The crux of the article is a call for techno-selectionism, which is neither techno-optimism nor techno-skepticism:
> Techno-selectionists believe that we should continue to encourage and reward people who experiment with what comes next. But they also know that some experiments end up causing more bad than good.
This reminded me of one group that practices a rather rigorous form of techno-selectionism: the Amish.
While they may go further than most of us might like to in terms of rejection of certain technologies, they provide a model for the idea that the choice of whether and how to use particular technologies should be a societal decision.
Which is fine, because the Amish are choosing that life for themselves. If some New Yorker columnist wants to choose what technology I can or cannot have, they can go to hell.
It discussed both personal actions and regulations as a counter to the current status quo. Regulations often limit what can be done, and probably will have to if they are to be effective given how legal consent has become watered down to the point of being meaningless.
Right, but it in no way suggested that "some New Yorker columnist wants to choose what technology [we] can or cannot have," which is what the other commenter was whipping himself into a froth about.
I think actually you could say that virtually no Amish people truly choose their own lifestyle. If you are born into an Amish community, the Amish way of life is programmed into you. You don’t have a choice in that. When you grow up, all of your peers are programmed in the same way. And the programming specifies extremely strict conservatism with respect to the programming. The Overton window is super-tight. There’s not a lot that can be changed. And any substantial change must be made by some sort of committeee. So as an Amish person you are mostly just stuck with Amishness as it is, as it always was. You don’t get to choose what it is. You just carry it on your back and pass it on to the next generation, mostly unchanged. Where is the choice in that?
That's not exactly true, as a period of adolescent self-discovery and active choice in joining the faith/community are common in Amish communities; it's usually called rumspringa. The point could be made that the rate of exit is extremely low and therefore perhaps the youths are overly programmed, but that's not a given - they are raised in a tight-knit community which is a powerful motivation to stay and not something the majority of modern Westerners actually experience.
> the Amish way of life is programmed into you. You don’t have a choice in that.
How is this, and most of the rest of what you're saying, different from the capitalist consumer lifestyle that's programmed into you if you're not Amish? To quote you, "You don't have a choice in that. When you grow up, all of your peers are programmed in the same way."
There only difference seems to be your claim that things don't change much for the Amish. But they do selectively adopt new technologies, just in ways that are consistent with their community values. Which is a discipline somewhat lacking in our tech-driven society.
> How is this, and most of the rest of what you're saying, different from the capitalist consumer lifestyle that's programmed into you if you're not Amish? To quote you, "You don't have a choice in that. When you grow up, all of your peers are programmed in the same way."
It’s very different. When you are born into an insular, homogenous, high-control community like the Amish, or the Haredis (Orthodox Jews), or any of the countless cult communities (e.g. Children of God, LDS), you are expected to conform to the group. Usually these groups live apart from others and don’t allow outsiders in or members out. If you are raised in such a group, your mind has basically only been shown the ways of the group. And those ways have been presented as, “This is the way.” It’s just the way. There’s the group and there’s the way. If you don’t go along with the group and walk in the ways of the way, you are shunned. There’s no room for any kind of serious challenge of the way because the way has long since been sacralized. It is religion.
Modern Western culture is extremely open and heterogenous. Yes, a lot of programming gets pumped into young minds through media and the school system. But it’s not like religious indoctrination where a closed system of belief is installed in the young mind. You might think that sounds trite, but a person who is indoctrinated in a high-control community is never really shown how to ask a question that the religion doesn’t have an answer for. If they do ask such a question, they get reprimanded. They learn to just ingest and integrate the questions and answers that the group allows. The questions line up with the answers, everything is internally consistent. In contrast to that, when a young person in Western society comes of age (assuming they don’t live in a high-control community), the doors open to nearly limitless possible ways of thinking and being if the person has the curiosity to ask questions. A person can go in pretty much any direction they want with their philosophy, value system, habits, customs. They can become an anti-capitalist socialist counter-culture minimalist anarchist and ‘find their people’ just fine. All they have to do is follow their curiosity. In Western society, there are a countless doorways to different ways of thinking and being. Forums, universities, philosophers and intellectuals to follow. You can just as easily stumble INTO a high-control group that you weren’t born into.
There’s no comparison between that and a community like the Amish. They literally live apart and unto themselves. There are no doorways within the community to other ways of thinking. The only doorway is the exit doorway. If a person can’t follow the way of the group, there’s no place for them within the group because of how homogenous it is, and how much generational inertia that homogeneity has.
It’s really all about curiosity, critical thinking, and asking questions. What happens to you if you are curious, think critically, and ask a lot of questions in a modern, Western society? All of the doors open. What happens if you do the same in a high-control community? You get shunned, suppressed, and the only door that might open is the exit door.
Luddites would be an even better example of technology selectionism. Contrary to popular belief, the Luddite movement did not reject new technology or technology in full[0]. In fact, they were quite adept at using technology and were in favor of it. Rather, Luddites were fighting for better worker rights as it relates to introduction of new technology and automation. The real story of the Luddite is one of worker rights, the ending of child labor, safer working conditions and closing wealth inequality for all. Not the rejection of technology[1]
Good example. Also quite instructive and relevant, considering the treatment the Luddites received, and how they're remembered. "History is written by the victors."
Among the kinds of people who use HN, I am probably more selective than most about technology I allow into my home, but I think this philosophy is a bit broken. The idea that we should "keep the good tech" and "reject the bad tech" implies that we somehow know which technologies are good and bad before those technologies are deployed. Sometimes we can take a good guess, but other times we can't. Nobody has a crystal ball, and you can't put every genie back into its lamp.
I read this, and I'm not sure what concrete steps Newport wants us to take. Sure, social media sucks, and if Facebook and TikTok disappeared we'd all be better off. But what should we do? Declare Meta a monopoly and bust it up? This just seems like verbal flailing about.
With problems like this, the path from identifying the problem to identifying concrete steps to address it is not necessarily trivial. It also ideally involves society as a whole.
As such, discussion of the nature of the problem and broad-strokes ideas about how it might be addressed - e.g. "techno-selectionism" - can be an important part of the process of improving the situation.
As for your proposed solution, breakups of companies like Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and probably quite a few more, is certainly one potentially promising possibility.
Even short of breaking them up, I would love to see more scrutiny of acquisitions. The buy all your disruptors to kill them would be good for everyone, except maybe VCs
Newport is the "Deep Work" guy whose first step was "off-load your trivial tasks to your secretary". He lost me at that, since I need the 5 steps before that where I get a secretary.
It will be interesting times if/when AI assistants progress to the point where they can (safely) operate as autonomously and competently as a human secretary.
He doesn't talk about monopoly much. Mostly about social media in general.
The network effects for social media are so strong as to push most people to the winning platform. Even without being a pre-installed default, Facebook and Twitter win. Google has to pay $47 billion a year to be the pre-installed default, indicating that their network effect is weaker.
That’s because he doesn’t talk about monopoly at all. It’s more about how we use these things and how frequently we’ve switched outlooks on them since 2016.
The monopoly stuff is something we’re just barely starting to take any issue with here in 2023. But it remains an insider/tech topic.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 67.0 ms ] thread> Techno-selectionists believe that we should continue to encourage and reward people who experiment with what comes next. But they also know that some experiments end up causing more bad than good.
While they may go further than most of us might like to in terms of rejection of certain technologies, they provide a model for the idea that the choice of whether and how to use particular technologies should be a societal decision.
Edit: reworded.
How is this, and most of the rest of what you're saying, different from the capitalist consumer lifestyle that's programmed into you if you're not Amish? To quote you, "You don't have a choice in that. When you grow up, all of your peers are programmed in the same way."
There only difference seems to be your claim that things don't change much for the Amish. But they do selectively adopt new technologies, just in ways that are consistent with their community values. Which is a discipline somewhat lacking in our tech-driven society.
It’s very different. When you are born into an insular, homogenous, high-control community like the Amish, or the Haredis (Orthodox Jews), or any of the countless cult communities (e.g. Children of God, LDS), you are expected to conform to the group. Usually these groups live apart from others and don’t allow outsiders in or members out. If you are raised in such a group, your mind has basically only been shown the ways of the group. And those ways have been presented as, “This is the way.” It’s just the way. There’s the group and there’s the way. If you don’t go along with the group and walk in the ways of the way, you are shunned. There’s no room for any kind of serious challenge of the way because the way has long since been sacralized. It is religion.
Modern Western culture is extremely open and heterogenous. Yes, a lot of programming gets pumped into young minds through media and the school system. But it’s not like religious indoctrination where a closed system of belief is installed in the young mind. You might think that sounds trite, but a person who is indoctrinated in a high-control community is never really shown how to ask a question that the religion doesn’t have an answer for. If they do ask such a question, they get reprimanded. They learn to just ingest and integrate the questions and answers that the group allows. The questions line up with the answers, everything is internally consistent. In contrast to that, when a young person in Western society comes of age (assuming they don’t live in a high-control community), the doors open to nearly limitless possible ways of thinking and being if the person has the curiosity to ask questions. A person can go in pretty much any direction they want with their philosophy, value system, habits, customs. They can become an anti-capitalist socialist counter-culture minimalist anarchist and ‘find their people’ just fine. All they have to do is follow their curiosity. In Western society, there are a countless doorways to different ways of thinking and being. Forums, universities, philosophers and intellectuals to follow. You can just as easily stumble INTO a high-control group that you weren’t born into.
There’s no comparison between that and a community like the Amish. They literally live apart and unto themselves. There are no doorways within the community to other ways of thinking. The only doorway is the exit doorway. If a person can’t follow the way of the group, there’s no place for them within the group because of how homogenous it is, and how much generational inertia that homogeneity has.
It’s really all about curiosity, critical thinking, and asking questions. What happens to you if you are curious, think critically, and ask a lot of questions in a modern, Western society? All of the doors open. What happens if you do the same in a high-control community? You get shunned, suppressed, and the only door that might open is the exit door.
Edit: expanded.
What an arrogant little troll you are to demand everyone else set aside such extravagant amounts of resources for your fetish.
[0]: https://thenib.com/im-a-luddite/
[1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-rea...
Sounds great! Let's unfuck the situation with Google/Apple having a chokehold on phones and app stores while we're at it.
As such, discussion of the nature of the problem and broad-strokes ideas about how it might be addressed - e.g. "techno-selectionism" - can be an important part of the process of improving the situation.
As for your proposed solution, breakups of companies like Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and probably quite a few more, is certainly one potentially promising possibility.
The network effects for social media are so strong as to push most people to the winning platform. Even without being a pre-installed default, Facebook and Twitter win. Google has to pay $47 billion a year to be the pre-installed default, indicating that their network effect is weaker.
The monopoly stuff is something we’re just barely starting to take any issue with here in 2023. But it remains an insider/tech topic.