I find the Amish’s perspective on technology interesting. Especially now, I respect the lengths they have gone through to preserve community over expediency.
I was particularly intrigued by “The Amish seek to master technology rather than become its slave.”
I love the conveniences tech offers, but I also worry about the digital habits that have turned into unhealthy addictions. Where in the technological progression did we tipped from technology being a tool to being a handcuff. Broadband? Wi-Fi? Smartphones?
Given the deep ties to tech here on HN, I am curious to know if there are others here who have similar thoughts.
I use technology, rather than allowing it to us me - as does my family. We're Orthodox Jews, but more than that we (as in my family) fail to see the majority of the utility most technologies provide. Effort saving technology is fantastic - but many others simply get in the way of the type of life I'd like to live, rather than reinforce it. While I love my Sabbath - I don't personally think that the forced disconnection from electronics is the healthy habit people need - regardless of my personal religious inclination. Establishing and reinforcing their primary selves over the years, while learning to use technology seems to be the real need, something that permeates due to lifestyle.
My children play with their friends, in meatspace. They co-ordinate doing so with WhatsApp or Telegram. This is the healthy balance. What they don't do is spend unending amounts of time playing video games, watching movies, or ever play a mobile game. They go to the movie theatre, or watch <insert streaming thing> with their friends should they want. But they don't do this every single day. Some use Khan Academy for play-based learning, all use their eBook readers for the unlimited books on whatever topics may interest them, for when we're out of treepubs.
Our trees are watered via a bluetooth drip irrigation system. Our groceries are delivered once ordered via an application. They walk to the local market to buy fresh in-season vegetables when we run out. During the week, when we study Torah we can access the history of exegesis through tablets. On Shabbat and Holidays we use books. It's balance.
Pfiuuu... You live in wonderland ! Congrats for getting your kids to do that !
How did you prevent your kids being sucked into tik tok and so on ? I tried, but failed :-( (at some point, I had to check what they do to make sure they don't spend too much time on these but, well I just couldn't handle the amount of checking I had to do)
Thanks for this comment. One thing I'm curious about is the influence of advertising. Is this something that is discussed at the community level? Say with your rabbi?
There are as many perspectives on the doctrine as stars in the sky. A computer is a tool of my trade, it is a part of my work. A phone, or one of the fancy cable TV's on the other hand, is not, and those have a much more pernicious nature, so I don't have them.
Not everyone is a beachy amish, not everyone is a schwartzentruber like you see in movies or imagine when you hear "Amish". You might have a hard time finding any one town where everyone has the same commitments, except for the schwartzentrubers, mainly due to it being the simplest lifestyle. Most of us just prefer a community centered, simple family unit with as much harmony with our neighbors as possible.
Just looked up the Schwartzentruber Wikipedia. Very interesting to learn of all of these sub-groups. I also find it interesting that the Schwartzentruber do allow the use of motorized washing machines. My guess is that the women do most of this work, and aren’t having it with manually cleaning clothes and raising umteen children.
I wonder if moderate Amish would consider nuclear in any form? For the sake of argument let's say there is a small scale reactor that would behave as large batteries with essentially zero risk and limitless energy. Could that replace the diesel generators or is diesel seen as more predictable? Would Amish ever consider a technology which allows them to produce their own diesel fuel even if it was somewhat complex?
Maintenance-free nuclear power plants are a pipe dream. Self-contained fail-safe reactors with enough fuel to last a very long time might be possible, but that is only part of a nuclear power plant. To make power with that reactor you need all the rest of the nuclear power plant around it. Water intake, heat exchanges, steam turbines, etc, etc. Diesel engines are relatively straight forward compared to all this. I think it would be easier to talk them into producing biodiesel for themselves (assuming they don't already.)
But if they're going to buy something high-tech once and keep it running themselves for years, wind turbines or solar seem more promising.
An Amish farm not too far from me (and not too far from Elizabethtown College, where TFA is from) has a solar panel on the barn roof. Noticed it while driving past about a month ago.
I don't know what sect the family belongs to, but a couple months ago I drove past on a Sunday morning and saw over twenty buggies parked in the pasture, nary a car in sight, so I'm confident they're at least not in a car-owning group.
As a kid I hated that we couldn’t watch tv in the living room for dinner but instead had to sit in the dining room with no tv. My parents were so uncool. Didn’t they now my classmates could watch TV during their dinner?
When I moved out I started taking all my meals with tv and later video on my computer.
I’m now in my thirties and I see the value of my parents decision.
I don’t live in the states, but I read online that cinema in the states are quite noisy. Where I live, the main benefit to me of going to the cinema is the forced focus. Dark room. No pause ability, no phones, no talking.
I’ve seen a few “no Wi-Fi, no laptop” cafes and thought them silly, but I’m starting to turn around. It would be nice with a no smartphone cafe, but I’d still want a picture …
My point is: no, you’re not the only one with these concerns and I think you are right that there was a tipping point where we “lost”, but the battle has been ongoing for a long time.
This depends on the base you are comparing to. In the home country people did not talk in the theater, literally they would sit silent during the whole show. Nor did they eat. So people talking, and loudly chewing, and sipping in the US was a shock to me.
I can see the food being surprising. High concession prices serve as a check on widespread consumption, thankfully. There are theaters that advertise serving good meals during the movie, but they arrange seating, engineer audio and enforce their no-disruption policies so that other moviegoers aren't noticeable.
I've yet to be in a theater in the US where I can't hear people talking and phones beeping unless it's almost empty. The issue is not that I cannot hear the film as theaters routinely crank volume up. My issue is that I expect immersion from a theater, which does not happen with all the noise.
Honestly, I agree with you, there are a lot of people in the US that casually treat public spaces as if they are theirs alone, and this sort of rudeness and selfishness permeates the culture. Some subcultures are worse than others about this.
The only cinema in the US I don’t hate is Alamo Drafthouse.
The sooner you learn not to trust what teenagers and bored 30-year-olds write on reddit, the better. :) It's not healthy when one person's single and potentially unreliable anecdote can be boosted hundreds to thousands of times.
The Amish have the right idea. If the point of helpful technology is to help us to better achieve our goals, the fact that we find ourselves drawn to devices like moths to flames strongly implies that the technology is not helpful. If even well-educated technologists unthinkingly find themselves filling free time with mindless (i.e. without prior prefrontal cortex planning) browsing, what chance is there for other folks? It's not a dignified way to be--we're just big rats pressing glowing levers to get dopamine spikes.
It’s like sugar. There’s an evolutionary reason for it from old times when it was scarce. But nowadays it’s all around us and leads to diabetes if not limited.
Really fail to see the value of that comment. I haven't seen any FANG/Startup creators sustain themselves building quality furniture or barns either...
Kind of an odd measure of if their values are a good idea or not
What would a rich Amish even do? The same as they always have. Some Amish around me in Ohio actually got quite wealthy selling oil rights on their land, they put all the money into a general emergency fund for their fellow Amish and continued on.
In Pennsylvania, the Amish are reputed to be quite wealthy (at least by local standards.) Shrewd and thrifty businessmen who often buy properties outright with surprising quantities of cash. I haven't dealt with them personally, but this is what I've heard about them from people who have.
The site posted indicates that they do pay most taxes, except for FICA, for which they have a religious exemption (dear god, don’t anyone tell the Christian Nationalists about this exemption).
Any group that qualifies for the employment tax exemption already knows about it. They have to be in one of several groups that are known to have existed for several decades, and either have their own mutual benefit program or conscientiously object to the taxes for religious reasons. That list includes far right, far left, and moderate adherents.
(Sometimes clergy from mainline or popular denominations will also claim it. There is some grey area in interpreting legitimate conscientious objection.)
> There is some grey area in interpreting legitimate conscientious objection.
A ton of unnecessary gray area, and a violation of separation of church and state to give preference to certain tribes over others based on political influence.
I assume they already are. Not just from explicitly benefit reductions like increasing the retirement age, but also the decreasing purchasing power of a dollar (inflation) outpacing any cost of living adjustments. I still have 35 years to go before I can collect, but I expect the demographics will be so tilted by then, that I will see little benefit from Social Security.
In the sene that SS is a broken pyramid model that depends on short retirements and population growth, yes. However, this is not a problem the US is willing to contemplate as they would removing the payroll cap, which would become a significant national conversation.
Inflation, not so much an issue, since benefits and maximum contributions receive COLAs and theoretically wages are inflating at pace with CPI.
It would make it progressive because those proposals do not lift the benefits cap (most of them don't, at least.) But I do understand what you're saying about the flat percentage of tax taken out per dollar of income.
If I had to pick a catalyst, I'd go with monetization based on impressions or duration of use -- e.g. ad-based business models. The feedback loops hyper-optimized addictive behavior targeting serotonin.
Dopamine is the neurotransmitter associated with prediction of reward (aka desire/craving/addiction). Serotonin is very complex (in humans) but more about social-emotional processing.
Dopamine is the neurotransmitter you’re thinking of. And also glutamate since glutamatergic firing in brain reward pathways are heavy associated with addiction
And I would say this started with TV, well before the Internet. Maybe radio too? But I want to say that visual media are especially addictive? I wonder if there are any studies comparing social media addiction across sighted and non-sighted communities.
It's not just a "set back", it's a fantasy. There's a hundred times too many people on this Earth to live like that. We've leveraged up our population using technology, and there's no way to unwind that without also eliminating almost everyone. Nor would we want to. Say what you will about the ills of technology, but I'm so much happier to be living now than a hundred years ago. Life is better by nearly every way you want to measure it. We'll have to get ourselves out of the climate mess the same way we got into it - with technology.
Also life is much better today for a weak, stupid person. 100 years, or even 40 years back, your life would be hell due to people giving you a hard time.
Today you would be put on a pedestal and worshiped for your shortcomings...
> We'll have to get ourselves out of the climate mess the same way we got into it - with technology.
And get into another one by doing it. Flawless logic.
Human beings should start being humble and realisitic about their capability to predict the effects of thier actions on environment, and start messing with it less. Not more. If humanity as a whole, has the capability to JUST FUCKING STOP, I would have much hope for the future. But no. Humanity has as much ability to course correct as that of a flying hippopotamus.
>Also life is much better today for a weak, stupid person. 100 years, or even 40 years back, your life would be hell due to people giving you a hard time.
40 years ago, an imbecile could support himself doing menial labor. Now not so much.
Someone born stupid can be used as a useful idiot and put in a position of authority or politics to act as a plant by someone who is not an idiot and is very malicious.
To be frank, I think, if not now, then eventually, all positions of authority will be manned by such plants..
Adversity doesn't mean stupid or weak though. Let's say a person made it to a certain level of success in life. If that person faced adversity along the way, the person likely had to be smart and hardworking to overcome the adversity. If the person didn't face adversity, the person might have coasted to that point and might not be smart and hardworking.
An intriguing question: could a temperance movement against digital services organize itself offline? Most, if not all, movements right now coalesce online. Perhaps people already forgot how to do this in the real world, much like they forgot how to navigate with paper maps.
And could they even still communicate effectively? Except landline and snail mail, what kind of possibilities are there left to exchange / propagate messages?
Pagers are (more or less) dead. Telegrams are dead. Fax is (more or less) dead. Newspapers are dying.
Amateur Radio, Flyers and public squares would still work, though.
I hope not. I refuse to go back to the loneliness I had before the internet. It is a wonder that I didn't kill myself before I exited my teens. My entire present life would have been a crapshoot before the internet - it is how I wound up meeting my spouse and moving overseas, after all (and yes, a stable relationship, over a decade long after moving).
> I wonder if we will see something like a temperance movement.
We probably already are seeing a form of it. With "temperance" to online advertising being adopted wholesale via the likes of Ublock Origin and other ad blockers.
Then there are the people who've Degoogled, Unfacebooked, (etc).
If (!) substantially more people continue to avoid Google, FB, (etc) it could become an actual Movement.
Hopefully it happens, in a positive (for humanity) way. :)
I have some Amish friends. Most have cell phones, they just can’t come into the house. But barn is fine. Most of them have them out of necessity. Calling vendors, emergency calls, etc
> Where in the technological progression did we tipped from technology being a tool to being a handcuff. Broadband? Wi-Fi? Smartphones?
It's not about technological progression, it's ethics and legislation.
Back in the day you would either not build user-hostile technology on ethical grounds, or the law would quickly catch up and outlaw your practice, or you just wouldn't get the funding necessary to do. For example, when some politician's video rental history was threatened to be made public, a law was quickly passed to outlaw the practice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act) and when Google (I think) initially announced plans to use targeted advertising based on personal data they initially backtracked due to the huge negative public reaction at the time.
Somewhere however the tide has turned and building user-hostile technology started being socially acceptable and rewarded by the market. People/companies that we call "VCs" even started specializing in funding said technology, all while regulation took a backseat.
I disconnect on Saturdays, just like religious Jews do. I'm not religious, but I piggyback on their custom to enjoy one day off. Not a day off work, a day off being available to whoever wants my time, whenever they want my time.
From what I understand, Knuth entirely stopped using email in 1990, for a similar reason. But for Knuth, at that point, he was already using email for 15 years.
100%. I love their approach. It harmonizes so much with how I try to think about every new bit of technology and it's served me very well. Some practices it has inspired for me;
- Absolutely NO social media on the phone. Computer only.
- Relatedly: Turned off ALL phone notifications except those that come from real-life human beings who I know personally.
- Paid hosting and perhaps more importantly, email. Self hosting is a pain, but I want the control and reliability. To me, it's an incredibly bad idea in the hands of e.g. Google. I need to be able to talk to a human who can fix things if it breaks.
> I was particularly intrigued by “The Amish seek to master technology rather than become its slave.”
The Amish actually fascinate me in this regard. If you've ever met with an Amish person, they are far from primitive or dumb.
When the Amish communities were first founded, they were technologically no different than the groups around them. Just anytime a new technology is introduced, Elders host a discussion about how they would adopt it as a group. So it ends up as some Amish have telephones and some don't and etc.
The misuse of television for pure unrestrained capitalism seems like it was a pretty significant setback both socially and environmentally. Was radio much better? Is it parasocial relationships?
Arranged marriages are barbaric and effectively rape in many cases, though, especially when they are forced based on threats of disownment or worse, which is common depending on the culture. In some places it is a lot more explicitly threatening. I don't really care whether people who are abused and brainwashed into signing on to participate in and perpetrate on the next generation horrific practices claim to be fine with the crap themselves, that's basically the story of every abusive religious practice ever, beat kids into thinking God will hate them unless X and they're going to tell you X is amazing as adults.
That's not how most arranged marriages work, it just means instead of getting options from Tinder, people get options through their parents' social network.
Which usually means they're more selected for things the parents like (well respected in the community) rather than things that look good in pictures (shirtless pics).
I think any useful definition of arranges marriage involved one or both parties not having a say in it, or maybe where one party has such a better negotiating position (such as immigration rights to the USA), that it precludes any other notions of compatibility.
It is not racist. I have family members who were married without consent of both parties. That is an arranged marriage with a distinct difference than that of a marriage that happens with the consent of both parties.
Getting introduced to a potential partner by family or friends and then dating is not any different than flirting with a partner and then dating, for the purposes of describing the circumstances that resulted in marriage.
Whether or not a couples’ uncles introduce each other, or their friends introduce each other, or couple meets each other at a bar/club/church/temple/volunteer org, the only meaningful difference I see is whether one or both parties consented (or was coerced due to drastic difference in negotiating position, such as my immigration example).
Two sets of parents deciding their kids are going to be married as adults and forcing/coercing it is arranged/forced marriage.
Two sets of parents introducing their kids to each other and the kids deciding they want to be married to each other is just marriage.
> Two sets of parents deciding their kids are going to be married as adults and forcing/coercing it is arranged/forced marriage.
This is forced marriage.
> Two sets of parents introducing their kids to each other and the kids deciding they want to be married to each other is just marriage.
This is arranged marriage. In a non-arranged marriage the kids find each other, or they get introduced in a non-formal way. In an arranged one parents or a matchmaker do it for them, but the kids make the final decision. An arranged marriage is simply that there is someone actively looking for a match for the kid.
In a forced marriage the kids have no say, or their only say is to try to convince the parents, but if the parents disagree the kids have no choice.
That's simply what the words mean. You asked for a definition, this is the definition.
Keep the distinction and you'll communicate better on this subject without confusing people. (Notice that the only replies you got were people explaining that you are wrong about the topic - that's because you used the wrong term.)
I think common-sense suggests being involuntarily married and obliged to have regular sex with someone not of your choosing probably leads to an unhappy condition, particularly if your community also punishes or forbids divorce or separation, particularly if you’re female.
Who or what do socially conservative practices like arranged marriage, prohibition on fornication, restriction on contraception (etc) serve? - the maximisation of happiness … or … often paternalistic control over a population for the greater benefit of a socially powerful elite?
There's also the big benefit of essentially eliminating STDs.
In my view, a lot of it comes down to what does sex mean? To me, sex says "I love you so much I want our love to overflow into new life. I love you so much I want to raise a child with you." Raising a child within a marriage is generally much better than raising a child outside of a marriage.
> restriction on contraception
One big problem with contraception is that it's not reliable. The pill has a 7% failure rate on average, and condoms have a 12% failure rate on average. People use contraception thinking it will prevent a pregnancy, but they're wrong.
> benefit of a socially powerful elite
I don't really understand how a prohibition on fornication benefits a powerful elite. The elites in the media industry seem to be promoting fornication in movies, TV shows, books, videogames, etc. I think elite men often want to use their position to have sex with a lot of women, which would be easier if women are ok with fornication. Also they won't be regarded as hypocrites if they say what they're doing is ok. Take for example Aziz Ansari. A woman accused him of some bad sexual thing. Much of the media defended Aziz saying it was just awkward sex, and that's not unethical. If Aziz had been publicly against fornication though, the media wouldn't have defended him.
I believe my outlook towards politics and society is substantially Amish-like, in that I (utterly and devoutly) hate industrialised, massive, yet so lonely and atomised, societies, and I believe the blood-tied extended family is the only reasonable unit you can build a healthy community on. https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=32265182 is one comment where I express those views.
There is nothing I despise more than what I call "The Economist Fetish", you know how it goes, "GROWTH! GDP! CAN EARTH SUPPORT 10 TRILLION PEOPLE?!! LETS FIND OUT!!", economists, as the namesake implies, are the most infested with this intellectual disease, but milder forms are endemic to a lot of modern people. A perverse and virus-like fascination with growing and expanding, a bizarre sexual pleasure derived from imagining life blown up to monstrous proportions. Someone with this disease have a rather curious inability to think about limits and ranges of validity : Can we humans, evolved for 1/4 million years to live among tightly-knit communities, live sanely in those infestations we call modern cities? Can the ecosystem, usually an incredibly balanced and intricate contraption based on animals eating each other to avoid overflowing resources, handle a species hitting 10 billion soon? An economist-fetishist have no patience for those questions, the rush for "GROWTH" overrides all conscious thought and sensation, like a drug, leaving only the raw sexual desire for more, more growth, more humans, more fuel, more cities and cement, more molding of the universe according to ugly and short sighted designs.
I like the Amish, in another life I would have loved living among them (if they allow strangers), despite my atheism. They are as far as you can go against the perverse idea of "society" and toward the more humane "community" without a full-fledged revolution.
Humans beings can be divided into two classes. The exploiters and the exploited. Exploiters are constantly looking on ways to do more efficient exploitation. So every new technological "thing" that get discovered, will be considered by the exploiters to do more efficient exploitation.
So every thing, even if this thing have huge potential to do good, will eventually be discovered by the exploiters to do more efficient exploitation. I will go even further and will say that things that does not aid much with efficient exploitation won't attain wide spread usage in this day.
For example, we got a TV in each home, becuause that would help with more efficient exploitation. Each of us have a full color, slab like smart phones with a dozen listening devices with 24x7 internet connection because, yea you guessed, it, because it helps exploitors to squeeze that last drop of juice out of you...
Now I am not saying that there is a self declared bunch of exploitrers that decides which tech should go mainstream, but I think this is sort of emergent behavior, given the primal instincts in each and every one of us human beings..
My respect for the Amish is huge. I grew up not far from a few rather large settlements.
The breadth of knowledge they have, as a group at least, is impressive. You could buy handmade furniture from them. And cheese. You're doing yourself a disservice if you've never tried an Amish cheese. And, they built my mother's house. A truck drove them in and picked them up each day. Just watching their work and attention to detail was something else.
If nothing else, they're a very self sustaining population.
There’s so much respect for communities with attention to detail and specific cultures: Amish, German, Japanese in particular.
It’s often spun as something specific to that community which “America” or “the UK” has lost. But… it seems more like what it reflects is a long established community of people who are treated well, like there jobs, and had the opportunity to do it for generations.
That turns it from a “unique to X culture” to idealize to just making you wonder what that level of expertise isn’t more commonly seen in the craftsmanship of our daily lives.
> The North American Amish population grew by an estimated 195,710 since 2000, increasing from approximately 177,910 in 2000 to 373,620 in 2022, an increase of 110 percent.
Wow... for context, compare to the fact that (at least according to the decennial census) the white population of the US actually decreased from 2010-2020.
> (at least according to the decennial census) the white population of the US actually decreased from 2010-2020.
How exactly is race categorized in that census? I'm just wondering if this is partly due to descendants of mixed couples not classifying themselves as white.
At the moment, that looks like Amish, Muslims, and Elon Musk.
The population who remain childless to not add to the population burden of the planet will become irrelevant. I find that sad, since I really like several of them...
No, Musk lacks something the Amish and Muslims have: continuity. Amish children are likely to remain Amish.
Musk may have 20 kids but those kids will probably have the American average of 1.5 kids each and his descendents will limit to 0 like everyone else in his culture.
It's funny how atheists believe in evolution in theory, but fervently religious groups like this are the ones winning at evolution in practice.
My theory is having kids is just really hard work, but a deeply ingrained religious belief that children are a blessing from God helps groups like the Amish push forward with it anyway.
sure, it does not matter that things that we pay for and consume ends up having a million things that makes us sick in multiple ways, and if you are in some developing nation, you would be hard pressed to find food to feed your babies that is not laced with some kind of harmful pesticides or fertilizer, but hey, we can always pay more in healthcare to extend our diseased misery. We are doing just fine, in the mean while, there are more and more existential threats as the day progress, but hey, say it with me, we are JUST.DOING.FINE.
Most countries (including those outside the west) are falling, or have fallen below replacement rate.
If we extrapolate this over the next few decades, and accept the conclusion that more technology = less children, and we can expect to see more technology in the future. Almost no new children will be born from within these high-tech societies, we will have to rely on immigration from Africa (the only place where replacement rate is high), and low-tech traditional religious societies.
People still have children and most countries do not need to be any more crowded than they are already. In fact many countries would benefit from having a lower population density.
Technology has already replaced most agricultural workers in most developed countries and I can't imagine anyone wanting to return to pre-industrial agriculture.
Enough food, clean water and knowledge of germ theory does most of the work there. New England has higher rates of natural increase for most of two centuries without benefit of modern medicine, as did Quebec.
Don't know if this is true of the Amish, but fundamentalist groups who target large families generally lose a large fraction of those kids to mainstream culture (source: Bob Altmeyer, The Authoritarians). Hence, their culture does not outcompete mainstream culture.
>Reasons for Population Growth. The primary forces driving the growth are sizable nuclear families (five or more children on average) and an average retention rate (Amish children who join the church as young adults) of 85 percent or more. A few outsiders have joined the Amish, but the growth is almost entirely from within the Amish community.
While they have Rumspringa as late teens and can theoretically choose not to get baptized and become adult members, choosing not to means exclusion from the only community they've ever known, into a world they have not been educated to make a living in - particularly, the girls.
At least some people do want to "win" against death by becoming immortal. Physics suggests true immortality is impossible, but maybe people will live a lot longer in future...
Biological immortality could be possible. Certain organisms are biologically immortal, and it's possible we can achieve that through technology. I think it's actually not at all unlikely we will get very close within a couple centuries, and that life expectancy will shoot through the roof. (We would have to fix some serious societal issues especially around pollution first though, beyond just the medical breakthroughs.)
If the human mind is a product of evolution, how can we be sure that it is reliable at arriving at the truth? What if false or irrational beliefs produced greater evolutionary fitness than true and rational ones? But, if that were so, it would undermine all our confidence in the very belief that the human mind is a product of evolution, making that a self-defeating idea.
Hence, if the human mind is a product of evolution, evolution must ultimately prefer truth to falsehood. But, what then to make of evidence that, in the long-run, natural selection prefers religious beliefs to non-religious belief? Can you see how that might be a problem for those who are convinced that all specifically religious beliefs are false and irrational?
Nah, if religious belief helps group cohesion in such a way that we get societies that overall increase the likelihood of survival, then the truth of said religion is irrelevant.
Religions themselves are to some degree affected by their own evolutionary pressures. The views on missionary work, procreation and possibly also military all will effect the group of people that adhere to the religion, and if they lead to a higher survival/birth-rate then the religion itself will also win against alternatives. The truth of its dogma isn’t really relevant for this factor (unless we start considering interventionist deities, but that’s a different discussion entirely, as the above would apply across shared value/belief systems without the need for interventionism)
> Nah, if religious belief helps group cohesion in such a way that we get societies that overall increase the likelihood of survival, then the truth of said religion is irrelevant.
Would you still endorse the same statement if one replaced “religious” with something else, say “philosophical”?
Also, is that saying “the truth of a belief is irrelevant, so long as it has pragmatic benefits”? But, doesn’t that undermine one of the key arguments for the truth of scientific claims - the pragmatic technological benefits of their acceptance?
The person you’re responding to is making a positive claim, not a normative one: from the anthropological perspective, religions solve coordination problems. That doesn’t mean we ought to solve coordination problems with religion, it just means that it has a moderately successful track record.
See above re: fundamental misunderstanding of truth in science.
Not quite sure where you’re going with the religion vs philosophy question, in the context of my statements the only real difference would be removing any threat of divine intervention, which itself may have some effect on the how well groups align with their shared beliefs. Read like that then yes, I would agree that the statement would apply for philosophy, but weaker.
As for your original post, you
make a jump to stating that evolution would prefer truth, but that’s not a given simply from the fact that we perceive our world in such a way that we consider evolution. Evolution as we understand it is without intent, and only “prefers” that which in the
long run yields further offspring.
A point I was trying to make was that the truthfulness of for instance religiosity doesn’t impact whether or not it has an effect on “fitness”. A religion can be entirely false, and yet contain memes that make its adherents’ genes procreate more successfully.
You can’t be sure you’re arrived at the truth. Nothing about the philosophy of science expects you to be sure; it’s an inductive process that encourages increasing confidence, but never absolute certainty.
Evolution doesn’t “prefer” anything. It’s a stochastic adaptation process. The existence of religious beliefs is incredibly interesting from an anthropological perspective, but doesn’t really tell us anything about evolution itself.
It isn’t an argument that we should believe in any particular religion. So, even if it works, yes it works just as well for Norse paganism as for anything else.
But still, an argument that “some religion is probably true” would have value even if it can’t tell us which religion is true
Having kids is probably no more work for them that it is you, and probably less. They’re willing to put kids to work doing substantial jobs from an early age.
Kids are actually pretty easy if you don't have a ton of distractions. Most complaints about how kids are difficult are about how they keep you from the things you want to do.
One of my grandmothers was one of 10 kids, and liked to relate that her parents always said it was the first 4 kids who were the hardest. After that, they start to look after themselves! Older kids act as babysitters for younger kids, etc.
If your goal is simply to increase population as the end goal, then sure I guess the Amish are winning. I know it's generally accepted that population growth is always desirable, but I am not at all convinced of it. I would love to see a significant reversal of the trend and see population decline — especially in deeply religious families. (It's my opinion that religion is a net negative for the world these days, some more than others.)
Beyond the lack of belief in deities part, atheism is not really a coherent philosophy or a label which reliably defines a group of people. As such it doesn’t make sense to put forward an atheism versus X argument. Atheism is the rejection of various belief systems, not an alternative to them. It simply has none of the advantages or disadvantages of such belief systems. It does not even imply that the atheist has actually contended with any metaphysical questions.
Evolution does not preclude such strategy as free riding. The amish community takes advantage from the advances of civilization like medicine, and infrastructure while they don't contribute to it. This is okay while the larger world accepts them or while the larger world exists to shield them from the consequences of their omissions. This does not mean that they win in evolution. Winning is if you can adapt every time the environment changes, which is still to be seen.
Pennsylvanian Dutch is more likely since they shun fancy things like electricity. https://ohiosamishcountry.com/articles/amish-faqs But, the concatenated type names deep in any inheritance hierarchy would tend to be a scary sight (there be dragons) in agglutinative languages.
I live in the upper midwest, and there's quite a few communities here. Those that I have visited have one phone (in a booth by the road in front of someone's house) that the whole community uses. A wood working shop has a diesel engine to occasionally run air compressors, which in turn operate a lot of the larger tools for making lumber. A horse could do the job on a treadmill [1], but since the result is the same, they don't make the animal do the pointless work when they already get plenty of exercise.
No cars, no electricity, though they'll hire a car when people need to get medical treatment or travel long distances to visit relatives. It's not about not using technology, so much as it is not having technology in your daily life that doesn't bring you closer to God. This particular group even uses safety pins instead of buttons in their clothes, since buttons are usually shiny or patterned with designs, which are can be a temptation of vanity. It's a conscious decision to give up a modern convenience in exchange for being spiritually healthier.
Try spending a winter in a place without electricity, where your life depends on keeping a wood fired stove going (preferably a high efficiency model that doesn't produce a lot of smoke or particulates), and you start to appreciate the true amount of work that gas heating saves you. It does make you wonder, though, if the effort saved has allowed you to actually live a richer life.
That is what they live every day, in all aspects. More work and fewer conveniences, but fewer distractions from what they value most.
So in order to be spiritually closer to god, they prefer to burn a fuel that takes much more work to gather, that creates exponentially more emissions, and that is way less efficient? Seems rather silly.
Proper wood burning devices can actually be as, if not more efficient (fuel consumption wise) than gas furnaces. Given that they also don't live in high density areas, any particulate is basically just fertilizing their crop fields.
Compared to natural gas and propane, which realease a fair amount of methane (not to mention just as much CO2), and it's not the slam dunk criticism that you're thinking it is.
You are comparing a singular aspect which is antithetical to the wholesome approach. If you don't actually like chopping wood or enjoy the sight of chopped wood or brawny men chopping wood (no wonder the birth rate is so high) or any other aspect of the chore then yes it is a very inefficient process. Burning wood outside of a city is not an emissions problem IMO.
Some do, some don't. Some of my relatives still wear all of the dress, have most of the customs, and live very simple lives but drive cars and use electricity. Some look exactly like you or or I but still have a lot of the cultural values.
Other much more distant relatives in nearby communities don't use electricity or any modern technology and speak mostly Pennsylvania Dutch.
My uncle is self-employed as a driver for the Amish. My aunt describes him as the “Amish Uber,” since his customers will call him up on the phone to schedule trips.
I’m not sure if this is the case for all Amish communities, but in our area at least they do not own cars but will hire someone to drive them when the situation calls for it, such as when they’re attending a wedding or other event that’s far enough away to make buggy-driving impractical.
They can use tech in some circumstances, and different Amish communities will have different standards[1]. Some of them may own cars and may even use smartphones or computers, in some specific cases and with limitations (e.g. they would install content blockers on their phones)[2]
The rules are different in different areas and with different groups. I grew up in an area with lots of Amish neighbors and they generally speaking did not use technology but there was at least one house I remember having a phone and even one that had a windmill to generate electricity though I don't know what for.
Amish men, at least in my area, would also occasionally go to bars, the whole family went to stores, etc. where they would be able to use technology like phones.
And I'm fairly certain the Amish around me in Western Pennsylvania/eastern Ohio were some of the stricter ones whereas, I've heard, communities in Minnesota for example are less strict and will even have things like TVs in their house.
I used to think this too and asked some whom I met while traveling. Their response was that they aren't absolutists about this: the rule itself isn't the cornerstone of their belief system. Some compromises are not controversial, say to enable trade with neighbors.
I realized afterwards that their decision tree could be compressed to two conditions: keeping everyone in the community really busy, and not interfering with their social and moral norms. These two aren't entirely unrelated but are different enough to state separately. I believe as long as these two conditions are met they will not see technological tools as harmful.
It’s more that they take a cautious approach to any new technology, making sure to understand what its effects might be on their society before deciding to what extent to allow it.
This article “Amish Hackers” is a good look at their approach [1].
That article has been on HN several times over the last decade. Here is the most recent discussion [2].
I think a lot of them use phones, electricity, and maybe even computers for their businesses, while avoiding them for personal/home use. They also make a distinction sometimes between using and owning. There are things they do not own but will still use for specific reasons that have been determined by the community to be valid.
> Note: Population estimates for 2022 were calculated using a variety of sources including Raber’s New American Almanac, reports by correspondents in Die Botschaft, The Budget, and The Diary, settlement directories, regional newsletters, and settlement informants. The data includes all Amish groups that use horse-and-buggy transportation, but excludes car-driving groups such as the Beachy Amish and Amish Mennonites.
>
> To cite this page: “Amish Population Profile, 2022.” Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, Elizabethtown College. http://groups.etown.edu/amishstudies/statistics/amish-popula....
Well, it's hard to cite a page where somebody manually estimated some numbers from various sources without at least providing a table to see what the individual estimates were so at least some errors can be corrected.
I’m sorry to say my first exposure to the Amish was through Weird Al’s Amish Paradise, which I now recognise has some unfairly unflattering passages.
I still wouldn’t endorse the bible-based aspects of the Amish lifestyle, but I see that their approach to technology isn’t all that irrational. They are taking a very methodical approach to what we might call dependency management. They seek independence, and they realize how dependence and risk can arise from the deep supply chains inherent in technology. Hence they do not reject electricity outright, but do reject grid connections.
Their approach is also to thoroughly impact assess technology on their community. They assess holistically whether a technology will help or hinder them, in a social as well as economic sense.
I think we could learn some things from the Amish when tempted to chase new tech.
Being associated and aware of a number of faith communities like this, I think you’re guess is upside down. When womens’ roles revolve more around children, the status and social currency of having them goes up, and so often it has been my observation that the women are the bigger driver (as opposed to “the patriarchy”).
> When womens’ roles revolve more around children, the status and social currency of having them goes up, and so often it has been my observation that the women are the bigger driver (as opposed to “the patriarchy”).
That's just another way of saying the same thing. In societies where non-childbearing-women are not valued, of _course_ having children increases your place in society.
Patriachy isn't men dictating every action of every individual, it's structuring society so that the only real choice is the one that benefits the ruling class.
> Patriachy isn't men dictating every action of every individual, it's structuring society so that the only real choice is the one that benefits the ruling class.
No, that's literally what patriarchy means, that the ruling class is men.
When the ruling class is women, that's called matriarchy.
When the ruling class doesn't favor either, it's neither.
My point is that under a patriarchy, or any system of rule, people still have the ability to make choices. It's just that most/all of those are set up so that the only logical choice to make will benefit and reinforce the system of rule.
So "X is not in the ruling class and X made a choice to improve their life" does _not_ suggest that a system of rule is not in place.
Woman is the gatekeeper, unless you want include rape-y options. But then the more traditional society is, the child raising is on women. And it’s women who raise next generation of men…
Yes, I do not think women had complete agency in deciding to have 5+ kids each. Or even 4. And it is probably still the same case for many around the world. Kind of like this scene:
Men are in the same boat if the whole community is focused on raising big families. In traditional communities women do vast majority of children raising. They're essentially gatekeepers of the culture. If the community wanted to reject the culture, women are the ones who can bring forward the change. If they want, of course.
Sort of like in western world people have no „complete agency“ to refuse consumerist work/buy/die life. Technically they can, but in reality the society is stacked against that.
I'd argue that Amish are even more flexible than mainstream. Amish communities kick out the young to explore the world and then return on your own accord. Is mainstream society willing to kick out the kids to live with amishes or something along those lines? As far as I see, with very few exceptions, it's reinforcing the work/buy/die cycle.
> If the community wanted to reject the culture, women are the ones who can bring forward the change. If they want, of course.
How? If they reject it, they then need to go out and find shelter, and food, and income, in a world where they are negotiating with men, more who are all more physically powerful, as well as cognizant of the woman’s lesser negotiating position.
I do not know about Amish forcing their young to do non Amish things or whatever, but without a financial nest egg, or otherwise ability to afford security, a woman can easily feel more intimidated about striking it out on their own. Men simply do not have to worry about their physical safety in the same manner.
Think long-term. Women handle home stuff and raise kids. Women can raise the next generation of boys and girls however they wish. If they keep propagating existing culture... It's done by women to next generation of women.
Most Amish communities do send kids out to explore the world. And looking at other comments, Amish women are usually more adopted to outside world and have modern office skills helping men construction etc businesses.
Semi-related... In my post-soviet country, we've a huge problem that women were forced out of home to the workforce in soviet era. Yet men were still sofa kings. Then 90s rolled in with huge unemployment and frequently women were handling both home & working, while men camped on sofas unemployed instead of taking care of the house.
Guess who is propagating this culture? Mothers and grandmothers mostly. For decades they treated boys as a special case who should go out and play and they'll clean up the house. With the help of girls, obviously. In my own childhood, it was a recurring conflict. Mom telling me to do cleaning after school. Grandmother not allowing me to do that and kicking out of the house while cleaning herself. And talking around, it's a very common pattern. Also, guess who is talking shit how men are lazy?
> Women can raise the next generation of boys and girls however they wish. If they keep propagating existing culture... It's done by women to next generation of women.
If your claim is that only women are responsible for propagating cultures where women are considered property, require dowry payments, lack women’s rights such as schooling, property rights, voting, driving, etc., then we will have to disagree.
I am pretty sure men have something to do with shackling women in certain societies.
Many people. Fathers, mothers, grandparents, other family members, friends, teachers, media, bosses.
I do not know where you intend to go with your thoughts, but if you are holding women solely responsible for the way men behave, again, we will have to simply disagree.
We're talking traditional societies here. It's mostly homeschooling and media is next-to-non-existant. Kids working parents' farm don't have bosses :) Friends and other family members are raised in the same culture by same women.
In very traditional societies, (grand)fathers spend very little time with kids compared to (grand)mothers.
Of course it's not just women to blame. Men themselves can bring the change too. But blaming just men is ignoring the elephant in the room. In traditional societies, women do have a crapton of power. It is power in a slightly different sense, but I'd argue that it's much bigger power.
In modern world, men and women can easily operate on their own by fixing problems using money. In traditional society... Men are toasted if they loose women. Of course, women do have a damn hard time without men too. But this dependence is mutual.
And yet there are innumerable examples of societies where women lack freedoms and objective power, and almost none where men lack freedoms compared to women.
Seems to directly contradict any notion of both sexes having similar levels of power. Hell, 2022 USA is removing women’s power to get the healthcare they need.
They lack freedoms and objective power according to your perception. At the same time women who don't need to care about making income in consumerist world can focus on family and local community. Which, coincidentally, gives a lot of power on raising the next generation.
Looking from a different background, postmodernist „freedoms and objective power“ seem very narrow definition that skips a lot of nuances. Individualist postmodernism needs some diversity of thought in this area.
P.S. It makes my brain freeze that killing fetus is „healthcare they need“. The new baby needs healthcare as well. For the record, I'm not against abortion per se because sometimes it is the lesser evil. But calling it „healthcare“ sounds batshit insane to me.
And the new baby is welcome to get it outside the womb, where it is no longer affecting someone else. Note that no doctors or women are going around terminating 39 week fetuses for the fun of it.
>They lack freedoms and objective power according to your perception. At the same time women who don't need to care about making income in consumerist world can focus on family and local community. Which, coincidentally, gives a lot of power on raising the next generation.
Being dependent on men for food, shelter, water, security, and other basic needs is not a limitation of freedom due to my perception, hence my use of the word “objective”, meaning outside of one’s perception. If my daughter cannot choose to live life without the help of a man, that is a restriction of her freedom, and reduction of her power.
If a government gave women a universal benefit of housing, food, etc and told them not to work, then maybe your scenario would be true. But I have never heard of a society where the woman does not have to worry about earning income and their spouse earning income, which being dependent on the latter gives them all the power. Objectively.
Women's financial independence is fragile. It depends upon the modern Welfare state, financed predominantly by men and the preservation of norms relating to alimony and child support, also financed predominantly by men. Time will tell if this model has a future, atm. the trends don't look too good.
> financed predominantly by men and the preservation of norms relating to alimony and child support,
What does this mean? Women’s financial independence is dependent on their ability to secure income to provide for themself without the help of others. I do not see what it has to do with alimony and child support.
This is one of those fellows who, perhaps due to some disappointments in his own life or those of friends, believes that all women are conniving dependents, looking only for a man to latch onto and take advantage of, and has trouble seeing that many of us do quite well on our own, provided that banks are required to treat us like they do men with similar finances, employers are required to treat us like they do men with similar qualifications, and that we are permitted to control our fertility.
And the few unfortunate women I know who do rely on child support to help raise kids... I do not envy those women. Their lives are anywhere from hectic (single-parenting with fulltime jobs) to hard (trouble making ends meet, despite economizing).
Let us leave IQ aside and talk just about education. The observation that educated urbanites have the lowest number of kids holds in the Islamic world, too.
Big, developed cities like Istanbul and Tehran have TFR well below reproduction rate and very similar to European values. Backwaters like rural Afghanistan or Niger, where literacy is still uncommon, have tons of kids.
Basic education for women is very well correlated with lower TFR everywhere in the world.
That would depend on the selection pressures in Muslim societies. GP was probably talking about the US, Europe, and East Asia where smart and motivated non-religious people use their increased opportunity to move to the cities. Cities decrease birthrates for the middle classes.
In Muslim communities, however, I would expect number of children to correlate with wealth/income (which is correlated with IQ) and with religiosity (which is not). So the overall picture is a lot more murky.
Amish and Mennonites have an extraordinary prevalence of genetic disease, as do orthodox jewish persons. Due to generations amongst generations of never breeding outside their religious views they've caused havoc on their own genes.
"They've caused havoc on their own genes" - genes don't work like that.
Here's one thing some people in this thread need to understand. Nature doesn't care. Nature doesn't judge you if you don't have kids. Your genes being slightly less prevalent down the timeline isn't a punishment.
There's no high score table at the end of time saying "This is how good your genes did".
Even the idea that they are "yours" is pretty incoherent.
If stuff like who gets most kids worries you, you seriously need to look elsewhere for meaning in your lives. That's one thing you could learn from the Amish.
“My genes” are carried by a really large number of people. It’s pretty much guaranteed many will reproduce.
I die because nature has selected humans to have a certain lifespan.
In many species, almost no individuals reproduce. Worker ants never have children. Same with worker bees. Plenty of species select have some/most members not reproduce to protect assist species.
Ants are not mammals so procreation and societal structure is very different from humans. Same in bees etc.
From evolutionary perspective, only your genes are „your“ genes. And from tribal perspective, procreation of each (quality) member is for the better.
P.S. At some points in human history we had a similar only-chosen-procreate tendency. But it was overturned. I'd argue that for the better. Humans who have a stake in the future seem to care more about the society. Compared to ants-like society where warlord procreates and the rest of men just guards his harem.
To repeat what I just told you: It eventually gets rid if you no matter what you do. (And no matter which subset of your genes you have incoherently decided to personally identify with.) And then none of it matters.
That's a very simplistic view of one as an individual. Which IMO is very wrong and a big problem in today's West.
A human being is a continuous process both genetically and culturally. Your forefathers form who you are and you form people who will live long after you.
Individuality's got nothing to do with it. Identify with some nebulous collective like your genes, your culture or your nation if you wish. They haven't got eternity in them either. They will all die too, it'll just take a little longer. And then it won't matter for anyone.
There should be things which matter for their own sake, here and now, no matter what happens in the future. I can promise you that if you don't find them now, you won't find anything that matters in the future either.
Sometimes I think about the Amish lifestyle and I'm drawn to it. No doubt the reality of hard work would soon hit me in the face if I ever tried it. Still working our doors and living the simple life certainly sounds freeing.
I say this as I take a short break from coding on the weekend and thinking about how I could automate folding the washing with a homemade robot. So maybe it's not for me...
> No doubt the reality of hard work would soon hit me in the face if I ever tried it.
Also the learning of a new language, the idea that education past 8th grade is "pride", the shunning as social control, the hierarchy of which you will be at the bottom, plus the allegations in some communities of physical and sexual abuse. Among other adjustments.
I say this as someone who felt the same longing until I looked into what it would actually entail.
It's not really all that simple, it's likely rigidly conformist, and it's totally a grass is greener on the HDR profile than IRL situation. Perhaps you can find a job or hobby working with cool modern technology while spending much more time outdoors?
As a gay man, it's always striking when I hear comments like this (or positive comments about living in conservative theocracies, such as the Gulf states). Must be nice to be free to choose civilisations purely on esthetics.
If it's any consultation I already live in accordance with very strict religious restrictions so the only difference for me would be the shunning of technology.
The Gulf states however I don't think would be safe for me due to my religion.
I'm also a firm believer that while communities should be free to be as exclusive as they want, nations should be as inclusive as possible.
> The primary forces driving the growth are sizable nuclear families (five or more children on average) and an average retention rate (Amish children who join the church as young adults) of 85 percent or more.
I used to assume it was close to 100%. Where are these 15% of people who leave the settlements as adults?
The 85% number seems to have been quoted for at least a decade or so, cited in some cases I can find to a 2013 book [1]. Here's a summary via a 2019 open-access book chapter about leaving the Amish [2]:
> Contrary to the persistent myth that they are dying out, the Amish population in North America continues to grow at a rapid pace. Numbering over 330,000 in thirty-one states and four Canadian provinces, the Amish population doubles every twenty years (Young Center 2018; Donnermeyer et al. 2013). While over 60 percent of the Amish still reside in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, home to the four largest Amish settlements, population pressures are increasingly resulting in out-migration to areas where land prices are more affordable. Because the Amish do not actively seek converts, this population surge is a result of two major forces—large family sizes and a high retention rate. Though family size differs by affiliation, Amish families still average approximately five children. At the same time, the retention rate is at an all-time high. Fully 85 percent of Amish youth get down on their knees in front of their congregation and pledge to uphold the Ordnung, or unwritten code of conduct, of their local church district (Kraybill, Johnson-Weiner, and Nolt 2013).
[1] Kraybill, D.B., Johnson-Weiner, K.M., and Nolt, S.M. (2013). The Amish. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
[2] McConnell, D.L. (2019). Leaving the Amish. In: Handbook of Leaving Religion, ed. D. Enstedt, G. Larsson, T. Mantsinen, pp. 154-163. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004331471_013
I'm not based in the US, so I'm wondering whether people meet ex-Amish in the general course of their lives? Do they go on to lead otherwise ordinary modern lives and have office jobs?
You pretty much have to go to them as they keep to themselves, so most people don’t run into them organically.
I had a friend in high school whose mother was ex-Amish though. That was kind of interesting. They were just regular folks but it was essentially like her mother had immigrated from the old world and truly left all her family behind. I don’t know if leaving is always a permanent severance from the community but I guess in this case it was.
Speaking anecdotally, I’ve known quite a few Amish of various stripes who left and became Mennonites, or joined the “English” world entirely. The Amish aren’t cloistered from the world like monks, so there’s plenty of interactions on the social edges that convince some to leave despite the very strong social pressure against it. One interesting dynamic is that in some areas women are more likely to have “modern” skills — accounting, management, even CAD/CAM expertise — so young Amish women can often find their way in the broader world more easily than men.
There's some that are quite well run. I wish I could find the link now, there was one in Appalachia which was doing quite well some years back.
While it doesn't count as non-religious, the Hutterites are quite interesting, as they are from another branch of the Anabaptist faith. And growing too, at a time where the Amish don't seem to be!
Whenever they come up, I find the Amish highly faszinating, and looking at the comments here, I don't seem to be alone in this. They look as if they found their perfect life style and are happy with that. If they are, I can congratulate them and wish them all the best moving forward.
However, after some thinking, I come to the conlusion, that either all the reporting is one sided positive about it or at least, the price they pay for what they achieved is a bit underreported. And I don't mean like missing out on Netflix, though a lot of people would already consider this a price that they would have to pay. I think of it more on a personal level with respect to social structures and freedom. Both human history and personal experience tells me that their communities work - if they work as frictionless as it might appear - only with a very rigid set of rules. Which of course impact the personal freedom significantly. We don't know how much social pressure is needed to uphold the structure, how much social force even.
This is by no means meant as a criticism of the Amish - without talking personally to them I would't dare to critize them from far away[1] - but rather of the reporting which seems to paint things in a more idyllic way than reality might be.
On a technical level, it certainly helps that Pennsylvenia seems to be a great place for their life style and one key element to their stabilty might be, that members who want to live differently can litterally walk away as "the rest of the US" is just a few miles away. Which also should be considered when looking at them as a possible "role model" for all: they do gain a lot of benefits from living near people who fully embrace the high tech life style, e.g. when needing medical help. Again, not a critique, just as a point of consideration.
But in one sense they should serve the rest of us as a rule model: they show that every one can and should decide for themselves how to live in this modern world. One might not shun technology completely, but even if it means using the smartphone and the internet more responsibly, that could help people a lot. We need to be a bit more concious in our decisions, however they end out to be.
[1]: fun fact, if I ever make it to Pennsylvania, I might well be able to talk to them. As far as I have learned, Pennsylvania Dutch is basically the regional German dialect "Pfälzisch". Which is basically the region me and my family comes from. So while I don't speak it normally, I can perfectly well unterstand it, and would quickly be fluent in it :)
I just joined an experimental crypto-Amish community near Austin. I work in blockchain, so all about decentralized community. We're honest about how technology is making all of us craaaazy. No porn here but we get to use solar and arduino to feed the chickens. Grew up in the city but really surprised I really don't miss that shit.
Lulz. like urban people who work in tech and are trying to be real Amish but also love crypto. We've studied groups like the orthodox Jews and Mormons and see the world retribalizing and decentralizing and want to experiment and learn from other traditions but without all of the institutional baggage.
I've been told that part of the explosion of Amish is that more than ever are coming back from Rumspringa than before.
Their actual fertility hasn't changed any - what's changed is that since the 80s the outside world has become more phone-obsessed zombies. We've crossed some sort of technological Rubicon where our technology has become less appealing to primitive people.
Can you imagine time traveling from 1990 to 2020? Seeing every single person, even children, glued to a screen in their hand. It’d feel freaky and dystopian.
I remember a whole lot of people glued to their Walkmans, books, newspapers, and when at home TVs. Screens are different (everything is different) but not so much that it would be shocking, I think.
I was particularly intrigued by “The Amish seek to master technology rather than become its slave.”
I love the conveniences tech offers, but I also worry about the digital habits that have turned into unhealthy addictions. Where in the technological progression did we tipped from technology being a tool to being a handcuff. Broadband? Wi-Fi? Smartphones?
Given the deep ties to tech here on HN, I am curious to know if there are others here who have similar thoughts.