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Comment by sandspar | Hacker News Reader

It's easy to laugh at these groups' apparent selective interpretations of their rules. But at the same time I realize that they are intelligent people, who no doubt reasoned this through to a degree that I can't even fathom. I don't know if this means that I'm right or they're right, whether a gut reaction of "haha that's obvious bullshit" should be listened to or whether that feeling should be ignored when it contradicts the experts' opinions.

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This is a common misconception about the Amish and other plain people, eg stricter Mennonites. They don’t have a universally agreed about set of rules. Each community sets its rules differently. Most Amish don’t reject technology wholesale they slowly evaluate individual technologies for what effects they would have on the tight knittedness of their community and closeness to god. For example most Amish places of business have electricity, battery powered lights are common as well as gas powered fridges. They generally don’t reject modern medicine. However, they generally don’t have electricity at home because they don’t want to be reliant on the grid at large. If and how much solar and wind power are adopted in Amish communities will be an interesting thing to observe over the next decade or two.

Now there are some communities who reject all power that doesn’t come from “gods creatures” and will reject e bikes and stick to push scooters and buggies. But e bikes totally fit in a lot of Amish and plain communities.

How do they fit the manufacturing of the things they use into their worldview?

From what I (think I) learned writing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39373558 they seek to minimise transactions with the rest of the world, so buying durable manufactured goods is acceptable (and higher-tech goods are even preferred as long as they have longer lifetimes) but subscribing to services is avoided.

So basically the higher number of transactions required for the manufacturing of higher-tech goods is ignored as long as it's not a transaction they are directly involved in?

That's my understanding, yes. For instance, for fabric, they avoid retail, going to manufacturers (or at least wholesalers) and buying a community-year's worth in a single transaction.

I guess it's channeling https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+17%3A15-16... ; transactions between english and amish are necessary (from being in the world) but to be minimised (not being of the world), whereas transactions between english or between amish don't count for flow across that boundary.

(too much rumination concerning flows across boundaries leads us across a different boundary: out of theology and into physical mathematics, eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokes%27_theorem#Maxwell's_eq... )

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Edit: unfortunately https://www.jstor.org/stable/44257359 (amish & tourism, 1997) is paywalled

For historical developments, see https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Nonconformity#Europe.2C_As...

For intersection with hippiedom, consider https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6itauSnrSZA

Sounds like they aren't against "transactions" as a thing - they are limiting _their_ transactions with society at large.

After all, the number of transactions required to make even a pencil is astonishingly high, as Adam Smith pointed out two hundred years ago.

They want to avoid critical outside dependencies. For example relying on the electrical grid is avoided because that would be overly dependent on a single outside supplier.

But using electrical devices powered by batteries or generators or solar panels is fine in many of those communities because there are multiple suppliers of all of those (and in the case of generators for the fuel to power them).

I grew up with Orthodox Judaism and wrote my Bar Mitzva speech on Jewish law governing the usage of electricity on Shabbat. It was a surprising endeavor through "well this was only valid back when vacuum tubes were used" and turned into "the rabbis who wrote the original responsa wrote absolute responsa, and now we respect their decisions". Now, the Orthodox community makes it a point of pride that they "disconnect" on Shabbat, in spite of the fact that it is not part of the list of the 39 Labors that are forbidden on Shabbat, and in spite of other parts of Jewish law about not introducing new restrictions over time.

When discussing religious matters - even when there's supposed to be some kind of logic involved, really, underneath, these are emotional decisions. Today it is simply a part of how a community defines itself. A local community makes these decisions together, or not at all, or individual members leave. I imagine Amish communities are similar.

As a tangent, I learned a few years ago that my oven has a Sabbath mode, intended to help observant folks keep the sabbath. It’s an interesting feature and I wonder how it started being implemented in appliances.

What exactly does the Sabbath mode do? Run the whole day?

Broadly, yes. You program it beforehand to come on and stay on all thru the day (think of it like a slow cooker), and, ancillary functions, like the light coming on if you open the door, are disabled.

It prevents the light from going on or off when you open the door; allows you to keep it set without auto-shutoff; and doesn't immediately respond to temperature change button presses, and only checks them on a set schedule (this last feature is generally accepted amongst Orthodox Jews as allowed for holidays — "Chag" — but not for Shabbat).

Many elevators also have sabbath mode.

(my understanding is that the intersection of the companies that (a) are hardcore orthodox, and (b) want to run servers, simply hire muslim or other sysops, so they can deal with a machine going down on the sabbath)

Question is how will it go when someone does decide to say goodbye to the community rules. Will family be under peer pressure to try keeping them aligned and break off all contact if they fail? Those "community made decisions" can be seriously one way street affairs...

I wonder if the following pattern can be observed: assuming that decisions are effectively not made by the community, but by some high status heads (whose decisionmaking privilege can be formal or not formal at all), then in a community with very fluid status, you'd see a self-radicalizing effect of status candidates trying to outdo each other one zealotry. Whereas in a community where status is not fluid at all (aristocracy in everything but name, or some formal education) decisionmakers would be much more at liberty to go soft. Is there a name for this?

Yeah even in Holland that's a problem. We have some calvinist villages where it's really not done to wash your car on Sunday "because god rested on Sunday" even if you don't subscribe to their harsh religion :(

Also I've heard some terrible things from jehova witnesses who got shunned by their entire family after speaking up against the group of elders called the "lighthouse" or something. One of my friends got really screwed up by that.

These communities are not at all healthy IMO and they force things that are supposed to be left to the democratic government.

My understanding is that amish „Gelassenheit“ and the orthodox melakhah of בורר‎ are similar (as are both to taoistic 非常道) in that one should take things as they come.

I'm not Amish, but e-bikes actually make a lot more sense if you understand why the Amish rejected electricity in the first place. It's because, up until very recently, the only practical way to actually obtain and use electricity is to have your house wired up to an electrical grid that delivers on-demand power supplied elsewhere. This is a no-go for a religious community that views decentralization as the only path to holiness.

Remember: the Amish don't hate new technology because it's technology and they want to live in a fantasy world. They hate technology because it's a centralizing force.

What changed? Simple: solar. Solar is (mostly) decentralized electricity: once you buy solar panels you are dependent only on the continued existence of the sun for power. This actually fits into the Amish lifestyle extremely well for the same reason why it fits into the lifestyle of Nigerian Youtuber Africa Everyday, for entirely coincidental reasons[0].

[0] Most Nigerians would jump at the chance to have reliable centralized electrical infrastructure. The Amish are energy poor by choice.

"once you buy solar panels you are dependent only on the continued existence of the sun for power"

Or until the panels degrade too much or break down, and you have to buy new ones as you cannot make them. So it is still a dependency, but less strong.

> Or until the panels degrade too much or break down

Just one lifetime then? Last I checked most panels have 30 year manufacturer warranties and tend to last longer if taken care of.

I think most people live longer than 30 years and you will be still dependant on the manufacturer who can also go out of buisness.

Buy 3 sets all at once or buy from a different manufacturer, which will probably have cheaper and better panels after 30 years.

30 years is a long time to figure things out.

> 30 years is a long time to figure things out.

especially when compared to the usual alternative: (bi-)monthly billing in a contractual relationship with a power company.

That still doesn't contradict their point about decentralization. When the panels need replacing you replace them from whichever suppliers are available at the time and then you're good for another 20-30 years. If you're hooked up to the grid then you owe a specific entity money every month.

The Amish buying a bunch of old PV manufacturing equipment and accidentally kickstarting America's solarpunk revolution isn't exactly something I had on my 2020s political upheaval Bingo board, but...

Amish approaches to technology are way more nuanced and sophisticated than most people think. You might find this article [1], called "Amish Hackers", interesting.

[1] https://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/

I recommend watching Peter Santenello's series about the Amish, where he interviews many Amish people, including people who are in the extreme traditional churches. It's on YouTube.

Maybe your understanding of their rules is a common english misperception, that doesn't match their understanding?

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39373558

> But at the same time I realize that they are intelligent people, who no doubt reasoned this through to a degree that I can't even fathom.

The brains coping mechanisms for cognitive dissonance are fascinating.

Yeah, smart people are just as at risk of self deception as anyone else, and feeling yourself reason things through doesn't guarantee that you're not simply rationalizing.

Self deception and cognitive dissonance are actually distinct from each other.

As you say self deception is easy to fall into. I have on at least one occasion I can remember thought doing something was stupid, and then realized I had done the same thing.

My face still burns from blushing when I think about it.

I don't know which that scenario would fall under, but I know it wasn't pleasant, and it always makes me pause and try to see things from outside my own perspective.

Right about what?

Thanks for pointing this out. "Right" is the wrong word. I think I would have been better to say something like, "whether I'm simply ignorant or whether they're deceiving themselves."

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