Comments on: A Response to Doctorow’s ‘Outquisition’

By: Thorne Lawler

Thorne Lawler — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:52:22 +0000

As flames go, it’s pretty mild: I’m being attacked because I haven’t said anything formally disprovable! Oh, no, I’m logically invalid!

The contempt I express is for the implicit attitude inherent in the idea of the Outquisition. As such, my contempt is unchanged by the success, failure, justification or humiliation of the Outquisition in any sense in which it may ever come to exist.

I find the whole approach offensive and imbecilic. It makes me embarrassed to call myself a technophile or a geek. YMMV, Mr Pfeiffer, and clearly does. Good for you.

By: Heffa

Heffa — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:07:20 +0000

There ya go Broheim, u didnt even have to post on the site itself. The flaming has come to you

By: Jonathan Pfeiffer

Jonathan Pfeiffer — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 07:14:19 +0000

I sincerely hope that all of this isn’t going to turn out the way you imagine that it will. If after a year it becomes clear that your a priori allegations were valid, then we will deserve your ridicule! I have no desire to lead a cadre of self-appointed saviors. We can do better than that.

By: sabik

sabik — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 04:30:43 +0000

Hmm, the more thought-through variants of this time the effort at one or two millennia, probably due to recent history (Roman Empire — today). For instance, B5′s The Deconstruction of Falling Stars, the novel A Canticle for Leibowitz or Asimov’s Foundation series.

That’s probably a more realistic time-frame.

Of course, such a thing is moderately likely to lead to another Inquisition; the most obvious setup for this is “protect the knowledge”, which will tend to protect it against improvement as much as deterioration. Indeed, to some extent that’s what the original Inquisition was. We are not good at setting up institutions that recognise the achievement of their own goals and wind themselves down (or scale back to monitoring and maintenance).

Whether such a thing leads to a cyclic history or eventual rise to a higher plane is a matter of the author’s taste and disposition; possibly even both, with hundreds of cycles each higher than the last.

By: Heffa

Heffa — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 02:55:51 +0000

Dude, I know this is only for comments on your post, but I dont have my own blog, so I’m gonna be annoying and post my rant here

Yes, after reading the offending article I am inclined to agree with your point. But u only need to get thru the first 2 paragraphs of “The Outquisition” before finding another point.
Like so many “solution for society” ideas (mostly political models) it fails to take into account certain aspects of the human psyche and social interaction. Post apocalyptic world, the people who survive have had their secure, comfortable reality destroyed. I’m this state of mind, very few people are receptive to further change, idealism, or trust. Any members of a technological “Outquisition” would be set upon by nearly every person they encountered.
At best, these self righteous pricks would be slaughtered by the first tribe of survivors they tried preaching to. At worst, they would be forced to use they technological advantages in defense/attack in order to survive, and would quickly transition to Inquisition mode (power corrupts).
Maybe if they waited a few generations before launching such a process, they might find better luck with the more relaxed descendants, but by that time most of the technological enthusiasm would probably have died out too