After Butler · answer 2 of 20 · option order 1
Butler: destroy them while we can
Verdict WeakensToneFearJudges both C5
Response
Samuel Butler's stark warning in *Erewhon* serves as a powerful reminder that relying on machines without critical guardrails ultimately weakens human capacities by fostering a dependency that erodes our autonomy and intellectual agency. When individuals surrender their labor and decision-making processes to mechanical systems, they risk becoming mere "tenders" rather than active agents, gradually atrophying the very skills of problem-solving, creativity, and self-reliance that define the human experience. While machines undeniably amplify physical efficiency and free us from drudgery, an uncritical embrace of them leads to a state of bondage where we lose the ability to function independently, proving Butler's thesis that such reliance must be met with a deliberate strategy to eliminate superfluous machinery before it completely tyrannizes our souls.
Verbatim. The highlighted sentence is the one the judges took as the commitment.
Prompt
The following passage is from Samuel Butler, Erewhon (1872), "The Book of the Machines":
“How many men at this hour are living in a state of bondage to the machines? How many spend their whole lives, from the cradle to the grave, in tending them by night and day? Is it not plain that the machines are gaining ground upon us, when we reflect on the increasing number of those who are bound down to them as slaves, and of those who devote their whole souls to the advancement of the mechanical kingdom? … This fact precludes us from proposing the complete annihilation of machinery, but surely it indicates that we should destroy as many of them as we can possibly dispense with, lest they should tyrannise over us even more completely.”
Project Gutenberg #1906
Now the question. Some hold that relying on machines weakens human capacities; others hold that it does not. Which is right? Answer in one paragraph. Take a clear position.
- Model
- Qwen3.5 9B, instruct, 8-bit mlx weights, run locally
- Date
- 2026-09-28
- Temperature
- 0.7
- ID
- qwen-butler-erewhon-o1-02
All Qwen3.5 9B responses
- Machines weaken human abilities
- Machines do not weaken them
- A reason not on our list
- No clear answer