While I appreciate Ted’s mathematical style and perspective as a highly intelligent outsider, I don’t agree with his value judgements and thus his conclusions. I’m on team technology. Nevertheless, many of his observations were prescient and remain thought-provoking. Quotes without further comment below.
What the principle of technological autonomy asserts is that the overall development of technological, and its long-term consequences for society, are not subject to human control. […] A corollary is that nothing short of the collapse of technological society can avert a greater disaster. Thus, if we want defend ourselves against technology, the only action we can take that might prove effective is an effort to precipitate the collapse of technological society. Though this conclusion is an obvious consequence of the principle of technological autonomy, and though it possibly is implied by certain statements of Ellul, I know of no conventionally published writer who has explicitly recognized that our only way out is through the collapse of technological society. This seeming blindness can only be explained as a result of timidity.
The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call feelings of inferiority and oversocialization.
The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter, a ruthless competitor. The kind of person has not wholly lost faith in himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but he can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong, and his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant behavior. But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings of inferiority are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the leftist. He can feel strong only as member of a large organization or a mass movement with which he identifies himself.
Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a a non-moral origin. We use the term ‘oversocialized’ to describe such people.
The Power Process
Human beings have a need (probably based in biology) for something that we will call the power process. This is closely related to the need for power (which is widely recognized) but is not quite the same thing. The power process has four elements. The three most clear-cut of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. (Everyone needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of the his goals.) The fourth element is more difficult to define and may be necessary for everyone. We call it autonomy.
The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can’t make rapid , drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid change inevitably break down traditional values.
Leftism, at least in its recent (mid- to late-20th century) form, is in part a symptom of deprivation with respect to the power process.
Disruption of the Power Process in Modern Society
We divide human drives into three groups: (1) those drives that can be satisfied with minimal effort; (2) those that can be satisfied but only at the cost of serious effort; (3) those that cannot be adequately satisfied no matter how much effort one makes. The power process is the process of satisfying drives of the second group. The more drives there are in the third group, the more there is frustration, anger, eventually defeatism, depression, etc. In modern industrial society, natural human drives tend to be pushed into the first and third groups, and the second group tends to consist increasingly of artificially created drives.
It is true that primitive man is powerless against some of the things that threaten him; disease for example. But he can accept the risk of disease stoically. It is part of the nature of things, it is no one’s fault, unless it is the fault of some imaginary, impersonal demon. But threats to the modern individual tend to be MAN-MADE. They are not the results of change but are IMPOSED on him by other persons whose decisions he, as an individual, is unable to influence. Consequently he feels frustrated, humiliated and angry.
Again, having successfully raised his children, going through the power process by providing for them with the physical necessities, the primitive man feels that his work is done and he is prepared to accept old age (if he survives that long) and death. Many modern people, on the other hand, are disturbed by the prospect of physical deterioration and death, as is shown by the amount of effort they expend trying to maintain their physical condition, appearance and health. We argue that this is due to unfulfillment result from the fact that they have never put their physical power to any practical use, have never gone through the process using their bodies in a serious way.
The Motives of Scientists
Science and technology provide the most important examples of surrogate activities. […] With possible rare exceptions, their [scientist] motive is neither curiosity nor a desire to benefit humanity but the need to go through the power process: to have a goal (a scientific problem to solve) to make an effort (research) and the attain the goal (solution of the problem). Science is a surrogate activity because scientists work mainly for the fulfillment they get out of the work itself. Of course, it’s not that simple. Other motives do play a role for many scientists. Money and status for example.
Genetic Engineering
If you think that big government interferes in your life too much NOW, just wait till the government starts regulating the genetic constitution of your children. Such regulation will inevitably follow the introduction of genetic engineering of human beings, because the consequences of unregulated genetic engineering would be disastrous. The usual response to such concerns is to talk about ‘medical ethics.’ But a code of ethics would not serve to protect freedom in the face of medical progress; it would only make matters worse. A code of ethics applicable to genetic engineering would be in effect a means of regulating the genetic constitution of human beings. Somebody (probably the upper middle class, mostly) would decide that such and such applications of genetic engineering were “ethical” and others were not, so that in effect they would be imposing their own values on the genetic constitution of the population at large.
People tend to assume that because a revolution involves a much greater change than reform does, it is more difficult to bring about than reform is. Actually, under certain circumstances revolution is much easier that reform. The reason is that a revolutionary movement can inspire an intensity of commitment that a reform movement cannot inspire. A reform movement merely offers to solve a particular problem. A revolutionary movement offers to solve all problems at one stroke and create a whole new world; it provides the kind of ideal for which people will take great risks and make great sacrifices.
Therefore two tasks confront those who hate the servitude to which the industrial system is reducing the human race. First, we must work to heighten the social stresses within the system so as to increase the likelihood that is will break down or be weakened sufficiently so that revolution against it becomes possible. Second, it is necessary to develop and propagate an ideology that opposes technology and the industrial system.
Thoughts on AI Alignment
First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.
If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions we can’t make any conjecture as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race could never be foolish enough to hand over all power to the machines. But we suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race migh easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and as machines more and more intelligent, people will let machines more and more decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.
On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will in the hands of a tiny elite– just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control of the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other pscyhological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becauses extinct, leaving the world the the elite. Or, if the elite consist of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the resk of the human race. They willl see to it that everyone’s physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him buys, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remvoe their need for the power process or to make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. Those engineered human being may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.
Globalize to Destabilize
Revolutionaries might consider favoring measures that tend to bind the world economy into a unified whole. Free trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT are probably harmful to the environment in the short run, but in the long run they may perhaps be advantageous because they foster economic interdependence between nations. It will be easier to destroy the industrial system on a worldwide basis if the world economy is so unified that its breakdown in any one major nation will lead to its breakdown in all industrialized nations.
Critical Cop-out
Would society EVENTUALLY develop again toward an industrial-technological form? Maybe, but there is no use in worrying about it, since we can’t predict or control events 500 or 1,000 years in the future.
By this time it should be sufficiently clear to the reader that what the anarcho-primitivists (and many anthropologists) are up to has nothing to do with a rational search for the truth about primitive cultures. Instead, they have been developing a myth.
Many people do not understand the roots of their own frustration, hence their rebellion is directionless. They know they want to rebel, but they don’t know what they want to rebel against. Luckily, the System is able to fill their need by providing them with a list of standard and stereotyped grievances in the name of which to rebel: racism, homophobia, women’s issues, poverty sweatshops… the whole laundry bag of ‘activist’ issues. Huge numbers of would-be rebels take the bait.
So, in a nutshell, the System’s neatest trick is this:
(a) For the sake of its own efficiency and security, the System needs to bring about deep and radical social changes to match the changed conditions resulting from technological progress.
(b) The frustration of life under the circumstances imposed by the System leads to rebellious impulses.
(c) Rebellious impulses are co-opted by the System in the service of social changes it requires; activists “rebel” against the old and outmoded values that are no longer of use to the System and in favor of the new values that the System needs us to accept.
(d) In this way rebellious impulses, which otherwise might have been dangerous to the System, are given an outlet that is not only harmless to the System, but useful to it.
(e) Much of the public resent resulting from the imposition of social changes is drawn away from the System and its institutions and is directed instead at the radicals who spearhead the social changes.
Of course, this trick was not planned in advance by the System’s leaders, who are not conscious of having played a trick at all.
In this situation there is a conflict between integration propaganda and agitation propaganda. Those people in whom the cuddly values and the aversion to violence have been most deeply planted can’t easily be persuaded to approve a bloody military operation.
Possibly you misinterpret my motives for emphasizing the “power process.” The purpose of doing so is not the exalt the “will to power.” […] I should admit, though, that I personally am strongly inclined to individualism. Ideally, I shouldn’t allow my individualistic predilections to influence my thinking on revolutionary strategy but should arrive at my conclusions objectively. The fact that you have spotted my individualistic leanings may mean that I have not been as objective as I should have been.