[HN Gopher] Amish Hackers (2009)
___________________________________________________________________
Amish Hackers (2009)
Author : harryvederci
Score : 117 points
Date : 2022-01-12 12:11 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kk.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (kk.org)
| circleit wrote:
| If the world wants to avert suicide, ending religion would be a
| step in the right direction. In black and white, it's closed
| mindedness vs exploration. We don't merely explore as much as we
| could and are held back by beliefs that are, in my opinion,
| extremely outdated.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Based on the title I was expecting a guy in traditional Amish
| garb deep in an underground basement somewhere surrounded by 486s
| and Sinclair ZX Spectrums madly typing away on an IBM model M.
|
| What was he hacking? Mainframes.
| akkartik wrote:
| I've liked this article for many years, but it's been hard to
| focus on it since learning about the dark consequences of the
| Amish way of life:
| https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a30284631/amish-sexua...
| singlow wrote:
| An interesting article, but I am curious about the incident
| rates and comparison to non-Amish communities. Child abuse is
| surprisingly common in general and I don't see anything in the
| article that makes specific claims about its frequency compared
| to the population in general.
|
| I see from their anecdotes that the culture seems like it
| tolerates it but there are lots of communities with power
| imbalances and social pressures that prevent perpetrator from
| being held accountable. Sometimes a perpetrator has the power
| or influence or reputation that will cause the community to not
| believe the victim or to prevent punishment. Is this more
| prevalent among Amish than among Catholics, or Mainstream
| Mormons, or Fundamentalist Baptists, or Atheists? The article
| doesn't even address that. It only makes a very generalized
| claim about 52 known cases across 2 decades, covering an
| unspecified population/region, and suggests that the real
| number must be much higher based on the anecdotes. If there was
| a link to any real study and I missed it, I apologize.
|
| It is obvious that the Amish churches do not approve of child
| abuse, in doctrine or in practice. They differ in how they
| think it should be dealt with for sure, because they generally
| don't prefer outside courts for anything. Does this result in
| more abuse? Maybe, but I'd like to know the answer from a
| scientific analysis rather than an anecdotal one before I write
| off the Amish people in general.
| akkartik wrote:
| Yeah, I noticed the lack of quantitative data as well. The
| biggest qualitative red flag for me in the whole article is
| sending victims back to live with the abuser very soon after
| the abuser has been found guilty and served a penalty.
| Reasonable people can argue about whether the penalty is
| reasonable, but it's hard to imagine reasonable people
| arguing that kids should go back to live with a previously
| abusive parent. And that decision is a straight-line
| consequence of the Amish belief system as I understand it.
| singlow wrote:
| But I can't even tell if that is the norm within Amish
| communities or if that is just something that some local
| church decided for one particular case. Another church may
| have chosen to isolate an abuser from the victim or other
| potential victims in various ways. A comprehensive study
| would probably document those things as well.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| Some years ago I met a fellow that was former Amish, still lived
| extremely simple and dressed almost the same. He left because he
| got the engine bug, ended up becoming a diesel mechanic and
| pursuing proper degrees in diesel tech/diesel mechanics, was just
| purely fascinated by machinery. Interesting guy.
| bullen wrote:
| I really like that the Amish are slow to adopt new stupid tech, I
| wish the people here would learn a bit from them.
|
| BUT the first item on that list "Homebuilt gas powered ice cutter
| to make ice for non-electric icebox." is the most in-denial waste
| of time/energy I have ever seen:
|
| Earthcellar?
| harryvederci wrote:
| > Like all legends, the Amish myth is based on some facts. The
| Amish, particular the Old Order Amish [...] really are slow to
| adopt new things. In contemporary society our default is set to
| say "yes" to new things, and in Old Order Amish societies the
| default is set to "no."
|
| > When new things come around, the Amish automatically start by
| refusing them.
|
| I notice I'm going in this direction more and more. A thought I
| keep having (especially when reading about IoT and VR) is: "Just
| because we can, does that mean we should?"
| Syonyk wrote:
| Figure out who benefits and profits from those things.
|
| IoT is largely a "push" system in which hardware is sold for
| under cost to get it out into people's homes and businesses for
| data collection, and VR promises to be the sort of thing that
| will, after some short experimentation, end up in a "Yeah, I
| mean, we figured out how to make cell phones addictive to
| maximize user engagement and behavioral surplus for profit, but
| they're nothing compared to _THIS_! " state.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _"From the tank a series of high-pressure pipes snake off
| toward every corner of the factory. A hard rubber flexible hose
| connects each tool to a pipe. The entire shop runs on compressed
| air. Every piece of machine is running on pneumatic power."_
|
| This was an entirely normal setup for factories and workshops
| back in the day, certainly not exclusive to the Amish!
|
| Now days, electric tools have become more powerful and more
| convenient thanks to better batteries etc, so pneumatic isn't as
| common as it once was. But pneumatic tools of all kinds are still
| sold and still used in some shops.
| riveducha wrote:
| This reminds of old factories that had belt-driven tools
| running off of a shared axle hanging overhead. The axle would
| be powered by a combustion motor. Turning on/off your tool
| meant engaging or disengaging it's belt from the axle. I've
| only seen these in museums and don't remember what they're
| called.
| moron4hire wrote:
| I don't like articles about the Amish like this because they only
| really provide the surface detail.
|
| I grew up around a lot of Amish, knew a few personally. They're
| ultimately just like everyone else. And by that I mean, they can
| be real assholes. For whatever prescribed tenets a particular
| religion may have, there will also be sinners. But for the Amish,
| they can be really judgemental sinners. They may have their
| "family values" and close-knit society for themselves, but think
| nothing of trying to screw over any "English" (their name for us)
| in business deals. I remember one particular Amish "investing
| group" back home when I was a kid that ended up going bankrupt
| because they failed to scam someone who was actually scamming
| them on a land deal. There was another high-profile case of an
| Amish drug ring selling to English school kids. And the way they
| treat women and children would be considered abuse in our
| society.
|
| Let's not lionize the Amish too much.
| harryvederci wrote:
| I posted the article because I find it an interesting take on
| technology, restrictions on technology usage, and working
| around (hacking) the limitations of those restrictions.
|
| I think that's a perfect combination for a Hacker News
| submission, and it perfectly fits the scope of the article. If
| the article would have gone into detail about how not all Amish
| are likeable (I wouldn't know, I've never met one) and whether
| or not they screwed people over in business deals, it would
| have made the article less suitable for an HN post, I think.
|
| TL/DR: there's a time and place for anything.
| moron4hire wrote:
| That's fair, and I didn't want to come off as complaining
| that it had been shared at all. It's just that these sort of
| articles frequently come up and I've never seen any that show
| any other side of them than "pious, salt-of-the-earth
| people". Then the comments roll of the form "the Amish seem
| to have life figured out".
|
| There's definitely something to be said about being more
| intentional in technology adoption. I don't think that's the
| same thing as being slower about adoption. But I also don't
| think being more intentional is really what's going on with
| the Amish.
|
| Like all religions, it's a system of control. You'll see
| people (rightly) criticize the homophobia, misogyny, and
| anti-intellectualism of Evangelical Christianity and
| Wahhabism in Islam. And then an article about the Amish shows
| up--who largely share a lot of those sorts of beliefs--and
| they're depicted as a quaint, harmless people. Maybe it's
| because they live in enclaves and don't proselytize, so they
| aren't harmful to _us_ , but they still inflict those abusive
| beliefs within their congregation.
|
| IDK, maybe it's no different than articles about how the
| Taliban weld scrap and guns to Toyota Hyraxes to make
| technicals. It does feel different, though.
| adrianN wrote:
| The Amish can evaluate the effects of new technology on their
| communities by having the rest of the world act as a guinea pig.
| I think society as a whole could benefit from thinking about the
| effects of new technology on communities before adopting it, but
| reasoning about that from first principles seems very hard and
| putting the genie back into the bottle after a technology has
| been widely deployed is essentially impossible.
| ebiester wrote:
| To be fair, the rest of the world should be using Silicon
| Valley the same way. Were I a medium sized city, I would have a
| group of people looking at things like scooters and private
| busses that start in the bay area and start thinking about
| legislation to how to harness the benefits without the chaos.
| mcdonje wrote:
| A society's best shot of protecting itself from the potential
| negative effects of unknown future technologies is ensuring
| that everyone's basic needs are met. Desperate people do
| desperate things.
| adrianN wrote:
| How would meeting everyone's basic needs help for example
| against disinformation campaigns on social media
| destabilizing democracies?
| bronzeage wrote:
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| You're confusing "the best thing you can do" with "the only
| thing you need to do."
| cabalamat wrote:
| If everyone's basic needs are met, they won't be so
| discontented and thus easily be swayed by destabilising
| propaganda.
| Mystlix wrote:
| But this is a very hypochritical way of living in my opinion.
|
| Let's take YouTube as an example: I am not addicted to YouTube;
| I use it sparingly, without an account, with an extension that
| blocks related videos and by flushing the cookies each time. I
| consider it of great value to me because when I need to search
| for a tutorial or a piece of information I'm almost sure to
| find a video that will meet my demand. The problem here lies
| with the fact that the only reason why there are so many videos
| in the first place is because the majority of the userbase is
| indeed addicted to the service, so people are highly
| incentivized to make videos on the platform sharing their
| knowledge in order to capture a money earning audience. And
| even if you tell me that the vast majority of content is made
| without money taken into consideration you still have to admit
| that the service wouldn't be free if there wasn't that mass of
| money earning youtubers making the content free for everyone
| else.
|
| Since I use YouTube in such an Amishly way, I believe I'm not
| earning people much money so I don't feel that bad perpetuating
| the cycle, but I still have to admit to myself that if more and
| more people acted like me YouTube and many other platforms
| wouldn't exist and my life would be a bit worse as a result. I
| hope the Amish truly realize how lucky they are that they can
| exploit the rest of society when it suits their needs (e.g.
| they have no problem going to the hospital) and check out for
| the rest of the day unbothered while everyone else slaves away
| to mainting the system
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Most of us aren't working maintaining the system. Developers
| most of all - we're mostly either working on line of business
| applications or startups, neither of which, by and large, are
| structural elements of society. I don't know for sure what
| percentage of working people are doing the holding-up of
| modern society, but my estimate is about 20%.
| kk6mrp wrote:
| You act as if the Amish produce nothing useful for society.
| While I see your point, I think making an effort to live more
| traditionally is a long way off from exploiting society.
| ballenf wrote:
| I don't think the article supports that position. Every new
| tech was evaluated by them based on the experience of people
| within their community who were approved early adopters. I
| didn't see any argument of "look what that tech is doing to the
| world" as factoring into a decision.
|
| Maybe I misread your point, but it seems like you're saying
| they're free loading off of the rest of society in some
| fundamentally greater way than other groups. I just don't see
| that.
| mod wrote:
| And in another way, the Amish are the guinea pig of their
| lifestyle. Maybe it will play out that strong, small, local
| communities have a huge long-term advantage in some important
| metric.
|
| I think it's very good that we have so many diverse cultures
| and lifestyles. There are many routes to happiness.
| ridewinter wrote:
| Agreed, perhaps there's a lot we can learn from their
| experiment. For example, by not using artificial lighting do
| they have a habit of "two sleeps" like our ancestors did?
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-
| medieva...
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| They do have much better healthcare outcomes.
| nederdirk wrote:
| Previous discussion (there are several, but this was the most
| active) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22324609
| Toutouxc wrote:
| > gas powered ice cutter to make ice for non-electric icebox
|
| > The diesel engine burns fuel to drive the compressor that fills
| the reservoir with pressure. From the tank a series of high-
| pressure pipes snake off toward every corner of the factory.
|
| > power their combine or threshers with diesel engines, if the
| engine only drives the threshers but is not self-propelled, so
| the whole smoking, noisy contraption is pulled by horses
|
| > In their goal to remain off the grid, yet modernize, some Amish
| have installed inverters on their diesel generators linked to
| batteries to provide them with off-grid 110 volts. They power
| specialty appliances at first, like an electric coffee pot.
|
| Just like Shabbat elevators, to me these all sound like weird,
| hacky, kinda stupid, environmentally unfriendly solutions to
| problems caused by ridiculous made up rules, that -- ultimately
| -- don't even matter, because while 50 or so years behind
| everyone else, the Amish are still going to adopt grid
| electricity, smartphones and Node.js sooner or later.
|
| You can also find the same amount of hacker DIY ingenuity in
| places where scarcity is not self-imposed, e.g. rural Russia, and
| those people get much more respect from me than weird religious
| communities almost piggybacking on the rest of the society.
| ziggus wrote:
| You're missing the point almost entirely.
|
| Yes, they're abiding by a weird set of made-up rules, but a set
| of rules that they've agreed upon as a community in order to
| preserve a specific set of moral and philosophical imperatives.
| The rules aren't there just to make life difficult or to
| exclude technology for no reason, but to preserve a culture
| which they (and other similar communities) believe is more
| important than simply adopting any technology without due
| consideration of its effects.
| newsbinator wrote:
| They probably won't adopt node.js unless node.js survives for
| another 50 years. That's the benefit of slow: the stuff that
| poofs into and out of existence for 5 years or 10 years never
| even makes it onto the radar.
| lucideer wrote:
| You can certainly critique individual judgement calls on their
| so-called "self-sufficiency" - e.g. reliance on external oil
| mining & refinement does seem an unfortunate choice - but at a
| high level I think saying their rules "ultimately don't even
| matter" misses the point a little.
|
| The intent (and benefits) of adopting things late is twofold:
| it allows more time for judgement calls to be made on impact,
| and it also instils self-sufficiency in individual members of
| the community, which ultimately is a pretty large collective
| benefit in itself when it comes to day-to-day living.
|
| > _in places where scarcity is not self-imposed_
|
| Not everyone has the freedom & resources to leave home and
| settle (& succeed) somewhere else, but for those who do,
| scarcities can be self-imposed by personal decisions on where
| to stay.
|
| Either way, I'm not sure how someone deserves more or less
| respect for taking similar approaches just because their
| situation is either chosen by them or by fate.
| snek_case wrote:
| I agree that the rules seem completely made up, but I think the
| most interesting thing in the article is that it makes it clear
| that there's a lot of Amish geeks, and these people are very
| curious, like all human beings. The geeks are really drawn to
| technology, and they find ways to implement more and more
| technology, despite the byzantine rules.
|
| If they end up switching more to solar (which the article hints
| at), it will probably help them be more self-sufficient. Even
| though they have their own convoluted process for approving
| technologies or not, they will probably converge towards the
| more efficient and cost effective solution, just much slower.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Also, please keep religious flamebait off HN. It leads to
| religious flamewars, which are tedious, nasty, and dumb.
| fao_ wrote:
| > because while 50 or so years behind everyone else, the Amish
| are still going to adopt grid electricity, smartphones and
| Node.js sooner or later.
|
| [citation needed]
| Toutouxc wrote:
| The last few paragraphs of the article strongly hint at that.
| With the boy carrying a cellphone and the inverter-for-coffee
| pot stuff and how the line is moving and how the amish are
| steadily adopting technology at their pace.
| as300 wrote:
| I mean, the boy's father also says that there will always
| be "horse and buggy" Amish. We are forgetting that there
| are different Amish orders that lie on a spectrum of
| conservatism within the Amish community. Even if there are
| some groups that end up looking more like us there will
| always be the Amish who don't use the internet,
| electricity, and probably even diesel power.
| ridewinter wrote:
| Utterly fascinating article. The OG steampunk hackers. I wonder
| what the latest is in 2021, have they decided that smartphones
| are anti-community?
|
| What can we learn from them?
| stickfigure wrote:
| While I can appreciate that pockets of this sort of esoteric
| culture exist in the world, I'm very glad that the situation
| isn't reversed and we don't have mere pockets of modernity. I
| would find Amish life _suffocating_.
| mdip wrote:
| The Amish are really misunderstood by people on the outside
| (myself included). This article does a great job of addressing
| those misconceptions and I enjoyed reading it after a long
| afternoon spent talking about the subject with a friend who was a
| midwife to the Amish community in northern Indiana[0]. My
| knowledge up to that point was "Those are the folks that I get my
| turkeys from who ride around in buggies."
|
| The conversation started with an odd statement -- she had 7
| children under 18 all home-schooled at least until High School
| (they were given the choice to attend public school at that
| point) and is a devout Christian. I was asking her why she
| allowed them to attend public school in High School given her
| rigidity on the merits of Home Schooling and her involvement in
| the Home Schooling movement.
|
| She said "They know enough to graduate by the time I'm done with
| them, so it's an opportunity for them to evangelize to the other
| kids and enjoy themselves. I even let them attend an occasional
| party provided it's not an _Amish party_ "
|
| I chuckled ... wouldn't want to be negatively influenced by The
| Amish! I had no idea what 'rumspringa' was at that point. She
| explained and I don't think I blinked the entire time. Her son
| pointed out "The Amish have the best cars and every hard drug
| around". Rumspringa[0] is a period of time after age 16 where
| Amish children are basically allowed to live conventionally in
| order to make the decision, on their own, if they want to join
| the community as adults. Many buy (really nice) cars, many --
| having experienced freedom for the first time in their lives --
| make every mistake a late teenager can make and seem to make it
| at a level that pales in comparison to my experience as a
| teenager. The cynical -- and she was one -- believe it is used to
| _encourage_ children to make every mistake the modern world has
| to offer so that they are _trapped_ into making the choice to
| join the Amish community.
|
| Because of my experience buying Amish turkeys, which are sold as
| cage free, hormone free, and otherwise considered superior from a
| health-standpoint to conventional turkeys[1]. I was surprised to
| find out that my midwife friend didn't buy Amish turkeys despite
| being _extremely_ into the "all natural" way of thinking[2].
|
| The article mentions that the technology choices which are
| allowed are limited by the parish and are inconsistent among
| parishes. Gas engines are usually allowed. Electricity is allowed
| with some restrictions, though AFAIK, being off-grid is required
| -- if you can generate it from solar/gas generator, it's OK and
| gas refrigerators or gas generators powering refrigerators were
| allowed.
|
| While Amish Turkeys may not use conventional methods -- hormone-
| free/pesticide-free feed -- such is not the case with pretty much
| anything else. Velveeta, apparently, can be found in large
| quantities in every Amish kitchen in the community she served and
| is used in so many meals that she turns down Amish meals. Gelatin
| (non-desert Jello) is another staple of the diets of the people
| she served. Her take was "Amish food is unhealthy and
| disgusting".
|
| Outside of that, she explained to me that _literally everything
| is grown conventionally_. The parish she serves has no rules
| against pesticide use /GMO/conventional fertilizers and the like
| are _common_ -- basically anything that will keep a plant from
| dying is _common_. On the surface, this was a strange thing for
| me to wrap my brain around given my Amish Turkey experience,
| however, the explanation she gave was "Velveeta notwithstanding,
| they rely on their own farming for the majority of their food and
| use the most effective/least expensive options available in order
| to make sure there's enough". I still can't get over the
| Velveeta. Nasty. Her opinion was that among the conventional
| farms, Amish farms were _the worst_ and she wouldn 't consume
| _anything_ grown on an Amish farm.
|
| As a midwife, though, she had a bit of experience with some of
| the darker side of Amish life (a lot is explained in The Devil's
| Playground). Bed Courtship is among the oddest practices for a
| community that believes per-marital sex is evil. More than a few
| of her baby-delivery roles were for late teenage girls who became
| pregnant before they were married. The practice involves,
| basically, bringing a girl home to lay in the same bed with as
| part of a date. Sex is forbidden, and it sometimes includes a
| barrier that is supposed to separate the two participants, but
| that practice is rare (as is Bed Courtship, in general). Her
| opinion was that Bed Courtship, much like 'rumspringa', is
| designed to _cause_ children to make mistakes that result in them
| feeling forced to stay Amish for life.
|
| A small anecdote I share with people choosing to make a switch to
| a programming/IT career was that her husband -- an IT systems
| analyst -- worked with a gentleman who was Amish up until his
| late 20s[3]. He was a former-Amish software developer. "If that
| guy can do it, anyone can."
|
| [0] I strongly recommend the documentary The Devil's Playground
| if you want to learn about 'rumspringa'.
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293088/
|
| [1] I don't challenge those labels, but I also can't validate
| them.
|
| [2] She refused to buy pasteurized milk, opting for milk from a
| neighbors farm. Her husband refused to drink it without passing
| it through their own pasteurizer.
|
| [3] Yes, they do shun family members who leave the community.
| kk6mrp wrote:
| Rumspringa varies greatly from community to community. I think
| it would be safe to say that the majority of Amish don't
| experience rumspringa in the wild way that has been popularized
| by TV culture.
|
| This link has a sizable section on the topic:
| https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=ht...
| moron4hire wrote:
| This is the kind of stuff I'm talking about in my own comment
| in this thread. The Amish are not the pious people they're made
| out to be in popular media. They sin just like you or me.
| blauditore wrote:
| The comments section is hilarious, some spam bot must have
| misinterpreted the title:
|
| > searching for a good hacker that could successfully change my
| university grades [...], a week to graduation i came across [...]
| 867-5309 wrote:
| ##AmishMacbeth
|
| func changeGrade(toB || !toB);
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Easy to mock their ways for being inefficient. That's because
| efficiency isn't their metric. It's self-sufficiency. To the
| degree self-sufficiency doesn't become hubris.
|
| So they'll do it themselves if they can. But they'll accept help
| if that's sensible, because otherwise its arrogance/pride and
| that's a sin.
|
| An old Amish joke: the young family in the buggy is heading home
| from Sunday meeting, Father says to Mother "I believe we were the
| plainest ones there!"
| philshem wrote:
| Another example of using a different metric, from Hans Rosling:
|
| >> A decade ago I lectured to the staff of the Ministry of
| Health in Cuba. After my talk the Minister happily said, this
| graphs showed that Cuba is the healthiest of the poor
| countries! On the way out a young staff member whispered in my
| ear:
|
| >> - He is wrong, Cuba is just the poorest of the healthy
| countries.
|
| https://www.gapminder.org/news/cuba-poorest-of-the-healthy/
| masterof0 wrote:
| This is such a joke. Stats on Cuba are usually provided by
| the Cuban government, not a single one international
| organization have ever made a census, or conducted an
| independent inspection to prove/disprove any of the
| government's claims. As someone who grew up in Miami, with
| many Cuban friends, and who have also been in Cuban, not in
| the touristy places(varadero, cayo largo, etc...), but where
| the Cubans actually live, this is disgusting, and a bad
| analogy. It blows my mind how people here, are always
| complaining about China, but go alone with the propaganda
| from the bloody, murderous Cuban dictatorship. There is
| plenty of info online, from independent sources on Cuba, on
| how is the healthcare(or the lack of it) over there, go and
| take a look.
| pxc wrote:
| > this is [...] a bad analogy
|
| That's true. The Amish don't live on an island, and haven't
| been subject to half a century of embargo and economic
| sanctions. The restrictions on their participation in the
| wider society and global economy are by choice, and they
| freely access whatever outside resources are useful to
| sustain themselves when they decide that it makes sense to
| do so. The two situations are indeed incomparable.
| hash872 wrote:
| Cuba is completely free to trade with the other 85% of
| the world economy that is not the United States, and
| indeed they've done so since the Soviet Union collapsed.
| They do quite a bit of trade with various European
| countries, and in particular Spain.
|
| Interestingly, they're not even 100% cut off from the US-
| agricultural exports are exempt, and so Cuba imports
| quite a bit of US foodstuffs like poultry, soybeans and
| corn. (Farmers generally drive US economic policy!)
| masterof0 wrote:
| Exactly, the "half a decade of embargo" rhetoric come
| from people who clearly don't live or never have been in
| Cuba, nor understand the reason for the embargo. I don't
| blame them tho, they are just victims of decades of
| propaganda.
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| Another joke, this old Slim Jim commercial
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5DC5cIbKUU
|
| Sorry, couldn't resist
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Golden!
| [deleted]
| mastazi wrote:
| > And if the Amish hackers and early adopters teach us anything,
| it's that you have to try things first. Try first and relinquish
| later if need be.
|
| Wow this reminds me of "break things and fail fast". I used to
| have a negative-ish opinion about the Amish but the more I learn
| about them (and other groups such as the Mennonites) the more I
| appreciate the way the conduct their lives.
| smoyer wrote:
| I'm am predominantly Pennsylvania Dutch (not Amish or
| Mennonite) and currently live within a few miles of both Amish
| and Mennonite farms. What I can tell you is that they are
| people - if you tell them a (good) joke they'll laugh and if
| you tell them a joke that's not funny, they'll smile awkwardly.
| They also have prejudices just like we do (even from one sect
| to another.) I'm a bit older than most here and what I've
| learned is that you can have an engaging conversation with
| almost anyone - take time to listen and you'll probably notice
| that the other person finds you interesting and curious too.
| mastazi wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this. I agree with what you said, I
| think one problem with the current social-media-driven public
| discourse is that it brings the tendency to "put a label on
| people" to an extreme. But as you say, if you spend time and
| have a real conversation with a person you will often find
| that reality is different from stereotypes.
| yetihehe wrote:
| > The Amish have the undeserved reputation of being luddites, of
| people who refuse to employ new technology.
|
| Looks like Amish ARE indeed luddites in original meaning of the
| word (only accept technology if it's for social good), but
| current widely believed meaning of "luddite" is just people
| shunning technology. For more info - you can start with recently
| posted "Science Fiction is a Luddite Literature"[0] or read "What
| the Luddites Really Fought Against"[1].
|
| [0] https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-
| fiction-i...
|
| [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-
| rea...
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