Dan Lyons: Are Luddites Confused? (1979, Inquiry)
- INTRODUCTION
- Lyon's definition of Luddism
- General opposition to tech "progress"
- General presumption that tech 'progress' is bad for us, so tech
innovation not a true achievement
- Luddism is not just opposition to this or that tech
- Lyons attempts to provide a systematic justification for a general
dislike of tech progress
- Definition of technology not all that important
- "Any set of techniques that make possible dramatic new ways of
changing world suddenly in pursuit of a definite goal"
- If poetical technique could outdo engineers in changing world by
spreading new religion, he'd be more concerned with it
- Lyons' goal: Not to prove Luddism correct, but show it is deserving of
serious consideration and is not ridiculous position many paint it to be
- SYNOPSIS OF LYONS' DEFENSE OF LUDDISM
- Tech powers misused will cause more harm than good
- Such harmful misuse is likely
- Dramatic ½ blind changes resulting from tech will damage world's (human
and natural) systems swamping their adjustment mechanisms
- Tech powers likely to be misused because
- Superhuman powers go sour with merely human wisdom
- Know-how tends to inherently pull ahead of know-whether
- Know-how without know-whether is dangerous incompetence
- Dangerous to further empower a fallible humanity
- IS TECHNOLOGY NEUTRAL?
- Opponents of Luddism (technophiles=lovers of tech) claim science/tech
is neutral; should blame people not tech
- Even if bad things have happened that would not have happened in
pre-technical society, foolish to blame these troubles on tech
- Blame people who use tech for evil, not tech
- "Blaming the tech is like blaming the crucifixion on existence of
hammers and nails"
- No new development is either peaceful or warlike (good or bad);
anything can be used in a variety of ways
- Worries about the tech is neutral idea
- This is like saying that if guns get in the hands of children we
shouldn't blame guns, but rather blame the children
- What about blaming the adults who allow this?
- Do we want to say that nuclear bombs, guns, or poison on the one
hand, and guitars and bikes on the other are equally neutral?
- LYONS CRITIQUE OF THE SUPPOSED NEUTRALITY OF POWER
(TECHNOLOGY)
- Technology is the major contemporary form of power
- Power (tech) is a hypothetical good/evil
- Rejects idea that power is valueless until used for good or ill
- Power should be positively or negatively valued in a context, depending
on how it is LIKELY to be used (and not how it could be used)
- So tech/power is not neutral, but has a value given a context
- That power might be used for good doesn't make it valuable (nor
does fact it might be used for bad make it disvaluable)
- How power is likely to be used is what counts
- Example: 8 year old with a car might take a sick person to hospital,
but since bad results are much more likely, his having this power in
this context is bad
- Power not itself to be admired, only power/tech used well
- Power/skill not a good in all circumstances
- We pity, not admire, someone who can achieve her short range goals
(has power), but this very success blocks her long range goals
- Unlucky/bad to posses the power that destroys you
- Powers are multipliers: Increases value of wisdom and disvalue of folly
- Speed a defect in a blind horse even before he uses it; better if blind
horse is slow
- To a fool, power adds disvalue to his folly; Fool better off weak
- Karate expert example
- Person learns karate, grows overconfident, picks fight with a man
w/gun and dies
- He knew how to fight with armed man in safest way possible
- Forgot that safe wasn't safe enough
- Didn't know enough not to fight at all
- Blame his fighting skill for this bad end
- Overconfidence from karate skill caused his death by tempting
him into a fight he could not survive.
- Such a skill was bad for this person
- Know-how is incompetence without know-whether
- Questions:
- Are humans too clever/powerful given our lack of wisdom?
- So the power/tech to go into outer space that humans have developed
is not to be admired for its own sake, but only if it is used well (or
likely to be?)
- Is this an example of a power we should admire for its own
sake?
- PRESUPPOSITION OF LYON'S ARGUMENT: BLIND CHANGE
HELPS ENTROPY (=DISORDER)
- Random changes are enemy of system (organization)
- There are more ways for a system to change for worse than for better
- Kid asking father why his things are so often out of place
- More places for things to be out of place than in place
- Random/blind changes more likely to make matters worse (in
organized systems)
- E.g.: Blind man thrusting screwdriver into a watch to fix it more
likely to wreck it than do it any good
- LYONS' ABSTRACT ARGUMENT FOR WHY FUTURE TECH
LIKELY TO BRING MORE HARM THAN GOOD
- Our acts (tech innovations) have two types of results: Blind (unforseen) and
sighted (foreseen)
- (If we are rational) foreseeable consequences are likely to be good (Why?)
- Unforseen consequences of dramatic innovations will be both good and bad,
but they are more likely to be bad
- Because such innovation is blindly impinging on human and natural
systems and blind change tends to bring disorder to systems
- So when unforseen consequences far outweigh the foreseeable ones, net
result will be bad (do more harm than good)
- Unforseen consequences of recent tech far outweigh foreseeable ones (a
crucial difference between modern and traditional techs)
- Reason: Because they are so powerful
- Therefore, it is likely that future tech developments will cause more harm
than good; thus Luddism is rational
- EXAMPLES OF UNFORSEEN CONSEQUENCES
- (Do they outweigh foreseeable ones?)
- Cars: People saw that car would give us new mobility, no one predicted
startling effect on family, city, atmosphere, and world-crises in middle east
- Lyons' argument explains fear of Global Warming: We should be
worried about global warming as most of the consequences are
unforeseeable. Thus we should expect them on balance to be overall bad
(though some good will come about too). (Could be that human-caused
changes to atmosphere will do more good than harm, but why expect blind
lunges into natural systems to be beneficial?) Natural and human systems
adapted to current climate. To expect good/bad consequences to
counterbalance each other like expecting two malfunctions in a watch to
cancel each other.
- REASON TO HOPE THAT OUR PARTIALLY BLIND
INTERVENTIONS WON'T BE SO BAD
- One: Hope blind intervention is puny comparted to magnitude of systems
they effect
- Big volcanoes when erupt put more particulates in air than human
pollution and yet atmosphere seems okay
- Two: Hope that natural and social systems are resilient enough--have
sufficient adjustment mechanism--to counter our negative interventions
- E.g., Hope atmosphere can produce more ozone as we destroy
it or that earth will find ways to cool itself as we warm the
planet
- But modern tech interventions have such force/speed not likely for
ecosystems to have evolved response mechanisms to such assaults
- There are limits to this resilience; at some point our acts/tech will
swamp adjustment mechanisms of important natural systems
- Three: Hope we can notice signs of damage to natural systems and repair
them
- But it is chancy to intervene half-blindly in mysterious systems (e.g.,
atmosphere or ecosystems) and try to repair the damage from our
previous mistakes
- E.g., Mongoose introduced into Hawaii to kill rats that humans
brought there (but mongoose fed by day and rats by night);
mongoose wiped out several bird species
- Our repairs often unhelpful
- Is this true of species extinction, ozone, global warming?
- LYONS RESPONSE TO CLAIM HUMANS OBVIOUSLY BETTER
OFF TODAY (AND THUS TECH HAS BEEN OVERALL GOOD)
- REPLY: NOT CLEAR GIVEN INCREASE IN TOTAL MISERY
- Who is better off: Middle class Westerners? Most people? Average
person? Worst off people?
- Even if greater numbers or greater % today better off, absolute
numbers of people are worse off
- More people live without electricity today due to increased
population than before this technology
- Before sci revolution, ½ billion lived w/o electricity; today billion or
more do
- In absolute terms, human misery increased since sci/tech revolution
- Deformed child analogy:
- Which is better?
- Family with two deformed children who are miserable, one healthy
happy child (2/3 miserable)
- Or family with four deformed miserable children and eight healthy
happy ones? (Only 1/3 miserable)
- Is this an improvement? (Lyons thinks not)
- That we are better off today is supported by one's chances of being
born well off today are better in this example
- If in 2010, ½ of 6 billion are miserable due to famine, this would be 6 times
the misery of before the advent of modern science (½ a billion)
- Also we now have threat of nuclear war (or terrorism); even if doesn't
happen this is a possibility
- We are in a predicament not encountered by earlier people
- Tech now left us to face possibility of annihilating ourselves
- Not ridiculous to say humans are worse off collectively in scientific age
- MISCELLANEOUS
- Know-how w/o know-whether is incompetence (a weakness, not a
strength)
- Know-how = cleverness
- Skill of achieving narrow well defined objectives; effectively
gets you what you want at any given moment
- Know-how advances quickly and easily
- Specialized tunnel vision advances knowledge quickly
- Know-whether = wisdom
- Broader, more difficult kind of knowledge, predicting and
evaluation all relevant consequences
- Know-whether includes getting right values/virtues (carrying
about future's and others interests) and predicting all
consequences of our actions/tech
- Humans show no noticeable progress in getting these
virtues
- Knowledge of the consequences of using our technologies always
lags behind knowledge of how to build them
- Very difficult knowledge to achieve
- No reason to expect know-whether to catch up with know-how
- And without it, know-how will go bad
- Too bad we got so clever
- If not yet too clever to survive w/o wisdom, we are close
- We should be in no hurry for more cleverness (i.e., technology)
- We now have staggering powers, only a small defect in know-whether
(prudence, beneficence) will produce a catastrophe
- Examples suggesting we don't have enough wisdom
- Better if not developed factory fishing vessels given "strip mining
the seas"
- Africanized bee example
- Scientists used 50 times more care ever used before
- But not enough (need 100 times the care)
- Scientists not blamed for not taking enough care
- Human standards of due care rise slowly
- Unlikely enough care will be used with new materials/tech
requiring huge new increases in care/safe handling
- We should not deal with materials that require quantum
jump in caution to handle safely
- Can't expect requisite caution to be exercised
- How Karate expert example supports Luddism
- If mod tech is likely to do more harm than good, rational to think it is
bad for us and should oppose our acquiring this ability
- For parents of karate expert rational to feel revulsion for whole
martial arts business
- Want to keep hot-head younger brother from getting exposed to these
skills
- Reasonable for one who thinks tech likely to be misused to feel
disenchanted with whole sci-technological world