Refuseniks

With reference to Jade Nekotenshi’s comment here, the graph to the right taken from this survey, methinks, reveals another key application of the so-important primitives-barbarians dichotomy.

See, if you don’t have these technologies, that just classifies you as “primitive”. That’s a term of art, not a value judgement. Every sophont race was there once, and with thought, effort, and will, can rise above it.

Not wanting them, on the other hand, that classifies you among the “barbarians”, and indeed with every “bigoted, knowledge-resenting, knuckle-dragging regressive” stereotype listed in the Big Book of Offensive Terms for Offensive People. Which are value judgements.

It’s the latter, as per said survey, that they’d hypothetically be sneering at us over, not simply our not having teched the tech yet.

Ignorance isn’t only pardonable, it doesn’t need to be pardoned, only cured. Gnosiophobia and its associated family of pathologies, on the other hand…