I have re-read the op's post many times now, and have decided it is poetic.Empiricist-Bruno wrote: ↑January 5th, 2019, 5:32 pm Hello Forum,
I just hang up the phone after picking up the line. When I picked up, I said, "hello" and given the number of seconds I had to wait before someone said something, I realized that this was due to an automated dialer that calls people all the time so that telephone marketers can focus on just talking to people and not waiting to a ringing sound.
Instead, it is me who does the waiting. I think this is wrong. If you want to speak to me, you got to be there when I pick up the line. So, my policy is to hang up immediately, without any concern, the moment someone starts talking, or even before. Is this rude behavior?
And a more deeper question, is it really possible to be rude to another while talking on the phone?
My basic assumption is that when you speak to a phone, you are not and cannot be speaking to a real person that way. Consequently, you cannot really be rude.
However, even if my rudeness is not real, it is still being perceived by a machine. Should this matter? When people tell you "talk to the hand", does it still matters to be polite, as if our habit of politeness must never be broken, even when our politeness makes no real sense?
This question tears me appart. I see it as evidence that people have not conquered fire yet, as what comes out of that phone is more like fire than it is like some human discussing, or trying to discuss things with you.
If the voice of the phone is not any human's voice, then how can we copyright it? If we can't morally copyright the stuff that the phone produces, how can we organize ourselves otherwise? This issue also connects with the idea of wills: once you die, your will cannot be accomplished because you aren't there anymore. If we understand this, we realize that wills are likely immoral too. I think not enough reasoning goes on in our heads as we are too busy respecting and organizing our stupid culture.
When you get to your red light, no one is giving you your signal, you just act as if you were being given a signal. But if no one really gave you your signal, aren't you "Just following the orders" like a machine, when you respect your signal? Isn't that too morally dubious? I suspect that we should avoid surrounding our selves with a technology that mimics us and we should especially beware of those who benefit from pushing technology this way onto people. We need justice first if we are to progress and not more technological development.
If this post is about the moral ambiguity of running traffic signs while nobody is looking and the effect of mass following technology,thats something entirely different than what I assume you are initially posting about. If it is the herd like and obedient nature of the modern man that you are blaming on technology,I would have to argue that has always been the case, at least since the victory of reverse morality(if you want to argue that noble morality was ever not sheep like in its form). Humans prefer to stay alive, and that generally means staying out of trouble.I would attribute our being Nietzsche's "dogs with no bite" less to the red lights and more to the growing comfort of society as a whole. In any case, I don't think thats what you're arguing, but I don't actually know what you ARE arguing. In regards to rudeness, if you hold the idea that it is something that exists somehow inherently in the universe as some god given gift, then yes, it probably translates over to cellphones. I'm not certain how it wouldn't translate over to cellphones, yet would translate to cellphones while talking to a robot. A madness caused by the fear of a program being able to to see you as rude. Incredible.