<story><title>Amish Hackers (2009)</title><url>https://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>adrianN</author><text>The Amish can evaluate the effects of new technology on their communities by having the rest of the world act as a guinea pig. I think society as a whole could benefit from thinking about the effects of new technology on communities before adopting it, but reasoning about that from first principles seems very hard and putting the genie back into the bottle after a technology has been widely deployed is essentially impossible.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Mystlix</author><text>But this is a very hypochritical way of living in my opinion.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s take YouTube as an example: I am not addicted to YouTube; I use it sparingly, without an account, with an extension that blocks related videos and by flushing the cookies each time. I consider it of great value to me because when I need to search for a tutorial or a piece of information I&amp;#x27;m almost sure to find a video that will meet my demand.
The problem here lies with the fact that the only reason why there are so many videos in the first place is because the majority of the userbase is indeed addicted to the service, so people are highly incentivized to make videos on the platform sharing their knowledge in order to capture a money earning audience. And even if you tell me that the vast majority of content is made without money taken into consideration you still have to admit that the service wouldn&amp;#x27;t be free if there wasn&amp;#x27;t that mass of money earning youtubers making the content free for everyone else.&lt;p&gt;Since I use YouTube in such an Amishly way, I believe I&amp;#x27;m not earning people much money so I don&amp;#x27;t feel that bad perpetuating the cycle, but I still have to admit to myself that if more and more people acted like me YouTube and many other platforms wouldn&amp;#x27;t exist and my life would be a bit worse as a result.
I hope the Amish truly realize how lucky they are that they can exploit the rest of society when it suits their needs (e.g. they have no problem going to the hospital) and check out for the rest of the day unbothered while everyone else slaves away to mainting the system</text></comment>
<story><title>Amish Hackers (2009)</title><url>https://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>adrianN</author><text>The Amish can evaluate the effects of new technology on their communities by having the rest of the world act as a guinea pig. I think society as a whole could benefit from thinking about the effects of new technology on communities before adopting it, but reasoning about that from first principles seems very hard and putting the genie back into the bottle after a technology has been widely deployed is essentially impossible.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ballenf</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think the article supports that position. Every new tech was evaluated by them based on the experience of people within their community who were approved early adopters. I didn&amp;#x27;t see any argument of &amp;quot;look what that tech is doing to the world&amp;quot; as factoring into a decision.&lt;p&gt;Maybe I misread your point, but it seems like you&amp;#x27;re saying they&amp;#x27;re free loading off of the rest of society in some fundamentally greater way than other groups. I just don&amp;#x27;t see that.</text></comment>