SciameriKen » July 25th, 2017, 2:59 am wrote:All I am saying is the threat to manufacturing from technology is not some Liberal propaganda, and we should be taking the issue seriously.
Haha, yeah there's a hint of 'fake news!' in the response, isn't there. We have the Carrier evidence, and the interviews with employees there at the factory that Trump visited during his campaign now, even, and yet because Trump does not even publicly recognise this looming technological tsunami, while promoting 'clean coal', and 'made in America' while he sells products manufactured abroad on the cheap, some of his hopeful voters have apparently invested their entire heart in his vision.
Personally I couldn't believe it recently when I saw the advertisement for AI solutions play on YouTube before my video played. It was like something out of a sci-fi movie. I recall the feeling of swiping a sophisticated smartphone touch-screen was something similar.
I felt kind of betrayed by society - that such technology and its mechanism was not being researched and implemented by my government 'for the good of the people', and had been hidden away - intellectually and physically - from public view until it physically got into my hands.
It made me wonder what else was out there in R&D departments waiting to revolutionise peoples' lives that the apparently 'caring government' couldn't care less about.
But as has been mentioned here already, if one's self-view entirely orbits around a very traditional concept of 'protestant manual labourer doing God's work on his way to heaven', then anything that threatens the continued satisfaction of that vision - a vocational as well as spiritual identity intimately fused together - then there is a very possible Amish-style response on the cards, rather than acceptance and adjustment.
One has other case studies, such as the people of Tanna Island who have resisted 'modernisation' ever since far more technologically advanced humans arrived there. They have formed cargo cults - wanting the tech but not the education that created it, and have even resorted at times, out of desperation, to attempting to construct 'radios' from stones and wood (assembled in the same shapes as real radios) to call back the donors who gave them cargo in the past.
I think it could be said that the relative global safety that the Amish communities in the US enjoy, is down to US modern tech. Shift them out of the US and to a border in the middle East and I am guessing that their philosophy on modernisation would change pretty quickly, or else they'd just implode or be invaded. As far as they are concerned nowadays, however, on their current situation they'd probably side with the idea that God is protecting them, not modern technology.
Of course it's their freedom to choose their reality, but it will be awkward to see how far such beliefs keep them safe if their sociopolitical climate changes significantly. Evolution has been a wise concept to embrace even long before Darwin's time - if one's competitors have better weapons then watch out!
The YouTube video of the Japanese 'ki master' who kicks his students butts without touching them vs MMA guy comes to mind. So sad and awkward to watch - the brutality of truth and evolved science towards those hypnotised by wishful fantasy. May it be a warning to the would-be future manual labourers.