Chain of ThoughtSociety RSVP · Mon 9/28

By Order of the

Chain of Thought Society

PROCLAMATION.

Whereas the Machines have lately learned to Write, to Paint, and to Converse; and Whereas a great many Persons have Opinions upon the Matter;

All Persons of a Curious & Argumentative Disposition

are hereby SUMMONED to

HARBORSIDE

upon the Shore of Lake Shipp, in the Town of Winter Haven,

on Monday, the 28th of September, 2026,
at Half past Five in the Evening,

there to consider the Question,

Is Technological Progress Always Progress?

Given under our Hand this 25th Day of September, 2026.God protect the Conversation.

Chain of Thought Office, Lake Shipp

Set after the Luddites’ own Framework Knitters’ Declaration of 1 January 1812, which closed: “God protect the Trade. Ned Lud’s Office, Sherwood Forest.”

Save a chair

Count me in

Names are only used for the headcount, so we can ask Harborside for the right size table.

The society

Winter Haven has a chain of lakes. We’re forging a chain of thought.

The Chain of Thought Society meets once a month to take on one big question over dinner by the water. We read a little beforehand, bring our best objections, and try to leave with better questions than we arrived with.

Each meeting adds a link to the chain. The next topic is chosen at the table.

Membership
Show up.
Dues
None.
Homework
One short reading. Optional, encouraged.
Plus-one
Someone who disagrees with you.
No. 1Sept 28 · The Luddites No. 2October · Chosen at the table No. 3November · ?

Link No. 1 · The Luddites, from 1811

Is technological progress always progress?

English textile workers protested (and sometimes destroyed machinery) when employers used it to replace skilled workers and reduce wages.

It began in Arnold, Nottinghamshire, on 11 March 1811, when framework knitters broke 63 stocking frames. They chose their targets: wide frames worked by “colts,” men who had skipped the customary seven-year apprenticeship, turning out cheap “cut-ups” that were sold as proper stockings. Nobody was hurt.

The raids spread to Yorkshire, where new cropping machines could do the work of many skilled hand-croppers, and to the power looms of Lancashire. Threatening letters went out signed by Ned Ludd, a legendary apprentice, from his “office” in Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood’s old address.

The state answered hard. In March 1812 Parliament made frame-breaking a hanging offense, despite Lord Byron’s scathing first speech in the House of Lords. Some 12,000 troops were deployed; the historian Eric Hobsbawm noted that was more than Wellington took to Portugal in 1808. The Luddites escalated too. A Yorkshire mill owner, William Horsfall, was shot dead in April 1812, and at York in January 1813, seventeen men were hanged.

  • 63frames broken in the first raid, Arnold, March 1811
  • ~1,000machines smashed by February 1812
  • 12,000troops deployed to put the rising down
  • 17men hanged at York, January 1813

In their own words

“…to break and destroy all Frames and Engines that fabricate Articles in a fraudulent and deceitful manner…”
The Framework Knitters’ Declaration, 1 January 1812
“…an Act to put down all Machinery hurtful to Commonality…”
Letter signed “Ned Ludd Clerk” to a Yorkshire shearing-frame owner, March 1812
“…will be Punish’d with death…”
Ned Lud’s Proclamation against informers, 23 December 1811. The National Archives, HO 42/118
“These men were willing to dig, but the spade was in other hands.”
Lord Byron, House of Lords, 27 February 1812

The thread

From a legend in 1779 to a table on Lake Shipp

  • The rising and the crackdown
  • Words
  • Machines that read cards
  • Now
  1. 1779

    Legend has a Leicestershire apprentice, Ned Ludd, smashing two stocking frames after a scolding. He probably never existed, which made him the perfect signature.

  2. 1804

    Joseph-Marie Jacquard’s loom weaves patterns read from punched cards. Keep an eye on this thread.

  3. 181111 March

    Arnold, Nottinghamshire. Framework knitters break 63 wide frames. Nobody is hurt.

  4. 181123 December

    Ned Lud’s Proclamation threatens death to informers, and to any constable who asks questions.

  5. 18121 January

    The Framework Knitters’ Declaration claims a royal charter to break frames making goods “in a fraudulent and deceitful manner.”

  6. 181227 February

    Lord Byron’s first speech in the Lords: “Will you erect a gibbet in every field and hang up men like scarecrows?”

  7. 181220 March

    Frame-breaking becomes a capital crime.

  8. 181211 April

    Rawfolds Mill, Yorkshire. The defended mill holds, and two Luddites die.

  9. 181228 April

    Mill owner William Horsfall is shot dead near Huddersfield.

  10. 1813January

    York. Seventeen men are hanged. Others are transported to penal colonies.

  11. 1816

    A last major outbreak at Loughborough. Byron writes, “Down with all kings but King Ludd!”

  12. 1843

    Ada Lovelace, Byron’s daughter, writes that Babbage’s Analytical Engine “weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.”

  13. 1930

    Keynes warns of “technological unemployment,” which he calls a new disease.

  14. 1952

    Historian Eric Hobsbawm calls machine-breaking “collective bargaining by riot.”

  15. 2023

    Hollywood writers strike and win contract limits on AI.

  16. 2026August

    Stanford economists find employment for 22-to-25-year-olds in the most AI-exposed jobs running about 19% below trend.

  17. 202628 September

    You, at Harborside, 5:30 PM.

For the table

Three questions

Bring an answer to one and an objection to the other two.

Question 1

Were their demands and methods defensible?

Their demands
Fair piece rates, honored apprenticeships, and no shoddy goods passed off as good ones.
Their methods
Petitions, then hammers, then threats of death, and in Yorkshire, a killing.
Consider
Most of them couldn’t vote, and unions were illegal. Does that change your answer about the methods?

Question 2

What does society owe people whose livelihoods are disrupted by inventions that benefit others?

The usual answers
NothingTimeRetrainingCashA sayA share of the gains
Consider
Is the debt owed to the worker or to the worker’s children? And who pays it: the inventor, the employer, the customer, or everyone?

Question 3

How far does the comparison with AI hold up?

One twist
In 1811, machines let employers skip the apprenticeship. In 2026, AI may let them skip hiring apprentices at all.
Consider
Our first pass at where it holds, bends and breaks is below. Where are we wrong?

The holes are real IBM keypunch code for the label printed along each card’s top edge. Jacquard’s loom read punched cards in 1804. Computers read them for much of the 20th century.

Test the argument

Break the chain

Here is the strongest short case against the Luddites. The conclusion hangs from four links, and every link has to hold. Pick up Enoch and find the weak one.

The Luddites named their sledgehammers Enoch, after Enoch Taylor, the Marsden smith who built the cropping machines. Their line: “Enoch made them, and Enoch shall break them.”

The case against the Luddites, in four links.

All four links are holding. The conclusion hangs on every one of them.

Therefore

Question three, laid out

Where the comparison holds, bends, and breaks

Our first pass. Argue with it on Monday.

1812 · Lord ByronDefends the frame-breakers in his first speech to the House of Lords.

1843 · Ada LovelaceOften called the first computer programmer, she compares Babbage’s engine to a Jacquard loom.

The Luddites’ champion in Parliament was the father of the woman often called the first programmer. The thread from the loom to the computer runs through one family.

  • Holds the parallel is close
  • Bends similar, with a twist
  • Breaks a real difference
  • Open too soon to say
Dimension18112026Verdict
What gets automatedHands: knitting, cropping, weaving.Heads: writing, drawing, coding, answering.Bends
The complaintWage cuts, skipped apprenticeships, shoddy cut-ups sold as the real thing.Wage pressure, people’s work used as training data without pay, cheap AI filler.Holds
Who feels it firstSkilled tradesmen, undercut by unapprenticed colts.Beginners. Employment for 22-to-25-year-olds in the most AI-exposed jobs is about 19% below trend.The ladder breaks at the other end.Bends
Weapons of the weakHammers, petitions, threatening letters.Lawsuits, union contracts, and data-poisoning tools like Nightshade.Bends
A voice in powerMost workers couldn’t vote. Unions were illegal until 1824.Votes, unions, courts, a free press.Breaks
The state’s answerThe gallows, transportation, 12,000 troops.Hearings, lawsuits, regulation fights.Breaks
Who gets the gains, and whenOwners and buyers first. Wages lagged for decades.Unknown. That is the question.Open

Before Monday

Reading, by how much time you have

Five minutes

Twenty minutes

For the AI half

A long weekend

  • Blood in the MachineBrian Merchant, 2023. The Luddites retold as a story about Big Tech.
  • Power and ProgressDaron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, 2023. Who technology’s gains go to, and why.
  • The Making of the English Working ClassE. P. Thompson, 1963. The classic.
  • Writings of the LudditesKevin Binfield, ed., 2004. The letters themselves.
  • “Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?”Thomas Pynchon, New York Times Book Review, 1984.
  • Luddite BicentenaryThe rising retold day by day, with the original letters. A rabbit hole.

House rules

Rules of the table

  1. Steelman first. Before you knock an argument down, state it well enough that its owner would sign it.

  2. Break arguments, not people. Enoch is for ideas only.

  3. Pass the hammer. Whoever holds it has the floor. Two minutes, then hand it on.

  4. Phones face down. It is Luddite night, after all.

  5. Changing your mind counts as winning.

Forge the next link

Nominate October’s question

Each month’s topic is picked at the end of the meeting before it. Put yours on the table now. The best nominations are one sharp question with room for two honest sides.

Link No. 2 · October Chosen at the table on September 28.