Post by @adamgreenfield@social.coop

I hesitate to say this bluntly, because I know a whole lot of folks on here are actively involved in technical development of one sort or another, and derive both pleasure and a significant part of their identity from that fact. There’s something I think we all need to get clear on, though, and it’s something I myself had to learn the hard way: no tool will liberate us. The achievement of justice cannot be automated, or otherwise outsourced to a technical apparatus of any sort.

You work on tools because that’s what you’re good at, because that’s the way your brain works, because that’s what you enjoy or can get compensated for doing. That’s all as may be. But please, please do not make the mistake of thinking that the tool – any tool, of any sort whatever – will produce “progress.” There is and can be no technical fix for the social-psychological, existential or ontological predicaments that confront us. In the end there is only us, staring back at us from whatever mirror we’ve built.

16 Replies

7 Boosts

Sir Dr Rusty o the Isle 🖤💛❤️

@rkd993@aus.social 15 min. ago

@adamgreenfield Thank you for starting this thread. Most interesting and enjoyable. At almost 82 I've been lucky to have been privy to a lot of system changes, tool changes, and social changes. Degrees in psychology, linguistics, psycholinguistics, years of teaching in environmental and population psychology and then specialising in databases, IT training companies, and consulting.

From working on the early #ARPAnet to today's internet. From discussing "AI" (early machine learning) with one of the original researchers at Stanford in 1964 to working with Microsoft on Natural Language Query processing in SQL Server to watching the absurd claims of #TheGreatAI_Grift.
It's been a wild ride as well as frustrating - The Limits to Growth #ClubOfRome #MIT was written by classmates trying to raise the alarm about the nature of dynamic systems, particularly as they interact at environmental, social, physical, and economic levels. Their early work has been expanded many times but especially in Australia by CSIRO.
The (system) tools and computing informed much about the probable dynamics of global systems and yet many lessons have not been learned. The current #AI_Hype is an extraordinary lesson in a bizarre approach to tools.

One of the best works on tools was written by Prof Bill Merrill.
Well worth a read.

When originally written as his PhD the manuscript was stolen twice - powers in the US didn't like what he was saying. #DangerousIdeas

https://www.amazon.com.au/Wisdom-Tools-Bill-Merrill/dp/0977334813 [Not promoting Amazon]

Otherwise this there are PDF of it.

Just as the unintended consequences of the internet are ever more apparent there are many early warning signs already around the #AI_Con and the tools being bandied about.

All tool makers should print out your comment Adam and make it a morning ritual to reread it.

The World's dynamic systems keep sending us messages and humankind continues to ignore them, to trivialise them, to pretend they aren't system feedback.
#NepalGlacialMelt
#WorstElNinoInLivingMemory
#EuropeanHeatWaves
#NorthAmericanWildFires

The people of the globe need to all stop being distracted by the glitter of the tools and money and focus on actually saving the planet or at least really slowing the downward climate cycle. Heating up the planet with thousands of unnecessary #AI_DataCenters is a particular kind of madness in this epoch. #Nepal is a timely warning to the world.

Another useful perspective is provided by Prof William Rees
https://youtu.be/sZnnvH7FgBw?si=d69JGfttpefj3DCg

How tools are used by humans has always had consequences. Consider them. Consider what goals we really need, not what the short-sighted #GreedyRich tell us.

Thank you again @adamgreenfield 🙏🏽🥂🥂

To real tool wisdom 💖💖

https://youtu.be/undefined

YouTubessa voit nauttia parhaista videoista ja musiikista, ladata alkuperäistä sisältöä ja jakaa kaiken ystäviesi, perheesi ja koko maailman kanssa.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Wisdom-Tools-Bill-Merrill/dp/0977334813

Adam Greenfield

@adamgreenfield@social.coop 46 sec. ago

@rkd993 Thanks, that’s very kind of you. As I so often say: the Club of Rome were mostly right.

Joan, but festive 🎅🏼🎄

@clickhere@mastodon.ie 22 min. ago

@adamgreenfield Great minds:

https://mastodon.social/@iris_meredith/117178026845359543

via @iris_meredith

View

Nu Modular

@numodular@c.im 33 min. ago

@adamgreenfield The continuation of the wealthy, manipulating the masses into subjugated subservience, via extraneous metrics developed to benefit them more, instead of you/us/99%, is the system that needs to be uprooted.

This can be done by pursuing individual proficiency ranges, earlier in developmental stages, not only through making Behavioral Science core education, but applying a more integrated hardware equation in the behavioral range process.

We have the tech to better target character trait data, through professions like #bioinformatics, that can be effectively integrated into educational curriculum. This averts distal abuses, like #TechBros and #FossilFuels #Oligarchy keeping too many from their inherent value ranges, and substantiates a more persistent, malleable, reliable infrastructure in human systems, and therefore better affecting overlapping ecosystems that ultimately cycle/feedback to us.

Adam Greenfield

@adamgreenfield@social.coop 29 min. ago

@numodular Hahahaha no.

clarkiestar

@clarkiestar@mas.to 1 hr. ago

@adamgreenfield

A meme showing a black and white photo of Audre Lorde standing and looking directly to camera. In black lettering on a white background, to the upper left is the following quote from Audre Lord: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. Never is highlighted in yellow

Adam Greenfield

@adamgreenfield@social.coop 1 hr. ago

@clarkiestar Yeah, sure. We’ve all read Audre, or at least I hope we have. But what I’m saying is something else: *no* tools will disable the master’s house.

Tero Hänninen

@0xtero@ohai.social 2 hr. ago

@adamgreenfield I guess it’s all relative to epochs. It’s hard to argue that tools to make fire or farm the land did not bring ”progress”. Future historians may find that one of the tools we are working on now progressed us to the next era of humanity.

Adam Greenfield

@adamgreenfield@social.coop 1 hr. ago

@0xtero My point is that there are no epochs, there is and will be no “next era of humanity.” We are as we have been, and shall continue to be.

kbal

@kbal@fedia.io 1 hr. ago

I dunno about that. We can read things from three millennia ago and see recognizable human nature in them, find out something about our modern selves, but it's taking things a little too far to claim that human nature never changes at all.

Adam Greenfield

@adamgreenfield@social.coop 1 hr. ago

@kbal @0xtero Well, I don’t think there is any such thing as human nature. There sure do seem to be strong attractors in human social behavior, though – very strong attractors.

3+ more replies

vriesk (Jan Srz)

@vriesk@hachyderm.io 2 hr. ago

@adamgreenfield this, but also, it's a perfectly good thing to actually care about a tool, feel the sense of joy of working with the right one for the job, or making it better for others

Adam Greenfield

@adamgreenfield@social.coop 2 hr. ago

@vriesk No argument there.

Colman Reilly

@Colman@mastodon.ie 2 hr. ago

@adamgreenfield the fixes are all at the system level and tools are part of that. There are no single factor fixes.

@gargon

Adam Greenfield

@adamgreenfield@social.coop 1 hr. ago

@Colman There are no fixes at all, is what I’m getting at.

Adam Greenfield

@adamgreenfield@social.coop 3 hr. ago

(“I don’t know who needs to hear this,” etc., and at that I strongly suspect the people who most do will struggle to take the thought on board. Selah.)