
Are we really so modern? - beeandapenguin
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/05/the-dream-of-enlightenment-by-anthony-gottlieb
======
faktorialas
People like trusting their intuitions. In many cases, they trust them so much
they even deny that there's an argument to be made about their content -
especially if people surrounding them share them.

This leads to people being ignorant of and confused about philosophical
issues, but more importantly, it leads to them dismissing them without looking
at them. Which doesn't make a worldview void of philosophy, instead it makes
one with an unquestioned amateur philosophy.

It's a lot like many in politics assuming that our time is different, and
historical examples are irrelevant, even when there is no good reason to
believe that. Our modernity is a lot like that.

~~~
wozniacki
It pays to keep this in the context of the events in our recent history which
some argue have lead to a certain stripe of ideological stagnation in America,
not just in the way we perceive modernity but in also their debilitating
influence on how we perceive actual technological progress itself.

Peter Thiel has been steadfastly vocal on this :

    
    
      I think one of the … you know, the counter-cultural in the '60s
      was the hippies. You know, we landed on the moon in July of 1969.
      Woodstock started three weeks later, and with the benefit of 
      hindsight, that’s when progress ended, and the hippies took over
      the country.
    
      Today the counterculture is to believe in science and technology.
      You know, our society, the dominant culture doesn’t like science.
      It doesn’t like technology. You just look at the science-fiction 
      movies that come out of Hollywood — Terminator, Matrix, Avatar, 
      Elysium. I watched the Gravity movie the other day. It’s like you
      would never want to go into outer space. You would just want to be
      back on some muddy island. And so I think we’re in a world where 
      actually believing that a better future is possible that you can 
      have agency and work towards a better future, that is actually 
      radically counter-cultural.[1]
    

[1]

Peter Thiel and Glenn Beck discuss what the counterculture looks like.

[http://www.glennbeck.com/2014/10/21/could-this-be-the-new-
co...](http://www.glennbeck.com/2014/10/21/could-this-be-the-new-counter-
culture/)

(or if your political persuasion forbids you against patronizing Beck)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IER50pX-
FuM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IER50pX-FuM)

~~~
trgn
IMHO, the space example is bad. I have no interest in space travel. Not
because I don't believe in technology, but because I don't think there's
anything appealing about going to space. Yeah, I think living on some cool
Star Trek planet would be fun, but we're talking about the moon or Mars. They
are, well, rocks. For a lot of people, like Thiel, space is like Plan B, where
we go to after we blow up the earth. I don't think that's going to happen
anytime soon. And should it happen, the earth during a nuclear winter will
still be infinitely more hospitable than some plastic pod on Mars.

Space-stuff is a cerebral pleasure. As an astronaut you can feel in awe as you
experience the sum total of human technological prowess. But space is a
horrible sensual pleasure. Mindnumbingly dull, ugly, and most of all,
shackled. No personal freedom, fully a slave to the overlords in Houston.

Let space to the robots. They can go mine ores, take pictures, and putz around
in the dust. But that sounds like a terrible way to spend time as a human.

~~~
AstralStorm
Given what we know about the asteroid probabilities, space, preferably very
far space, should be a quite big priority. Or at least a sensible asteroid
defense system, but colonies are potentially more resilient if self
sufficient.

~~~
peterwoo
The odds of a medium sized impact in the next few thousand years are very
small. Still, an advanced asteroid defense capability should be prepared,
since even the small-ish bolides that we expect to hit with greater frequency
should be eliminated. This should reduce the risk from catastrophic impactors
even further.

Settlement of e.g. Mars will never be needed in the time frames we should be
thinking about. If asteroid defense is developed, then for thousands of years
that will not be a concern at all. And if in 2,000 years they need a
settlement on Mars, the people in 1,800 years can prioritize doing it.

In other words I don't see it as a priority. Material conditions on Earth are
not great, and we are threatened by catastrophes in the atmosphere, oceans,
and tectonic plates. Earth and its cities are infinitely more responsive to
our efforts and investment than Mars or elsewhere. There is so much that we
can do here in this century, while settling another planetary body in this
century seems basically impossible.

~~~
AstralStorm
I like the base rate fallacy committed there. In recent history, there have
been at least 5 sizable asteroid impacts, each of which would evaporate a big
city. Just lucky those didn't hit any. In longer term, two of those triggered
mass extinctions.

~~~
PeterisP
If a "evaporate a big city" or "kill all humans on Earth" asteroid strikes,
the existence of a Mars colony doesn't help my personal survival or well-being
in any way whatsoever unless I'm there.

And if I'm _there_ , odds are that it made my personal survival chances worse,
since they're mostly determined by the many "normal" causes of death and being
a pioneer in a world not really suited for humans is likely to be worse than
Earth.

You could make an argument that it's not wise to put all your eggs in one
basket, and it has some merit in this discussion, but when all I have is one
egg, the only thing I can do is to pick the safest basket I have - and for now
it's Earth.

------
astazangasta
This is the same argument made by Bruno Latour in "We were never Modern", that
modernity is marked by the insistence on split between science, politics and
philosophy - but this split cannot hold up, and we get "hybrids". Science is
not a separate domain, but treads in politics and so on.

My wife is fond of "The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosopher",
which argues the Enlightenment wasn't new, either, it was just pouring
religion (the thirst for god) into new cups.

Modernity, to me, is a more complex attempt at the same, to find a new source
of unambiguous authority, a method by which the world makes sense. Again a
futile gesture, but still it takes hold.

~~~
user202020
> Science is not a separate domain, but treads in politics and so on.

How does science tread in politics? I'm actually honestly wondering.

~~~
astazangasta
Scientists make guns, rockets, energy technologies, robots, all of which have
political and social consequence. Scientists produce models of human identity
and behavior which have the same. See the other thread about machine learning
and inequality, e.g.

~~~
user202020
I see this point, but I thought you meant that aspects of science mix with
political thought. I can definitely see that science has consequences and
influences on all kinds of things, including politics. In that case, every
field is connected or related to another in some form or fashion.

~~~
astazangasta
I also mean that, science is deeply fucked by the political prejudices of its
practitioners, and not in some trivial "all scientists are Democrats" sort of
way. Science, no different than any other form of human knowledge, involves
construction of narrative, and is subject to all of the same constraints that
narrative prejudice yields. What you study and the methods you use are an
obvious place we might find this problem.

~~~
user202020
I wouldn't say it's as messed up as that. You make it sound as thought
scientific institutions suffer from systemic corruption. Yes, narrative is
involved, but humans are storytellers. I don't think science is limited or
hindered by the way people process information.

------
renox
The article isn't bad but this part made me shake my head:

> Gottlieb writes, “physical bodies are . . . not quite what they seem, but
> are only appearances somehow thrown up by monads” seems less extravagant in
> the light of contemporary string theory, which holds that everything that
> exists is the product of vibrating one-dimensional objects

Poor string theory used to justify such nonsense..

~~~
jomamaxx
String Theory is probably nonsense, so it's in good company.

~~~
AstralStorm
Mostly not nonsense, since it fits most or all experimental physics, just the
mathematic description is quite extravagant and interpretation is even more
alien than quantum physics or general relativity, which are already highly
mind-boggling.

~~~
azemetre
I believe they were inferring that string theory isn't exactly falsifiable
which teeters on the edge of poor science.

------
6stringmerc
Wonderful exploration of many similar / related / intellectual / belief /
explanation systems regarding human existence! Coming across a lot of those
names and concepts what feels like a decade ago (probably was, during graduate
school and supplementing my Education track with hybrid Philosophy &
Anthropology snippets) but they're very nicely presented here in my opinion.
The sticking point is treating each as a belief structure, and looking to the
human condition and our primal tendencies (e.g. "reasoning") as to why they
have appeal.

In a world were there are so few answers to genuinely big questions, seeking
explanations or making them up seems reasonable and, as history seems to show,
kind of inevitable. Interesting to keep in touch with, diversity I think helps
understanding and/or appreciation (and also the ability to discuss in polity,
heady company where there may be disagreement to chat about).

------
JackFr
As an aside, I found Neal Stephenson's historical fiction the Baroque Cycle,
to be a wonderful exposition of the invention of the modern in the 17th and
18th century.

Apart from the swashbuckling, romance and intrigue what makes the books so
compelling is the idea that so much of what we take for granted with respect
to our worldview and our mindset was created at this time.

~~~
Balgair
How so? I'm kinda going through the lead up and fall-out of the Peace of
Westphalia right now and would love to know your opinion of Stephenson's work.

~~~
JackFr
I'm not sure I understand your question.

As an undergraduate history minor I took electives all over the place,
including 'The Glorious Revolution', 'The Scientific Revolution' and 'The Rise
of Financial Capitalism'. Even though I kind of knew it, reading the Baroque
Cycle it really hit home that all of these things were happening at the same
time, and over the course of a generation or two, the world, and in the West
the worldview, was really, fundamentally changed

(WRT, the Peace of Westphalia - not sure where you're writing from -- but if
you're ever in the neighborhood visit Muenster and check out the room where it
was signed, as well as the cages for the Anabaptist leaders still hanging from
the cathedral steeple.)

------
losteverything
Lately I looked into writing history (and desire more) and was surprised one
"fact" \- many more people read than people who wrote (as centuries went on).
I suspect the total number of studied writers is quite small wrt the articles
mentioned sources.

To compare to today, the keyboard and vocal cords afford many more authors.
History is not taking the "average" of philosophical thought but if it was I
wish there were more writers centuries ago.

~~~
dajohnson89
That will certainly offer cultural insight, which is valuable, but I think
you'd find essentially the medieval equivalent of the YouTube comments
section.

~~~
losteverything
Just thinking... I've never read you tube comments. I'll try next time. Ty

~~~
dajohnson89
Trust me, you're not missing anything. You've been warned :-)

------
euroclydon
Among other things, I would judge how modern a community is by what their
solid waste disposal facilities look like. All those plastic toys, furniture,
building material, packaging, etc, being pressed into a mound! Or, head down
to the cancer treatment facility, and imagine what Dr. McCoy would have to
say.

~~~
melling
Imagine what people who grew up watching Dr. McCoy would say. This isn't the
future we were expecting. If you were born 100 years ago, you might think the
world has changed dramatically. However, if you were born 50 years ago, the
future has been slow to arrive.

~~~
ctdonath
I was born nearly 50 years ago. The only reason it may seem "slow to arrive"
is that the dramatic visuals are absent, and that some of the expected
technology proved a lot more boring/problematic than expected. Instead of
rockets taking the staggeringly long time to reach staggeringly boring
destinations (Moon & Mars are dead rocks), we've brought most of human
knowledge & communications from racked hidden ink-on-paper to instant access
anywhere on the planet via a pocket wireless supercomputer - something so
amazing that most people spend much of their time staring at it (mostly for
porn & cat videos...ARGH!). 5-minute food is the norm. Electric cars are on
track for massive market penetration. Nearly-free worldwide-coverage
videophones are available (just nobody actually wants to be _seen_ ). A
lifetime of cinema, much in 3D, is available in your living room for an hour's
pay per month. A couple days' wage can fly you to the other side of the planet
in a few hours. 72 _F indoor temperature is so ubiquitous it 's practically
illegal to not have it. Thousands of books are trivially stored on a $35
e-reader weighing ounces.

Heck, as an middle-class kid growing up back then, we had wood-fired heat (no
A/C), well water, grew half our own food, walked miles to town, and 4-digit
phone numbers. Home computers didn't exist early on, the closest being hobby
kids with _maybe* hundreds of bytes of storage; when "personal computers"
finally appeared (Apple II and IBM PC) they were, well, paltry. I don't
remember a milkman delivering, but do recall returnable glass bottles.

We _could_ have rockets and Moon bases etc as the norm, but when we got to the
Moon early on we realized it really wasn't that interesting. Infinite cat
videos in your pocket - _that 's_ what people really wanted.

~~~
VLM
"the dramatic visuals are absent"

Some examples:

My mother is active and healthy and doing the grandma things after her heart
operation instead of being a tombstone, and after the laser operation my MiL
is not blind. I'm mystified how you'd even visually express that, but it is a
pretty big change over the last 50 years.

Modern cars are horrifically ugly and character-less compared to my grandpa's
cars, but they last roughly 10x as many miles and require far less than 1/10th
the maintenance and get about twice the MPG and I'm almost certain to survive
most car crashes (whereas in my grandpas day, a car crash was only about as
survivable as an airplane crash). Its easy to express the bland ugliness of
modern commuter cars visually, but how do you express that the hood may as
well be welded down compared to the bad old days?

~~~
ctdonath
I was referring to decades-past "artist's rendition" pictures depicting the
future. Scenes of dramatic rocket launches and moon hotels, exotic-looking
personal vehicles, surreal attire, and sporadic inclusion of alien life forms.

You're making my point. Your mother is simply alive. Your MiL sees like anyone
else might. Cars are kinda ugly, but in a character-less way instead of "OMG
that's butt-ugly", and simply travel farther and kill fewer people.

The reality of being in the "future" is that it's not visually a dramatic
difference ... yet it _is_ dramatically "futuristic" precisely because
percentage-wise more people are leading normal lives, living on the Moon isn't
interesting to most, and instant access to the near-sum-total of human
knowledge just means more porn & cat pictures to amuse oneself with.

------
throwanem
I'm not sure I see the value in this article's protracted digression into a
bestiary of philosophers. There is, though, much truth in the statement that
to conceive of ourselves as detached from history is to conceive of ourselves
inaccurately.

~~~
codq
The article is, at it's base level, a review of a book called 'The Dream of
Enlightenment'.

~~~
user202020
Yeah. If it told me it would be that in the title, I would be fine, but it
didn't, so now I'm left yearning for thoughts on how or why we think of
ourselves as being so modern, or how we aren't all that different at all. :(

------
advertising
With the idea that knowledge is an act of remembering, consciousness is a
matter of matter, and gods/natures role in creating, seems to me that humans
creating concious AI would potentially create that third era of modernity.

------
InclinedPlane
Of course not. We tolerate mass injustice and violence (even state
perpetuated, both at home and abroad), and racism, and misogyny. We think
vengeance is justice. We savor "redemptive violence". We routinely believe
that mercy is weakness. We harbor numerous misunderstandings and superstitions
on vitally important subjects ranging from relationships to economics to
science to mental illnesses to sexual orientation and gender to recreational
drug use.

Modern? We're practically medieval. But at least there is some glimmering of
hope that we understand our problems and are working to fix them.

~~~
tomp
Where (in the Western world) are racism and misogyny tolerated?

~~~
creshal
Just have a look at Europe. Discussions about migration here go from
"complaining about genuine policy problems" to "blatant racism" in the span it
takes people to get slightly drunk, and that's just the start. If I had a
nickel for every time I hear random people insulting others as "fucking Jews"…

Misogyny is definitely not as bad as it used to be, but it's still everywhere.
And in many cases the victims don't report it for whatever reasons.

~~~
tomp
That's an issue vastly more complicated than "racism". No matter what
"migration" you mean (intra-European or non-European), that's mostly
Xenophobia, not racism. Furthermore, often times people have legitimate
concerns, such as job losses and incompatible cultural norms, if anything I'd
say that these legitimate concerns often get unfairly branded as "racism" just
to silence them.

Finally, you're probably right that insults and intolerance of religions is
common, although I don't see why that should be discouraged - after all,
religion is a choice, and disliking it is just as valid as disliking e.g. neo-
Nazis and white suprematists.

~~~
dagw
_religion is a choice_

In many parts of the world it really isn't. If your parents where catholic
then you are catholic, if your parents where jews then you are a jew, if you
parents where muslim then you are a muslim etc. What you (or your parents)
actually believe and don't believe in is rarely factors into it.

~~~
tomp
Well, they could start by e.g. proclaiming that they're atheist, not wearing
religious symbols/clothing and stopping the religious traditions (e.g. prayer,
dietary prohibitions, etc.). At least, that's what many European catholics did
in the past century.

~~~
AstralStorm
In certain countries religious dissent is considered grounds for
extermination. Up to about 18th century this was practiced in Europe. The
converse is still being practiced, even as recently as 20th century.

No, we aren't that much more modern when tribalism is still rampant.

------
ievahanordah
I think people greatly mix up how advanced "objects" are, and how advanced
people are. The true test is if you take away objects from a person, and then
test their reason. Key word being reason, as the tests which are called iq
tests do not test reason. What they do test, is how well a person is able to
perform in a relatively small aspect, of a subset of American culture. Again
what I just described are two separate things.

------
Etheryte
While I generally don't comment on the appearance of sites, the font The New
Yorker uses makes the text very hard to read, at least on my screen. Simply
using Times New Roman or something similar would already be an improvement.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
Not sure what you mean. The typeface is much larger than the type right here,
and serif typefaces are more readable than sans-serifs.

~~~
zingermc
Maybe serif fonts are more readable on a high-resolution phone screen or
"retina" display, but not on my monitor.

The edges of the serif font on the New Yorker's site just look blurry to me.

