Comment by paulorlando | Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulorlando | Hacker News Reader

This piece reminded me, of all things, of Gandhi's essay "Hind Swaraj." He was pretty anti-technological-driven change.

He was anti: - Machinery replacing handicraft (skill disappeared and poverty followed) - Labor-saving machines replacing human workers (workers became expendable) - Doctors replacing consequences (people lost self-control) - Railways replacing constraint and slowness (harm spread faster)

But he loved the sewing machine.

Gandhi’s test for whether to accept tech-driven change was whether it satisfied primary needs. Interpretation of those needs was certainly not universal. As he wrote: "...it is not the primary need of man to traverse distances with the rapidity of a motor car. The needle on the contrary happens to be an essential thing in life, a primary need.”

That's the airplane in this post. Excitement or fear of the AI airplane is either judged as helping mathematicians (sewing machine) or doing something not quite right (the above machinery/doctor/railway)...

Gandhi’s argument seems flawed. It’s arbitrary to decide the needle is a primary need because it requires delineation of need vs. want. If we took a time machine back every 100 years, that delineation would be quite apparently different at each stop. Yesterday’s luxuries are today’s basic human rights. I probably wouldn’t have to use up much of my remaining thorium to find a century that laughs at the idea of a school being a basic human right.

He also seems backwards on the outcomes of things like what you listed. Those things all raised people out of poverty and serfdom.

It’s interesting, though, to see someone as revered as Gandhi having to add epicycles to his beliefs after having seen the other side of it.

You can expect an argument to stand the test of time, but not a material example, because the speaker is always someone in his circumstances. I'm not saying anything for or against the argument, just that the foundation of your disagreement isn't too solid.

I think ghandi speaks much more from a tone of trying to make you think differently, not necessarily being right or wrong, but making you accept or reject him by making you contemplate for a moment his perspective.

In this case you reaffirmed your view of the world that technology is a vector of freedom, but what is the circumstances of that technology? Because when you think of ghandi as an Indian, and that Indians suffered a humanitarian crisis in the hands of the English empire, I can't help but wonder if the colonizers just created the poison than sold them the medicine.

So from his point of view he's right to reject technology that are colonization instruments, but if that same tech would otherwise take place in the world from the needs of the people, then it would be an acceptable technology to adopt. And this argument is timeless, because how many current tech, the social networks, the language models, are actually being used as colonization tools today, by influencing elections or by spreading misinformation? We don't need to go that fast, not when the price to pay is our freedom.

I disagree his arguments are timeless.

https://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/hind_swaraj.pdf

I posted more in another comment on this thread but here’s a PDF of his book. Gandhi says in the “A Word of Explanation” section that he would welcome the natural destruction of hospitals. How is that timeless?

I have no idea, what's a hospital for him? Does he have the same idea of a hospital as we have? What if he's talking about the destruction of the hospitalar, higenic, disciplinary society of you extend it beyond the materialism of the word hospital?

Do you want to see beyond the mere meaning of words or do you just want to be a good thesaurus? Because we have the luxury of access to accumulated knowledge. Here I'm appropriating byong chul Hans lingo, but ghandi didn't have access to this vocabulary at his time. That's maybe the best he would have done, and it's a figure that I think is worth it giving the benefit of the doubt and reading him in good faith, but that requires lifting the lenses of skepticism for a little while.

The Flag of India today incorporates the Ashoka Chakra which is a stylized dharmic wheel symbol.

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

It previously incorporated the symbol of Indian independence and nationalism, the charkha or spinning-wheel. This is not a sewing machine. A spinning wheel is part of a machine used to spin textile fibers into yarn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_wheel#Charkha

Gandhi loved the spinning wheel, but he was citing the Singer sewing machine specifically as a "useful device... with a romance" that was perhaps secondary to his love for the actual spinning wheel, which is stated clearly elsewhere in the same document.

For thousands of years, women were formerly respected and revered for their spinning talents and skills, in pagan and Christian societies alike: such as the Greek goddess of Wisdom, Athena [Minerva] whose symbols included the distaff; this same distaff was also synedoche for the matriarchal aspect of any family, and mentioned in Proverbs 31, as a tool of the industrious and devoted wife.

It is no accident that, in Romance languages, "machina" is a feminine noun. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/machina#Latin

Some of the things he’s advocating seem nonsensical to me.

For example he says it would be a good thing if all railways and hospitals ended up being destroyed.

If all hospitals ended up destroyed what would happen to the people who need treatment for bacterial infections? Or need treatment for heart attacks? Or need dialysis? Or get necrotizing fasciitis and need surgery? Or need cancer treatment?

And if all the railways and factories and such are destroyed how do you manufacture medicine and antibiotics and other devices to save lives?

I understand the things I mentioned just now weren’t around in 1908 when Gandhi wrote that essay but who knows what advancements modern AI could bring that we can’t imagine now?

https://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/hind_swaraj.pdf

This is a PDF of that Gandhi book. Under the “A Word of Explanation” you find Gandhi saying he would welcome the natural destruction of hospitals and railways.

> what would happen to the people who need treatment…

In this respect Gandhi was essentially on the same page as RFK Jr. He thought people should try to lead healthy lives - diet, hygiene, exercise etc. - but ultimately that nature should take its course.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com