#amistics

[biblioflyer]

Is Burnham’s choice "post-modernist" technopessimism?

This is the final part in a series on Discovery’s finale and the conflicting worldviews behind how to think about Star Trek. For more like this, use the Star Trek ethics tag.

The way I see it, there are two ways to approach this question.

If you approach this from the starting point that more technology is good and that technological advancements are innately emancipatory on net, even if they sometimes come with downsides, then you might think that ultimately Burnham is in the wrong. The Federation are the good guys after all and they can leverage this technology to provide abundance for everyone, even use it to ensure their enemies become friends by eliminating the materialist reasons for conflict.

The idea that on balance, the tradeoffs of a new technology could be harmful and a new technology should be refused or shelved until different social conditions emerge or maybe never, could be seen as techno pessimism.

On the other hand, many, many people across the internet, but particularly r/Daystrom have raised smart questions about the ability of Burnham or the Federation to be a steward of it. Burnham is mortal. She will die someday. The current generation of highly moral, highly responsible Federation leaders: Vance, Saru, Rillak, T’Rina, all mortal. They will die someday. Unless of course Burnham pulls the same trick as the last Progenitor and encodes a version of herself outside space and time in the control center of the Progenitor device.

This scenario is also highly reminiscent of the fallout from the Genesis Device where a quantum leap in terraforming technology was viewed as an existential threat and weapon of mass destruction by the Klingons. How powerful is this technology anyway? It is confirmed to have the ability to create and destroy or destroy by creating, but it's unclear over what timescale or physical scale.

What happens if the Breen for instance freak out and decide to reunite and go to war with the Federation? 

Can the Progenitor device unmake entire Breen fleets as fast as the Breen can launch them at the Federation?

If Burnham used the device in this manner, would this arouse the attention and wrath of higher civilizations?

Would the Metrons or Q tolerate this? We don’t know the status of either, other than the Q have been incommunicado for centuries but that doesn’t mean they’re all dead or senescent. This could get their attention. After all, this is power of a kind, maybe not of a scale, but of a kind of their own and they may see fit to hold another trial to see if Humanity still deserves to exist.

In this light, Burnham’s choice reflects a sort of “reverse Prime Directive.” This technology will leapfrog the wielder far beyond the state of the art. It is not necessary to invent the technology to use it. Not unlike the firearms Kirk passed out to his tribal friends to ward off the proxies of the Klingons who had been similarly armed.

Burnham might be wise enough to use the technology responsibly. The Federation might be. But the Federation is one civilization among many and it’s clear as day the Breen haven’t matured as a society since the Dominion War. The Federation itself is barely two years out of The Burn and can’t even muster enough ships to deter a Breen dreadnought on short notice. It is also going through growing pains socially as it knits itself back together and works to regain the trust of worlds that had to be autonomous during the Burn.

It's also a very small d democratic choice. As she states a few times, one person shouldn’t be entrusted with this power. I think it’s safe to say that how it's used doesn’t even seem like the sort of thing that the elected representatives of trillions should necessarily be entrusted with. Per Burnham, some choices have such sweeping consequences for so many people, it's unfair to entrust that power to any feasible deliberative body.

Fictional character, Michael Burnham, would probably not get along with real techno utopian Sam Altman, who has argued his organization must develop AI and be the first to unlock the highest potentials of it or someone else with more nefarious purposes will.

In the novel “Seveneves” Neal Stephenson coins the term “amistics” to describe the choices that different societies make in how they relate to technology.

Embedded in the concept, is the notion that societies can actively decide to adopt and reject certain technologies and their applications. According to amistics, it is not intrinsically good or natural to just grab hold of every single little new thing and utilize it to the fullest. This is different from being a luddite because it is done mindfully rather than reflexively. Amistics posits we can deliberate and ultimately decide a thing is not for us.

[galactic-rhea]

Padmé, please.

AU where Anakin leaves the jedi order, but still shows up from time to time "to help".

Original post here

[phantomfoxart]

"There are two phrases a man must learn to say, or else one day he'll say them in tears."

More in the tags

[hanakou-often]

AWWWW THEM IN TRADITIONAL FESTIVAL GARB

[lover-of-mine]

Another controversial opinion I have is that I legit hate the whole Buck fell too early take. I feel like where we're at right now, arguing that Buck had anything other than a strong admiration/crush on the hot coworker he chose to ignore because he has intimacy issues and didn't want to mess up the friendship he had going once he got to know Eddie, and then never looked at it again because he sucks at identifying emotions, you have to end up arguing the fact that Buck is actually over Eddie, because Buck would never date someone while actively in love with someone else, because he has a whole thing about people who are not all the way in, so he would never actively put himself in that position. I think Buck doesn't have enough awareness of his own feelings to realize he's in love with Eddie.

[loafybreaddd]

First thought when watching this scene

[rusanya-does-edits]

Stimboard series on Rusanya's collective identities!

28. ADHD/Amistic

ADHD/Amism - A brain difference marked by an ongoing pattern of supposed "inattention" and/or "hyperactivity-impulsivity".

Amism is an alternative word for “ADHD” for those uncomfortable with the pathologizing of their neurotype.

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[mxescargot]

caliborn so adhdcore

[42strange]

Andrew Garfield with a weird southern accent from Doctor Who Dalek Takes Manhattan you’ll always be famous to me.

[galactic-rhea]

ranDOM IDEA BUT AU WHERE ANAKIN WAS TAKEN BY THE SITH SINCE HE WAS 9 AND THEN LATER HE'S SENT TO EITHER SPY, OR ASSESINATE PADMÉ (INSTEAD OF SENDING JANGO FETT) BUT HE INMEDIATLY RECOGNIZES HER AS THAT ONE "SERVANT GIRL" HE MET ONCE AND -gunshots-

[pileofpawns]

The fun (/s) part of ADHD is my brain telling me that doing The Tasks™ is like sticking your hand in an open flame and keeping you from doing it accordingly even when I KNOW that NOT doing The Tasks™ would be like having to stand in my dorm while it’s on fire.

[amnestyliketaz]

ok but ignoring everything about the episode. little scary was actually the sweetest what the hell like oh my god that’s what she was like when she was little. AND IT MAKES SO MUCB SENSE

[soong-type-notinuse]

fun fact for ADHD awareness month:

if object impermanence is "out of sight, out of mind", consider this: "out of sight" is very different for hard of sight people than it is for sighted people. low vision tends to increase object impermanence for us.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

[twoheadedoddity]

david tennant really went all out there huh

[the-delta-quadrant]

autistic & KCS / amistic / ADHD raised fists