Comment by clock_tower | Hacker News Reader

Comment by clock_tower | Hacker News Reader

Just going off the summary of part 1, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to make of this. Every cultural voice in the US -- except a few eccentric Greens -- was pro-computer-revolution; the Left wanted decentralization and freedom, while the Right wanted prosperity and anti-Communism. Neither major side in the US saw surveillance capitalism coming. If the author's trying to absolve the Left of responsibility for surveillance capitalism, he's wasting his time -- think of Apple Computer, the Free Software Foundation, 37signals.com, and the whole close association of computers (especially personal computers) with the counterculture...

He also enumerates the following goals that the personal-computing revolution was after:

* No economic risk or failure

* No boom-bust cycle

* Decentralized political power

* Democracy

* Connectedness

* Non-hierarchy

* Pursuit of self-interest

* Desire to improve the world

Which of these does he think we shouldn't have pursued? Which of them does he think are bad? If you oppose all of them, you're asking to live in the Egypt of the Pharaohs, and not even the neo-reactionaries want _that_.

At the risk of sounding glib, watching the documentary itself would answer your questions, no? If you're interested in the topic, as you seem to be, they are likely worth your time.

> watching the documentary itself would answer your questions, no?

I'm definitely feeling engaged, but not entirely enthusiastic... (EDIT: But I feel like I'm picking a fight with you, and I apologize for that. I'll definitely give this documentary a shot!)

Part 1 sounds like the fascist mode of thinking: "all our intractable emergent problems are due to an evil conspiracy of outsiders in our midst, with an inexplicable desire to destroy the world!" The whole problem with Ayn Rand is that she tried too hard to be anti-communist and accidentally turned fascist; seeing her followers pointed to as a fascist-style internal outgroup is as depressing as it is silly.

As for the other two parts -- tearing down the Gaia hypothesis and the Selfish Gene -- what does he think are the right things to think, if these are the wrong things? Are we going to just start pretending that the establishment Left was always anti-hippie, now that hippieness has turned out to have nasty emergent consequences?

I'm particularly annoyed that he blames the Congo situation on the Selfish Gene. The establishment likes to pretend that the Congo is too complicated to understand -- because the alternative is owning up to how the French backed the Hutus during and after the Rwandan genocide, and how the international community is still more sympathetic to the Hutus than the Tutsis. (See also the allegedly inexplicable causes of WWI.)

If you oppose all of them, you're asking to live in the Egypt of the Pharaohs, and not even the neo-reactionaries want _that_.

That's where you're wrong kiddo*

http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/the-dangerous-philosopher-be...

* punchline to a joke you may or may not be familiar with

Well, does the author of this documentary agree with him? Whatever the neo-reactionaries might or might not want, I doubt he wants the same.

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