It's black swan theory. Not an argument
What you described (Donald Rumsfeld epistemology) is not black swan theory. The theory is simply identifying highly improbable events that were completely unpredictable and rationalized as predictable after the fact. If you want to label this as "unknown unknowns" for convenience's sake, that's fine, but it doesn't categorize knowledge in the way in which you've claimed. Also, this is black swan theory is not an argument either, because you have still have to make the argument how.
Low iq cope. It seems like your whole system of political philosophy is DUDE, WHAT IF I COULD TRUST THE GUYS MAKING DECISIONS, AND THEY DID EVERYTHING I WANT THEM TO.
How many times do I have to say it? I don't care about political philosophy. I don't have a political "system." You can argue and bicker amongst yourselves along your tribal affiliations to decide what rules you should have in place regarding this and which dear leader you should listen to. That isn't a problem with my proposal that there needs to be some kind of authoritative body that controls technological development and advancement, instead of letting it run rampant and then dealing with the fallout after the fact. That's, as they say, a you problem.
You seem to be ironically unaware that forcing others to abandon technology, like Ted was trying to do with his mail campaign, is doing precisely what you're speaking out against: forcing others to follow your laws and dictums. I get it, you have problems with authoritative restrictions on your freedom (even if that includes restricting your freedom to develop technology that would destroy us all). That's not my argument (the restriction on your personal freedom), so stop arguing something I'm not saying.
Sovereignty over oneself and one's decisions is an inalienable right. By restricting my freedom and controlling my behavior without my consent you are taking from me and making me a slave. Which I think we can all agree is bad.
And it looks like you didn't read ISAIF, because things like laws against murder isn't what he's talking about. One example he gives is surveillance, which you explicitly complain about when you talk about kikebook.
You're arguing a false equivalence again. You are taking an argument against the restriction of your personal sovereignty e.g., by a government with its laws, and then using THAT argument against the restriction of free technological development via some as-of-yet undefined and unestablished authority (because "authority bad"), as a reason why we should abandon technology altogether. Your reasoning is ghastly erroneous, at least - to be charitable - incomplete (see the previous gaps which you haven't addressed).
You also haven't made a rebuttal against the counter argument that restrictions on freedom does not imply that good cannot be separated from bad. You've been just picking and choosing what to respond to and ignoring challenges. That's not good faith argumentation.
Everybody has a right to be free. If my freedom somehow hurts you when you are trying to impinge upon my freedom, it is a conflict between the oppressor and this inalienable right. For me, it is only an accident which I cannot avoid.
OK, great. Whatever. This seems to be a problem you have against government and authority. That's not our focus here. Once again, I don't care about the political arguments surrounding restrictions on your personal sovereignty, because that's a red herring.
I am just going by what you admitted to me, when you say
No, you've got it backwards.
"Technology necessarily implies restriction of human freedom." This is your argument.
"Some freedoms must be restricted, or I'd argue, controlled in the case of technology." And this is mine.
I'll ask again. How does restricting and controlling the development of technology (to prevent it from reaching systems level and having the devastating effects on society that is so worrisome) mean that technology necessarily implies restriction of human freedom?
Remember how I said earlier that it's question begging (circular)? It's patently nonsensical to say that we must stop technology because it limits our freedoms and then when I say that we should control technology, you turn it right back around and point out that this control of technology is putting restrictions on our freedom. To do what, create technology? Hmmm. Yes, that's the whole point. Restrict tech, before it restricts you (societally).
You're trying to use my counter point as an answer to a follow up point. It neither answers my question, nor strengthens your argument.
None of this is relevant to what you were replying to, and admitting technology acts as a revolutionizing agent only agrees with my point. Face it: you got btfo'd by the internet social networking example.
Your claim was that technology "exerts itself on us and we exert itself on it." In doing this you've categorized technology as some sort of monolithic force, acting independent from us and on us (very similar to gravity, from the way you've described it). I instead argued that it isn't anything of the sort and argued that technology is mostly constant, and described two ways in which it becomes momentarily variable i.e., changes (improves, really, because technology, by intent, never regresses - nobody is going to try and design a more efficient musket to use in war, for example).
Facebook falls under the second case. The technology was already there. Facebook just put together some existing lego pieces to make something new. Calling it "revolutionary" is like calling Amazon "revolutionary" for changing online shopping, but that's a matter of opinion. When you boil it down it really just centralized it, and Facebook centralized digital social communication. The "revolution" is in how society adjusted to these changes. Entire businesses and industries ("social media marketing" JFL) were built around it. Actual technological revolutions (the kind of thing I suspect you're talking about, if I'm being charitable) are things like the inventions of the transistor and the microchip.
These "unintended" changes are what you like to refer to as the "unknown unknowns," I suppose. Call it whatever suits your fancy. The fact is that technology is just a tool, even at the systematic level. It's inanimate and lifeless, and we give it purpose (in both its intent of creation and in creative new ways) and utilize it how we see fit according to our needs. The internet isn't "alive" and we don't have a symbiotic relationship with it, where both sides exert some pressure on it. The internet is not some thing that exists independently, separate from us. We use it to communicate and conduct our business. And it certainly isn't some natural force to be feared.
And as you said it changes humanity too.
Not in the way you're construing it.
Here you are either blatantly ignoring what I am saying or still don't understand, so I'll give you another example. Technology serves as an extension of man, and media serves as an extension of the senses. The nature of technology determines the "order" of sensory preferences in a culture. You talk about information networks independent of technology, but media technology has changed us drastically since we actually lived like that by reordering our senses. In the tribal world, every one of our senses was well developed for practical purposes, with the ear being the sense for communication (speech). The ear is all inclusive, sensitive, and cannot be focused as opposed to the analytic and linear eye, which contributed to the harmony and interdependence of tribal kinship. With the invention of the phonetic alphabet, this equilibrium was thrown into permanent disruption by installing sight as the dominant sense. In the words of McLuhan:
But those information networks still
ARE independent of the technology that restructured the priority of senses in culture. You and I could still be be having this discussion and back forth in a tribalist society. The differences, though, are obvious. The tempo, pace, and structure of our words (on a written, digital format vs a live, oral one demanding only the aural sense in real time) would certainly be different. The quality of our discussion, too, would be hindered (you wouldn't be able to quote McLuhan, unless he was present right there with us sitting around the fire, for example). Before the internet, philosophers and thinkers would write letters back and forth and do more or less what you and I are doing here (much higher quality with them than us, of course), but instead of taking a day or two like we're doing, it would take them months to reply back and forth.
Of course, this changes the way we live.
IT'S SUPPOSED TO, BY DESIGN. Teleology is intrinsic to the metaphysic of technology. In plain English: Technology does not exist in reality without design and intended purpose aka it's not a naturally occurring phenomenon. Civilizational existence augmented with technology is far superior - orders of magnitude more - than a tribal existence. It's self-evident, and it's frankly surprising how somebody as brilliant as Ted Kaczynski would be so wrong about this. I suppose it is true after all that when a genius makes mistakes it's catastrophically big.
This goes back to criticism of Ted's claim that technology disrupts man's natural state, and comes full circle to what I said earlier. Man does not have some natural state that is intrinsically human. I suppose you could argue that the capacity to reason and use language is in fact man's natural state, since this is a uniquely human trait (I'm sure somebody, somewhere, sometime made this argument long before I existed). To argue that technology takes us far away from our natural state is assuming the truth of a questionable premise.
The invention of the phonetic alphabet has thus imbued in man a radically different concept of time space relationships.
This is a function of language, not technology (see: Sapir-Whorf hypothesis).
It further affected interpersonal relationships by replacing speech as the main means of communication, which destroyed tribal relationships and senses of community. So yes, I can place the blame on technology.
The implication being that communities can only exist within tribal structures is circular. Communities
are tribal structures. The alphabet reorganized communities and expanded their size and scope. It only disrupted the structure of tribes that relied solely on speech, much like how the automobile disrupted the structure of businesses that relied solely on the horse.
Your blaming of technology for disrupting your potential state of minimalist, triablist community and it's attendant comforts you would have grown accustomed to, is you blaming guns for shootings that disrupt your workflow comfort because now you have to go through security screening procedures and metal detectors installed every time you go to work and leave on a lunch break to come back (and also have to waste productive time going through active shooter response training). I trust that you're sufficiently reasonable to see the irrationality of that position.
In your example of the messengers and the kings, the focus should not be on the content of the message but the nature of messengers as means of communication.
The messenger
IS the "technology." The king taking his anger out on the messenger is precisely him blaming the technology for the misfortune of whatever message would be bringing to his kingdom.
Yes, the focus should be on the nature of the technology. In this case trusted messengers and envoys were the best possible technology available at the time (you can't always trust a pigeon with important and sensitive information). This is why we look for technological innovation and improvements whenever we have tangible problems that need solving.
And with facebook, we should not focus on Darlene gossiping about Betsy's affair, but how facebook as a mean of communication has had an effect on social spaces.
No, the medium is not the message. The messenger is not the message he's delivering to the king. McLuhan's catch phrase is as silly as the old adage, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Sounds cool and wise on the face of it, but upon close inspection it's absurd. Paralysis doesn't kill me either. Guess I'm stronger now. Lemme get out of my wheelchair and break my deadlift PR.
Of course, Facebook has had an effect on social spaces. Who's denying that? Why are you concerned about Facebook facilitating gossip when you should be concerned that people gossip in the first place?
Technology doesn't fix problems of the human condition, nor does it make them worse. Technology makes the existing problems more visible. Technology allows good humans to be better humans, and it allows bad humans to be worse. (This isn't alluding to the inseparability problem of separating the good of technology from the bad of technology that you were claiming earlier. I'm talking about specifically about the human condition here.)
Technology will always be misused, because that is ultimately a human problem. This is why I'm surprised that that Ted focused his efforts on stopping the tools, rather than stopping the misuse of those tools.
I don't blame the gun in the shooting, but the nature of the gun as opposed to some other instrument of death should be analyzed when considering the nature of violence. "The medium is the message".
FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC.
You don't blame technology then. Good news: You're not as irrational as I thought.
You can certainly analyze the nature of the technology in all aspects. That happens all of the time in academia, for example, and now recently is happening in the public sphere with all of this hoopla surrounding AI and the alarmist proclamations of its existential threat to us by public intellectuals and business figures. (If only we some way of controlling the development of this technology. Hm, oh well.) However, it's a huge leap of logic to go from the analysis of technology and it's effects on society to conclude that technology is to blame.
Anyway, I got you to admit technology acts as a revolutionizing agent and that it necessarily restricts human freedom, so it seems like this is pretty much wrapped up and this will probably be my last reply.
No, you didn't, as I already explained in this post and in previous posts.
But feel free to close your eyes and ears and walk away. The technology you're using to read this certainly isn't restricting your freedom to do so. KEK
