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You left off the one that is perhaps most directly relevant to HN: their approach to technology. Contrary to popular belief, they are not opposed to adopting modern technology. They are just cautious about it, wanting to understand both the good points AND the bad points of it first (unlike most of us, who ignore the bad points until we have become dependent on the new technology and it is too late to do anything about the bad).

There's a great article called "Amish Hackers" that goes into this here: http://kk.org/thetechnium/2009/02/amish-hackers-a/



Yeah, that's what I meant by their theology/philosophy. As I understand it, they evaluate technologies on a case-by-case basis, the key judgement being whether the technology makes members less dependent on the community, without regard to "how modern" the technology is. And the decision is on a per-community basis, and their communities are quite small (although they do generally fall into larger regional groups that share many decisions). The Amish near where I grew up have what appears to me to be a fairly modern lumber mill that must be powered either by grid electricity or (more likely) internal combustion generators.


Just wonder what bad sides of electrical engineering they had found, then.

I totally get conservativeness of not jumping right onto the hype wagon for the latest tech fad of the year or even decade, but I find it strange they oppose more than a century old scientific concept that hadn't shown any negative effects (some particular implementation did, but as I get it they're generally opposed to the applied use of the very phenomena, not case-by-case implementations like avoiding those fossil-burning stations).



To summarize tptacek's link, the Amish generally refrain from using the public power grid, but they use electricity from their own generators or even solar panels. The idea isn't to ban things that are modern or things that save time, but rather things that make members more influenced by the world and less dependent on their own community.




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