Ancestors

Written by Ali Alkhatib on 2025-01-20 at 15:36

I'm reading Imagination: A Manifesto by

@ruha9 and discussing it with a reading group spanning a few platforms.

I'm going to post a few quotes and start some conversations here and there about it. Hope you'll bear with me (and maybe better yet, join us)

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Written by Ali Alkhatib on 2025-01-20 at 15:37

(you can just reply if you want, but if you want to keep up with reading group stuff, you can join https://buttondown.com/al2)

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Written by Ali Alkhatib on 2025-01-20 at 15:39

This made me think about something tangential - how many times I've talked with people about an engineering problem, seen them be enthusiastic, willing to do all sorts of mental acrobatics. When they're motivated, they can think and be clever about all sorts of obstacles...

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Written by Ali Alkhatib on 2025-01-20 at 15:43

... But when the conversation turns to history, when I ask them to think about disparate impacts, or to interrogate "engineering-brain" solutions, their faces turn sullen and they suddenly become very tired or something. Now, every little obstacle is enough to overwhelm them.

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Toot

Written by Ali Alkhatib on 2025-01-20 at 15:43

I don't really have an insight, except to say that I've seen (and probably been guilty of) shrinking when going from "growing heart cells from scratch" to "confronting entrenched inequality and injustice".

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Descendants

Written by Ali Alkhatib on 2025-01-20 at 15:43

And it's so frustrating to try to interact with someone who you know is capable of being intelligent, capable of being creative, capable of thinking critically...

it's almost like they close their eyes and start saying "honk shoo honk shoo" to pretend to be asleep to get out of the conversation as soon as it got a little challenging.

Is there a word for when this happens?

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Written by emenel on 2025-01-20 at 15:57

@ali Joseph Weizenbaum wrote a lot about this in Computer Power and Human Reason. He referred to engineering-brain as the “compulsive programmer” and his analysis is excellent.

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