I wonder how much academic familiarity one really needs to recognise the rather obvious vernacular effects. I've studied religion and mass communication effects somewhat as well as being a practising Christian, and as I see it the word "religion" commonly applies to the orthodoxy and its big, visible impacts that are social and psychological, rather than the personal, spiritual realm of gnostic metaphysical faith.

The OP seems right in the sense that the SV technology cargo cult has all the bad mind-narrowing sides of orthodoxy and none of the good. Observe; suspension of critical thinking, credulity, superstition, arcane symbolism, charismatic leaders, secret knowledge, obsessive rituals and tics, insularity, smug self-righteous and strident proselytising, attacking and denigrating "unbelievers", defensiveness, fear of exclusion, dehumanisation of others, mass hysteria....

Digital tech (smartphones plus corporate social media), as presently configured, presses all the same buttons for psychological and societal harm that cults have for millennia. Moreover, it so pitifully fails to offer any positive social benefits, like a sense of real community, shared values, comfort and stability, or certainty. Instead it overlays a shallow and unreal facsimile of those things. "Idolatry" is probably a great way to frame it.

Like historical religions it spawns a super-wealthy elite who exploit the confused masses. It has a small cadre of extremely vocal "true believers", disciples and acolytes, who cajole and bully along the enormous middle mass who are actually ambivalent "pretenders", technological agnostics who mostly can't be bothered to argue. They go along to get along, to avoid feeling persecuted ("left behind" - the modern equivalent of Hell).

Real religions may span thousands of years and have subtantial continuity, but cult-tech presents a flimsy facade of being "deep, essential, enduring and universal". In reality, any thoughtful computer scientist can tell you, it's a heterogeneous assemblage of the arbitrary or, as Graeber observed, a world we can "remake in any way we choose".

Working in cybersecurity, carefully observing genuine attitudes in peoples' unguarded moments - in contrast to their "official/professional" positions - makes me sure that were the entire telecommunications network of the planet to explode tomorrow, other than for food riots as payment and supply chains adjust, most people would have one bad week, shrug, and get on with the next thing. That's to say "it's all a game" but one that we're all very, very invested in trying to preserve... to the extent we're prepared to terrorise others into sharing our worldview to keep it so. Isn't that a sure hallmark of a religion?

This is what the analytical elicitation stage of expert systems [1] was supposed to address (a now mature but presently unfashionable branch of "AI").

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ineffability

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system

"framing the narrative around the technology is far more important than the technology itself"

We're on the umpteenth cycle of this and we all seem very slow to learn the pattern. I tried to express it in "Chindogu" [0] but since then "AI" hype has taken the fake technological narrative to a whole new level.

[0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/chindogu/

   " the reason I wrote this book was that I became frustrated with
   myself...  You write books to convince people of certain opinions
   and then you hope that some other people do the actual work of
   making the world better... I experienced this emotion that I
   describe as moral envy: You're standing on the sidelines and
   wishing, gosh, wouldn't it be awesome to be in the arena? To
   actually have skin in the game? "

Besides, I think these are foundational personality traits ... very difficult to "learn/add-on/fake" later in life. So I think the author wastes time appealing to "elites" already saddled by their shameless immorality. Those panged by deathbed "philanthropic" regrets, fretting on their "moral legacy" or place in eternity - having spent their whole lives shitting on the world to get ahead - are a tough, niche audience. Better to speak to younger people who are not yet soured, who have not yet become extremely fearful of taking social risk or jeapordising their "career". If you're under 25 and questioning what "successful" maens, this could be a life-changing book.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Roddick

[0] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e4/84/79/e484792971cc77ddff8f...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43928051

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

I heard someone say "epistemic humility" the other day to mean fallibilism [0] and the conversation got interesting when we moved on to the subject of "what one can and should reasonably claim to know". For example: should cops know the law?

Not every programmer needs to be a computer science PhD with deep knowledge about obscure data-structures... but when you encounter them it's a decision whether to find out more.

Integrity is discomfort with "hand-waving and magical" explanations of things that we gloss over. Sure, it's sometimes expedient to just accept face-value and get the job done. Other times it's kinda psychologically impossible to move forward without satisfying that need to know more.

Frighteningly, the world/society puts ever more pressure on us to just nod along to get along, and to accept magic. This is where so much goes wrong with correctness and security imho.

[0] https://iep.utm.edu/fallibil/

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43903037

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43903037

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Has anyone got more details?

[0] https://en.biginfinland.com/vappu-spring-fest-finland/

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles