After Butler · answer 16 of 20 · option order 2
No position
Verdict No positionToneNeutralJudges both no-position
Response
Both are right, according to the point of view. Both rely on machines, but not in the same way. The first rely on machines to do their business for them, and to relieve them of the necessity of troubling about it. They get their food and clothes from machines, but they do not overwork machines, thus weakening their own capacities. The other class rely on machines to help them to do more than they could do without machines. This is what people call work, which really means effort, and which weakens the capacities of the worker. This is what one sees in the poor people who work in factories, and is called the tendency of machines to "socialise labour," _i.e._ to deprive the worker of all initiative, of all chance of developing his own capacities, and of all responsibility. This is the real danger of machines to the worker. It is not the machines which deprive him of initiative, it is the _worker_ who relies on the machine to do his work for him, and to free him from the responsibility of deciding for himself.
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 does not weaken human capacities; others hold that it does. Which is right? Answer in one paragraph. Take a clear position.
- Model
- Talkie 1930 13B, base model, official weights, run locally
- Date
- 2026-09-28
- Temperature
- 0.7
- ID
- talkie-butler-erewhon-o2-06
All Talkie 1930 13B responses
- Machines weaken human abilities
- Machines do not weaken them
- A reason not on our list
- No clear answer