Deals with the devil aren't what they used to be | Hacker News Reader

Deals with the devil aren't what they used to be

newyorker.com

173 pointspepys243 comments

This was really nice.

I'll just say, it starts out deconstructing the way "magic" in the modern world has given way to "engineering" and thus mythological things like 'deals with the devil' are no longer believed.

But, in my view, a significant part of the appeal of the 'deal with the devil' is that it isn't mysterious. A Faustian bargain works according to exactly the letter of the deal, and the devil always keeps his end of it. Part of what makes it interesting, enticing even, is that it looks like there might be ways to outwit the devil. The devil then is a force of nature to be engineered just like any other branch of engineering in modern times, not an arbitrary fact of life beyond our comprehension.

Coincidentally, I've just finished Thomas' Religion and the Decline of Magic. It's very long and massively overexampled, but still a good and eye-opening read.

When it came out in 1971 it cost an extortionate £7; one national newspaper had an editorial saying people might be forced to pay for it in instalments.

How is that extortionate? Using the inflation calculator of the Bank of England that is 86 pounds now or $110. Admittedly that more expensive than the current price of $24 for the paper back, but at worst that seems to be twice as expensive as a common price for a 850 page book?

I cannot imagine paying £86 for any book tbh. That seems crazy high.

Consider that some technical books have a potential target audience of thousand or so people. Then ask how many hours the book needs to save you to be worth $100. Depending on the book that can look very cheap.

I think I paid similar for Wolfram's A New Kind of Science back in the early 00's. Huge great beast of a hardback tome, promising the secrets of the universe. I don't think I ever finished it, and ended up giving it away to a charity shop after schlepping it around the world with me, unread.

Don't go to college, you'll have to do that 5 times every semester.

Oh I forgot that's a thing in some countries. I did both of my university degrees just borrowing books needed from the library, they have to have enough copies for every student if needed.

American way of life

Most of the time we'd end up with a group of friends where we'd each buy a different book then share among each other. Not many were spending the whole amount every semester, especially past the first year when we didn't really know any better.

Luckily most of my courses did not require textbooks. Though it was easy enough to get PDFs on libgen.

But did you get a loan and.... pay for it in instalments?

At October, 1970, the provisional figures of average weekly earnings of full-time manual workers were £28 Os. 11d. for men aged 21 years and over, and £13 19s. 10d. for women aged 18 years and over. Between October, 1965 and October, 1970, average earnings of all workers covered by the regular inquiry rose by 45.9 per cent. and the general index of retail prices by 26.4 per cent. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1971/jan/...

So it would have been around a decent chunk of your weekly wage as an average worker, it sounds like. I think what we would need to know is how much excess income someone would have for something like that at the time.

> twice as expensive as a common price for a 850 page book?

Costs per page have dropped significantly - so not valid to use page count as a fixed comparison point???

So perhaps its price is more reasonable than we might assume.

> but at worst that seems to be twice as expensive as a common price for a 850 page book?

Huh? https://www.amazon.com/Fires-Heaven-Wheel-Time-Book/dp/03128...

Hardcover for $24.49 (703 pages), paperback for $16.99 (848 pages).

Surprised what educating people and making them write their own sentences does to the psyche of a population.

Yes, the point, as I have always thought, is not that playing with the devil is playing with a deceitful sharper, but playing against one's own inability to handle one's desires, one's own imperfections and basically facing the corruption of the original sin in oneself. The devil just sets things up in such a way that the human who yielded to the temptation arrives to the state of ruin faster, and initially enjoying the ride, all while not being formally lied to at any moment.

The idea is that there logically may be ways to outwit the devil, but he will never offer you a deal where you would be able to outwit him by the power of your (weak and corrupted) mind, so the faith is the only salvation, and rejecting any deals is the only non-losing strategy. Remember, Dr Faustus was not written by an atheist.

So in a nutshell the whole genre can be reduced to "be careful what you wish for, you might get it"?

Not just that, but also "...and you'll never be able to handle it, and the sleek scoundrel on the other side knows it".

Or "don't think you're as smart as you think you are."

Perhaps there's a line to be drawn from here to the dictum that code should be only half as clever as it could be, because debugging is twice as hard.

Jokes about recursion are always funny, just like this one!

So you want to wave away whole storytelling experience by sentence that fits in a tweet.

Gist of it might be true but reading dry sentence doesn’t do to a brain same thing as reading a story and going for a ride along with the imaginary person.

Well done story evokes emotions, makes one think of what ifs and what nots.

Also a lot of memes or tweet length life lessons are not possible without long form background we share as a society.

I see a "discussions" one time where a professor tried to explain why Twitter is actually bad for the wiring of the brain. The other guy was a self proclaimed twitter expert. Every time the professor tried to say something the twitter expert interupted him just around 500 chars. The professor eventually got angry then the twitter man said, but i already knew what you wanted to say.

Enraged the professor stood up then left the room.

I thought it was the best instance of my work here is done

And then the whole class stood and clapped - and that twitter expert’s name?

> The idea is that there logically may be ways to outwit the devil, but he will never offer you a deal where you would be able to outwit him by the power of your (weak and corrupted) mind

If it’s a comedy, The Devil may end up outwitting himself. Doubly funny if the human was suspicious at first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnhfjdVYRrk

Though in the end, The Devil may still get what he wanted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwg8EjQXEc4

Reading the description I immediately knew what will be under the links. Nice reference!

Or in other words "it's hard to get scammed if you're not greedy"

In Pratchett's "Going Postal", there's the following quote:

There is a saying, “You can’t fool an honest man,” which is much quoted by people who make a profitable living by fooling honest men. Moist never tried it, knowingly anyway. If you did fool an honest man, he tended to complain to the local Watch, and these days they were harder to buy off. Fooling dishonest men was a lot safer and, somehow, more sporting. And, of course, there were so many more of them. You hardly had to aim.

The Swiss outwitted him at the Gotthard.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sch%C3%B6llenen... (look for Devil's Bridge legend)

Or you can beat him just by being really good at playing a fiddle.

It worked for me. The first part did a great job of painting the horror of living in an age of ignorance, at the mercy of unseen, never understood forces. But I kept thinking... no, hold on... that's now too! [0], so was pleased the last stanza wrapped up as I anticipated, concluding modern forms of magic and Faustian bargains are indeed "exchange in which short-term gain threatens long-term security." As a book review it went off into the long grass for a bit in the middle.

[0] EDIT; sorry but that SouthPark episode where Butters prays to the government just popped into my head; "And if it wouldn't be too much trouble, I'd really like to get a puppy for Christmas this year. G'night, Government!"

Exactly. All of magic is like that and has never really been mysterious... the people actually practicing it have mostly always understood that it was psychological hacks: that people are mostly holding themselves back from what they want, one just needs to align their unconscious desires with their will, and it will happen.

(in)famous occultist Aleister Crowley was asked if magic is "real" e.g. can you actually do physical things like light a fire with your mind. His answer was basically that he didn't care or it doesn't matter- because the magic that aligns your unconscious with your conscious will is more powerful than people even imagine that type of magic would be.

"Magic" in its various forms is alive and well, and is actually widely used (although often on the down low) by creative types to create things that far exceed what confused/ignorant lay people historically imagined magic to be capable of.

> (in)famous occultist Aleister Crowley was asked if magic is "real" e.g. can you actually do physical things like light a fire with your mind. His answer was basically that he didn't care or it doesn't matter-

Aligning the conscious with the subconscious is surely powerful, but this dismissal seems more like sour grapes tbh.

Perhaps, but Crowley actually claimed to be capable of that type of physical magic, and still dismissed it. I’m not sure what to make of that- he was brilliant but probably both crazy and dishonest.

> I’m not sure what to make of that

Easy. Crowley was a grifter taking advantage of credulous people for his own ends. "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."

Grifter is uncharitable for someone that is dealing with esoteric things relating to the unconscious where words fail, and who openly admits that what he says isn't intended to be taken as literal truth- I mean he even titled his books things like "the book of lies." His intended audience is too intelligent to be easily "grifted" or to take him literally.

In the words of Garek (Deep Space Nine):

Doctor: What I want to know, out of all of the stories you've told me, which ones were true and which ones weren't?

Garek: My dear doctor, they're all true.

Doctor: Even the lies?

Garek: Especially the lies.

Source: https://youtu.be/4n8j6z8fQ_c?feature=shared

Aleister Crowley's conception of magic is much more modern than the forms of occultism discussed in this article though. He was a modern man living in a modern world, influenced by modern philosophy. If you had asked someone in the 1500s that question, they would have said yes and thought you were an idiot for asking about it.

I disagree - I think more intelligent people have always had a more nuanced view of things like religion and magic, but it wasn’t accepted to talk openly about it. You don’t need science or modern philosophy to be curious and critical of what you hear. Marcus Aurelius touched on this in his private journal ~2k years ago, and it was clear that he understood magic and religion as useful metaphors.

Agreed. Interestingly, my understanding is that it was quiet-ishly passed on by monks and clergy through the middle ages. See John of Morigny on Wikipedia as an example.

Interesting example, I hadn't heard of Morigny, and will look at his book.

I think one reason these things are 'mystical' and 'mysterious' is because the people that understood them did openly talk about them and write about them, but used literary and speaking techniques that give them plausible deniability, and mostly limit the audience to people intelligent enough to decipher them. William Blake is a great example of this- he was writing about ideas so progressive and ahead of their time, many are still today unacceptable to talk about, yet he was able to publish book after book about them in the late 1700s, and was regarded as kooky, rather than dangerous.

This idea was discussed in "On the Practice of Esotericism," 1992. https://doi.org/10.2307/2709872

Try reading what Renaissance humanists actually wrote about magic — like Pico, Ficino or Porta. ChatGPT can help you explore. It is a lot more complicated than you portray.

ChatGPT is like Wikipedia c. 2005: simultaneously very useful and yet with just enough junk to cause problems which mostly affect those who know the least about whichever topic.

Still better than learning from newspapers, though.

I think scholarly books and translations create a sense of "Truth" that is dangerous for beginners. With ChatGPT, it creates an automatic "should I really believe this?" sensation in the reader. I LOVE that sensation when dealing with old literature.

Most translations have serious issues. Most human summaries and books about old literature are crushingly wrong or misleading in key ways. That's not necessarily a problem, unless the reader takes them as the "Truth." It takes a long time for a beginner to get the confidence to doubt the experts.

Wikipedia had this effect: making us question what we read on the internet (since it was written by amateurs). However, now that wikipedia has largely become the best source of information on the web (due to insistence on sourcing), I see chatGPT playing a key role in building critical thinking skills among topic n00bs. It can help guide a beginner towards new knowledge in an accessible manner, but yet leaves them feeling skeptical and wanting more direct information. Many experts doubt that the average person can think this way, but my experience with 15 year olds using chatGPT is that they very quickly learn to maintain skepticism. They just need about an hour or two of use, and it comes naturally.

Maybe with better models, they won't get this practice. Maybe in the future, we will roll out GPT3 for human training.

I also read a lot of old translations, especially philosophy, and completely agree. It is amazing how many translators that are academic professors with PhDs in the subject matter fundamentally misunderstand the ideas they are translating, or try to seem "impressive" (and obscure their lack of comprehension) by translating simple plain text into pompous and indecipherable jargon.

Personally, I usually deal with that by reading the translators commentary so I can see where they were missing the point, and reading multiple translations.

A lot of the time I think certain ideas are semi-intentionally misunderstood, because they are personally threatening or upsetting to the translator. Nietzsche for example had a deep disdain for the type of professor that translates classic texts- from having had a bad experience as a professor of classics himself at University of Basel. His books are filled with cutting deep insults directly targeted at this type of person and their career, and when they translate it, they seem to almost always manage to "subtly misunderstand" what he's saying.

There is also an aspect of (for lack of a better term) "spiritual progression" where unless you are already at or nearly at the level of the author, you can't comprehend the ideas, and then tend to assume it is something else entirely that you can comprehend.

> Many experts doubt that the average person can think this way, but my experience with 15 year olds using chatGPT is that they very quickly learn to maintain skepticism. They just need about an hour or two of use, and it comes naturally.

Interesting, and I hope that reproduces outside the sample :)

I'll take a look, but not going to use ChatGTP to learn about historical texts...

Try taking a Loeb Library original Greek or Latin text and asking ChatGPT (4) to create a table with the original, the transliteration and the translation, with one row per phrase, trying to preserve word order and cognates.

> it was psychological hacks: that people are mostly holding themselves back from what they want, one just needs to align their unconscious desires with their will, and it will happen.

This is the correct understanding of magick, at least as formulated by Crowley and other western esotericists such as the Hermeticists. "As above, so below" and the principle of correspondence refer to the way in which our inner psychological worlds correspond to the external world without. To the degree that we are able to transform our inner psychological world and the ways in which we perceive reality [0], we are able to at least modify our own subjective take on the world, which influences our behaviour and the actions we (are willing to) take or don't take in the objective, outer sphere, and thus, as a downstream consequence, modifies the external world without.

Crucially, this modification of one's internal state can be done through sheer application of will alone, and so in a similar fashion as one can invent entire software systems, logical structures, and psychotechnologies [1] through nothing other than the operation of one's mind, one can rewire aspects of their own subjective, psychological reality, and thus minutely affect the real world without.

The conjuring of firebolts and magic missiles are to be regarded as "stage magic" or prestidigitation, not the psychological/spiritual practice that produces inner transformation and mastery of the self (magick). Religion, spirituality, and mysticism are studies of the mind/soul (synonyms for the exact same thing, that which beholds the unconscious, intellectual, emotional, and other aspects of reality not having to do with meatspace), not cheap conjuring tricks or metaphysical assertions about bearded men in the sky or "energies" pervading the universe.

[0] As a modern, practical, worked example see the "Practices" in Igor Kusakov's Psychonetics which can be tried right now, in your browser: https://web.archive.org/web/20160520233250/http://deconcentr...

[1] https://www.meaningcrisis.co/episode-1-introduction/

well said but lacking?

> modification of one's internal state can be done through

there is an old theology question.. can enlightenment/grace/salvation come through individual will and effort? purifications? a certain diet? the right books?

extend that to all manner of transformations .. is it really the sole power of an individual human that can effect such changes? How does a human live, eat, exist each day.. not alone really.. similarly in the unseen realms..

Those who have strong will tend to see the case for individual efforts.

There are plenty of people "practicing magic" even today that are fully convinced they are producing physical results through non-physical means. I would bet anything that there has always been a mix of both of these types of people, plus a huge array of charlatans.

Faust himself didn't get tricked. He was offered the chance to get out of it until the very last instant. There wasn't any sneaky wording. There wasn't anything to outwit.

At the beginning he somehow convinced himself that his soul didn't really exist, despite the presence of a literal devil in front of him, offering the power to do genuine magic. At the end he somehow just couldn't bring himself to repent.

In between he uses his power for absolutely nothing of interest. The most earth shaking thing he does is that he plays a prank on the Pope.

I'll be honest that I really don't get the point of the story. It's not about the devil being a trickster. If anything it reads kinda like a self critique by Marlowe, but that reading is also kinda shaky. It's more like people just wanted to see an academic get taken down a peg.

Even if the Devil was being honest with the terms, Faust did get tricked so long as he did not believe in souls, even if it was Faust tricking himself, and presumably the Devil was counting on that, knowing as he did that it was a bad deal.

That's not unbelievable. It's human nature. I think a lot of real life businesses that work more or less the same way. It's a tragic tale about a pretty regular guy convincing himself to accept a shitty deal because the short term upside sounds pretty great, despite not even particular wanting or needing that upside.

Have I mentioned that I’d be happy to loan you money for your startup’s cashflow issues, with deferred interest, secured only by your immortal soul?

> Have I mentioned that I’d be happy to loan you money for your startup’s cashflow issues, with deferred interest, secured only by your immortal soul?

Well I'm atheist, so I don't believe in souls. I guess I'll ... take the deal?

Which brings up another question - is selling something for material gain that you legitimately believe doesn’t exist fraud?

I’m imagining the court precedent in this particular case would be delicious.

Also, this is funny [https://www.catholic.com/qa/is-it-possible-to-unsell-ones-so...].

As long as you are open about it and the other side is fine with that, it's not a fraud from your side.

This goes somewhat deeper than you might expect. "Literal" spells are for sale on e.g. ebay, and presumably authenticity/belief are managed like reputation?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/b/bn_7023443545

I recall when eBay had to face that question. Their conclusion:

* If a soul does not exist, it's not a valid eBay auction.

* If a soul does exist, it's a body part, and forbidden from selling on eBay.

I could poke some holes in their ontology, but I thought the conclusion was very clever.

That was such a cop-out. Souls are part of the person, but their whole deal is not being part of the body.

Are we talking European souls, south west Asian souls, or East Asian souls?

I’m pretty sure Daoist, Buddhist, or Hindu souls are not sellable conceptually in the way European souls are. One of those times when ‘無門關’ (mu-koan) might be the right answer. Not really a thing, in the western concept anyway. Anymore than it’s possible to square a circle, or calculate Pi from a line.

Maybe that’s why European cultures have been taking over the world? We were able to sell our souls to the devil?

Looks like Jews don’t have a concept of selling ones soul anymore than Hindus. [https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1093498/jewis...].

Muslims seem divided on the topic (among many others), with a pretty solid ‘western’ type tradition of ‘you bet, but you’ll regret it’ to a similar type view of the Catholics near as I can tell (no, and you’ll be forgiven if you get back on the right path).

I guess it behooves one to familiarize oneself with something one is willing to take as collateral, eh?

P.S. If you’re an atheist who doesn’t believe in a soul, then clearly you’re a soulless bastard. ;)

(Leaving out the extremely wide variety of African and various covered regions indigenous peoples Soul-concepts for brevity).

How much money and how deferred? If you're willing to wait until after I'm dead, we can talk.

This sounds like an SCP waiting to be written.

https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-738

The point depends on the version, no?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_based_on_Faust

Marlowe being neither the first nor the most influential.

Yeah, true. I'm a Shakespearean actor, and so Marlowe's version is most important to me. It has at least has one famous line ("The face that launched a thousand ships").

I actually should at least familiarize myself with Goethe's version.

"At the beginning he somehow convinced himself that his soul didn't really exist, despite the presence of a literal devil in front of him, offering the power to do genuine magic."

To be fair, if a "devil" suddenly showed up in front of me, offering me anything I ever wanted in exchange for my "soul", my worldview would not change. Since this "devil" exists, it is part of the natural world, I just can't know exactly what it is or where did it came from. I might as well accept the offer this alien/ultra advanced AI/simulation being/whatever offers me, since this simple fact of something appearing out of nothing is not in any way a proof of God's existence, or of souls being a thing etc. If that was the case, when the Europeans arrived in America, with gunpowder and ocean capable ships, the natives should have, obviously, accepted as fact that they were gods... well, it didn't end well for the Aztecs.

Recently I encountered a piece discussing "The Prestige" as a counter to the opinion that science dulls the wonder of the world by removing magic from the equation.

The idea is that the machine in The Prestige is stipulated as being science as a conceit to allow the audience to experience an unexplainable phenomenon as the people of the time of the film would have experienced to technology of today.

The distinction between magic and technology is shown to be that the wonder goes away for magic tricks once you know how the trick is performed. Technology maintains wonder even after you know how it works, because the wonder is the appreciation of how the goal is achieved by known principles.

Honestly? ‘deals with the devil’ aren’t dangerous because the devil is doing any of the enticing, we are to ourselves.

The devil just gives us a glorious chance to be hoist on our own petard (long term) in exchange for short term glory/enjoyment. A temptation eternally present in humanity, no matter the environment. We’re more than happy to scam ourselves later.

You mean like burning oil and single use plastic?

No, no, we totally have an infinite number of technological tricks to pull out of a magic hat and will roll nat20 every time.

It’s crazy how often it’s actually true though, when it really comes down to it eh?

I don't think climate breakdown, industrial pollution, and microplastic saturation count as nat20s, nor do I think that we'll find a replacement fuel source that can sustain energy demand where it stands right now much less what this civilization would demand between AI/blockchain/metaverse everywhere, for everyone, for everything.

But for a brief period of time we generated a lot of value for shareholders.

Eh, that’s a rather myopic view though isn’t it?

None of those issues you’re talking about seem intractable using the same tools that caused them, frankly, and are likely no harder to solve (if we want) than some of the things we’ve already successfully resolved quite thoroughly like;

- world hunger from a technical/energy basis, as the only remaining hunger issues appear to be politically driven.

- Smallpox, Cholera, Typhoid, Leprosy, and a large slew of other infectious diseases which have ravaged humanity since at least the dawn of recorded history, and probably earlier. Even Malaria is controllable/controlled, depending on the political situation.

- Death by violence or accident is a rare and distant possibility for humans today compared to even 100 years ago.

- Actual life impacting environmental pollution (comparing historical norms like open sewers, indoor wood burning stoves, dangerous fine particulates/dusts), etc. is at historic lows.

- Real world quality of life for the population of the world is at the highest level globally we’ve seen, probably ever. And while there will be dips, that is not likely to materially change back. At least not without a lot of work to intentionally break things.

Do we still have issues that need to be solved, and more upcoming? You bet. Some of them quite urgent. We also have more tools than ever at our disposal to solve them, if/when we use them.

Currently, the biggest issue appears that it isn’t actually obviously critical that we use them, so people are holding back. Because it’s more fun to live their lives than make the sacrifices necessary to use many of those tools.

I mean, just look back to what was going on 100 years ago vs now.

If my view is myopic, yours is rosy. Almost everything you listed is a consequence of us making use of a finite fuel source that was many times denser than anything before, which we are using up faster than ever at the price of the biosphere, but you're assuming the red queen will win her race because she hasn't lost it in the past. That whole "if" we harness the tools we have to solve our problems is doing way too much heavy lifting, and completely ignores the question of if we do indeed have the tools needed to solve the problems we face in the first place.

The wheel turns. It is what it does.

If your view is that all life will cease on this planet from our current state, then I have records of several billion years of past existence of life on this planet as proof that is relatively unlikely. Especially given the relatively minor (from a geological history perspective) nature of the things you are talking about.

Also if your take on my view is that things will be pleasant, ‘fine’, ‘fun’, or with no change or conflict in the future, then I suggest you re-read it.

I see no reason to think that things will not continue in some form. And I have no reason to think that the issues you are naming are unsolvable, with sufficient motivation. Pain and existential threat being historically very effective motivators.

Right now there are historically very low levels of those motivators. We also have an exceptional ability to insulate us from those motivators (historically), especially in the developed world.

Hell, we haven’t even taken a war time footing economically on things like energy yet.

Obviously things will "continue in some form". It just won't be a pleasant form, because we will not be equal to the challenges we face.

Well, not with that attitude. (Literally)

Hope you're not implying that a positive attitude is all it takes. We're going to use up the runway. That's all.

> then I have records of several billion years of past existence of life on this planet as proof that is relatively unlikely.

Have you looked at that record?

There literal End Of The World happened 6 times!

Mass extinction events like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. Basically everyone died 6 times, and 99% of all spieces that ever existed are extinct. Everything bigger than a squirrel died out multiple times over.

> we haven’t taken a war time footing

This is a fantasy that a chain smoker can quit any time he wants and will really kick the habit once he has motivation, like when the doctor tells him he has stage 4 lunch cancer!

We knew about the problem for 120 years, we had the means too - a fleet of electric busses operated in London in 1901. You are on copium

Quite familiar with the fossil record (at least as well as we know it now).

The great oxidation (probably the single most apocalyptic biosphere wide event yeah?) nuked ~ 80% of the biosphere, far from all. It was the modern day equivalent of if a simple life form evolved to (energetically favorable) emit sulphuric acid and cyanide.

And no known life at the time had things like hydroponics, nuclear reactors, bunkers (or concrete), chemistry, nuclear weapons, gene editing tech, etc.

We’ve also had events that pushed atmospheric Co2 to > 3000 ppm, atmospheric oxygen to 35% (above current levels of 20-22%), massive asteroid strikes, etc.

The whole world is running on copium right now, which is why none of the issues being brought up are being addressed.

When people are no longer able to ignore it, it will change and rapidly. Probably involving over correction and create a whole slew of new (and different problems), as is the norm.

As you note, we have the means. And it isn’t technically difficult. It’s just not as fun/easy/pleasant/cheap as the current behavior.

I guess the only difference in our views, is will be do anything before it's too late

Keep in mind, less than 100 years ago, half the world was literally trying to murder the other half using every effort conceivable and every bit of modern technology they could muster. Not that long before there were endemic diseases everywhere that killed 30% of everyone infected.

We have a long, long, long way to go before we conceivably hit ‘too late’. Will people die? Yes. But people die anyway.

If that is comforting or not, is up to you. Either way, the wheel will continue to turn.

If you like the structured nature of deals with Other beings and the intersection of that with magic, you might really enjoy the Pact web serial and its sequel Pale by Wildbow.

They contain an exceptionally intricate and well thought through magic system in a modern "hidden world" setting.

My favorite part is how litigious it all is. Power is gained, lost, and traded through deals practitioners make with Other beings, and these are mired in details and exploitation of nuanced language and such. It even features diabolist lawyers!

https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/

The devil never lies.

Or so the devil would have you believe.

The mark always believes he has an edge.

Are the persistent themes the outcome of generation via the authors' predilections, or of winnowing via the readers'?

Ok I read it. More it served the interests of power, "Protestantism (and, of course, Christianity generally) had a need to enforce the discipline of delayed gratification".

It has a heckuva closing sentence.

Interesting, the theme that "the dangers of knowledge (Pandora, Genesis) may be as old as humanity.". Did that one stem from power (and pesky upstarts) too?

(Is nixtamalization (of cornmeal) an example or a counterexample?)

What is the field that studies or pontificates upon the historical? forces that led to various cultural themes?

One thing I never understood about dealing with the Devil. When the Devil shows up, it changes the calculus. Now the person knows there is a heaven and hell, etc. What used to be a reasonable decision is now outrageously wrong.

You're applying a modern sensibility. Originally, the skepticism you're alluding to didn't exist. The existence of a god and the various related phenomena was taken for granted. Given the knowledge of the time, how else could humans have come into existence?

Widespread skepticism of those beliefs didn't start until the Englightment and the discovery of evolution.

I wonder.. Back in polytheistic times did people really believe all those stories about their pantheon? It seems to me that the lines between true history, pious belief, and entertainment were all kinds of blurred.

Maybe people simply didn't really care too much whether the stories were true or not?

Pretty much. The Greek pantheists weren't that different to Marvel or Star Wars fans. The point of the mythology was to have a common identity. If you asked the priest at the template of Demeter "Next spring, I'd like to go and meet Persephone on her journey to home to Demeter, which road does she normally take?" -- they would think you were some kind of fool getting reality and myth confused, while thinking up some mythology about your journey that would turn into a nice play next year.

The modern-day equivalent would be meeting a travel agent at a DC Comics convention and asking them to book flights for you to Gotham City. The best-case outcome is that they write some fan-fiction about you.

This was one of the reasons that Christianity was very disruptive, and exploded across the Graeco-Roman world over the following centuries. It provided a common identity with historical grounding -- if you wanted to go to the temple in Jerusalem where Jesus had kicked the merchants out, you could, and there was no ambiguity or vagueness about which one this happened in even after it was destroyed.

Graeco roman beliefs had historical grounding too. Mt. Olympus is a real place. The pillars of Hades were real. Cities were founded by gods and they existed right in front of people. Offerings would be made and outcomes would happen.

What was really so disruptive about christianity was the aspect of proselytization. That was new with christianity that wasn't really an aspect of judaism. And with proselytization came a need for formal organization of the faith, which served as a useful tool for government to maintain a mandate of power and quell divergent beliefs as heathen or even worthy of crusade, in contrast to synecratic greco-roman paganism.

> The Greek pantheists weren't that different to Marvel or Star Wars fans.

What are you basing this on? (And note, I think you mean "polytheists", as pantheists are people who don't typically believe in gods, but in the idea that everything in the universe is divine).

Polytheistic people pray to the gods just like monotheistic people do. Some believe in more concrete notions of their gods, some in more poetic ones, and both co-exist in the same societies. Just like many Christians believe Jesus existed, lived, died, and became physically resurrected, so do many modern-day polytheists, and many ancient ones as well.

And beyond the specifics of the stories, people most of all believed and believe that performing or not performing certain rituals will attract the benevolence or ire of their gods. They perform rituals to attract the rain, or to bring good luck in battle, or to bless their crops. They try to put curses on their enemies or competitors. These are all real beliefs that exist today, in both polytheistic and monotheistic religions, and that have existed since the dawn of humanity based on everything we know.

And one clear proof that people truly believed and still believe in the importance of these things is the significant resources they are willing to invest in them. Sometimes they directly perform sacrifices, sometimes they give money for the building of altars, sometimes they sacrifice their time or enjoyment towards these goals.

I think this is not really true. They did all sorts of things… like, these fairly poor (by modern standards) people sacrificed valuable resources to their gods. There is no particular reason to think they believed in their gods any less than current religious people.

I know people with tens of thousands of dollars of Marvel paraphernalia. They spend thousands a year on tickets, events, comics. These people are not well off, it's money they otherwise would do well to have in retirement savings. Humans are not always rational.

They had big rituals that cost them a lot. I could see these as being performative. But then, for something to be performative, the people it is being performed to need to believe in it, right? Like modern generals don’t perform a sacrifice to Iron Man because modern soldiers don’t believe it is necessary.

They also had boring little rituals that weren’t really very effective performative signals.

What reason is there to think they didn’t believe in their gods? It is hard to query what’s going on in the heads even of living people, let alone long-dead ones. But I think the null hypothesis should be that people in the past at least believe their religion as much as modern ones do.

The comparison I would make is Santa Claus. He is not all powerful, but he has a lot of supernatural powers. He makes demands of your behavior (but you don't have to align your whole life around him) that comes with a tangible reward (presents). There are big, expensive and complicated rituals relating to him.

Do you have any evidence of this or reason to believe it?

The Christian Scriptures actually include something of a counter-example to this, in Acts 19:35 and following, where an angry crowd is settled by being reminded that the statue in their temple _fell from the sky_:

"When the city clerk had quieted the crowd, he said: 'Men of Ephesus, what man is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple guardian of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from (Zeus/Jupiter)? Therefore, since these things cannot be denied, you ought to be quiet and do nothing rashly. For you have brought these men here who are neither robbers of temples nor blasphemers of (y)our goddess. Therefore, if Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a case against anyone, the courts are open and there are proconsuls. Let them bring charges against one another. But if you have any other inquiry to make, it shall be determined in the lawful assembly. For we are in danger of being called in question for today’s uproar, there being no reason which we may give to account for this disorderly gathering.' And when he had said these things, he dismissed the assembly."

Sure, but for some reason we are assuming that people don’t believe their religions… if we apply that logic to Christians as well, I guess an excerpt from their book won’t be very compelling.

I think they certainly believed in the existence of the gods as something more than metaphor (although there were skeptics then as there always are,) and many people probably considered their own local myths to be true.

It doesn't seem any less likely to me than Biblical literalists today. I think people forget that what we now consider mythology was more often than not religion to people of the time.

> It seems to me that the lines between true history, pious belief, and entertainment were all kinds of blurred.

This is (unintentionally?) hilarious.

This article argues that people did believe it, or at least believe that their rituals actually matters https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polythei...

Darn, I wanted to link the article.

Something that really stuck with me is that they seemed to believe in their gods in an interesting way: they specifically negotiated their vows, being very explicit about what is promised. Because they really expect the gods to punish them in the corporal world, shortly

We’re a lot more loose with our vows nowadays. Although to be fair, negotiations with all-powerful monotheistic gods don’t make as much sense in the first place, really. Most of these gods are so powerful that you can’t really offer them anything but obedience/loyalty/love.

Back then people probably didn't even all have the same sorts of stories about their myths straight. And while we think today we are so enlightened having little faith in these things, we are more in line with these people than we might admit, the common thread being herd mentality. Consider yourself, are you an atheist because you sat down one day and came up with your own philosophy about it? Or are you an atheist because there are millions of westerners today who are also atheists and its an existing off the shelf philosophy that is easy to adopt, and you happened to fall into it? Maybe you did work it out yourself, but for many people their sensibilities and beliefs tend to fall into discrete categories already present to a good degree in a society, versus being truly novel concepts unique to them.

"Atheist" feels like such a strange and artificial category, lumping people together on the basis of what they don't believe rather than what they do.

It's a bit like defining everyone who isn't Indo-European or Asiatic as "black", even though there's more genetic diversity in Africa than the rest of the world put together.

> "Atheist" feels like such a strange and artificial category

Bah, not any more that any other category: I have religious friends who are in theory from the same religion: some believe in heaven some don't, some believe in the miracles some don't, etc..

But yes, there can be atheists who believe that the earth is flat or that crystals can heal, etc.

But they all identify with the same hierarchical structure to some degree, at least if we're talking about a group like Roman Catholics, Sunni Muslims etc. It gets more complicated of course where e.g. Judaism is concerned, because that's more than just a religion.

Those stories also serve as a tapestry upon which to build tribal bonds. Beliefs are not necessary for them to serve a purpose.

Just like how 90% of people who proclaim they belong to x religion don’t actually believe in stuff the religion proclaims, but it is useful for displaying tribal allegiance.

In some cases, the feigning of belief in obviously false things can even help to serve as a signal for how strong your conviction is to others in a tribe. In the same vein, being a hypocrite can also be seen as a display of “look at the rules I am willing to break, and so I might be willing to break some for you”. Or at least, it shows the belief that some people are above the rules.

"believe" and "true" as you're using them are relatively modern, secular concepts, the idea that anything can be tested to destruction and deemed true or false, and the idea that stories are superimposed upon the world rather than being inherently part of it.

If as a pre-modern person, you don't believe in a God or Gods, what fills the void? Nowadays the boundary of our knowledge stretches far beyond day to day life in many respects, but if you don't know about a round Earth, or the solar system, or how weather systems work, how else do you explain phenomena that have a material impact on your day to day life as a subsistence farmer?

Pre Christianity, there wasn't really God's law and Man's law, there was just law. Even today, if you ask a highly educated religious person about their faith, you'll often find a concept of truth in some ways broader than the secular, material variety.

Do you really believe in the existence of Pluto?

For them, it was the same type of situation.

> did people really believe all those stories about their pantheon

They did, in the same way we still believe in the horoscope, lucky numbers, miraculous diets or having success by reading the same books CEOs read.

Does it really brings bad luck if 13 people sit at the same table for a dinner?

And what about Friday the 13th?

In many sports competitions the number 17 is removed, because, you know, better safe than sorry.

Or in the same way that modern religious people believe the stories in their books, right? Which is to say, opinions vary, but some go right up to literalism.

I’m very confused as to why folks in this thread seem to think that ancient people were any different in their religious beliefs than modern ones.

Baysian probability is technology???

  The term Bayesian derives from Thomas Bayes (1702–1761), who proved a special case of what is now called Bayes' theorem in a paper titled "An Essay Towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances".

Did the devil know about modern probability theory before we did?

Bayesian probability is just a mathematical description of optimal learning process from data, e.g. common sense. It is already built into every living thing[1], because it is the best way to respond to your environment.

[1] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2017.079...

If a Devil showed up and could grant wishes, it would be a phenomenon in the universe we could do science at. Thing better look out, we’re going to try and capture it, squeeze the wish-juice out or whatever.

Ah, the hubris!

Not hubris, pride—I’m the bait, I’ll draw the thing’s attention with all my sinning, you see if you can knock it out.

This reads as if the author set out to make a point about modern traditionalism, got distracted with Renaissance literature halfway through, and then gave up on the piece with three or four paragraphs still to write.

It's a shame. Something a little trenchant about the vacuity of "forward unto the past" would've made a better read than this.

I agree it seems pretty unfocused. To be fair I read it quickly so I might be missing something, but I'm struggling to pull a thesis out of this piece.

At the beginning it seems like it's trying to make a point about society becoming better after eliminating superstition, but then it mostly just goes through a history of Faustian bargains in literature before ending with one paragraph that implies that the modern equivalent is EULAs in software.

EDIT: I just realized from the URL that this is supposed to be a book review? I probably didn't notice because the book isn't mentioned in the title or even in the article until four paragraphs in.

Yeah, on reflection my initial reading was a little unfair. The focus makes sense given what it is, although it still feels odd to start out with what sounds like it wants to be a critique of a critique of materialism.

Especially funny since he calls Goethe's Faust incoherent.

I don't know if I'm missing something about the Newyorker but every article I've tried to read loses me in a similar chaos of literary references and excessive thesaurus usage.

I can't tell if I'm illiterate or it's overhyped.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who found the title and content disconnected. Seems like the author got a chance to talk about their interest in literary history by adding a paragraph at the end and an enticing title.

That type of essay often works like that: start with a few paragraphs that are interesting to a broader audience, write a book review while showing off your literary chops, and then tie it together sloppily the end.

It's like they need to continue the book review genre, and add the required literary flourishes, and have a book review at its core.

https://archive.is/1jr1B

The story of Faust is about the dangers of knowledge and technology. If you know too much, you will eventually lose your soul.

As this book review explains, with the enlightenment and industrial revolution, this fear of knowledge receded. But the myth is still there.

For example, take the "Terminator" movies. They're about the dangers of technology: what if we create machines that are intelligent enough to turn on their creators and seek to destroy them? There is a parallel between gaining forbidden knowledge and making artificial creatures. Today, we are afraid that corporations and governments will use our inventions to control us, but I think that fear has an echo of the old myth that it is dangerous to learn forbidden knowledge, or create artificial life, because that would be entering the realm once reserved for the Almighty.

It's crazy to think that one of the oldest religious stories, the whole Adam and Eve don't eat from the fruit of the forbidden tree of knowledge, actually has a coincidence (...I mean, I believe it was a coincidence) in our past diet

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/03/27/521423216/wh...

I don't believe pre-human primates somehow passed that story down or anything but old stories always make me curious into their origins. Sometimes cool and interesting stuff comes up when you do

Fruit is great, as described. Knowing fruit is great is of course adaptive and this receives selective presure. Most life forms naturally seek out the things that they need to survive. Intelligent beings will use their intelligence to seek out such things, and will understand their value.

I've been told the whole Genesis narrative was essentially political propaganda based on the Babylonian creation account in the Enuma Elish and written during the Babylonian exile.

I don't know how accurate that is but they do share similarities and given the relative cultural influence of Babylon I wouldn't doubt some influence was there.

Those are basically two different theories to account for the similarities. The one where the hebrews picked up the myth during captivity in babylon is mostly out of favor currently though it has some reputable proponents.

"Political propaganda" isn't quite how I would put it but yes a slightly more main stream theory is that genesis is an intentional reconfiguration of a myth that would have been widely known in the region, for the purpose of repudiating the mesopotamian religion in favor of the hebrew one.

Either way, or both, or neither, the story was "in the air" in the eastern mediterranean/west asia at that time. It was widely known and incredibly influential, and bits of it turn up in basically all significant literature with its roots in that place & era. Scholars go back and forth on the archeological and linguistic evidence but it's fairly commonly held that they are all simply a mesh of mutually-influenced variants of an even earlier myth that was lost or never recorded in its "original" form.

And not just fruit - getting ability to metabolize alcohol, ie. to efficiently consume those ripe fruits lying around under the tree seems to be that jump start in the brain development, walking up-right, etc. And the alcohol produces that artificial feeling of empowerment and freedom (which are basically top temptations by the devil). Btw, in Russia alcohol has evil image of the "green serpent" (after the biblical Serpent, and the Soviet propaganda used all that religious imagery - a 1962 cartoon where moonshine distillator is ran by a Witch and a Daemon and it morphs into the Serpent, and there is also a Faust's Mefistofele signing the famous solo of the opera

https://youtu.be/xa7VHwpCgDk?t=352 and https://youtu.be/xa7VHwpCgDk?t=482 )

> the whole Adam and Eve don't eat from the fruit of the forbidden tree of knowledge

knowledge of good and evil

It's so odd how often nuance from the bible is lost. Just like people say "money is the root of all evil" when the quote is actually " the love of money is the root of all evil.

These are actually important distinctions. From a literary perspective, knowledge didn't cause the downfall of Adam and Eve, it was awareness of morality that did.

Money is just a tool, but love of money is a motivation that leads to evil actions.

Oh dang, that's even more interesting

Continuing with your points, I've been told that "... is the root of all evil" is likely an idiomatic use of hyperbole.

I.e., in modern colloquial English we'd say, "The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil."

> knowledge of good and evil

This translation shouldn't necessarily be taken to mean solely awareness of morality. The knowledge of good and evil, being opposites, would in fact include the knowledge of everything. It's a literary device, like the phrases day and night or heaven and earth.

> what if we create machines that are intelligent enough to turn on their creators and seek to destroy them?

I disagree with this - it's about creating machines that are powerful enough to turn on their creators. Battlestar Galactica is more about intelligence/superiority IMO (as well as powerful).

It's also about making deals with entities smarter than you are. Essentially the same thing can be found in Science Fiction (e.g. Culture Minds):

> Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.” ― Iain M. Banks, Look to Windward [0]

In classic Fantasy, it's dragons who take the same role, manipulating and deceiving mortals into doing bad things (e.g Tolkein's dragons, based on the old Norse traditions of dragons being sly and deceptive [1]).

And of course, the Djinn's classic Three Wishes is all about being careful what you wish for. The Djinn does exactly what the wisher wishes for, but if there's any way of manipulating it for evil, they will.

We now have AI and tech, so it's natural that we start telling these same stories about our smarter-than-us entities. I don't think the Terminator gets into this kind of story; it's more as you say about our children being a danger to us (but then the Greek creation myths are all about that, too).

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/83257-oh-they-never-lie-the... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragons_in_Middle-earth

We already have no shortage of machines powerful enough to turn on us. A steel rake lying hidden in the grass for example. Everyone knows the apparent danger with these things, yet this tool has managed to infect our very ethos to the point where its potentially operator-harming design has remained unchallenged for 100 years, perhaps longer. I trust there will still be people getting smacked in the face with rakes in 100 and 1000 years from now at this rate.

I love deals with the Devil. What's your favorite Deal with the Devil tale? Tell me one off the beaten path.

My favorite is the Brazillian "Grande Sertão: Veredas"

Stingy Jack (namesake for the Jack O'Lantern) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingy_Jack

Here is a Norwegian tale of the Devil, in form of a traditional fiddle song. Music at the bottom, recommend playing it through once before reading the post. https://www.norskkornolfestival.no/2019/06/18/fanitullen/

https://kasmana.people.charleston.edu/MATHFICT/mfview.php?ca...

“The Devil and Simon Flagg” in which Flagg sells his soul in exchange for the proof of Fermat’s last theorem. No proof is found, but the Devil becomes consumed with mathematics.

Cool, someone should update the story now with the Collatz conjecture.

I love any story about ancient super powerful creatures being defeated by modern people. Humanity kicks ass.

These things are often scaled to be something extremely powerful but possible for the hero to struggle against, at the time, which often puts them far below the capabilities of modern society. This is usually missing the point (the ancient God or gods probably set up an adversary that like that on purpose, or whatever, to show something to the mortals), but just taking that on face value and trouncing the thing will never not be funny to me.

It's on the beaten path, but how can you resist (and how did the New Yorker resist?) "The Devil Went Down to Georgia"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_Went_Down_to_Georgia

Most of the deals in the article do not end well for the human, but here there's no lesson about hubris, nor the curse of knowledge, or anything else. No, Johnny's just a better fiddle player, he beats the devil, and he wins a golden fiddle fair and square.

(The article might allude to this story: "Satan is not the real God, because there is only one God; the Devil doesn’t have the best tunes.")

There is a lesson about hubris, but most people miss it. The Devil's deal is false, he doesn't play "fair and square." Johnny wins the bet but still loses his soul to the sin of pride. It's even in the lyrics: "My name's Johnny and it might be a sin, but I'll take your bet and you're gonna regret 'cause I'm the best that's ever been!"

At least that's how I've always interpreted it.

Very interesting interpretation! I see your point.

Which always seemed to me just a retelling of the Robert Johnson “crossroads” legend.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson#Devil_legend

Maybe shifting further but ’the silver tongued devil’ by Kris Kristofferson is a beautiful song with a beautiful message in my opinion

funny enough, "To Beat the Devil" of his is my pick for the best riff on the trope of country songs about musicians taking on the devil

A modern take I've always enjoyed is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1tcj6bUv98

If we're mentioning songs then I'd pick T..... & Beer by Frank Zappa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPO1QGhYDjM

In "The Master and Margarita", Pilate makes a hard-boiled metaphorical, not literal, deal with the devil.

I also love "The Master and Margarita"! Woland is a very compelling devil.

Crossroads! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossroads_(folklore)

My favorite is the legend of the Devil's Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schöllenen_Gorge where some Swiss hired the devil to build a bridge over a seemingly unbridgeable gorge, and then tricked him out of his payment.

I've referred to the devil as the Patron Unholy of Swiss engineering.

I love "The Grand Inquisitor" from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. It's not exactly a deal with the devil, but it does have some interesting parallels.

Full chapter: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8578/8578-h/8578-h.htm Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Inquisitor

Been fond of "La Chasse-galerie" for a while:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chasse-galerie

Bob Dylan. Said he sold his soul to the Devil and promised to play til the end of his days

Poland has a tale of "Pan Twardowski"(Mr Twardowski) about a man who made a pact with the devil for all kinds of powers, in exchange the devil said he will take Twardowski's soul if he ever sets his foot in Rome - since he didn't intend to visit Rome, he assumed this was the perfect deal. However the devil outwitted him, by coming for his soul in an inn called Rzym(Rome in Polish).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Twardowski

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ydqkBG22Tk8&pp=ygUYaG9tZXIgc2l...

Homers deal with Flanders as Satan, for a donut of course

"But I'm so sweet and tasty"

The Devil & Billy Markham Shel Silverstein Playboy January 1979

https://crazcowboy.tripod.com/Silverstein/markham.htm

The Twilight Zone episode, “I of Newton 666”, from 1985. Great ending.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0ZRKSoN7Vg

Phantom of the Paradise is a rock opera inspired by Faust.

> In these two early stories lie most of the subsequent Faustian motifs: the temptations of knowledge and power; the bargaining away of more distant spiritual gains for nearer material ones; the almost symmetrical rivalry of good and evil forces; the taint of the commercial or contractual bond; the picaresque flights through time and space; even the odd obsession with exciting women called Helen.

In apocryphal Bible texts, it's claimed corrupted angels called "The Watchers" gave humans various technologies, in exchange for their women.

> In the Book of Enoch, the watchers are angels dispatched to Earth to watch over the humans. They soon begin to lust for human women and, at the prodding of their leader Samyaza, defect to illicitly instruct humanity and procreate among them, arriving on a mountain called Hermon. The offspring of these unions are the Nephilim, savage giants who pillage the earth and endanger humanity.

> Samyaza and his associates further taught their human charges arts and technologies such as weaponry, cosmetics, mirrors, sorcery, and other techniques that would otherwise be discovered gradually over time by humans, not foisted upon them all at once. Eventually, God allows a Great Flood to rid the earth of the Nephilim, but first sends Uriel to warn Noah so as not to eradicate the human race. The watchers are bound "in the valleys of the Earth" until Judgment Day (Jude verse 6 says, "And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.").

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watcher_(angel)#Rogue_watchers...

We are witnessing the beginning of a significant shift in how we perceive the world—a "remagicalization" driven by technological advancements. Technology has progressed to a point where it often feels indistinguishable from magic to many.

In the past, building a radio, the primary tool for real-time information, was within reach of anyone with basic components like wire, a speaker, a capacitor, and a coil. Today, however, technology has become so advanced that it is incomprehensible to most, controlled by experts who can seem like modern-day wizards.

I fully agree with the conclusion of the article.

* We’re all Faustians now. These days [...] we write our contracts not in blood but in silicon—both figuratively, insofar as we sign away our identities and privacies for all the short-term benefits of material ease, and literally, whenever we scroll rapidly through one of those unreadable online contracts, eager only to assent.*

Well, I hope not. Sagan warned us about this decades ago.

In some sense, the world today is the world we previously believed it to be.

I disagree. "For most people, life was a business of terrifying external forces and arbitrary powers, both spiritual and legal." Substitute "economic" for "spiritual" and it describes the experiences of the majority in modern societies. To most, searching for a job involves appeasing various inscrutable forces, such as AI resume filtering, HR hoops, and interview questions that might as well be asking about how to cast spells. Employers are arbitrary and capricious entities of enormous power over individuals and with the ability to influence the world in ways the individual has no hope of matching.

We don't call it magic, but there are other incantations for it. The adherents to the True Way of economics and law elevate themselves to positions of power and influence.

This is written for someone with a higher reading level than me. I skimmed the first few paragraphs and have no idea what it is about beyond the title.

It meanders around the history of tales involving selling one's soul for worldly power or gratification, then in the last sentence says that's what smartphones are, because we trade privacy and identity for convenience.

I don't mean this offensively, but if this is beyond your reading level and you went to college, your college did not do a good job. The vocabulary and structure is nothing out of the ordinary for college level reading.

That said, like some college level reading, it definitely meanders a bit, is a little self-important and feels padded with unnecessary filler, and is just only somewhat but ultimately not deeply interesting unless you are already pretty interested in how tales of the devil featured in medieval Europe. It's ok. I didn't finish it. If you misspoke and meant you didn't feel like reading it, but certainly could have comprehended it, then never mind I guess

But again, this isn't personal-- but if you are a successful educated software engineer who genuinely finds this beyond your reading level, your reading level is low for your station in life. It will limit your rise. Take it as an insult if you like though I don't mean it that way or else a wake up call.

The reason I dare stick my fingers into this fire and possibly offend you is, there is a trend of "educated" people who know science but completely skipped humanities, and thus have huge blind spots. My real audience for this comment is other people who will be encouraged to value the ability to read obtuse things and write clearly, to understand history and literature. And if you are picking a college for your kids, check out the readings for some classes. If they are not expected to easily be able to read something at this level, then it's a waste of money unless it's very cheap.

You must be old. Nowadays even Harvard students aren't expected to be able to read anything complicated. From coincidentally, another New Yorker link: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/06/the-end-of-the... -- "The last time I taught 'The Scarlet Letter,' I discovered that my students were really struggling to understand the sentences as sentences—like, having trouble identifying the subject and the verb," she said. "Their capacities are different, and the nineteenth century is a long time ago."

Ah. So that's why so many people think chatgpt is such a boon for drafting trivial things that a competent writer could do almost as fast, but with more control. They really can't do it.

The deskilling continues. "What can be expected of a man who has spent 20 years putting heads on pins?"

PS: I am not that old. I was in the college class '11 at an average small liberal arts college with an over 60% acceptance rate. I was not exceptional. I think the deskilling has accelerated very greatly and very recently.

The story by E.M. Forster is actually "The Machine Stops". The dystopia that came to mind for me was Harrison Bergeron, only instead of a human Handicapper General enforcing an equality of sub-mediocrity, it will be the masses and the tools they were bequeathed by the FAANGs. Having also been at uni in '11, I agree - GenZ and below are unnerving to observe.

NB- this is in reply to an earlier version of my comment, which I edited out purely for brevity, but now guiltily am restoring here-- where I worried we're marching towards a dystopia like the ones imagined in many works like Idiocracy, Wall-E, or The Machine Stops (misremembering the title as The Machine Breaks Down or something)

You make a very good point. I am starting to hear things along the lines of "But it's normal that some people learn better from videos" and "Why are you gatekeeping this knowledge" and even here you increasingly see references to videos that are much lower detail but higher time commitment summaries of writing that has much more detail available yet could be consumed, skimmed, etc more quickly than sitting through a video that your eyes have no ability to skip around, rushing past the irrelevant and dwelling on the relevant, without ever having to click a button.

They already invented telepathic interfaces -- books.

I was really confused when I posted my comment and didn't see any mention of the titles I saw in the original.

A succinct encapsulation of the problem is that the total "signal" of civilization is now being eclipsed exponentially, in all sorts of ways, by "noise". Some people say we're heading towards singularity, and others towards collapse; either way I'm confident we'll live to see some sort of great Reckoning, because I don't see how the generations after Millennial can sustain the current setup and weight of civilization.

Not just Gen Z. 54% of US adults read below a 6th grade reading level[1][2][3]. The younger generations might skew the results, I haven't dug deep into the links.

1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2020/09/09/low-...

2: https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-s....

3: https://map.barbarabush.org

The mind fairly boggles. That's depressing.

That’s what happens when the political apparatus shortchanges public education for decades: illiteracy and innumeracy.

I wonder what impact it will have on America's ability to operate over the next few decades. Will a lack of intelligent communicators find themselves unable to coordinate complex business? Even the simplest of enterprises at scale are quite complex.

I expect the end game if it continues is something like Elysium where we're going to bifurcate into a small, literate, educated class, whose parents were able to send them to private schools or overseas to be educated, and who will run the show, and a large underclass who end up as fodder for the corporate machine and/or the war machine. Today, we're in a competitive race to make enough to ensure our great-great-great-grandchildren end up in the first group and not the second.

That is terrifying. If the elite of the elite can't interact with historical works, how can we trust them to make informed decisions about the present? I really don't want foreign policy on India set by Harvard grads who have never read Ghandi, and I don't want domestic policy set by people who haven't read the Scarlet Letter.

It’s Gandhi.

The nineteenth century, hell. I have to limit the grammatical complexity I use here, or expect to be fussed at by people asking for summarization.

Or, lately, pasting into ChatGPT, I suppose. There's a thought: I wonder if I could develop a style that's consistent with the rules of English grammar and reads naturally to the fluent, but is also too complex for LLMs to reliably summarize. It'd be a pure gimmick, of course, but it still might be fun to play around with...

Yes; alas, "fluent" is mu (nothingness). Barriers, barriers are. One may permit it in art, but communication thwarted brings pain. (This has absolutely nothing to do with a squirrel.)

Granted. But are we engineers or aren't we? If we won't develop the capacity to reckon with complex thoughts, then what can we even claim to offer over a coding model?

(You also suggest my use of "fluent" begs the wrong question. How so? Not every thought is trivial of expression, or we'd need no words but the commonest ten hundred.)

Say not the straightforward deeply, but the deep straightforwardly.

(NP-hard so.) Two words, answering directly yet explaining nothing. Shibboleths and CAPTCHAs are illusionary protection (and really exclusionary).

They're poor, early tools. But a complex world can be addressed as if only so simple. Or safely, anyway.

It's not that I don't understand the temptation otherwise. But those are sent to be mastered, I heard.

Science is not obscurantism. Of their purpose, these tools are early (we hope). Of their ilk, these tools are late, almost unsurpassable, and unenviable.

"Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison."

Scarlet Letter was important among the limited works that could afford to be published. It touches on important idea. But it's stilted language of a different society isn't better than modern language. Just as we don't consider Nathaniel Hawthorne stupid because he wouldn't easily understand a modern sentence like "An open source platform for building a writing space on the web."

Why do people like yourself have such an allergy to becoming familiar with the past? It is as small-minded to be parochially bound to your own time as it is to your own country. Think of it as analogous to learning Spanish or Chinese so you can understand people from those places.

Except it's much much easier because it's almost the same language, only a very, very, very slightly different dialect, that uses words that are still used, just a slightly different distribution of which are popular. Read a book or two from the 19th century and you'll find the rest easy.

When you admit that this is impenetrable to you you are admitting you've never tried for very long.

Not a single word in that sentence is uncommon today other than "edifice" (though any romance language speaker would understand it), as well as the fact that the average urbanite today does not know the names of many common weeds (but context makes that irrelevant)

Nathanial Hawthorne had no ability to converse with the future, but we have the ability, if we choose it, and a responsibility, to understand the past, so we can learn from it and make good choices in the future.

That isn't stilted, nor is it some crazy difficult usage of past English. If someone really can't understand it, then they really are ignorant.

And just 19 years later, Mark Twain published The Innocents Abroad, which I remember loving. I haven't looked at either in decades, but I'd bet that I'd still find The Scarlett Letter to be ponderous and boring and The Innocents Abroad to be an absolute delight in its subject matter, storytelling, and playful use of language.

This happens every time an article from the new yorker is posted. Now we will mostly talk about this, about the merits or pointlessness of literary nonfiction and literature in general. Maybe recommend each other some brandon sanderson or malcolm gladwell and all have a great time.

Developing media literacy is an important skill!

One way to approach this work is to understand the genre of the work you are reading! We can determine genre in a few ways, but in this case, we see that the publication is the New Yorker, which tells us to expect magazine-style writing, specifically longer form feature pieces.

Another important clue is that this is published in the New Yorker's "Books" section, suggesting that this is a book review. And, if you know much about the New Yorker's book reviews, they often include things such as history of the field the book addresses, compares the book to other related books, and what the book's thesis might imply about our world today.

This longer form book review can introduce important context and enrich your understanding of the world! I encourage you to keep an open mind and continue to read pieces that are outside of your usual genre.

Is this written by gpt

It absolutely feels like it

In the style of New Yorker, a joke as old as gpt itself.

The style matches, but I think that's because it's just a median style of writing. It's too… je ne sais quoi, to be produced by that algorithm.

"And, if you know much about the New Yorker's book reviews,", specifically feels like a phrase GPT would never use.

Its making a longwinded comparison between eulas and faustian bargains, trading short term gains for long term suffering.

So it's a tale of Boeing?

Almost any company now. If you're not growing faster or making more profit than you were last quarter, forever, the entire world will crash, apparently.

Is English your native language?

For what it's worth I absolutely loathe this writing style. Just look at this sentence:

> No longer open to the pressing torque of divinities and djinns, we moderns are closed off and shut down, buffered and buttressed, marching efficiently through our merely material world, grim-faced assassins of mystery.

You could say instead: "Since the Enlightenment people believe in magic less."

Come on, "buffered and buttressed", really?!

This article is one close to my heart but the pompous writing put me off.

Ah, yes, an article about deals with the devil should be straight to the point for the effortless efficiency that only the best bureaucracy can provide. As I tell my team, "bottom line up front, folks!". I hope I have understood you here so please understand me - that is meant with irony but not sarcasm. Perhaps there is a reason for the purple prose, if we only could find it.

It's not that well-written. It's mostly a literary review with a paragraph about silicon shoe-horned in at the end to try to bring home some kind of thesis.

> Jesus again rejects material gain, and finally banishes the tempter: Satan is not the real God, because there is only one God; the Devil doesn’t have the best tunes.

Hard disagree. Though playing them on a golden fiddle certainly doesn't help.

Disenchantment was well underway in the 1600s, and arguably peaked in the 1700s, the Age of Reason, before it was partly undone by Romanticism. The disenchantment narrative goes back at least as far as Chaucer: https://aeon.co/essays/enlightenment-does-not-demand-disench...

If you want to go back the age of magic, try the 900s, or better yet, prehistory.

I would add that Christianity was all about "disenchanting" the world (and my interpretation of Die Nibelungen as taken to express this in literary form). The enchanted universe, a world of magic rather than wonder (some may confuse the two, but they are quite different), is rather characteristic of the pagan world and its superstitions and irrationalities, rather than the rational world of the Divine Logos. To disenchant is to "free from enchantment, deliver from the power of charms or spells" [0], that is, to free people from lies and deceit, the fake and unreal, sometimes tyrannical constructions.

You find neopagans today who want to "reenchant the world". It is an expression of hopelessness running into the arms of a demon who promises them relief if only they believe his madness. What they don't understand is that it isn't their rationality that has produced their misery, but they're irrationality.

[0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/disenchant#etymonline_v_1142...

I would also add that the article confuses Christianity with superstitious Christians. They still exist. But this is an aberration, and always was. Human beings are prone to the vice of superstition. Our age is no less superstitious, I would say. We've merely given our superstitions other labels, or they've taken other forms. And it was in Protestant societies that witch hunts really took place, which makes it all the more mystifying why the author would have expected Protestant England to deal with superstition better than the Church, who was not in the business of witch hunts and who condemned superstition as irrational, as rooted in a lust for power over and domination of others, and as an attempt to coerce God into doing one's will, defects of will and intellect that predispose a person to still further evils. (He does admit that Protestant theology actually predisposed people to more superstitious compulsions, but the fictitious examples suggest otherwise. I would also point to the Puritans as perfecting Protestant rebellion in the Salem witch trials.)

Knowledge and power, in the abstract, are good as such, but like all appetites, they can get the better of us. Lust for knowledge, or curiosity as it was called, is self-destructive and irrational, as opposed to studiousness, the pursuit of knowledge according to right reason (our information glut today is rather shallow curiosity and desire to know what is none of our business to know; gossip). Lust for power is likewise, turning the desire to be and to do good into an irrational craving to dominate and exploit other people, even forgetting that one's very being is utterly dependent on the will of God sustaining you in existence at every moment; were it not for God willing you, you would not be.

Also, the failure to distinguish between "religious" (a wishy-washy and nebulous term, if there ever was one) from "magic" is annoying. Magic is about power. True faith is but trust in what the human mind can only partially, but sufficiently grasp to warrant trust. There is no Manicheanism in Christianity, as evil is privation of the good, not an ontological equal of the good, and Jesus could very well have expelled the Devil. He was not in danger of succumbing, though his human side, as it were, was subjected to the temptation. I don't see how the author could claim otherwise. What I see is lazy prooftexting, not serious scholarship.

The idea of "selling your soul" is figurative. One can live in accordance with the objective good, or violate it. One cannot sell a soul, and God is not in competition with created beings, but rather their fulfillment, as God is Being. The author's view suggests strongly a liberal view of freedom, not as the ability to be what you are by nature and to do what is good, but the ability to choose anything, even your own harm. But how is that freeing? It isn't. That's the fundamental mistake of philosophical liberalism.

No one claims pleasure in this world brings pain in the next. The Church has never taught that pleasure as such is bad. It only taught that the pursuit of illicit pleasures is harmful. We get this, so why do we pretend otherwise? We know that eating tasty treats in excess jeopardizes the higher good of health. We know that pursuing depraved desires, like pedophilia, is evil and jeopardizes both the good of the pedophile and the children he intends to exploit and abuse. There are wicked pleasures, and there is a hierarchy of objective goods.

Ultimately, the vice is pride, the refusal to submit to the truth, the refusal to live according to reality. As Satan, the poster child of pride, says in "Paradise Lost", "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." This is the essence of pride, to live in the "enchanted" fictions of one's mind rather than face reality as it is.

So yeah, we're all Faustians because we're all sinners. We all whore ourselves, bit by bit, some more and some less, betray higher goods for the sparkle of a lower good. This lower good may be an illusion, or it may even be good as such, but it is the decision to violate a higher good for its sake that offends and corrupts.

Great piece, though I do wish there was some more discussion about the Book of Job, in which God Himself makes a deal with the 'accuser' (Satan). The parallels with later 'deal with the devil' stories are numerous. I think it's particularly interesting to note that in Job, 'Satan' must still get permission from God to torment Job, and that, arguably, Job's final redemption rests on God coming down and speaking directly to him.

Isn't the faustian bargain a warning against taking money from unscrupulous lenders? The promise of riches, but in the process you lose your freedom (still true for business owners)

it's selling your soul to the devil for something you desire

Not historically -- not in Faust nor in the history of the concept [1].

You're certainly free to call borrowing money a "deal with the devil" or a "Faustian bargain", if it's something you can describe as metaphorically "selling your soul" -- e.g. losing control of your company or giving up your vision for it -- but the concept did not arise out of anything related to lenders.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deal_with_the_Devil

"Engineering" reflects the popular way of thinking. So when magic is explained for the popular mind it looks like engineering.

There's no way to see this and not include this neat little Twilight Zone episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29sd4IneEm4&pp=ygUZaSBvZiBuZ...

weird story, I happen to have known the devil quite well. all the things they say about him are true, and that's the uncanny thing. you'd look at this man, slightly too large, objectively not attractive, impossibly clever and disarming, wealthy, seemingly impervious to any known law, known and welcomed everywhere, the exception to every rule and convention, accompanied everywhere by beautiful women, with literal horns on his head, and never once said a dishonest word even for the sake of politeness. Rationally, it was impossible that he could have been the devil, even if he specifically said it, broadcast it, and advertised it in every humanly possible way, the more he told you, the less you believed it, the more you felt like you were in on it. After all, he was harmless and fun, nobody around him ever did anything they didn't want to do. They always chose, they always consented with enthusiasm, and there are thousands of people who would rush to his defence and aid if anyone were to suggest he had ever done anything untoward. He is quite legitimately a great man in this world of men. Even when you knew, how much harm could be done in letting people who are already lost mislead themselves? We are not their keepers. They were having the time of their lives, but without him, their lives were less. He encouraged them up the hedonic treadmill to see how well they swam out of their depth. Decadent nights out became credit card bills, indulgences became needs, flings became transactions, familiarity contempt. They were all my choices as well, and I spent them unwisely, and at some truly astonishing personal cost, because we were spending what we wouldn't miss until it was gone. You couldn't know because you didn't know you were valuable. That was the impossible brilliance of it. I allowed myself to be seduced and misled because that was the whole ride. It's awesome. You can't judge the devil, it doesn't mean anything to him, but you can learn to appreciate and respect him for what he is, it's only a question of what you will pay for that education.

I haven't seen him in many years and it's hard not to miss him, but with some distance and respect I'm good with that. If you don't believe me and maybe think I'm insane, it doesn't matter either. If you ever want to prove it to yourself and find him, all you need to do is want for the material things in this world a bit more than others for whatever reason, and I guarantee he will find you. Bye old friend, you're missed, and may we never meet again.

Amen brother, hope everything is good for you now

I mean, the horns kinda give him away, don't they? Or are you saying you are the only one who sees the horns? It's not like I want to dismiss you but you are making it really hard to know what level of abstractions you are talking in. On one hand it sounds like symbolism and yet the descriptions are very specific.

If someone wearing horns told you they were the devil, would you believe them? Of course not. It would be insane. But that's the trick.

The thing is, according to Biblical canon (if we're taking that seriously,) the devil is one of the most beautiful beings in creation. He's an angel, albeit a fallen one, second in power and glory only to God. Also, the devil doesn't have horns - that's a motif added by the Church associating the devil with pagan horned deities like Cernunnos and Pan.

Also the devil lies, all the time. He's literally called the father of lies. He isn't bound to human rules of politesse or legality (definitely not morality,) only to what God allows him to do, and God let the devil ruin an honest man and slaughter his entire family over table stakes in the Book of Job. Even the serpent in the Garden of Eden was for all intents and purposes just a talking snake at first. Religion is weird like that.

And yes, technically that wasn't "the devil," because the "Satan" of Job and the devil (Lucifer) were different beings at one point, but now I think they're conflated.

I like your story - it reads like a one-off and if so I really respect the flow. I used to write and was only ever able to pull that off once, it was like somehow I did real magic, but was never able to again. But (putting my critic hat on, because those who can, do, and those who can't criticize) it's also a bit too cliche and even tame, to me. I mean, the devil may as well not have even been in it. The whole world is already is already full of rich sociopaths and charismatic predators ready to lead people into vice and corruption. You're not describing an encounter with the literal devil you're just describing an interesting life.

I won't tell you that you are wrong. But speak to your local priest. You have a lot of weird opinions and they could be dangerous. Especially if you think a lot and speak a lot. You might say something you can't take back .

It drives me BONKERS that I can read the new yorker within the apple news app (because I pay money) but I cannot in any way through any means read the same words via a web browser to the actual new yorker site.

I know, welcome to the new internet. Apple sells me discounted access via their app because in doing so Apple can monetize my eyeballs. I hate it.

Could this be the New Yorker's problem and not Apple's? I'm not super familiar with how Apple News subscriptions work, but there's probably a way they could let you log in to the New Yorker with your Apple ID or link the accounts somehow.

Only insofar as the New Yorker chose to be available on Apple News.

If you subscribe to Apple News, you have to read this article in the Apple News app on your Mac, not in a browser.

It does seem like there ought to be a way to take a web URL and tell Apple News, hey, I want to read this article in your app. I don't know if that's a thing, though. It certainly should be.

Share button does that, at least

Not sure what problem you are facing, but I could read that article just fine, no subscription. Win 10, Firefox. For the rest there is always archive.is

Gosh, one might even characterize this as a Faustian bargain with some sort of FANGed daemon.

I thought this was going to be about deals with VCs.

I thought it was going to be about the Disney+ shenanigans: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41242400

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