> In his 1904 book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber introduces the metaphor of an "iron cage" [steely shell]:
>
> > The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which to-day determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt. In Baxter's view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the "saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment". But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.
>
> According to Weber, the market-dominated economic order was created by innovative, religiously motivated economic. But the individual today can no longer engage in such creative action. Instead, the worker must operate in a narrowly-defined specialization, and economic enterprises must continually strive to maximize profits and rationalize their production for the sake of efficiency.
What concerns me is that I cannot see a way for this cultural modus operandi to be superseded. Something Weber suggests earlier is that the capitalist spirit came to dominate global culture precisely because of a religious devotion to the accumulation of material influence [capital]. In a globalized economy where mass surveillance and behavioral modification are not science fictions but pedestrian technologies, what can possibly challenge a culture which irrationally pursues efficient material accumulation?
Humans knowing stuff may make me feel nice and warm and happy. However, humans who sacrifice material efficiency for the sake of pursuing human understanding will, definitionally, be at a material disadvantage. This was already problematic when material disadvantage meant 'only' that the other guy had more guns and could take your lunch money. Now they can establish a techno-bureaucratic order around which essentially criminalizes undermining their material efficiency.
This is what I see happening to contemporary specialists in these technologies. For many of my colleagues, refusing to participate in this mess amounts to a sentence to a sentence to an unfulfilling life. They have been socialized to be satisfied only with technological problem solving, and offered only one alternative: churn out shit papers that people will cite based on the abstract because they don't have time to think about anything. "Be thankful that you have any time at all to scribble formulas on a whiteboard. If you don't like something about this you can go get a low-paying dead-end job in web development. Don't like that either? Work below 'minimum' wage on a menial job and never think about anything interesting ever again while you marvel at how unaffordable your insulin is. Unhappy with your options? Be homeless. Nobody is gonna give you any insulin though. Just remember while you ruminate: this is the freest man has ever been. You really are quite unreasonable to be so unhappy."
Why wouldn't they submit AI generated trash? It's better than the alternative - right?
When enshittification touches everything like Midas, having gone too far for too long, it passes a point of no return. We passed it. I only noticed it since around 2011 finding among my lifelong Democratic Party voting liberal educated middle class world traveler white people friends the complete loss of any ability to communicate about anything. Anything. Everything completely enshittified in precisely the way you describe at the beginning of this post. And since then? They’ve only lit themselves on fire with accelerant
> “In this paragraph you have said one thing. And in that you have said the opposite. Which is it to be?” They are polite, and wish to please, but they are as baffled by the question as I am by the response. “I know,” they will say, “but that is there and this is here.”
Having observed the same; my educated friends and colleagues becoming unable to make any progress on any discussions whatsoever. Realizing that the problem is - in large part - that they do not experience cognitive discomfort comparable to mine when confronted by contradictions... this was very useful I think. Since I read this post I have already shifted one disagreement back to, "is being consistent useful/important?" and had some success.
Old habits die hard, but people are often interested in fixing problems... It's helpful to be able to help them work on what the problem actually is.
"...they do not experience cognitive discomfort comparable to mine when confronted by contradictions ..."
Huh. I think that's spot on. From my perspective, based in a Christian worldview which is ontologically and epistemically realist + classical and analytical philosophy, contradictions are crucial.
But from a perspective where the basic idea is that nobody can never really know what's true or not, contradictions sort of lose their importance. Their meaning gets eroded.
This not only renders discourse superficial. It means that there can be no reasoned dissent. There's then only disloyalty and symbolic expressions of allegiance.
In terms of the question of what we can do about this, I think the best (and only solution) like you posit, is just to not be like that. Refusing to use these tools, and approaching every interaction we have online with integrity, logic, and humility. Of course this too will eventually be turned against us, in which case I think leaving the internet might be the only way to go.
I think you're right. But I also think that solution is not going to be widely adopted as long as these addictive systems are in place.
Postman faced the same conclusion, but rejected what he called the fanciful "Luddite" position of e.g. Jerry Mander. His admittedly imperfect solution was a renewal of education, and maybe that's a good answer.
But maybe we're also asking the wrong kind of questions. I don't know.
"WHAT EXACTLY IS THE UNITED NATIONS AGENDA 2030 WHICH IS CURRENTLY BEING ENFORCED GLOBALLY?", To find out more, pls visit my blog 👇https://bibleprophecyinaction.blogspot.com/
I quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_cage which in turn is quoting Max Weber.
> In his 1904 book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber introduces the metaphor of an "iron cage" [steely shell]:
>
> > The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which to-day determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt. In Baxter's view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the "saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment". But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.
>
> According to Weber, the market-dominated economic order was created by innovative, religiously motivated economic. But the individual today can no longer engage in such creative action. Instead, the worker must operate in a narrowly-defined specialization, and economic enterprises must continually strive to maximize profits and rationalize their production for the sake of efficiency.
What concerns me is that I cannot see a way for this cultural modus operandi to be superseded. Something Weber suggests earlier is that the capitalist spirit came to dominate global culture precisely because of a religious devotion to the accumulation of material influence [capital]. In a globalized economy where mass surveillance and behavioral modification are not science fictions but pedestrian technologies, what can possibly challenge a culture which irrationally pursues efficient material accumulation?
Humans knowing stuff may make me feel nice and warm and happy. However, humans who sacrifice material efficiency for the sake of pursuing human understanding will, definitionally, be at a material disadvantage. This was already problematic when material disadvantage meant 'only' that the other guy had more guns and could take your lunch money. Now they can establish a techno-bureaucratic order around which essentially criminalizes undermining their material efficiency.
This is what I see happening to contemporary specialists in these technologies. For many of my colleagues, refusing to participate in this mess amounts to a sentence to a sentence to an unfulfilling life. They have been socialized to be satisfied only with technological problem solving, and offered only one alternative: churn out shit papers that people will cite based on the abstract because they don't have time to think about anything. "Be thankful that you have any time at all to scribble formulas on a whiteboard. If you don't like something about this you can go get a low-paying dead-end job in web development. Don't like that either? Work below 'minimum' wage on a menial job and never think about anything interesting ever again while you marvel at how unaffordable your insulin is. Unhappy with your options? Be homeless. Nobody is gonna give you any insulin though. Just remember while you ruminate: this is the freest man has ever been. You really are quite unreasonable to be so unhappy."
Why wouldn't they submit AI generated trash? It's better than the alternative - right?
Not to worry. Science is already ruined. Sterile AI trash will just bury it in the landfill, thereby mitigating its stink.
‘Enshittification’ coined in 2022 has a narrow technical meaning but of course means more than that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
When enshittification touches everything like Midas, having gone too far for too long, it passes a point of no return. We passed it. I only noticed it since around 2011 finding among my lifelong Democratic Party voting liberal educated middle class world traveler white people friends the complete loss of any ability to communicate about anything. Anything. Everything completely enshittified in precisely the way you describe at the beginning of this post. And since then? They’ve only lit themselves on fire with accelerant
> “In this paragraph you have said one thing. And in that you have said the opposite. Which is it to be?” They are polite, and wish to please, but they are as baffled by the question as I am by the response. “I know,” they will say, “but that is there and this is here.”
Having observed the same; my educated friends and colleagues becoming unable to make any progress on any discussions whatsoever. Realizing that the problem is - in large part - that they do not experience cognitive discomfort comparable to mine when confronted by contradictions... this was very useful I think. Since I read this post I have already shifted one disagreement back to, "is being consistent useful/important?" and had some success.
Old habits die hard, but people are often interested in fixing problems... It's helpful to be able to help them work on what the problem actually is.
"...they do not experience cognitive discomfort comparable to mine when confronted by contradictions ..."
Huh. I think that's spot on. From my perspective, based in a Christian worldview which is ontologically and epistemically realist + classical and analytical philosophy, contradictions are crucial.
But from a perspective where the basic idea is that nobody can never really know what's true or not, contradictions sort of lose their importance. Their meaning gets eroded.
This not only renders discourse superficial. It means that there can be no reasoned dissent. There's then only disloyalty and symbolic expressions of allegiance.
In terms of the question of what we can do about this, I think the best (and only solution) like you posit, is just to not be like that. Refusing to use these tools, and approaching every interaction we have online with integrity, logic, and humility. Of course this too will eventually be turned against us, in which case I think leaving the internet might be the only way to go.
I think you're right. But I also think that solution is not going to be widely adopted as long as these addictive systems are in place.
Postman faced the same conclusion, but rejected what he called the fanciful "Luddite" position of e.g. Jerry Mander. His admittedly imperfect solution was a renewal of education, and maybe that's a good answer.
But maybe we're also asking the wrong kind of questions. I don't know.
Thanks for the Article..
"WHAT EXACTLY IS THE UNITED NATIONS AGENDA 2030 WHICH IS CURRENTLY BEING ENFORCED GLOBALLY?", To find out more, pls visit my blog 👇https://bibleprophecyinaction.blogspot.com/