@cjd @freakazoid
Only if those mediocre developers don't create negative externalities.

@Wolf480pl @freakazoid
That's basically the fundamental question. Prometheus stole fire from the gods to help humans, who certainly were worse at using it than the gods.

So is Prometheus a hero or a villain ?

If Prometheus is a hero, it's hard to avoid concluding that the snake in the genesis story is also the hero.

But if Prometheus is the villain then it's hard not to reason yourself into Anarcho-Primitivism.

@cjd @freakazoid
IMO, you're generalizing too much.

Each of those cases is different, and it might be quite possible that giving people fire is ok, but giving them asbestos isn't. Where does JS lie on the fire-asbestos spectrum?

@cjd @freakazoid
Also, I don't understand why you equate what the snake did with what Prometheus did.

The snake gave people freedom. It pushed them out of choicelessness. Made them realize that things don't have to be the way they are, and that everything has a reason. That it makes sense to ask "why".

The snake is clearly a hero (or a tool in God's hands, whichever you prefer).

Well ok, if you are an anarcho-primitivism you may argue that choicelessness is a good thing and the snake is a villain, but otherwise, I don't see why you couldn't have a choiceless fire-using society which worships Prometheus and hates Snake, or a society in systematic mode which doesn't use fire or any higher technology.

@Wolf480pl @freakazoid
Interesting take, I know so little about religion that I'm really out of my depth here, I just thought that the snake was typically considered evil, maybe @natecull can clarify.

I think it is fair though to equate technology to choice/freedom, after Prometheus people had the choice to use fire or not to, before that they didn't. Same as all the choice in NPM, much of which will get you burned :)

@cjd @freakazoid @natecull
Yeah, the Snake is traditionally depicted as evil, but that's IMO naive as fuck.

Every religion accumulates a lot of folklore around it that arises from misunderstanding of the religion and/or trying to use it as a vehicle for their own ideas. So when you're trying to get to the bottom of what some religion is really about, you should treat most folklore as bullshit, or at least as a very unreliable source.

@Wolf480pl @freakazoid @natecull
If the snake is evil, then that has the distinctive smell of Plato's social degeneration philosophy which Karl Popper viciously attacked, with good reason IMO. There was also an article claiming this to be Bannon's philosophy, though I cannot find it now.

@cjd @Wolf480pl @freakazoid

imo the jury's still out on whether what Prometheus gave humanity was a good thing or bad, at least until the climate change crisis is over. Lots of burned trees and extinct species sitting in the witness box...

But I do love Javascript for exactly the same reason Caleb does. It's just so much *fun* to use as personal local scripting engine. Feels like BASIC again.

@Wolf480pl @cjd @freakazoid @natecull
To go off on a side tangent, the snake is depicted as evil in part because the allegories are trying to explain all of the pain and suffering in the world.

If you view pain and suffering as separate from free will, then the snake is a hero. Or at least it could be one. But as far as I understand it the original idea was that the snake brought free will but also pain, death, and loss.

@mike @cjd @freakazoid @natecull

IOW, the snake allows you to shoot yourself in the foot?

And people are like "hey I don't want to be able to do that, why can't you take away my free will and then you'll be responsible to make sure everything ends well?"

@Wolf480pl @cjd @freakazoid @natecull
I think it's one thing to think that way if you live in a technologically advanced, low poverty area of the 21st century. I think it's something else to accept it when you live in a different time or even today under different economic conditions and watch your children die of malaria, or starvation.

Or even my cousin, who lost his four year old last year to a brain tumor.

@Wolf480pl @cjd Couple of things: first, I think it's instructive to view these stories in terms of the goals the people teaching them had through the ages. It's not like people started with Prometheus and the snake and then decided how to interpret them; they had the thing they wanted to teach and then came up with (originally) or decided to use the stories to get across whatever they wanted to get across.

@freakazoid @cjd maybe they recognized the tradeoff correctly, but picked a side we disagree with?

@cjd @Wolf480pl Second, (and now I'm doing exactly the opposite of what I just said), fire (or more to the point cooking) dates back to H. erectus, and it's almost certain that H. sapiens never could have evolved without it. Any hypothetical society without fire would have had to discard it and would need to live in a pretty favorable location to be able to obtain sufficient nutrition without cooking.

@freakazoid @Wolf480pl
The moment when I realize that 5 years in France has affected me:
I read "without cooking" and feel a physical repulsion at the thought 😂

@Wolf480pl @cjd In other words, Prometheus pre-dates not just Snake but the Garden of Eden, if you think the Garden of Eden was populated by H. sapiens.

It's possible the hunting of big game (and thus war, since big game hunting doesn't seem otherwise beneficial) started with H. sapiens, which would point to the Garden of Eden being populated by H. erectus and Prometheus preceding it.

@cjd @Wolf480pl Actually big game hunting was probably precipitated by an ice age, then continued afterward because groups that stayed good at it were better able to kill other people as well, so anyone who went back to small game as soon as they could got killed or joined the groups (potentially involuntarily) who hunted big game.

@Wolf480pl @cjd Hmm, I guess that assertion obliterates anarcho-primitivism, doesn't it? If H. sapiens is defined by big game hunting and war, then there was never a time that didn't have organized violence.

Which is not to say we shouldn't abandon war, just that link between war and civilization doesn't go the direction anarcho-primitivists think it does. In fact, agriculture and civilization would have *reduced* violence.

@cjd @Wolf480pl Since human history shows a long term, steady decline in death by violence in concert with the growth of agriculture, industry, urbanization, and technology generally, I'd say anarcho-primitivism has it exactly backward.

@Wolf480pl @cjd In fact, it was *trade* that created for the first time any reason at all for humans not to kill, kidnap, or rape any stranger they came across, because any other group would simply be a competitor for resources.

@freakazoid @cjd
I wonder how Mongol Hordes fit into this picture.

@Wolf480pl

Not sure about how this picture is framed.

Why does hunting big game = war

Also I dont think agricultural societies = peaceful societies.
Theres been very violent societies that practiced agriculture also hunter/gatherers that weren't aggressive. Also, as suggested, the inverse.
@freakazoid @cjd

@dazinism @cjd @Wolf480pl It's just a theory I once read as to why humans have hunted big game for so long even when it was not the most efficient way to get protein that was available to them. The tools and techniques of big game hunting also work well for killing people. It could certainly be wrong, but nomadic hunter-gatherer groups that came in contact would have been competitors more than, say, nomadic herders.

@Wolf480pl @cjd @dazinism And agrarians aren't nomadic, so they would only run into other agrarians if they were trying to expand their territory or had to move for whatever reason.

Of course, agriculture was a prerequisite for large scale war, but I think the scale of such wars was more than offset by the much reduced frequency. On average, of course.

@dazinism @cjd @Wolf480pl Agriculture also created the surplus necessary to have a ruling class, and the dominance that came with that, of course. I just had that long monologue thread about agriculture and feudalism. But it also created the surplus necessary for trade.

@freakazoid
All sounds like a rather bleak theory of the human condition, where out of group interactions are driven only by harsh utility

Is this theory based primarily on one thing you read, (do you recall what?)

I like to think that theres always been more possible reasons/options for interaction than just trade or war- certainly for me this is the case.
I think that theres evidence that this has also been the case historically
@cjd @Wolf480pl

@dazinism @freakazoid @cjd

I think by Occam's Razor, there's no reason to think there are other reasons for interaction, until shown an example that can't be explained by "harsh" utility.

Can you enumerate some of those other possible reasons?

@Wolf480pl @dazinism @freakazoid
This same question arrives again and again. Did we fall from grace or are we better every day ?
Plato clearly believed that we fell from grace, from the perfect republic with the perfect Philosopher King.
Lots of lore around this belief of fall from grace. The innocent and peaceful hunter-gatherers wiped out by the cruel and mechanistic Europeans is a really common belief system.

@Wolf480pl

>Can you enumerate some of those other possible reasons? (Than trade or war)

Us humans are curious beings - could be interested in the sound of their music, their clothes, their hunting methods etc. etc.
Maybe looking for love?

I know some may like to suggest these kind of interactions are trades, even go as far to suggest all human interactions are effectively trades. I dont >buy< that 🤣
@dazinism @freakazoid @cjd

@dazinism @Wolf480pl @cjd The link between big game hunting and warfare is, but many games and sports are pretty clearly practice for warfare as well. There are numerous sources that say nomadic hunter-gatherer groups tended to kill one another when they ran into each other, too. American tribes certainly were not peaceful, at least in some areas, presumably where there was resource contention.

@cjd @Wolf480pl @dazinism I don't consider steady progress toward peace to be a bleak theory at all. The notion of falling from grace and everything steadily going to shit while a small fraction of us act as Cassandras is what's bleak.

@freakazoid @Wolf480pl @cjd Don't be part of the problem...

https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript

@seven @freakazoid @Wolf480pl
If you're not part of the solution then you're part of the problem, sort of the leftist version of "either you are with us, or you're with the terrorists"

@cjd @freakazoid @Wolf480pl Jabascript, terrorism... 🤔​ One could argue that. ;)

@cjd @freakazoid @Wolf480pl But, alas I have to use it just like everyone else...

@cjd @freakazoid @Wolf480pl That is far away from, by choice however...

@seven @freakazoid @Wolf480pl
Well it's unfortunate that you have to use it and you don't like it, but I would argue that if it makes programming accessible to more people then it's a net win for society.

@cjd @seven @freakazoid
"chose between being part of the solution and being part of the problem"

"chose between lesser evil and greater evil"

@Wolf480pl @cjd @seven @freakazoid

BASIC, and the personal computer, is the fire Prometheus stole.

When the gods finally noticed, they taught Prometheus capitalism, and then he and his followers convince the world that BASIC was bad, and that only Promethians can use fire safely.

@requiem @seven @cjd @Wolf480pl Ok now that's a myth I can get behind.

All hail Prometheus!

@Wolf480pl @cjd @seven @freakazoid

BASIC, and the personal computer, is the fire Prometheus stole.

When the gods finally noticed, they taught Prometheus capitalism, and then he and his followers convince the world that BASIC was bad, and that only Promethians can use fire safely.

@Wolf480pl @freakazoid
To this point, I think it's fair to pick on PHP. It's similarly a good first language, manages to guess what you probably mean so you're not stuck pleasing a compiler before you can see your code work, but it has a lot of rules and exceptions (sadly JS is going this direction now with ES6, ES7 etc)

@cjd @Wolf480pl @freakazoid genuinely confused how this entire discussion ended up with the ending sentence sliding into anarcho primativism

@decoy @Wolf480pl @cjd Well it's his thread he can take it where he wants.