or doing it.
It boils down to this, "normal" people aren't that way, simply cannot fathom the utterly alien and barren landscape some others operate in, and would rather pile on rationalizations and faux complexity. Even you described as "pleasure" which I would assume is more a temporary relief from the pain and fear of existence someone who never got to develop a personality feels constantly, and tries to instill in others.
TLDR:
> "I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong."
-- Leo Rosten
Hitler came back from WW1 with the same rank he went in, which was a huge disappointment for him, then he failed as an artist and ended up in homeless shelter where he was disliked because, well, I guess he just wasn't very lovable or interesting. He was driven by resentment and a feeling of inferiority, which is narcissism 101, as is the fact that he put on a great show which he and others fell for.
Generally, even when "just" talking about a sociopath desire for power and less about the self-destruction of someone as sick as Hitler: any leash transforms people on both ends, and the very desire to have power over others betrays a lack of inner strength and integrity. I can't prove that, but I'll claim it. And furthermore I think people pretend to themselves and each other that power is an end in and of itself, because they're so scared of what it covers up. When you walk on a landmine, you can't just go on pretending you still have legs -- not so with abuse, trauma and neglect resulting in a haywire personality development, where routing around things, in ourselves and others, is often our default reaction.
P.S. If you're really interested in the psychology of Hitler as well as the Nazis historically I can recommend the books by Sebastian Haffner, the titles make it kind of obvious which ones apply.