

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Huxley vs Orwell - eplanit
http://www.highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-vs-orwell/

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michaelwww
When I first saw the film Clockwork Orange many years ago, I found Ludovico
Technique very disturbing. Now it's just another day on the internet. "Amusing
Ourselves to Death" is a great book, but I haven't read it in so long I can't
say if it's still relevant or just come to pass and now unremarkable.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludovico_Technique>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death>

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rohern
Just below this post is "Tips for Gamifying Your Mobile App".

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krcz
Huxley also had thought drugs can only make us dumb (like soma in Brave New
World) - until someone shown him psychedelics.

He even wrote later a book describing utopia (Island) which contained similar
things as in Brave New World (drugs use, assisted reproduction, sexual
openness, exposing children to death), but used in positive way.

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crosvenir
Previous posts:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4607098> (2012)

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=627476> (2009)

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rootedbox
Read the book...

[http://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-
Busi...](http://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-
Business/dp/014303653X)

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dionidium
There have been states since 1984 was published that seem to have used it as a
template. See Czeslaw Milosz's comments about the book's impact behind the
Iron Curtain. Or just consider the DPRK today. Both authors got it more or
less right, in other words.

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mixedbit
But Orwellian states are eventually falling, because people rebel against
oppression. Perfect totalitarian state can be a one of which citizens are not
aware.

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dionidium
Your first sentence conspicuously relies on the word "eventually". And there's
no reason to assume that history is a linear march forward. Orwell's words may
again be relevant, "even" in the west.

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jdmitch
Why is it either/or? Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 depicts a dystopian future
full of both bookburning and constant information. I think Huxley and Orwell
both had it right (though the authoritarian disinformation and suppression of
information may be more subtle at the moment than Orwell imagined).

When we become overwhelmed by trivial information, we start to hate
substantial/meaningful information, and both what we hate and what we love
conspire to bring our ruin. (Not that I am that I'm a cynic or anything ;)

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BorgHunter
_"When we become overwhelmed by trivial information, we start to hate
substantial/meaningful information, and both what we hate and what we love
conspire to bring our ruin."_

Is it hatred, or simply a desire to get the "cheaper" information? It seems
like human brains are wired to assume a kind of information parity, in which
"Kim Kardashian buys a soda" is equal in value to "Germany annexes the
Sudetenland". Understanding the latter has a lot of prerequisites, each of
which is also a piece of information that has to be acquired, and so the
latter is rightly seen as requiring more work than the former. And so, if you
have a greedy information-gathering algorithm, you'll prefer the Kardashian
data to the WWII data. This is why I admire people like Carl Sagan, David
Attenborough, and all the other great popularizers of complex subjects,
because instilling that passion and showing _why_ some data are more important
than others is a really hard job.

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crosvenir
Well, I _was_ interested in the book that inspired this comic, but I followed
the link to the original [1] which states that the "comic was respectfully
removed in March 2012 due to the wishes of the copyright holders of the text."

1) [http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-
Ourse...](http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourselves-to-
Death.html)

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GHFigs
Please don't let something like that keep you from reading a book. If you
don't want them to get your money, get it from a library.

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crosvenir
Brilliant! Libraries... I remember them... And much more ethical than the
method I was considering.

