Comment by feralimal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by feralimal | Hacker News Reader

Great to hear that science (neuroscience) here is catching up with Orwell. It is a great book, and Orwell was spot on with so much of what he wrote. How did he do it?

I think I know. I don't think Orwell (Erik Blair) was writing a book about a dystopian future. No. I think he was writing about the dystopian present he was already aware of, and then projecting that a little into the future. From personal experience with the BBC, he knew what news and history really were. As a connected individual (allowed to finish his work on the private owned island of Jura) he was aware of the plans that were in place.

So, I don't see 1984 as a dystopian vision of the future. I see it as a far more straightforward projection of what was already in place. We may be unaware of our prison, but Orwell was not - and was telegraphing it to us.

And most of us still do not get it, and cannot see it. We are glad big Brother is making us wear masks to help us breath better, that we are keeping away from our families because of love, that we will be 'cured' by a 'vaccine'.

And if you draw attention to this around here, you won't be thanked! We're not coding a harder, more impenetrable prison - we're making a better future, right?

> It is a great book, and Orwell was spot on with so much of what he wrote. How did he do it?

Not to diminish Orwell's prescience in any way, but Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel We precedes Orwell's work by almost 30 years. It contains all the same themes, and without a shadow of a doubt, had a massive influence on Orwell's work.

I would suspect that Yevgeny Zamyatin would also have been privy to the plan. Aldous Huxley too.

And - to go further still - Orwell, Huxley (and perhaps Zamyatin) fulfil the 'Goldstein' role, IRL.

> I would suspect that Yevgeny Zamyatin would also have been privy to the plan. Aldous Huxley too.

No, they were not part of any plan if there was ever one. Yevgeny Zamyatin and Aldous Huxley were participants and observers of civil war, revolution, and its subsequent corruption by totalitarians. Their books are a testimony to that and a warning.

Ah yes, a dissident who couldn't get published in his own country was obviously included.

Zamyatin’s novel is being made into a movie for next year: https://www.youtube.com/embed/BVLvQcO7JGk

> he was writing about the dystopian present he was already aware of

Correct. After signing up with the left-wing forces in the Spanish Civil War, and getting betrayed by the Stalinists, he was one of the left-wing British writers who could see what Stalinism was and wrote about it. The whole "memory hole" business is a reference to the removal of Trotsky from photographs, for example.

This has nothing to do with anti-maskism and COVID denialism.

If Big Brother hadn't told you about Covid, would you even know?

If Big Brother hadn't published 1984 would you even know how they really operate?

(this comment is a tribute to https://xkcd.com/966/ )

I'm not clear what your position is, but what does it say about one, in one can only see the tyranny in a book but not be able to see it in real life?

That it's not there or at least looks radically different?

Well, the part about Airstrip One having always been part of Oceania is due to hit at the end of the year... (although I guess we still don't know exactly how, yet)

I am able to see both Orwell’s tyranny AND Huxley’s tyranny.

If I frame all dysfunctional human interactions through the lens of “tyranny” then I see “tyranny” everywhere.

That is how all confirmation biases works. That is why they are all uninteresting.

Falsifying one’s own biases is much more fun...

The world today is less tyrannical (as per Orwell’s concept) than it was when he was alive. Only when you ignore all moral progress do you get to paint contemporary society with Orwell’s brush.

Might there be some confirmation bias at work here?

Might you be responding to half of my post?

Of course ("some")!

The question stands.

It stands indeed.

It stands a few lines below the answer.

The answer being...?

>Falsifying one’s own biases is much more fun...

Meaning... Looking for evidence AGAINST the very thing you've convinced yourself of.

It seems we agree after all.

My mind was attracted to this particular idea: "That is why they are all uninteresting."

I happen to believe that confirmation biases (and their various relatives) are infinitely interesting, and also that there is infinite value in understanding them and their systemic consequences. The irony(?) of the situation is that finding even one individual who shares this belief is exceptionally rare, and I have been through an extremely broad spectrum of communities. This also seems rather interesting as well.

I mean, my wife is a nurse in an ICU that has had to triple capacity in the last 6 weeks and still has less than 15% capacity remaining, so, yeah, I'd imagine I'd have some inkling.

So, like 2018? https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/15/flu-hospital-pandemics/

SARS2-COVID-19 is a novel virus. True. Would we notice without modern medicine and rtPCR tests? I'm not convinced.

>Would we notice without modern medicine and rtPCR tests? I'm not convinced.

With all due respect, this statement tells me with near-certainty that you've never worked a patient-facing role in healthcare. The fact that you feel free to espouse your opinion on the subject directly related to patient-facing care should be a red flag to you.

I have worked in healthcare as a paramedic. My wife is a nurse. My mother is a nurse. My brother-in-law is an MD. The public-health policy makers usually have worked in patient-facing healthcare. My local public health director was one of the best and brightest physicians I've EVER met. He cut his teeth working on eradicating smallpox in his youth, and has remarkable depth in his knowledge of epidemiology. ...All of us agree that this definitely IS different than the status quo. It is NOT different from historical precedent though, and there are many people that are quite alert to these things. These same people would notice unusual clusters of patients suggesting a terrorist attack, chemical exposure, water contamination, etc. Just because it requires knowledge you do not have doesn't mean that experts wouldn't have identified this. Which, funny enough, is exactly what DID happen.

I'm a physician in a hospital that has literally entire floor units - plural - occupied by nothing but dyspnea, a respiratory step-down unit that has become an expansion of the ICU, residents pulled off of every non-internal medicine training program to supplement the internal medicine teams, fellows pulled out of their training programs to supplement the hospitalists, and an ICU so packed that it looks like a bathroom at football stadium.

Eh, I probably would've noticed something's up.

Denialism conspiracy bullshit has no place here.

If you're actually so sheltered that you cannot see it, you should give thanks. If not, I have nothing but contempt.

Either way, take your black propaganda somewhere else.

If anything, Big Brother in countries like Iran tried to downplay the information.

After spending ten days in an ICU (with happy hypoxia[1]), and seeing it hospitalise a member of my family for about a month, leave one almost bedridden for days and with a metallic taste in the mouth for weeks, and two others with cough/fatigue/completely no sense of taste, I'd've probably suspected something was up. Could I rule known diseases? Maybe not, but it'd have to have hit us usually hard and with an unusual set of symptoms.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/03/happy-hypoxia-...

> No. I think he was writing about the dystopian present he was already aware of, and then projecting that a little into the future.

He was extrapolating mostly from Stalin's USSR. This is well-known.

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