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Comment by redsummer | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people think the Amish are against technology. In fact, they carefully consider the technology's effect on themselves and their community. Will it really help, or is it just a new thing which will cause unintended consequences? For instance, some Amish groups accepted cars, and their community disappeared - when anyone can drive anywhere the community collapsed. Now there are no Amish who allow cars. The same thing would happen with the internet. Tech people like ourselves automatically assume that technology is some advance, or improvement. Our peers tell us this, our incomes depend on us believing this. In fact, technology does not improve the human condition in most cases. It erodes it. We would be better making careful decisions like the Amish, but our civilisation is locked onto this myth of 'progress'.

Technology should be for us, not the other way around. Unlike the Amish, we put the cart before the horse.

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Cars give freedom to those who don't have it. It's easy to have a rosy pastoral view of the Amish, but the reality is grim for many young women subjugated to that culture. The ability for such people to see that the outside world can be far less harsh than the one they are used to will necessarily (and in my opinion should) lead to the collapse of those communities.

The Amish are happier than almost all Americans: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/16/happiness-wealth-a...

You want those communities to collapse, because you see no other solutions except more tech, more greed, more 'progress'. That's the hamster wheel you've been given. What other life could there be?

I knew briefly a woman who had ran away from everything she knew at 17, to avoid a marriage. The stories of what counted as "normal" was horrific, especially with regards to daughters. Between the corporal punishment, starvation-as-punishment and strict-to-consequence-of-abandonment gender roles, it mapped closely to the popular conception of young women's lives in radical Islam. They also have a greater prevalence of genetic diseases due to inbreeding.

The study linked in that blog post makes no reference to the Amish, whose happiness is entirely conjecture from the blogger.

Making people happy is surprisingly easy; all it takes is a couple of electrodes inserted into the brain. So if that's the only bar that you have, the Amish are way overthinking it.

In theory yes; in practice, it's beyond our technological capabilities at the moment. A better alternative would be drugs. And honestly, it's our "universal culture" that's more susceptible to this failure mode.

I recall reading about such experiments done on rats, and that was at least a couple decades ago. Is it really beyond our technological capabilities? Note, I'm not talking about electrodes to induce dreams or some such; just a simple direct electric stimulation of the pleasure centers. Presumably, the resulting sensation is that you wouldn't know why you're happy - you're just happy.

Direct electric stimulation of brain (implanting electrodes) is simple only if you don't care if the subject has a risk of fatal infection, and if performing literal brain surgery is cheap and routine, as it is for mice/rats (again, because a risk of death or brain damage is acceptable).

Yes, we can do that, but that would be complicated to do it safely on humans - compared to that, a lifetime supply of drugs is cheap and simple.

>In fact, technology does not improve the human condition in most cases. It erodes it.

I agree with what you said but think this is a little strong of a statement. I guess it depends on what you mean by technology. I'd rather live today than in the 1900s because of medical technology alone.

It's like anything. Technology just is. It's what people with free will do with it that can be harmful or helpful.

With that said, I agree we should be more diligent to at least be aware of how technology is affecting us personally, then act accordingly.

You might think you would prefer to live now rather than 1900, but I would suspect that the word "live" had greater meaning then.

Here is Ben Franklin on the appeal of the traditional Native American life: "When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return, and that this is not natural [to them] merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho' ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them"

Thanks for sharing that passage. From what I understand, our Constitution is based heavily on the governance of Indian tribes of the time. I'm not sure how well that scales, since much if it is now gone.

I was referring more to the Polio and TB and Smallpox. I believe estimates are 50-96% dead from European travels to North America. Crazy stuff.

I don't think so. It's more like - a lot of technologies help you join bigger communities, in particular the Universal Culture[0]. If your community is defined mostly by not being part of universal culture, technology becomes an existential threat to it.

[0] - defined as the culture that outcompetes other cultures; often called "Western culture", but it's not really important where it came from. McDonalds, for instance, is part of universal culture, but it wins not because it's from America; it wins because people find it to be actually a pretty good idea.

Your "universal culture" sounds a lot like corporate consumerism and lacking in real cultural diversity.

Corporate consumerism may be a part of that, sure. Not saying it's good or bad, it just is.

As for lack of "real cultural diversity", well, people apparently don't care. I know that I don't. Cultural diversity is just random noise for me - it's cool to look at when you have lots of spare time / income, but when I'm making day-to-day decisions about what to wear, eat, or use for my tasks, I'm going to pick it based on factors like quality, cost-effectiveness and usefulness. Or in other words - it's fun to go to a ${insert culture} restaurant from time to time, but day-to-day, I'm gonna buy the white bread that's the same and universally available almost everywhere.

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