I find that surprising, do you care to elaborate? I don’t think his worldview is complete, but he cares deeply about a lot of things I value too, which modern society seems not to value. I would certainly be glad to have him in my moral parliament.
Yeah, that’s how I feel about Tolkien, Mateusz. I take the good bits, the parts I love, and recognize that I would never vote for him in an election. His observations are beautiful, and his solutions are terrible.
There is poetry in the way he describes the natural world, and human relationships, that deeply touches things in me and helps me see the world in a better light. He points out criticisms of human nature in respect to technology that do in fact highlight patterns of weakness in our psychology.
That he is wrong to be anti-progress, and wrong to be pro-feudalism class structure, doesn’t invalidate the good he highlights.
I, personally, find it quite compatible to be an progress-loving transhumanist extropian who is excited by the grand changes humanity might experience and the new forms of intelligence we might invent… and yet still love the way Tolkien writes about trees.
I think that’s a bit too extreme. Are all machines bad? No, obviously better to have mechanised agriculture than be all peasants. But he is grasping something here which we are now dealing with more directly. It’s the classic Moloch trap of “if you have enough power to optimise hard enough then all slack is destroyed and eventually life itself”. If you thought that was an inevitable end of all technological development (and we haven’t proven it isn’t yet), you may end up thinking being peasants is better too.
As someone who agrees with ~90% of the content of these letters, and has all my life viewed Tolkien as a moral role model, I am curious to hear an elaboration of this opinion.
These quotes show how anti-progress and reactionary Tolkien was. He hated machines, he hated housing construction, he hated innovation. He would condemn humanity to be tenant farmers ruled by a warrior aristocracy at a medieval tech level, forever. If you want to live in Tolkien’s utopia, move to Zambia.
Basically, Tolkien is very much like the Unabomber. He saw real problems, but his proposed solutions are destructive. He was a master of using the bouba–kiki effect to incept his worldview in the minds of millions, so he did far more to stop progress than the Unabomber ever did. He bears significant responsibility for the productivity slowdown, and for your rent being too damn high.
I mean, I think you are right about him being anti-progress and fantasy-proposing terrible ‘solutions’ to real problems. I don’t think you are correct to give him so much credit for productivity slowdown. I think his effect is quite a bit more minor than that. I think the productivity slowdown is mostly due to weird unanticipated long term downstream effects of our government structure, land use rules, tax structures, and a tendency towards veto-ochracy.
He was a master of using the bouba–kiki effect to incept his worldview in the minds of millions, so he did far more to stop progress than the Unabomber ever did. He bears significant responsibility for the productivity slowdown, and for your rent being too damn high.
The older I get, and the more I learn about Tolkien, the more he disgusts me.
He is the inverse of all I value and all I find good in the world.
I find that surprising, do you care to elaborate? I don’t think his worldview is complete, but he cares deeply about a lot of things I value too, which modern society seems not to value. I would certainly be glad to have him in my moral parliament.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/u8GMcpEN9Z6aQiCvp/rule-thinkers-in-not-out
Yeah, that’s how I feel about Tolkien, Mateusz. I take the good bits, the parts I love, and recognize that I would never vote for him in an election. His observations are beautiful, and his solutions are terrible.
There is poetry in the way he describes the natural world, and human relationships, that deeply touches things in me and helps me see the world in a better light. He points out criticisms of human nature in respect to technology that do in fact highlight patterns of weakness in our psychology.
That he is wrong to be anti-progress, and wrong to be pro-feudalism class structure, doesn’t invalidate the good he highlights.
I, personally, find it quite compatible to be an progress-loving transhumanist extropian who is excited by the grand changes humanity might experience and the new forms of intelligence we might invent… and yet still love the way Tolkien writes about trees.
I think that’s a bit too extreme. Are all machines bad? No, obviously better to have mechanised agriculture than be all peasants. But he is grasping something here which we are now dealing with more directly. It’s the classic Moloch trap of “if you have enough power to optimise hard enough then all slack is destroyed and eventually life itself”. If you thought that was an inevitable end of all technological development (and we haven’t proven it isn’t yet), you may end up thinking being peasants is better too.
As someone who agrees with ~90% of the content of these letters, and has all my life viewed Tolkien as a moral role model, I am curious to hear an elaboration of this opinion.
These quotes show how anti-progress and reactionary Tolkien was. He hated machines, he hated housing construction, he hated innovation. He would condemn humanity to be tenant farmers ruled by a warrior aristocracy at a medieval tech level, forever. If you want to live in Tolkien’s utopia, move to Zambia.
Basically, Tolkien is very much like the Unabomber. He saw real problems, but his proposed solutions are destructive. He was a master of using the bouba–kiki effect to incept his worldview in the minds of millions, so he did far more to stop progress than the Unabomber ever did. He bears significant responsibility for the productivity slowdown, and for your rent being too damn high.
I mean, I think you are right about him being anti-progress and fantasy-proposing terrible ‘solutions’ to real problems. I don’t think you are correct to give him so much credit for productivity slowdown. I think his effect is quite a bit more minor than that. I think the productivity slowdown is mostly due to weird unanticipated long term downstream effects of our government structure, land use rules, tax structures, and a tendency towards veto-ochracy.
Wait what?
Can you elaborate on this?