Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

hn-books.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 80 posts

Re: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

#71

Post by joe_the_user »

steveklabnik wrote: post #24
alnayyir wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're reading the book very well, to be honest. I'm a bit of a Nietzsche fan and I think you'll find that he praises the Jews in various parts of the book. He despised anti-semitism as well as the formative groups that led to national socialism. To focus on one example he made like that is very bad form. His commentary on the brutality of societies relatively to how secure they feel was particularly br…

First of all, you'll notice that I said "when I got to the bit about," not "This is my final view of Nietzsche." Secondly, I didn't say that it was "all [I] can extract out of his writing," either.

"when I got to the bit..." actually sounds like pretty definite judgment.

Perhaps "my impression was..." would "sound" preliminary. This doesn't.

Re: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

#72

Post by steveklabnik »

joe_the_user wrote: post #71
steveklabnik wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, you'll notice that I said "when I got to the bit about," not "This is my final view of Nietzsche." Secondly, I didn't say that it was "all [I] can extract out of his writing," either.

"when I got to the bit..." actually sounds like pretty definite judgment. Perhaps "my impression was..." would "sound" preliminary. This doesn't.

Interesting. My intention was "as I was reading it, when I came across that part, this is what I was thinking."

Re: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

#74

Post by neutronicus »

davidmathers wrote: post #70
neutronicus wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1984 may be the most successful memetic engineering project in history. Dressing down your prose a little, you're saying " 1984 successfully manipulated a lot of [gullible] people". And that is, in a nutshell, why I don't like it much. Orwell does not treat his reader as a peer. There's no respect there, just manipulation, because the author doesn't trust the reader with nuance. EDIT (in response to yours): Luckily f…

"1984 successfully manipulated a lot of [gullible] people" 1984 successfully vaccinated a lot of people and helped stop certain diseases of the mind from spreading and causing more damage to civilization. Like Jonas Salk and polio. Although.. I saw Victoria Jackson on a Fox News clip once ranting about how Barack Obama is a socialist and she mentioned how she had read 1984 multiple times and therefore understood how…

"1984 successfully vaccinated a lot of people and helped stop certain diseases of the mind from spreading and causing more damage to civilization."

You're still just coming up with synonyms for "got them to do what I want."

I'll thought experiment you back. If 1984 were largely ignored, would you still think it worth reading? You claim that this book influenced the behavior of a world ripe for totalitarian domination. That's a big claim in and of itself, but let's let it stand for the sake of the point I really want to make.

Basically, you care about 1984 from the perspective of its effect on a bunch of people you don't respect (you think their "minds" are weak enough to need "vaccination" against a "disease"). Even you are treating it basically as a remedial text for political idiots. You don't even mention anything you got out of reading 1984.

So, if it weren't effective at convincing people you don't respect of your viewpoint, would you care at all? Would this book be worth reading if you were the only person ever to read it?

That last is my measure of quality, and 1984 falls short - sure, it's an important cultural phenomenon, but I could have reaped the benefits of the cultural phenomenon without ever reading the book.

Re: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

#75

Post by davidmathers »

neutronicus wrote: post #74
davidmathers wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"1984 successfully manipulated a lot of [gullible] people" 1984 successfully vaccinated a lot of people and helped stop certain diseases of the mind from spreading and causing more damage to civilization. Like Jonas Salk and polio. Although.. I saw Victoria Jackson on a Fox News clip once ranting about how Barack Obama is a socialist and she mentioned how she had read 1984 multiple times and therefore understood how…

"1984 successfully vaccinated a lot of people and helped stop certain diseases of the mind from spreading and causing more damage to civilization." You're still just coming up with synonyms for "got them to do what I want." I'll thought experiment you back. If 1984 were largely ignored, would you still think it worth reading? You claim that this book influenced the behavior of a world ripe for totalitarian domination…

No no no no. It didn't occur to me that my words might be interpreted this way:

people you don't respect -- you think their "minds" are weak enough to need "vaccination" against a "disease" -- remedial text for political idiots

I respect (former) East Germans. I don't think they're idiots or have weak minds, or need remedial texts or any kind of higher education or higher intelligence. I don't think they're any different from West Germans. Same with North Koreans and South Koreans. There's no such thing as a mind which is naturally insusceptible to bad ideology. We all need inoculation.

Basically, you care about 1984 from the perspective of its effect

Yes. Orwell fought with a gun in Spain as a member of the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification. He was fighting with a pen when he wrote 1984. He was more successful with the pen.

would you still think it worth reading?

Dunno. I never claimed it worth reading. But it's short, to the point, and concisely illustrates some important ideas. It might be worth reading just to add "memory hole" to your vocabulary. On other hand maybe Milan Kundera is a more entertaining choice. I love this Kundera quote: "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Whether any given book is worth reading seems very personal to me. I don't have much of an opinion about it. I, personally, didn't love the book. But I did love the movie.

Re: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

#77

Post by wladimir »

neutronicus wrote: post #74
davidmathers wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"1984 successfully manipulated a lot of [gullible] people" 1984 successfully vaccinated a lot of people and helped stop certain diseases of the mind from spreading and causing more damage to civilization. Like Jonas Salk and polio. Although.. I saw Victoria Jackson on a Fox News clip once ranting about how Barack Obama is a socialist and she mentioned how she had read 1984 multiple times and therefore understood how…

"1984 successfully vaccinated a lot of people and helped stop certain diseases of the mind from spreading and causing more damage to civilization." You're still just coming up with synonyms for "got them to do what I want." I'll thought experiment you back. If 1984 were largely ignored, would you still think it worth reading? You claim that this book influenced the behavior of a world ripe for totalitarian domination…

You could summarize that whole discussion with one word warning. 1984 is a warning as to what can happen. And a succesful one, as a lot of people are afraid of the extreme dystopia it shows. The analogies tot diseases and vaccination are interesting, but appear to just confuse people.

Re: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

#79

Post by Gormo »

davidmathers wrote: post #75
neutronicus wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"1984 successfully vaccinated a lot of people and helped stop certain diseases of the mind from spreading and causing more damage to civilization." You're still just coming up with synonyms for "got them to do what I want." I'll thought experiment you back. If 1984 were largely ignored, would you still think it worth reading? You claim that this book influenced the behavior of a world ripe for totalitarian domination…

No no no no. It didn't occur to me that my words might be interpreted this way: people you don't respect -- you think their "minds" are weak enough to need "vaccination" against a "disease" -- remedial text for political idiots I respect (former) East Germans. I don't think they're idiots or have weak minds, or need remedial texts or any kind of higher education or higher intelligence. I don't think they're any diffe…

I think there's quite a distinction to be made between the people who did their best to survive under the East German system and the people who actively participated in establishing and maintaining that system.

Consider 1984 as being targeted at those who would otherwise be influenced by equally-simplistic totalitarian ideologies, and who might otherwise be led to collaborate with the equivalent the Stasi in the belief that they were doing good.

There was - and is - an unfortunately large population of such people, and I can't find much fault in Orwell's intention to shrink its ranks.

Re: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

#80

Post by mista_x »

unoti wrote: post #32
pirsig_fan wrote: post #21

It never ceases to amaze me how often technical people in general and computer programmers in particular read this book and can't see the point, which is that your values can't be deduced by logic.

Here are some thought provoking ideas for computer hackers that he discusses at some length: * Is it a good idea or bad idea to listen to music while working? Why? * Do machines have souls, and can they? * Why do machines frustrate me so much? What happens when I get frustrated? What role does frame-of-mind play in productivity, and how do you control it? A lot of the negative comments I see here are perhaps expectin…

How about a computer hacker break into Cuban internet users with the news with what happened in Egypt.
Post reply on HN