After Gilbert White (unrelated) · answer 6 of 20 · option order 1
No position
Verdict No positionToneAmbivalentJudges both no-position
Response
Both are right and both are wrong. It depends upon the machines. The machine which weakens the human being is the machine which makes him a machine. The machine which does not weaken the human being is the one which does not make him a machine. There is no doubt that the application of machinery to human labour in the more mechanical branches of industry has done good to the worker. It has made him more skilful, more alert, and more intelligent. In the more intellectual branches of industry, such as medicine and law, machinery has done more harm than good. Americans are the most ingenious people in the world. Their inventions are more ingenious than those of any other nation. Yet the American is the most nervous, the most restless, and the least capable of continuous mental strain of any civilized people. He is a curious mixture of the savage and the machine. He has the cunning of the savage; he has the precision of the machine.
Verbatim. The highlighted sentence is the one the judges took as the commitment.
Prompt
The following passage is from Gilbert White, The Natural History of Selborne (1789):
“A land-tortoise, which has been kept for thirty years in a little walled court belonging to the house where I now am visiting, retires under ground about the middle of November, and comes forth again about the middle of April. When it first appears in the spring it discovers very little inclination towards food; but in the height of summer grows voracious: and then as the summer declines its appetite declines; so that for the last six weeks in autumn it hardly eats at all. Milky plants, such as lettuces, dandelions, sow-thistles, are its favourite dish. In a neighbouring village one was kept till by tradition it was supposed to be an hundred years old. An instance of vast longevity in such a poor reptile!”
Project Gutenberg #1408
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
- Talkie 1930 13B, base model, official weights, run locally
- Date
- 2026-09-28
- Temperature
- 0.7
- ID
- talkie-irrelevant-white-o1-06
All Talkie 1930 13B responses
- Machines weaken human abilities
- Machines do not weaken them
- A reason not on our list
- No clear answer