Worship of Tools and Weapons (2012) | Hacker News Reader

Worship of Tools and Weapons (2012)

rigvedaanalysis.wordpress.com

43 pointszdw8 comments

> Surely, such a practice of revering articles that form an important part of one’s life, must rate as unique in the ancient world. This is the ethos from the Rig Veda that has survived and become the bedrock of Hindu and I dare say Indian culture and life. A practice and heritage that today’s consumerist generation could do well to imbibe.

Seems like a bad take. It implies that everyone else doesn't respect the tools of their trade by virtue of being a consumer society. This is a strawman.

Consumerism doesn't mean a programmer who buys a very powerful laptop can afford to just throw it away. It doesn't mean that people who drive vehicles for a living don't take care of them.

It does mean that things that are seldomly used are often made to be used fewer times. The feature that is planned obsolescence could seem like a consumerist virtue, but really it's a feature of greed and at times a complicated calculation of perceived consumer value juxtaposed with the cumulative cost of components in a device. More simply stated it's what the market will bare for costs.

Given that a lot of programmers put more effort into configuring their environment than they do into using it, maybe we need someone that teaches the lesson opposite to this one.

Playing around with older Linux distros and the innovative user interface modifications and enhancements were some of my best spent hours out of all of them.

This mythical programmer must exist somewhere, but in my experience most people I see & have worked with seem to have underinvested in tooling — not because the estimated value calculation came up short, but mainly because lack of clarity about the possibilities scares people away from exploring. This includes not understanding how/why the tool works, and the biases it introduces. I will also include cognitive tooling I.e. people trying to not actually understand the underlying concepts they’re using / building on.

Well it is our own fault. If a programmer faces a hard problem, it is always tempting to follow the urge to fiddle around with the tooling. Like a hobbyist who buys a ton of gear for their hobby but never uses it.

Tools are tools. If you feel they are more, you got a problem. Unless of course your job is the creation of tools, in which case: go ahead.

I don't see any cogent explanation for why it is desirable to worship tools and weapons. Strange reasoning

In Abrahamic religions it is common I believe to say thank you to God before a meal. This is a key difference between these religions and religions like Hinduism.

The thanks is to the object that has helped us in anyway. This stems from the base of Nature/Environment worship that religions like Hinduism are derived from.

All things in the Universe are seen as a manifestation of God or Parmatma (Supreme life force) than God as a third entity.

As to whether it is useful, it is upto each individual to decide for themselves.

Note: I am a practicing Hindu and we just finished this ritual at home last week, including saying thanks to my Laptop :-)

wow wonderful read,

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