Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021) • Hacker News Board

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#151

Post by palata » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 2:02 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #138

palata wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree that dramatically reducing the number of private cars is a challenge. But I strongly believe that we don't have a choice. I see it this way: our society is built upon abundant energy, which is mostly (and by far) fossil fuels. Yes, renewable grow fast (while still being marginal), but they grow fast in a world of abundant fossil fuels. Cut the fossil fuels entirely today, and we are dead. The thing is: fos…

> we don't have a solution to replace it (we can hope for technological breakthroughs, but we just don't have the solution today) Yes, we do: nuclear. The reasons why nuclear energy has not taken hold as widely as it should have are political, not technical. We could be at the point today where no fossil fuels need to be burned anywhere in the world if we had started building nuclear plants on a larger scale back in…

That's likely wrong, or at least it would be a very risky bet. If we started today to build nuclear plants everywhere, it's not like we would replace fossil fuels tomorrow. It takes time. Then we would need to replace absolutely everything that uses fossil fuel to use electricity.

This is wishful thinking. What's most likely is that we need to start building a lot of nuclear plant today, and we still need to degrow. Because nuclear plants won't compensate fossil fuels, but obviously even with a degrowth we will need some energy. We will have less energy, hence the degrowth.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#152

Post by palata » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 2:03 AM UTC

di4na wrote: post #80

palata wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's about who's going to pay for those highways Those who are paying now. And if it's only for emergency vehicles and trucks that bring food to cities (because you are right, cities need them to survive), then don't you think you need less infrastructure? Doesn't seem to me that 6-lanes highways are fully used by emergency vehicles and trucks. > won't work and will definitely not happen anymore. It's not black and…

Note that illich is against cities. In his mind, a more atomised world would emerge from such a ban, more localised and focused on communities in neighborhood, with less dependencies outside. So the only thing using roads would be emergency. Food would need to be local too or transported slowly by speed of walk or bicycle. Which means that we would all be taxed pretty high for something rarely used.

Well big cities are a problem we need to address. They absolutely depend on fossil fuel for trucks to bring food into them.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#153

Post by palata » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 2:07 AM UTC

ska wrote: post #109

heresie-dabord wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should not care about our survival on Earth and start looking at other solar systems Wacky thinking. Another modern achievement, some very wealthy people literally have more money than neurons. ^_^ > I strongly believe that we have an energy problem There is no doubt that the challenge is now . But our industrial and technical capabilities can solve the problem... if corrupt petrostate kakistocracies don't destr…

> There is no doubt that the challenge is now. But our industrial and technical capabilities can solve the problem... Of the first part, there is no doubt - the second statement is not nearly so clear (at least, on the necessary timelines)

I agree. We currently clearly don't have the technical solutions. Just hope that if we put enough people on it we will find some.

As an engineer, I know that every project that is fundamentally new always ends up being harder than expected. Hoping that we will find a technological solution to a problem that will kill us if we fail is a bit irrational to me.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#154

Post by palata » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 2:09 AM UTC

markhahn wrote: post #108

heresie-dabord wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should not care about our survival on Earth and start looking at other solar systems Wacky thinking. Another modern achievement, some very wealthy people literally have more money than neurons. ^_^ > I strongly believe that we have an energy problem There is no doubt that the challenge is now . But our industrial and technical capabilities can solve the problem... if corrupt petrostate kakistocracies don't destr…

surely it's not just an energy problem - but a resource problem. I dislike the "overconsumption" mantra (and its degrowth kin). The problem is waste - fast fashion is a great example. just stop making stupid choices - people still need clothes, and we still need lots of people.

> surely it's not just an energy problem - but a resource problem.

It is an energy problem. The modern society is built upon fossil fuels, that's a fact. Remove the fossil fuels, and it collapses. Turns out that "building upon fossil fuels" means "gradually removing them". It's just a question of time, and we are talking decades, not centuries. We will live long enough to see it, most likely.

We need to rethink society to use less energy in general, and that includes consuming less of everything.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#155

Post by palata » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 2:12 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #146

palata wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the modern economy have achieved remarkable, good things on a global scale. There is no doubt about that. But it has also brought us into a mass extinction (that's happening right now), it brought climate change (it will add to the biodiversity issue), and it relies very heavily on fossil fuels which are not unlimited. > to his solutionless critique. I believe that we need to agree on the problem before we can find…

> There is no doubt about that. But it has also brought us into a mass extinction (that's happening right now), it brought climate change (it will add to the biodiversity issue), and it relies very heavily on fossil fuels which are not unlimited. There have been 5 mass extinctions in known history. Probably more. Pre-anthropocene. The universe has no morality, there is no "natural order". Whether or not a mass extinc…

> A mass extinction is terrible solely because of the impact it may have on humans, on human life. That's it.

Sure, I agree. But as it happens, I am a human, and I want to live in a society where I as a human don't have to experience a mass extinction.

I don't want to survive in a capsule on Mars, or even in a capsule on Earth once it's impossible to live outside on big parts of the globe. I want to live on Earth, with some amount of biodiversity. And I want to change society to achieve that.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#156

Post by aguacaterojo » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 2:13 AM UTC

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #93

aguacaterojo wrote: post #66

I found Deschooling Society book on my dad's bookshelf about 9 years ago. No idea why he had it. I quit university about 3/4 way through reading it. I'm poorly adapted to the cadence and mechanisms of institutional education and this guy provided an alternative that I have employed since to an effect further than I had imagined was possible.

Can you give us a bit more with regards to the most successfull or helpful bits in your experience?

Anecdotally speaking, the deeply ingrained cultural view around me is that education is attained through educational institutions. One of Illich's core arguments against traditional schooling is that in fact the mechanisms of school are not the major contributor to one's aptitudes. When I traced my most promising or useful aptitudes, I agreed that school was not where these were developed. Having one dissenting and well-reasoned voice was important in being able to follow through with experimenting with a self-driven educational model.

Illich demonstrates real examples in learning Spanish through a dominant institutional approach versus intensive, ad-hoc immersive study groups to claim a growing disconnect between method & goal as well as agency problems arising in institutional education (credentialism, self-justification etc). For me, replacing the learning confirmation and feedback tools with a real-world cause/effect, market-driven approach (job interviews, low stakes freelancing, hobby projects) well aligned my intrinsic motivation with my educational goals.

Retrospectively, an institutional computer-science education would have had its advantages, though I don't think I was ready for it. I do think our dominant educational approaches are very far from optimal for a big subset of students, we haven't ventured far enough into experimenting with alternatives and from a macro lens, I definitely sympathise with the idea that broadly speaking, it begins to look like a grift designed to continue & justify its own existence.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#157

Post by Obscurity4340 » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 2:17 AM UTC

aguacaterojo wrote: post #156

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give us a bit more with regards to the most successfull or helpful bits in your experience?

Anecdotally speaking, the deeply ingrained cultural view around me is that education is attained through educational institutions. One of Illich's core arguments against traditional schooling is that in fact the mechanisms of school are not the major contributor to one's aptitudes. When I traced my most promising or useful aptitudes, I agreed that school was not where these were developed. Having one dissenting and w…

Did you get diagnosed and start taking a certain med at some point or am I taking a shot in the dark, here

Also i dont know whether you outlined any practical/tangible actionable steps.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#158

Post by hudon » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 2:45 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #148

hudon wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't at odds, since in both cases (euthanasia and medically-prolonged end-of-life), it is the human person that is trying to control the ultimate outcome of life. The Catholic approach is to say "let God decide".

The Catholic approach is economical: it's expensive to keep dying people alive if you need resources to do so, but a religion promising eternal paradise is going to have a real propagation problem if a significant number of adherents commit suicide - and trying to carve out euthanasia exceptions wasn't going to play well to medieval peasants.

If economics ruled the Church, there are many dogmas that do not "play well to peasants" that could be dropped tomorrow for the sake of propagation.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#159

Post by pdonis » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 3:08 AM UTC

palata wrote: post #151

pdonis wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we don't have a solution to replace it (we can hope for technological breakthroughs, but we just don't have the solution today) Yes, we do: nuclear. The reasons why nuclear energy has not taken hold as widely as it should have are political, not technical. We could be at the point today where no fossil fuels need to be burned anywhere in the world if we had started building nuclear plants on a larger scale back in…

That's likely wrong, or at least it would be a very risky bet. If we started today to build nuclear plants everywhere, it's not like we would replace fossil fuels tomorrow. It takes time. Then we would need to replace absolutely everything that uses fossil fuel to use electricity. This is wishful thinking. What's most likely is that we need to start building a lot of nuclear plant today, and we still need to degrow .…

> If we started today to build nuclear plants everywhere, it's not like we would replace fossil fuels tomorrow. It takes time.

Replacing fossil fuels with anything will take time. That doesn't mean we shouldn't start doing it.

> Then we would need to replace absolutely everything that uses fossil fuel to use electricity.

No, we wouldn't. For applications where electricity is not practical (such as, for example, commercial aviation), we can use electricity to make liquid fuels from the CO2 and water vapor in the air, by reversing the chemical reactions that take place when the fuels are burned.

> nuclear plants won't compensate fossil fuels

They will gradually reduce their usage, eventually to zero. You simply refuse to consider the possbility of gradually shifting energy usage in order to not have to "degrow" and lower people's standard of living. Good luck convincing the rest of the world of that. Particularly when "degrow" for most of the rest of the world translates into "stay in poverty forever". Poverty has negative consequences too.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#160

Post by aguacaterojo » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 4:56 AM UTC

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #157

aguacaterojo wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally speaking, the deeply ingrained cultural view around me is that education is attained through educational institutions. One of Illich's core arguments against traditional schooling is that in fact the mechanisms of school are not the major contributor to one's aptitudes. When I traced my most promising or useful aptitudes, I agreed that school was not where these were developed. Having one dissenting and w…

Did you get diagnosed and start taking a certain med at some point or am I taking a shot in the dark, here Also i dont know whether you outlined any practical/tangible actionable steps.

no meds, what's the implication lol

practically: minimised expenses, quit job & university, went to coding meetups in my city 1-2x a week, signed up to a couple mentorship programs as a mentee, read through and completed exercises in books on web fundamentals (via codeacademy, pluralsight etc - microsoft used to give free memberships), C ("the c book"), JS (ydkjs, eloquentjs), Go (straight to the docs), posted all exercises and projects to github, built and deployed an application for a not for profit, took on average ~15hrs freelance work a week, reviewed job boards, requested feedback from recruiters and interviewers and used it to adapt syllabus.