PKD didn’t consider encryption and the many tools we can use to thwart spying and surveillance. I’m tired of these articles that suggest we’re helpless fools sleepwalking into a dystopia. Encryption is all we have now to fight Orwellian dystopias and it’s worth having good opsec (depending on your threat model). I feel very safe and cozy on the web and with technology in general because it’s all locked down. MFA. Password managers, AD blockers, secure operating systems, compartmentalized identities etc
And in addition, to say we can use encryption to fight the surveillance state is a tacit admission that the system actually works as described, or at least that is the intent. And again Dick was not trying to predict actual technology. He was mainly thinking about how it could be used, and he was frequently on the mark.
To illustrate how far this discussion is from PKD's frame of reference, PKD didn't need encryption when VALIS used a pink laser beam from space to trigger anamnesis so he remembered that he was a secret Christian in ancient Rome, and also predicted that his son would suffer from an inguinal hernia.
In case that wasn't clear enough, PKD wasn't talking about what you're talking about.
Where reading PKD and absorbing his worldview ends and a career in infosec begins is incresingly vague. I've been in it since the 90's and tbh, sometimes I think cybersecurity is just a way of collecting undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenics and setting them against one another for sport. If it weren't, how would we know?
There is a great talk by him from about '77 where he outlines the basic idea that we are living in a simulation that became the basis for the plot of The Matrix movies, and the logic is pretty classic psychological disassociation and paranoia you get from using drugs over time. Not to diminish his huge contributions, but there's stuff that's right on the edge. One of the beautiful elements of the "Mr. Robot" series is that this underlying question is also a major plot point. You can see him in the video here (sorry, the better versions seem to haven scrubbed) https://youtu.be/_U6lgSbPj8Q?t=47 , and he's got the kind of blunted affect that is typically associated with decline. His book "Exegesis," which were the letters he was writing to people at the time are consistent with indications something was going wrong as well. When I was just learning synths and a new sampler over the pandemic, I produced a track from a live session with samples from the speech, albeit they were in reference to the "Computer Controlled" logo on the 303 bass synth I used in it: https://soundcloud.com/n-gram-music/exegesis , but I sampled just the best parts.
This is to say, neither PKD nor hackers concerned about surveillance dystopia today may have a reliable picture, as paranoia can be really enveloping. That said, of course that's what They would say - you can see how this becomes an inescapable spiral. Paranoia is the iterated logic of an idea and unless you uproot the foudational one, by virtue of perfectly reasonable and consistent logic, it's going to creep back.
You're assuming that we're talking about a government surveillance setup where information is intended to be private. But the article's discussion still applies when the subject matter is canceling people on social networks.
In fact it seems even more apropos of the dual identity of both subject and narc that the article discusses. Traditional government surveillance makes most of us solely subjects with little role in the enforcement process. But in a world where mob justice applies social sanctions, we're all simultaneously judges and candidates to become defendants, able to be condemned by our own words. Encryption is irrelevant when those words are intended for public consumption.
Black Mirror did an episode on what it would look like if your social reputation were reified into concrete societal privileges. That kind of ad absurdum exploration makes the surveillance state of social networks much easier to recognize.
PKD didn’t consider encryption and the many tools we can use to thwart spying and surveillance.
I have lost count of the times people used encryption and either it was broken or subverted in some way, an example being the FBI creating its own encryption app as a major honeypot. Encryption apps, chat programs , protocols, etc. have a recurring tendency to be broken or have leaks.
This either satire or laughably naive. You think big brother doesnt have disproportionate access to crack or backdoor the tech that makes you feel so safe?
Interesting writeup, and the modern surveillance state certainly has a lot of parallels to Philip K. Dick's world, although the personal flavor of the latter - i.e. the extensive use of undercover STASI-type operatives in A Scanner Darkly, characterized by the betrayal of trust in personal and intimate relationships, is not as much of an obvious general feature of Facebook-type data collection and NSA archival data tracking of both American citizens and non-citizens.
At least our current system is not (yet) a true panopticon, which is a system where the prison guards can see all the prisoners, all the time, but the prisoners cannot see or communicate with one another. People can still communicate with one another, but the expectation of privacy is almost entirely gone. Certainly the power structure can see who is communicating with who via metadata monitoring, even if strong encryption can hide the content of the communication in many cases.
The extent to which general knowledge of this constant monitoring changes mass social behavior isn't really known, but one imagines it's the kind of thing the research anthropologists in CIA Behavioral Studies programs - characters that populate many PKD works - are obsessed with.
Incidentally, PKD's drug-psychosis-theme in many of his works is most likely linked to amphetamine psychosis, a fairly well-studied and well-understood side effect of constant use of amphetamines and their derivatives or analogues (i.e amphetamine, (Adderall), methamphetamine, MDMA (Ecstacy), methylphenidate (Ritalin)). These widely prescribed, used and abused substances should be regarded with more caution, I think - particularly when it comes to ADHD diagnoses in children. Certainly the for-profit drug manufacturers shouldn't be trusted on this, nor the mass social behavior manipulation types.
Also, it's likely that Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, another vision of a drug-addled dystopian future (1932), was a major influence on PKD's dystopian works.
The breakdown of personal relationships has been influenced by Facebook style social media. We crested that wave back in 2012-2015 when politics roared across the web and split families, wives and husbands and laid the groundwork for making any form of verbal negativity a social faux pas.
It is close enough to a true panopticon. Inside of any form of web communication, the compulsion to not say anything that rocks the boat too much is felt and seen clearly in people's behaviour. Even in "private" encrypted chat the culture is one of which we shouldn't say anything lest it be leaked, evidence of that outcome or not.
Drawing conclusions from ADHD related diagnoses is difficult. The illness is incredibly poorly defined and the state-of-the-art biological research has yet to identify what the problem is, or who even has it. The waters are even muddier, ADHD is frequently diagnosed in the place of other hidden difficulties like narcolepsy, depression, thyroid problems, vitamin deficiency and more. I agree more caution is warranted and also more research. Psychologists operate in a grey area where they can prescribe and hide more than is arguably justifiable.
I don't like this fearmongering about central stimulant treatment of ADHD in children. Stimulant treatment in childhood is the best verified psychiatric treatment we have, period. Long term studies have shown a significant reduction of neurological abnormality and executive dysfunction. Remember, ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder. Treating it early can be the difference between a good life and a life plagued with comorbidity, unemployment and poor executive function.
Don't be so hasty to condemn kids to this miserable existence based on some vague worries about stimulant psychosis, which is very rare with current treatment protocols and most cases are due to abuse.
1) ADHD diagnoses are a relatively new phenomenon, which did not exist before the early 1980s. The fact that these diagnoses created a multi-billion dollar market for amphetamine manufacturers can hardly be ignored when discussing this issue.
2) A specific neurological problem is very hard to diagnose accurately, and there's no independent biochemical/molecular test for ADHD. Assuming real examples of ADHD do in fact exist, massive levels of overdiagnosis are entirely possible.
3) It's entirely possible that some people do find these drugs helpful in their day-to-day lives, even if they have nothing like 'clinical pathology' to excuse or justify their use of such substances. For example, caffeine is not considered an ADHD treatment, although it may help with focus for some people.
They didn't use the term in the 1960s, but they did talk about kids who could not sit still in the classroom. And they didn't, as far as I know, use speed then, but they did try other stuff. Sorry for no details, but I was a kid myself.
It was known as Minimal Brain Dysfunction in the original DSM(1952) and Hyperkinetic Reaction of Childhood in DSM-II(1968). But in fact use of amphetamine as a treatment goes all the way back to the 30s! And Ritalin(methylphenidate) appeared in the 1950s.
> it’s entirely possible that some people find these drugs helpful in their day to day lives
This is a dishonest representation. It’s a gross understatement to say “some people” find it helpful when I and many people personally know those who have had their lives radically changed by prescription ADHD treatment
Not really true. The name ADHD and the now deprecated ADD originated in DSM-III in 1980 but the actual disorder has been discussed in the literature since the 19th century, and was present under a different name(minimal brain dysfunction) already in the original DSM.
> Assuming real examples of ADHD do in fact exist
You implying this needs to be an assumption when there is broad scientific consensus that ADHD is a real disorder, only makes you seem biased. I'm not saying overdiagnosis isn't an issue. The US is particularly bad here, just like with every other instance of oversized corporate influence. But implying ADHD is some big pharma hoax is needlessly dichotomous and not at all supported by evidence.
3) Just because something is "entirely possible" doesn't mean it's the case. And once again research into amphetamine has shown that healthy subjects have little if any measurable benefit from taking it whereas people with ADHD can have life-changing benefits.
You seem to enjoy listing things that are "entirely possible". Might I suggest reading some research?
> First, objective tests for ADHD are lacking, a problem shared with most other psychiatric conditions. Guidelines for proper diagnosis must be followed, so that disorders with similar symptoms (such as conduct disorder or bipolar disorder) do not receive inappropriate stimulant treatment.
> Second, prescription rates of stimulants (and other psychotropic medications) have greatly increased, at least in the United States, even for preschoolers. About half of U.S. children and adolescents diagnosed with ADHD receive stimulant medications or related agents.
> Third, unintended side effects may accompany stimulant use. Most are mild, but public health concerns have arisen about the potential for negative cardiovascular effects and suicidal thoughts [this is relevant to PKD's history, note he died of a stroke, and had at least one suicidal episode]
> Fourth, questions abound about the potential for “diversion” of prescription stimulants to people without ADHD, related to improvement of study skills and possible euphoriant effects.
As far as the 'clincal reality' of ADHD, I'd argue that the scientific basis of psychiatric disorder classifications and the efficacy of treatments is not that clear, relative to say, a diagnosis of drug-resitant tuberculosis infection. For example, the entire serotonin theory of depression is now on shaky ground due to apparent fraud in historical studies. This doesn't mean anti-depressants and amphetamine derivatives don't provide some benefit to people, but the whole field's not on very solid ground.
Interesting that you ignore the fact that you were caught grossly misrepresenting the history of ADHD as a clinical entity yourself. This makes it hard to take you seriously.
You mention the "serotonin theory" as if it's been a theory with wide consensus behind it, when it never was. The wider monoamine hypothesis was just a loose idea based on the efficacy of monoaminergic medication(starting with MAOIs in the 50s). It was always controversial, and studies have always been mixed on this. The hypothesis saw a brief surge in the 90s when highly selective serotonergic medications were shown to be effective. But research has moved on since then, showing that effect of SSRIs is more strongly linked to upregulation of things like BDNF. The review from 2022 on the serotonin hypothesis was not some earth-shattering result, it just confirmed what most researchers in the field already suspected for the last 2 decades.
Once again your description of psychiatric clinical practice and research comes off as a caricature gained from mainly consuming mainstream simplifications of the research, and I'm done engaging with it.
Digging through those references seems to point to a very low level of ADHD diagnoses and treatment in the 1970s relative to the 1990s, for example. Was there a massive undiagnosed disorder among American children in the 1970s?
Notably, the CDC only starts tracking ADHD diagnoses starting in 1997!
What does that curve look like if you extend in back to 1967, which is apparently when the NIH began funding US academic studies on the behavioral effects of treating children with amphetamines?
I'd remind you that this is a Philip K Dick thread. What do you think PKD would make of a program that delivers mass quantities of amphetamines and amphetamine derivatives to children in the name of helping them control their classroom behavior, really?
I love how their comments section censor any mention of him to D**k.
Big PKD fan myself, some of his stories seem impossibly fanciful and he does bang on about drugs an AWFUL lot but the stories can have a lot of insight in them all the same.
In one of his books, the characters take drugs so powerful reality itself changes. Bit rum even for PKD, I had thought. Until I read the account of a depression sufferer when asked how he knew his medication was kicking in. He said he felt no internal changes whatsoever, but knew it was working when other people starting being nicer to him. And I realised PKD had got to the truth of something, how we take drugs maybe not to change ourselves but our perceptions of the world, and if your perception of the world changes is that not the world changing?
No. Changing our perceptions of the world does not change the world. If I put on rose colored glasses I change nothing except how I perceive the world, the world stays the same.
1. Your mind is also part of the world. Changing your perceptions is changing part of the world.
2. All human minds are only capable of perceiving a small fraction of the total information content of the world, and most of our perceptions are based on constructed social realities (e.g., as this is a tech forum, you could say we live in a virtual machine where small rectangles of woven fiber are given a meaning far beyond the mere fact of their existence, purely based upon our collective perceptions of what those rectangles represent). Changing our perceptions can therefore change this social reality and, as a result, change the context in which we live.
I think that's one of the most important qualities of literature and poetry—they can illuminate those "truer than science" personal-perceptual aspects of the human experience, which are hard to get at otherwise. Literature as a whole ends up providing a kind of language for our inner lives, and a map of what is human.
That's a fairly apt description of coming out of a depression from my own experience. But the world hasn't changed, just your perceptions of it. I.e part.of depression for some people is irrationally perceiving judgement or dislike from others where there is none. In getting better, it might seem like people are nicer, but the change is really internal.
But is it though? There's the old saying that people will treat you the same way that you treat them (not a universal truth by any measure though). If you present different social cues based on the way you're feeling -- and these can be damnably subtle -- then people might actually be nicer in casual, every day interactions, rather than just seeming so.
PKD there ['drugs so powerful reality itself changes'] is getting into the concept of the immersion of the self in a perceived reality, one of the major themes he returns to over and over.
It can be a difficult concept to grasp for those who've lived their entire lives immersed in one single viewpoint (religious fundamentalists for example). In such cases, it's rather like trying to explain what 'wet' means to a fish. The fish has never experienced 'not-wet', and so has no notion that it's immersed in anything - that's just its perceived reality. Hence the 'take the fish out of the water' concept can be seen as a kind of deprogramming, in PKD's view, or escaping the brainwashing imposed by authoritarian socieites of all stripes. There are those who ardently argue against this kind of thinking, curiously enough - for example, they'll say we should tell historical lies to children in the name of enhancing their faith in their political leaders and state institutions.
In terms of actual physical reality, though, humans have tended to rely on shared experience of global external state, in the programmer's lingo. Internal object state has to be tested against other's perceptions, which is why if people hear or see something strange or out-of-the-ordinary, the first thing we do is ask someone else "Hey did you hear that? Did you see what I just saw?"
Now if others don't confirm our reality, we might worry about our mental state - i.e. auditory hallucinations are a well-known feature of schizophrenia, for example.
Concentration-of-attention is the most popular and powerful drug in the world. When employed everything becomes clearer. We master our task. The difference between true and false becomes obvious.
Yeah it’s my favorite PKD book although I wouldn’t recommend it as a first one.
It has some mystique because apparently Dick himself was so terrified of its contents that he never read it after writing it, not even for proofreading.
This piece shows little awareness of Philip K. Dick's work or the circumstances of his life. PKD wasn't on the typical agenda of a sci-fi author, so it won't really work to analyze his work that way. PKD's fiction doesn't have any clear goal of futurology, deeply analyzing technology (like, say, Arthur C. Clarke) or presenting dystopias (like, say, George Orwell). A Scanner Darkly was written at a tough time in his life and was autobiographical in some fragmentary way. Tessa Dick made a sci-fi novel out of it, but the veneer over 1960s California is paper-thin.
It would be more adequate to say that PKD focused on spiritual and religious subjects, particularly the nature of reality and how the "little creatures" suffer and struggle to survive. This isn't a mode of futurology. PKD struggled with the symptoms of diagnosed schizophrenia and his work powerfully reflects that personal struggle. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" is about a spiritual dystopia that doesn't center the replicants at all - that theme of "our idea of the human" comes rather from Ridley Scott.
Then comes the political pivot near the end of this blog post. PKD didn't predict COVID-19 or even try. It's spectacularly unclear that he was trying to warn us about the "danger" of qualified scientists telling us that it would be helpful to get vaccinated and wear masks to reduce the death and disability caused by a lethal pandemic. COVID-19 has killed over a million people in the US alone - hundreds of 9/11s worth. This isn't a conspiracy to control you with technology. To quote a certain wise wizard, "I am not trying to rob you. I'm trying to help you."
It's weird how they focused on A Scanner Darkly, I thought Ubik was more prescient in the small part of the plot that corporations run the world and advertising for them is ubiquitous.
One of them is a movie and the other one isn't (although searching IMDB tells me that an Ubik movie is in development - yay!). You can't expert journalists to read books now can you?
Going off the main topic, I was reading one of PKD's short stories, Second Variety, and I thought I knew how it was going to end because it was made into a movie I had seen, and it did turn out as expected but the movie that was made from this short story (I have watched it as well) was not the first one that came to mind.
I'm all for criticizing hypocrisy, especially in government, but the COVID example strikes me as perhaps the worst possible for demonstrating the point. Some level of "draconian" action would have helped slow, or even stop, the spread of COVID-19; at least in the US, none was taken.
A far better example, which actually involves surveillance rather than unrelated masking and distancing measures, would be politicians and wealthy businesspeople pushing invasive CSAM detection systems into consumer devices "for the good of the children" while schmoozing with Jeffrey Epstein.
Typical faff from Unherd; a long article full of information better explained elsewhere followed by a poorly veiled gesture towards their existing agenda.
I absolutely agree. You're comparing an undemocratic illiberal totalitarian state's violent actions against citizens to the US government giving away vaccines, stopping international travel for a short time, and some states and municipalities mandating the wearing of masks. Nobody was taken to the gulag about it. That's not dystopian.
I do find it amusing how far the window for what Americans consider draconian is from the rest of the world. If I was smarter I could perhaps write an essay drawing on our absurd focus on individualism.
Actually, almost half of Dems & 20% of GOP wanted to lock up Americans who didn't get the shots. NY State was about to vote on such a measure until it got public.
International travel (into the USA for non residents/citizens) is still stopped for people who didn't take the vaccine even though it doesn't work and never stopped transmission anyway. So it was absolutely a set of Draconian and totalitarian moves that had no impact whatsoever.
If we are only free from "draconian" action when it's convenient for the elites then we are not really ever free from "draconian" action. The first thing china did was lockdowns and masks, we did exactly what the authoritarians did, we just didn't travel down that road quite as far.
Unherd is indeed agenda driven. A more thoughtful piece would have traced the evolution of the a modern panopticon back through the the terrorism panic of the early 2000s.
We don't get to see, directly, how everyone else experiences life. They might tell us, and they might do so more or less truthfully and accurately. They might struggle to communicate those things in a way we really understand. Meanwhile, we ourselves may struggle to explain our experiences and perspectives to others, or be ashamed or embarrassed about doing so.
One aim of literature and poetry is (or may be) to open up that inner world—to do a better job of expressing those experiences than most folks manage to, to do so across a breadth of experience we may not all encounter, and to make explicit and examinable things we may not ourselves think to examine, or may otherwise think shameful or private and ours alone.
Like, say, the experience of taking a drug and not feeling at all like you changed, but that the world did, as in the original example.
The practical utility of this in communication is evident in that the well-read tend to reach for episodes from literature or passages of poetry to relate difficult concepts concerning that inner life, and this practice is in fact helpful to readers who have a similar background, or, if you will, a common language (as in the section of my post that you quoted). This is seen extensively in philosophy, for example, and is so helpful in religion that even those that try to downplay literature or scripture (Buddhism, for example) tend to end up with extensive literatures regardless, because they are so useful for relating difficult, very personal ideas and experiences, even if they can only ever be the "finger that points" and never directly the thing-in-itself. For the individual per se it can help us understand ourselves, help us feel less alone, act as a kind of therapy to some degree, be one factor in working out what exactly we're doing here, what we want or ought to be doing, expand or exercise our empathy, and provide ethical and moral guideposts more effectively than any kind of "do this, don't do that" list of bullet points.
> and to make explicit and examinable things we may not ourselves think to examine, or may otherwise think shameful or private and ours alone
That's just a claim, I could write the complete opposite and have it be just as (in)valid.
> be one factor in working out what exactly we're doing here, what we want or ought to be doing, expand
OK, so give some examples. Without saying "we all are doing/wanting different things". Get a mate, have a comfortable life... any advance on that?
> and provide ethical and moral guideposts more effectively than any kind of "do this, don't do that" list of bullet points
Another unverified claim and I don't accept any of it.
Point is when artistic types are pushed into a corner they come up with this kind of handwavy stuff about being human or whatever, the point being the fuzzier the claim the harder it is to dispute.
Art needs to at least try to be as rigorous as science, as it stands it so often lets itself down.
Shrug. If you don't find it valuable, feel free to ignore it. Meanwhile most of your requests amount to "give me a liberal education in a Hackernews post" so are entirely ridiculous.
Maybe it's not valuable because it's not true? (and maybe it is because it is - but how can I tell). In science we can point to solid results like having electric lights to write literature by.
What is literature worth - show me some measures. Oh, you can't. That doesn't make it worthless, I love a good book, and be happy if you said it brings much happiness to people, that alone would justify it. But you claim more, far too much.
Show me that liberal arts types are on average more ethical than science types, which seems to be what you claimed, or maybe don't claim so much.
Again, feel free to disagree with and ignore the entire millenia-long traditions of the liberal arts outside math and science if you like. You may be right, and all those other people wrong. It doesn't seem like you're really trying to engage with it, though, and the answers to these "show me..." type requests are—and I'm not trying to be flippant—literally "read a book" (or, rather, lots of them—guides to which might be valuable are easy to come by) which is why I'm not trying to answer them. The attempt to address them is sometimes called the "Great Conversation" and can fill whole bookcases. But if you don't think anything's missing in your life that they might help fill in, or that it's even possible there can be any truth there because only science can provide truth, then don't. That's fine too.
Arguing with artistic types is frustrating because they have no rigour. For instance "because only science can provide truth" - I never said that.
(edit: regarding "Maybe it's not valuable because it's not true?" I'm saying maybe literature is not as valuable as you claim, just so that doesn't get misunderstood, nothing to do with science).
"But if you don't think anything's missing in your life that they might help fill in" - Sure, I love a good escapist read and literature can definitely provide for that, but beyond that, what I want is a job, a GF, drugs, sex, going out and seeing some good mates. Lessee, will literature help there?
You claim, but are willing to provide no evidence. You won't even answer a simple question I asked, let me try again "Get a mate, have a comfortable life..." - what else?
Life is not awash with deep questions, most stuff in life is trivial and straightforwards.
> Show me that liberal arts types are on average more ethical than science types
Liberal arts types? Science types? More ethical?! I could pick out more but that was a fun, dense one, and anyway I don't want to engage on that level because I don't think it'd help this exchange a bit. Frustrating indeed.
Physician, et c., et c.
I'm not trying to argue, anyway—I answered one reasonable (if a touch hostile) clarifying question and have since been trying to communicate that "recite entire fields of the humanities to me" is unreasonable in this context. How would you react to my demanding proof that science is as good at getting at the truth as you seem to think it is? (incidentally, outside this for-the-sake-of-argument analogy, I do probably largely agree with you on that, so this isn't intended as an actual point of contention) If you've got the patience of a saint, maybe you point out some examples of evident successes, you explain the process—but I say that's not enough, examples of apparent successes aren't proof, and so on. At some point you probably ought to tell me to go read a damn book or take a few courses (i.e. get an education in the thing I'm dismissing but also have so many questions about). It'd be crazy to expect you to produce a philosophy of science course (at a minimum—we could, if I were obstinate, keep digging deeper forever) over HN posts.
My usual approach if a whole lot of apparently-smart-people-with-seemingly-decent-taste think something is valuable and that certain things are true about it and I don't see it is to assume I lack the necessary education and that if I want to be able to understand it and have an informed opinion on it, I need to seek out that education, and to engage with that thing a whole bunch even if it's unpleasant and seems pointless or even bad at first.
I picked that attitude up from... literature and philosophy, largely. I've found it useful. I've never gotten over that initial barrier by asking questions to which I think I already have the answers, on a web forum. Not even (hahaha) this one. In the case of the arts the usual argument for their value, as far as what convinces people, is precisely that kind of direct engagement, perhaps with some guidance from a teacher.
Practically no-one arrives at the conclusion that the arts are valuable and express truths or provide an improving education by reading some scientific paper. Yet, so very many people do reach that conclusion, plenty of them a hell of a lot smarter than me, and they keep doing it well into the scientific revolution—including tons of scientists ("science type"—smh). So the best I can write is that, if you actually want to be convinced, that's the thing to do.
What you seem to be doing instead is asking me to prove to a skeptic's satisfaction that general relativity is true, purely via slam poetry and using only the vocabulary contained in Doctor Seuss books. Be pretty fucking impressive if I pulled that off, right? Wrong tool, wrong approach, if that skeptic's actually interested in being convinced—not that such a thing couldn't be good, or even useful, if such a work existed, just as some kind of scientific examination of the value of the arts might be good and useful, but in either case I doubt it would suffice to convince anyone on its own.
But, I repeat yet again, if things are going swimmingly for you, disregarding the possibility of valuable truth or insight existing in the arts or their being improving, keep going as you are. Seriously. The arts are largely a kind of exercise in working through our collective existential confusion and trauma, and if you don't see the need for that, holy shit, that's great—or if you do see the need for it, and have genuinely sought comfort and answers and guidance across the liberal arts and found all but science wa...
You have the right to talk about confusion and trauma when you have had your life (and your siblings lives also) destroyed by child abuse. You, with your nice mental health, and your lovely stable relationships and peace of mind, something I've never had. Ever had half a lifetime of clinical depression, the real shit, like blackness eating you from the inside out and it hurts like you can't imagine, no, not "having a bad day" depression. You talk about insights into human nature but there are some insights you have never had and never will and don't know how fortunate you are, you with your sodding self-indulgent burblings of 'confusion' and 'trauma', so STFU you have no experience of what other's life can be like and you never want to know that life can be a curse. Just shut up.
Damn dude(ette?). I sincerely wish you peace. I suggest we not continue this (doesn't seem like you were planning to anyway). Sorry if this exchange caused you pain.
Before there was science, technology, math and statistical inference, there were our dreams and our stories about a world that could be something other than what it was at that very moment for that very individual.
Have you noticed how many Star Trek gadgets are real things you can now buy in a store? That does not happen in some inevitable scientific process that will eventually produce obvious predefined advancements. It happens because our art and our philosophy inspires our science and our engineering. We are what we dreamed we could be.
You are sitting on top of a very large mountain of human achievement in the humanities. Law, government, peace, prosperity, human rights, ethics. These things all spring from the humanities. They were all invented before the scientific method. We would be still living in caves without them.
I was talking about literature. You just expanded it a whole lot, which diffuses the point I was making. I don't think this is a tactic, I just don't think you can focus.
Nonethless, "It happens because our art and our philosophy [1] inspires our science and our engineering [2]" You conveniently assume [1] and [2] are divorced and each lies with two entirely divided castes. They are aspects of the same.
"Law, government, peace, prosperity, human rights, ethics. These things all spring from the humanities"
> Show me that liberal arts types are on average more ethical than science types
Are interest in science and interest in liberal arts mutually exclusive now? Anecdotally, I would say that the two interests are positively correlated.
As to evidence of the benefits of reading fiction, there has been a fair amount of research done in that area[1].
You perpetuated this flamewar several times. Can you please not? We're trying to avoid this kind of thing, especially the kind that degenerates into a tit-for-tat spat, and double especially when the topic is something tediously generic like science-vs-humanities mud wrestling.
You started a flamewar with this, and perpetuated it downthread. Can you please not? We're trying to avoid this kind of thing, especially the kind that degenerates into a tit-for-tat spat, and double especially when the topic is something tediously generic like science-vs-humanities mud wrestling.
On a light note, I live down the street from PKD's old house in Point Reyes. I drove by yesterday and took this pic. The current owner has setup a Starlink above his old study where he wrote many of his books.
I wonder what he would have thought if someone told him that 50 years later, just a few feet above his head, that there would be an antenna talking to a swarm of low earth orbit satellites in space, that could access all information known to man. But, at least 20% of the data flow would be used to share images of people having sex with each other.
He actually might have been one of the few people from that era who would NOT have been surprised this was the future.
>"Technology was and is perhaps the most Californian aspect of the American mythos. The idea that the universal constants of human nature were at war with the mutilating demands of technology-driven systems was a very Sixties Californian conceit, to which Dick’s fellow anti-utopians each adhered in their own way: In Kesey’s showdown between man and the castrating nanny-state; in Didion’s emphasis on the vanishing virtue of self-reliance; in Pynchon’s degenerate Ivy League Puritanism; in Thompson’s drug-addled primitivism; and in Stone’s Catholic idea of devotion to a God that might somehow salve the wounds of the survivors once the great American adventure goes bust."
What an interesting quote!
I will have to check out some of the works of those other authors in the future, to examine the idea sets they propose, and then (after having read them thoroughly!) possibly add some of the better/more interesting ideas they propose -- to my "chock-full-o'-everything philosophical idea corpus in my mind" <g> (For lack of a better term!)
Anyway, a very interesting quote -- worthy of future study!
P.K. churned out much of his work in an amphetamine haze driven by then need to make money as writing was his sole means of support. I think a lot of California dystopian writings can be attributed to the overuse of amphetamines. The Summer of Love was destroyed by it as the phrase that emerged at the time was "Speed Kills." Joan Didion wrote about it "Slouching Towards Bethlehem.'
On the other hand I'm a optimistic utopian, so I may be inclined to minimize and disregard dystopian writing.
Where P.K. Dick really got me is in "How to Build a..." [1] in which he's very interested in the nature of reality and open to the idea that it is far more fungible than we think and in fact there may be a greater intelligence at work in the Universe that arranges reality in such a way as to communicate to the participant who is paying close attention. It doesn't scare and depress me to think that I don't have the control I thought I did and am mostly along for the ride. It's also exciting to think "more will be revealed"
[1] "How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later" Philip K. Dick, 1978
> there may be a greater intelligence at work in the Universe
He believed that there may be two greater intelligences diametrically opposed to each other and vying for control over the universe in order to remake it according to their own preferences. He expressed in his interview in Metz, France 1977[0] that he believes they are engaged in a constant struggle of programming and reprogramming the universe and history each trying to undo the others work. He connects this idea to his novels The Man In The High Castle and Flow My Tears The Policeman Said both of which involve alternate timelines. He even thought that he could retrieve memories of other timelines or other incarnations and that some of them were in worlds that were much more brutal than our own.
All this to say that his belief in a higher power certainly followed the same lines of thought that he explored in his novels.
> a surveillance society run by engineers would feel like to its inhabitants with a nauseating accuracy that did not become fully apparent until the rise of the modern tech surveillance complex.
Dick used to write letters to the FBI in the 1970s urging them to investigate fellow science fiction writers like Thomas Disch or professors like Fredrick Jameson. He was a participant in (delusionaly?) ratting people out to the secret police. I'll leave it to others to forecast a dystopia, he seems to forecast a dystopia he is trying to build.
Read most of Phil's books - not more than once - enjoyed them for what they were ... paranoid, dark, imaginative, disorganized, groping ... but wouldn't include him with the great writers (showing what it can mean to be human in its great variety ... and how that can be denied us ... revealing more as we age).
Bladerunner (the director's cut anyway) was a great film, still among my top favorites. It added much-needed clarity to some of Phil's best cud-chewings. Without the film, I think he'd have remained relatively unknown. Other authors, before and since him, I may turn back to for another read - because they offer me more than more confusion.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 158 ms ] thread[0] https://www.wired.com/2013/09/nsa-backdoored-and-stole-keys/
We aren't. 95% of people are.
In case that wasn't clear enough, PKD wasn't talking about what you're talking about.
There is a great talk by him from about '77 where he outlines the basic idea that we are living in a simulation that became the basis for the plot of The Matrix movies, and the logic is pretty classic psychological disassociation and paranoia you get from using drugs over time. Not to diminish his huge contributions, but there's stuff that's right on the edge. One of the beautiful elements of the "Mr. Robot" series is that this underlying question is also a major plot point. You can see him in the video here (sorry, the better versions seem to haven scrubbed) https://youtu.be/_U6lgSbPj8Q?t=47 , and he's got the kind of blunted affect that is typically associated with decline. His book "Exegesis," which were the letters he was writing to people at the time are consistent with indications something was going wrong as well. When I was just learning synths and a new sampler over the pandemic, I produced a track from a live session with samples from the speech, albeit they were in reference to the "Computer Controlled" logo on the 303 bass synth I used in it: https://soundcloud.com/n-gram-music/exegesis , but I sampled just the best parts.
This is to say, neither PKD nor hackers concerned about surveillance dystopia today may have a reliable picture, as paranoia can be really enveloping. That said, of course that's what They would say - you can see how this becomes an inescapable spiral. Paranoia is the iterated logic of an idea and unless you uproot the foudational one, by virtue of perfectly reasonable and consistent logic, it's going to creep back.
In fact it seems even more apropos of the dual identity of both subject and narc that the article discusses. Traditional government surveillance makes most of us solely subjects with little role in the enforcement process. But in a world where mob justice applies social sanctions, we're all simultaneously judges and candidates to become defendants, able to be condemned by our own words. Encryption is irrelevant when those words are intended for public consumption.
Black Mirror did an episode on what it would look like if your social reputation were reified into concrete societal privileges. That kind of ad absurdum exploration makes the surveillance state of social networks much easier to recognize.
I have lost count of the times people used encryption and either it was broken or subverted in some way, an example being the FBI creating its own encryption app as a major honeypot. Encryption apps, chat programs , protocols, etc. have a recurring tendency to be broken or have leaks.
At least our current system is not (yet) a true panopticon, which is a system where the prison guards can see all the prisoners, all the time, but the prisoners cannot see or communicate with one another. People can still communicate with one another, but the expectation of privacy is almost entirely gone. Certainly the power structure can see who is communicating with who via metadata monitoring, even if strong encryption can hide the content of the communication in many cases.
The extent to which general knowledge of this constant monitoring changes mass social behavior isn't really known, but one imagines it's the kind of thing the research anthropologists in CIA Behavioral Studies programs - characters that populate many PKD works - are obsessed with.
Incidentally, PKD's drug-psychosis-theme in many of his works is most likely linked to amphetamine psychosis, a fairly well-studied and well-understood side effect of constant use of amphetamines and their derivatives or analogues (i.e amphetamine, (Adderall), methamphetamine, MDMA (Ecstacy), methylphenidate (Ritalin)). These widely prescribed, used and abused substances should be regarded with more caution, I think - particularly when it comes to ADHD diagnoses in children. Certainly the for-profit drug manufacturers shouldn't be trusted on this, nor the mass social behavior manipulation types.
Also, it's likely that Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, another vision of a drug-addled dystopian future (1932), was a major influence on PKD's dystopian works.
It is close enough to a true panopticon. Inside of any form of web communication, the compulsion to not say anything that rocks the boat too much is felt and seen clearly in people's behaviour. Even in "private" encrypted chat the culture is one of which we shouldn't say anything lest it be leaked, evidence of that outcome or not.
Drawing conclusions from ADHD related diagnoses is difficult. The illness is incredibly poorly defined and the state-of-the-art biological research has yet to identify what the problem is, or who even has it. The waters are even muddier, ADHD is frequently diagnosed in the place of other hidden difficulties like narcolepsy, depression, thyroid problems, vitamin deficiency and more. I agree more caution is warranted and also more research. Psychologists operate in a grey area where they can prescribe and hide more than is arguably justifiable.
Don't be so hasty to condemn kids to this miserable existence based on some vague worries about stimulant psychosis, which is very rare with current treatment protocols and most cases are due to abuse.
1) ADHD diagnoses are a relatively new phenomenon, which did not exist before the early 1980s. The fact that these diagnoses created a multi-billion dollar market for amphetamine manufacturers can hardly be ignored when discussing this issue.
2) A specific neurological problem is very hard to diagnose accurately, and there's no independent biochemical/molecular test for ADHD. Assuming real examples of ADHD do in fact exist, massive levels of overdiagnosis are entirely possible.
3) It's entirely possible that some people do find these drugs helpful in their day-to-day lives, even if they have nothing like 'clinical pathology' to excuse or justify their use of such substances. For example, caffeine is not considered an ADHD treatment, although it may help with focus for some people.
This is a dishonest representation. It’s a gross understatement to say “some people” find it helpful when I and many people personally know those who have had their lives radically changed by prescription ADHD treatment
Not really true. The name ADHD and the now deprecated ADD originated in DSM-III in 1980 but the actual disorder has been discussed in the literature since the 19th century, and was present under a different name(minimal brain dysfunction) already in the original DSM.
> Assuming real examples of ADHD do in fact exist
You implying this needs to be an assumption when there is broad scientific consensus that ADHD is a real disorder, only makes you seem biased. I'm not saying overdiagnosis isn't an issue. The US is particularly bad here, just like with every other instance of oversized corporate influence. But implying ADHD is some big pharma hoax is needlessly dichotomous and not at all supported by evidence.
3) Just because something is "entirely possible" doesn't mean it's the case. And once again research into amphetamine has shown that healthy subjects have little if any measurable benefit from taking it whereas people with ADHD can have life-changing benefits.
You seem to enjoy listing things that are "entirely possible". Might I suggest reading some research?
The Global Market For ADHD Medications (2007)
https://sci-hub.se/10.1377/hlthaff.26.2.450
> Several key issues are salient.
> First, objective tests for ADHD are lacking, a problem shared with most other psychiatric conditions. Guidelines for proper diagnosis must be followed, so that disorders with similar symptoms (such as conduct disorder or bipolar disorder) do not receive inappropriate stimulant treatment.
> Second, prescription rates of stimulants (and other psychotropic medications) have greatly increased, at least in the United States, even for preschoolers. About half of U.S. children and adolescents diagnosed with ADHD receive stimulant medications or related agents.
> Third, unintended side effects may accompany stimulant use. Most are mild, but public health concerns have arisen about the potential for negative cardiovascular effects and suicidal thoughts [this is relevant to PKD's history, note he died of a stroke, and had at least one suicidal episode]
> Fourth, questions abound about the potential for “diversion” of prescription stimulants to people without ADHD, related to improvement of study skills and possible euphoriant effects.
As far as the 'clincal reality' of ADHD, I'd argue that the scientific basis of psychiatric disorder classifications and the efficacy of treatments is not that clear, relative to say, a diagnosis of drug-resitant tuberculosis infection. For example, the entire serotonin theory of depression is now on shaky ground due to apparent fraud in historical studies. This doesn't mean anti-depressants and amphetamine derivatives don't provide some benefit to people, but the whole field's not on very solid ground.
You mention the "serotonin theory" as if it's been a theory with wide consensus behind it, when it never was. The wider monoamine hypothesis was just a loose idea based on the efficacy of monoaminergic medication(starting with MAOIs in the 50s). It was always controversial, and studies have always been mixed on this. The hypothesis saw a brief surge in the 90s when highly selective serotonergic medications were shown to be effective. But research has moved on since then, showing that effect of SSRIs is more strongly linked to upregulation of things like BDNF. The review from 2022 on the serotonin hypothesis was not some earth-shattering result, it just confirmed what most researchers in the field already suspected for the last 2 decades.
Once again your description of psychiatric clinical practice and research comes off as a caricature gained from mainly consuming mainstream simplifications of the research, and I'm done engaging with it.
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/documents/Timeline.pdf
Digging through those references seems to point to a very low level of ADHD diagnoses and treatment in the 1970s relative to the 1990s, for example. Was there a massive undiagnosed disorder among American children in the 1970s?
Notably, the CDC only starts tracking ADHD diagnoses starting in 1997!
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/timeline.html
What does that curve look like if you extend in back to 1967, which is apparently when the NIH began funding US academic studies on the behavioral effects of treating children with amphetamines?
I agree with much of your argument but I think the question of how common ADHD medications affect people without ADHD is fairly inconclusive, see e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3591814/ and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3489818/ for examples that show some effects (and not others) and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6165228/ that does not (but with a small study size).
Big PKD fan myself, some of his stories seem impossibly fanciful and he does bang on about drugs an AWFUL lot but the stories can have a lot of insight in them all the same.
In one of his books, the characters take drugs so powerful reality itself changes. Bit rum even for PKD, I had thought. Until I read the account of a depression sufferer when asked how he knew his medication was kicking in. He said he felt no internal changes whatsoever, but knew it was working when other people starting being nicer to him. And I realised PKD had got to the truth of something, how we take drugs maybe not to change ourselves but our perceptions of the world, and if your perception of the world changes is that not the world changing?
On the other hand, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing it, doesn't go away.”
2. All human minds are only capable of perceiving a small fraction of the total information content of the world, and most of our perceptions are based on constructed social realities (e.g., as this is a tech forum, you could say we live in a virtual machine where small rectangles of woven fiber are given a meaning far beyond the mere fact of their existence, purely based upon our collective perceptions of what those rectangles represent). Changing our perceptions can therefore change this social reality and, as a result, change the context in which we live.
Forgive me for the high-school philosophizing.
Also...if butterflies can cause tornados, who says putting on your tinted glasses can't change the world?
I don't know how you'd test this though.
It can be a difficult concept to grasp for those who've lived their entire lives immersed in one single viewpoint (religious fundamentalists for example). In such cases, it's rather like trying to explain what 'wet' means to a fish. The fish has never experienced 'not-wet', and so has no notion that it's immersed in anything - that's just its perceived reality. Hence the 'take the fish out of the water' concept can be seen as a kind of deprogramming, in PKD's view, or escaping the brainwashing imposed by authoritarian socieites of all stripes. There are those who ardently argue against this kind of thinking, curiously enough - for example, they'll say we should tell historical lies to children in the name of enhancing their faith in their political leaders and state institutions.
In terms of actual physical reality, though, humans have tended to rely on shared experience of global external state, in the programmer's lingo. Internal object state has to be tested against other's perceptions, which is why if people hear or see something strange or out-of-the-ordinary, the first thing we do is ask someone else "Hey did you hear that? Did you see what I just saw?"
Now if others don't confirm our reality, we might worry about our mental state - i.e. auditory hallucinations are a well-known feature of schizophrenia, for example.
It has some mystique because apparently Dick himself was so terrified of its contents that he never read it after writing it, not even for proofreading.
It would be more adequate to say that PKD focused on spiritual and religious subjects, particularly the nature of reality and how the "little creatures" suffer and struggle to survive. This isn't a mode of futurology. PKD struggled with the symptoms of diagnosed schizophrenia and his work powerfully reflects that personal struggle. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" is about a spiritual dystopia that doesn't center the replicants at all - that theme of "our idea of the human" comes rather from Ridley Scott.
Then comes the political pivot near the end of this blog post. PKD didn't predict COVID-19 or even try. It's spectacularly unclear that he was trying to warn us about the "danger" of qualified scientists telling us that it would be helpful to get vaccinated and wear masks to reduce the death and disability caused by a lethal pandemic. COVID-19 has killed over a million people in the US alone - hundreds of 9/11s worth. This isn't a conspiracy to control you with technology. To quote a certain wise wizard, "I am not trying to rob you. I'm trying to help you."
A far better example, which actually involves surveillance rather than unrelated masking and distancing measures, would be politicians and wealthy businesspeople pushing invasive CSAM detection systems into consumer devices "for the good of the children" while schmoozing with Jeffrey Epstein.
Typical faff from Unherd; a long article full of information better explained elsewhere followed by a poorly veiled gesture towards their existing agenda.
China can't even stop it. It's not possible.
That IS dystopian.
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/par...
One aim of literature and poetry is (or may be) to open up that inner world—to do a better job of expressing those experiences than most folks manage to, to do so across a breadth of experience we may not all encounter, and to make explicit and examinable things we may not ourselves think to examine, or may otherwise think shameful or private and ours alone.
Like, say, the experience of taking a drug and not feeling at all like you changed, but that the world did, as in the original example.
The practical utility of this in communication is evident in that the well-read tend to reach for episodes from literature or passages of poetry to relate difficult concepts concerning that inner life, and this practice is in fact helpful to readers who have a similar background, or, if you will, a common language (as in the section of my post that you quoted). This is seen extensively in philosophy, for example, and is so helpful in religion that even those that try to downplay literature or scripture (Buddhism, for example) tend to end up with extensive literatures regardless, because they are so useful for relating difficult, very personal ideas and experiences, even if they can only ever be the "finger that points" and never directly the thing-in-itself. For the individual per se it can help us understand ourselves, help us feel less alone, act as a kind of therapy to some degree, be one factor in working out what exactly we're doing here, what we want or ought to be doing, expand or exercise our empathy, and provide ethical and moral guideposts more effectively than any kind of "do this, don't do that" list of bullet points.
That's just a claim, I could write the complete opposite and have it be just as (in)valid.
> be one factor in working out what exactly we're doing here, what we want or ought to be doing, expand
OK, so give some examples. Without saying "we all are doing/wanting different things". Get a mate, have a comfortable life... any advance on that?
> and provide ethical and moral guideposts more effectively than any kind of "do this, don't do that" list of bullet points
Another unverified claim and I don't accept any of it.
Point is when artistic types are pushed into a corner they come up with this kind of handwavy stuff about being human or whatever, the point being the fuzzier the claim the harder it is to dispute.
Art needs to at least try to be as rigorous as science, as it stands it so often lets itself down.
What is literature worth - show me some measures. Oh, you can't. That doesn't make it worthless, I love a good book, and be happy if you said it brings much happiness to people, that alone would justify it. But you claim more, far too much.
Show me that liberal arts types are on average more ethical than science types, which seems to be what you claimed, or maybe don't claim so much.
(edit: regarding "Maybe it's not valuable because it's not true?" I'm saying maybe literature is not as valuable as you claim, just so that doesn't get misunderstood, nothing to do with science).
"But if you don't think anything's missing in your life that they might help fill in" - Sure, I love a good escapist read and literature can definitely provide for that, but beyond that, what I want is a job, a GF, drugs, sex, going out and seeing some good mates. Lessee, will literature help there?
You claim, but are willing to provide no evidence. You won't even answer a simple question I asked, let me try again "Get a mate, have a comfortable life..." - what else?
Life is not awash with deep questions, most stuff in life is trivial and straightforwards.
> Show me that liberal arts types are on average more ethical than science types
Liberal arts types? Science types? More ethical?! I could pick out more but that was a fun, dense one, and anyway I don't want to engage on that level because I don't think it'd help this exchange a bit. Frustrating indeed.
Physician, et c., et c.
I'm not trying to argue, anyway—I answered one reasonable (if a touch hostile) clarifying question and have since been trying to communicate that "recite entire fields of the humanities to me" is unreasonable in this context. How would you react to my demanding proof that science is as good at getting at the truth as you seem to think it is? (incidentally, outside this for-the-sake-of-argument analogy, I do probably largely agree with you on that, so this isn't intended as an actual point of contention) If you've got the patience of a saint, maybe you point out some examples of evident successes, you explain the process—but I say that's not enough, examples of apparent successes aren't proof, and so on. At some point you probably ought to tell me to go read a damn book or take a few courses (i.e. get an education in the thing I'm dismissing but also have so many questions about). It'd be crazy to expect you to produce a philosophy of science course (at a minimum—we could, if I were obstinate, keep digging deeper forever) over HN posts.
My usual approach if a whole lot of apparently-smart-people-with-seemingly-decent-taste think something is valuable and that certain things are true about it and I don't see it is to assume I lack the necessary education and that if I want to be able to understand it and have an informed opinion on it, I need to seek out that education, and to engage with that thing a whole bunch even if it's unpleasant and seems pointless or even bad at first.
I picked that attitude up from... literature and philosophy, largely. I've found it useful. I've never gotten over that initial barrier by asking questions to which I think I already have the answers, on a web forum. Not even (hahaha) this one. In the case of the arts the usual argument for their value, as far as what convinces people, is precisely that kind of direct engagement, perhaps with some guidance from a teacher.
Practically no-one arrives at the conclusion that the arts are valuable and express truths or provide an improving education by reading some scientific paper. Yet, so very many people do reach that conclusion, plenty of them a hell of a lot smarter than me, and they keep doing it well into the scientific revolution—including tons of scientists ("science type"—smh). So the best I can write is that, if you actually want to be convinced, that's the thing to do.
What you seem to be doing instead is asking me to prove to a skeptic's satisfaction that general relativity is true, purely via slam poetry and using only the vocabulary contained in Doctor Seuss books. Be pretty fucking impressive if I pulled that off, right? Wrong tool, wrong approach, if that skeptic's actually interested in being convinced—not that such a thing couldn't be good, or even useful, if such a work existed, just as some kind of scientific examination of the value of the arts might be good and useful, but in either case I doubt it would suffice to convince anyone on its own.
But, I repeat yet again, if things are going swimmingly for you, disregarding the possibility of valuable truth or insight existing in the arts or their being improving, keep going as you are. Seriously. The arts are largely a kind of exercise in working through our collective existential confusion and trauma, and if you don't see the need for that, holy shit, that's great—or if you do see the need for it, and have genuinely sought comfort and answers and guidance across the liberal arts and found all but science wa...
Have you noticed how many Star Trek gadgets are real things you can now buy in a store? That does not happen in some inevitable scientific process that will eventually produce obvious predefined advancements. It happens because our art and our philosophy inspires our science and our engineering. We are what we dreamed we could be.
You are sitting on top of a very large mountain of human achievement in the humanities. Law, government, peace, prosperity, human rights, ethics. These things all spring from the humanities. They were all invented before the scientific method. We would be still living in caves without them.
I was talking about literature. You just expanded it a whole lot, which diffuses the point I was making. I don't think this is a tactic, I just don't think you can focus.
Nonethless, "It happens because our art and our philosophy [1] inspires our science and our engineering [2]" You conveniently assume [1] and [2] are divorced and each lies with two entirely divided castes. They are aspects of the same.
"Law, government, peace, prosperity, human rights, ethics. These things all spring from the humanities"
Oh lord. Law is from human nature. Desire for justice/fairness exists even in monkeys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg
Peace - this comes from humanities? Justify this.
ethics - nothing to do with law apparently, see above.
prosperity - nothing to do with science, right.
I've had enough of this crap. You can't debate, you don't want to look for common understanding. It's a kind of arrogance.
Are interest in science and interest in liberal arts mutually exclusive now? Anecdotally, I would say that the two interests are positively correlated.
As to evidence of the benefits of reading fiction, there has been a fair amount of research done in that area[1].
[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190523-does-reading-fic...
I didn't say they were (or did I, it's getting late), but as for your evidence, that is what I was after, an actual fact, thanks so much!
The physical sciences (and social sciences) are core pillars of the liberal arts, so... yeah, I'd hope so.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32522938.
https://imgur.com/a/DojT97L
I wonder what he would have thought if someone told him that 50 years later, just a few feet above his head, that there would be an antenna talking to a swarm of low earth orbit satellites in space, that could access all information known to man. But, at least 20% of the data flow would be used to share images of people having sex with each other.
He actually might have been one of the few people from that era who would NOT have been surprised this was the future.
What an interesting quote!
I will have to check out some of the works of those other authors in the future, to examine the idea sets they propose, and then (after having read them thoroughly!) possibly add some of the better/more interesting ideas they propose -- to my "chock-full-o'-everything philosophical idea corpus in my mind" <g> (For lack of a better term!)
Anyway, a very interesting quote -- worthy of future study!
On the other hand I'm a optimistic utopian, so I may be inclined to minimize and disregard dystopian writing.
Where P.K. Dick really got me is in "How to Build a..." [1] in which he's very interested in the nature of reality and open to the idea that it is far more fungible than we think and in fact there may be a greater intelligence at work in the Universe that arranges reality in such a way as to communicate to the participant who is paying close attention. It doesn't scare and depress me to think that I don't have the control I thought I did and am mostly along for the ride. It's also exciting to think "more will be revealed"
[1] "How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later" Philip K. Dick, 1978
https://urbigenous.net/library/how_to_build.html
He believed that there may be two greater intelligences diametrically opposed to each other and vying for control over the universe in order to remake it according to their own preferences. He expressed in his interview in Metz, France 1977[0] that he believes they are engaged in a constant struggle of programming and reprogramming the universe and history each trying to undo the others work. He connects this idea to his novels The Man In The High Castle and Flow My Tears The Policeman Said both of which involve alternate timelines. He even thought that he could retrieve memories of other timelines or other incarnations and that some of them were in worlds that were much more brutal than our own.
All this to say that his belief in a higher power certainly followed the same lines of thought that he explored in his novels.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkaQUZFbJjE
Dick used to write letters to the FBI in the 1970s urging them to investigate fellow science fiction writers like Thomas Disch or professors like Fredrick Jameson. He was a participant in (delusionaly?) ratting people out to the secret police. I'll leave it to others to forecast a dystopia, he seems to forecast a dystopia he is trying to build.
Bladerunner (the director's cut anyway) was a great film, still among my top favorites. It added much-needed clarity to some of Phil's best cud-chewings. Without the film, I think he'd have remained relatively unknown. Other authors, before and since him, I may turn back to for another read - because they offer me more than more confusion.