I think that the rise of secularism has more to do with the way religion has traditionally been entangled with families and communities. E.g., if I was working on my family farm, my dissenting views on religion probably wouldn't be welcome. I probably wouldn't have access to alternative religious books or any material that's not approved by the local community. I would have to attend church whether I enjoyed it or not.
Technology changing things is less about technology acting as a replacement cult or Zuck trying to make one [1] and more about how the industrial revolution has untied our method of sustenance from our family and community groups that used to act as a great source of peer pressure.
If I don't like what my family thinks about religion or anything else like that, I'm free to do my own thing because they have no financial or community leverage over me.
[1] I can't stress enough how much I think the idea of the Metaverse will be bungled by Facebook. They are selling their investors on a hope and a prayer that they can make up for lost revenue from Apple and Google's privacy policy changes, and have literally not even shown a new product yet. They're just selling the same VR headset with an app store and some games. It's not a Metaverse. It's Facebook's crappy attempt at making something better than "hanging out with your friends on Discord while playing Deep Rock Galactic."
I gotta say, speaking as one who was highly intelligent, very arrogant, and who took myself way too seriously, I think that's hubris talking.
Thinking carefully about and being good stewards of our creations presupposes that we can predict their effects and side-effects and so on. I don't think we can. Let me put it in concrete terms: Did you predict Twitter? I don't mean "you" personally, it's a heuristic, as in, if you didn't predict Twitter you probably don't know what's going on.
I thought I knew what was going on. I read Alvin Toffler's Futureshock, I thought I knew where my towel was. And then Twitter comes along and punctures my balloon. I'm not saying that we should abdicate all responsibility, there are things I've invented that I don't talk about because the potential downside seems to outweigh the benefits, sure, but the idea that we can create and release technology and shape its effects and results seems unlikely to me.
Accepting that duality is part of a mature stance as a technologist. Nobody's asking you to be a futurologist and take responsibility for the sins of all your progeny.
Maybe you did the right thing to not talk about your creation whose "potential downside seems to outweigh the benefits". At least you thought about it. I chose to put mine out there, blind to the future, but in good faith. Whether we are optimists or pessimists, guided by hope or fear may be just aspects of personality and not something I'd judge another for.
Regardless, the maxinm "Just because you can doesn't mean you should" has never had a time to shine so brightly in.
But that's not what I'm talking about.
> I'm not saying that we should abdicate all responsibility
No, you don't get to abdicate _any_ responsibility, and that's nothing to do with hubris. The second Kantian postulate, less well known than the categorical imperative or golden rule is that we must always act as if we are moral agents. You don't get to have the hubris of being a creator without the commensurate hubris of bearing responsibility. Hubris it may be (because some would argue that we create nothing that isn't given to us by <deity>). But calling it that doesn't get you off the hook.
> Thinking carefully about and being good stewards of our creations presupposes that we can predict their effects
Not at all. That would indeed be hubris. Being a good parent does not presuppose I know every future action of my child, Being a good/moral parent merely requires that I take close interest, and act with proper love/attention to their development.
Likewise. :)
> I've built medical robotics for battlefield surgery that, with a minor twist, became systems for killing.
That's the sort of thing I mean. Something like that would haunt me.
> Accepting that duality is part of a mature stance as a technologist.
Maturity or a Faustian bargain? It may be that one can't prevent the misuse of a technology, but does it follow that you have to be the one to invent it?
> Nobody's asking you to be a futurologist and take responsibility for the sins of all your progeny.
Not to be cheeky but I am. I'll circle back to this in a sec...
> Whether we are optimists or pessimists, guided by hope or fear may be just aspects of personality and not something I'd judge another for.
Same here, well said. Since I'm kinda saying that we can't know the ultimate effects of our inventions, it would be contradictory for me to insist that I could know the ultimate effects of your inventions, for good or ill. FWIW, I hope they are good on the balance.
To some extent I'm a coward, perhaps, for not being more willing to inflict my creativity upon the world. Not a happy thought, but not unfamiliar.
In re: responsibility, you say,
> Nobody's asking you to be a futurologist and take responsibility for the sins of all your progeny.
but then later you say,
> you don't get to abdicate _any_ responsibility, ... You don't get to [be] a creator without ... bearing responsibility.
(I hope my crude edits don't offend you, I tried to preserve your meaning.)
Right or wrong, I (would) feel responsible for the misuse of technology I invented.
It seems to me that you can only be a good steward to the extent that you can foresee and avoid difficulties
> Being a good parent does not presuppose I know every future action of my child, Being a good/moral parent merely requires that I take close interest, and act with proper love/attention to their development.
Becoming a parent is incredible hubris, excused only by the fact that you're the descendant of four billion years of successful parenting.
When you're inventing new technology it's a different story. With a kid it's pretty unlikely you're going to give birth to the next Hitler, eh? (sorry about the Godwin's law tick)
If the thing I said about never getting to abrogate responsibility seems harsh that's because Kant is considered an impossible moral standard. But in a funny way it absolves you of some moral labour, because you __must_ :)
We may be talking at cross purposes a bit, between academic moral principles (like those of Kant, Petit, Mill and so on... which I don't expect everyone to magically know) and more pragmatic day-to-day ethics that I presume we all aspire to.
People have tried to post-facto control the uses of their work, for example using "no military use" licences. But these seem to be a weak instrument.
By the way, I did go into the robotics gig with eyes wide open, knowing it was a military/defence-funded project. good wishes.
Me too.
> By the way, I did go into the robotics gig with eyes wide open, knowing it was a military/defence-funded project.
FWIW, I should admit that I both envy and admire you for it.
Cheers, well met.
Because technology can take physical form like robots and cars?
IMO religion has done so much damage in the form of wars, torture, and (mass and individual) mental illness that I imagine modern technology has a long way to go before it t can be considered as worrisome as religion and its memes.
> Because technology can take physical form like robots and cars?
Not so much that, no. Quite the opposite, because it's non-physical. Physical technology has already taken on worrying forms, like atomic weapons and gasoline automobiles. We've managed those admirably I think [1] - even though it may seem otherwise at times. Physical has inbuilt limitations. Consider Google Glass and the near unanimous societal rejection of "glassholes".
I am just recycling Mumford, Ellul and Postman here, but digital technology is different as it can produce near instantaneous change on global culture.
> IMO religion has done so much damage in the form of wars, torture, and (mass and individual) mental illness that I imagine modern technology has a long way to go before it t can be considered as worrisome as religion and its memes.
You're right, religion has and still does yield these consequences. BTW I am not rejecting _all_ of religion, it has many good sides too. But religion took thousands of years for its damaging effects to happen. Much of what we blame 'religion' for is really a parochial perspective on history (the view from now) and the playing out of human evolutionary affairs through it. The same will be true of technology .
What we must be mindful of is that they are (1) essentially the same phenomenon, and (2) that digital technology will produce effects much, much faster than religion. It;s really only been 50 years, which is nothing in historical terms.
[1] That might seem like a disingenuous thing to say within a context that feels so cynical, and we don't get to run control groups on history, but I like to think that we're on course to correct for climate change and that the game-theoretical MAD aspect to nukes has proven somewhat correct so far and we will reach a future time of disarmament. In that sense I have faith in science and people.
Actually the worst wars and killing events in history (WWI and WWII) were secular, technology driven.
And religion has cured far more than it caused. The statistics are pretty damn clear: religious people are happier, live longer, have bigger families, and score better on almost every measure of wellbeing.
-- Steven WeinbergThe rest of the conquest was not due to the military genius of the Spanish, but rather that they allied with less powerful indian groups against the dominant indians groups.
>>Both the Spanish and American churches committed cultural genocide against American Indians on an enormous scale.
The indigenous populations were barbarians. They were cannibals, they tortured people sadistically. I am so grateful of what the Spanish did in America. I thank Spain and the church that they eradicated all those cultures and taught us Christianity.
Nietzsche's parable of the Death of God is absolutely essential reading for all hackers. Pay very close attention to the exact words of the madman in the marketplace. Technology is very evidently bound up with the "new rites and rituals". Much of what we do in digital technology is no more than a new cult, more or less arbitrary in its form but still fulfilling the old religious negative functions - distraction, domination, fealty, creating new sins and pleasures, new rituals, new denominations and partitions on humanity. Of course Jung and Freud said the same and went further. It doesn't merely fail to be a rational and benevolent replacement for superstition, it threatens much worse modes of failure. Unlike traditional religion technology is not subject to the same constraints as stone churches, dusty books and preachers. Zuckerberg's "Meta" is literally a Gnostic/Cosmist project to create "Another Place" here on Earth. Because it has the potential to create more and bloodier wars than religion ever could, we have a solemn duty as hackers to steward it and think very carefully about what we create. "Move fast and break things" is not apropos this duty.