Giant Anchor Forge! Why Have Technology?

In which Joseph and Joseph geek out about a giant anchor forge at the Black Country Living History Museum in the UK. This thing is incredible! We also ponder a little about why we both think the forge is so impressive, and the moral consequences of technology.
Podcast: anchor.fm/goodandbasic
Twitter: @goodandbasic
Instagram: @good_and_basic
Music credit: Egyptian Crawl from audionautix.com

[@vrennexx3736]

I'm a German who kinda knows some English... And although the workshop is the main objective here .. the thing I admire the mist in this video is the English language!

[@matthewwillson6515]

Want to see those tools still being used. Just search KZbin for blacksmithing in places like India and China. They forge in flip flops lol

[@2strokecherry]

I went and saw these anchors 3 days ago and took some great pictures everything is still in the same place nothing has changed

[@theJellyjoker]

The noble nobility of being noble.

[@GoodandBasic]

Very noble. Much being. JF

[@Squidwardman1]

Love to see anchor forges. Did its location matter all that much or was it a forge that just specialized in anchors?

[@typical5719]

Hah thought i recognised the location I’ve always loved the Black Country museum

[@ekner]

Lovely poetic musings about the morals of developing your abilities. I believe you have to try to be the best version of yourself all the time, especially at your craft, and hearing your take on it felt both assuring and inspiring. I now want to try harder, to try and do more good in the world.

[@simontay4851]

Ive been here and watched the stream hammer operating. I recorded video of it but haven't uploaded it to YT. The power is truely amazing. When the hammer comes down, it comes down with >2 metric tons of force and a giant thud and you can feel the ground shaking. They burn diesel in the furnace (would've been coal in the old days) to heat the water to make steam to run the hammer and to heat the steel blocks so they're glowing white hot. They use big iron tongs to move the blocks from the furnace to the hammer.

[@simontay4851]

m.kzbin.info/www/bejne/mKOuan6Pg7V2oNU

[@wobblysauce]

Weight and cost with that annotation are quite interchangeable in that context... cost savings is a thing if you mess up that is quite a big thing.

[@blogshagify]

How the freak do they get those on the ship? Some weigh 60,000 tons

[@craigmonteforte1478]

Amazing stuff , i read thru other Comments and the one about people in Asia Forging in FlipFlops doesn’t suprise me but on the flip side is how could those people honestly think that is safe ? I grew up inSouth Florida and myself and many of my freinds used Motorcycles as our daily Commuter vehicles one afternoon i stopped by a good freind of mine home and he hadn’t gotten home from work just yet so i picked a Shady spot and waited in his Driveway i heard him coming down the street on his Motorcycle and when he pulled into his Driveway. i just shook my head because he was wearing a pair of FlipFlops i mentioned that to him and he looked and said innocently yeah i always wear these to and from Work so i pointed out how dangerous that would be. in a accident or if his foot slipped off the pegs sure i was wearing only leather Sneakers but as i explained to him it was some form of protection and he agreed with me he actually had a small locking trunk on that motorcycle for his helmet and i convinced him to at least put a pair of Sneakers in there to ride back and forth to work in and he agreed he has mentioned to me many times despite being highly Educated that before i told him my concerns he had not really given it much of a thought because he had not had many Accidents over the years he rode Motorcycles he ihave a fairly large Age difference and he is much older than I am. perhaps because of that i typically rode faster and a little more recklessly so i had been banged and Scraped up a few times on motorcycles and had invested in more Safety gear as well ? Although i did protest the Helmet Laws inFlorida. i have always worn one i just don’t think our Government should tell us that in a Law As luck would have it in my 40s. i suffered a Traumatic BrainInjury non Motorcycle related but that was the rational for the governments Law because Most motorcycle injuries. result in Head Injuries and the Government winds up picking up the Medical Bills as inFlorida back then Insurance was not a requirement for Motocyclists to have because they often didn’t do a lot of monetary damages t if they were at fault in a accident such as Property Damage and harm to others well being

[@x9x9x9x9x9]

Moral, nobel, moral, nobel, moral, nobel. I didn't count how many times they were said but it was a lot.

[@QlueDuPlessis]

Joey Van Der Steeg forged an anchor. It's a toy next to that.

[@Just_Sara]

It's just a toy, period, I think!

[@gramursowanfaborden5820]

technology and ideas were together at first, philosophy, religious beliefs and morals were fundamentally intertwined with what we made and what we used those things for. you mentioned stonehenge, a monument to human ingenuity, a statement to the world "look what we can do!", echoed as recently as North Korea's nuclear capable missiles.

[@theterribleanimator1793]

well, stonehenge was used to mark star locations if you look at it at the right distance, it wasnt a selflatio.

[@gramursowanfaborden5820]

@@theterribleanimator1793 not only are those two things not mutually exclusive, but what you're saying proves my point, the fact that it is made of massive stones is one thing, the fact it was actually a timekeeping, astrological tool - a device - by which they can tell the time and use it as a reference point for knowing the exact time of year is EXACTLY why it's so impressive, and why it was so much more impressive back when it was new.

[@theterribleanimator1793]

@@gramursowanfaborden5820 given how aristocratic societies worked, i doubt the people who actually built the things knew what they were for, for only the highest members in those societies were teached how the damned things work. So i doubt they slaid much pussy for building it.

[@Sam3532]

I literally watched this video randomly the other day flicking through some of your older videos and didn’t realise it was in the UK and literally just watched geowizards video today and he went and ran through the Black Country museum and past this exact location lol kzbin.info/www/bejne/nHPSpZuZnNpjgtE

[@p.f.changhimself4119]

yeah you could get a five guys together and build alllll that withs a "few purchaced parts" yeah buddy in minecraft. you'd need the investment of an angel to get all the parts to assemble a crane, forge and hammer that could safely help you forge an Anvil. The smiths that kept that forge alive were noble and chosen by the forge to undertake massive anchor projects. But you made it sound way too easy to diy that.

[@LexTenebris]

"We want to know how to use technology right." And here's the problem. "Right." Because "right" means nothing. In an ultimate sense, it's an empty word which carries no purpose. What it really means is "in ways that I agree with," and has nothing to do with me or with technology. "What you agree with" is not only ill-defined, it's a moving target. When you go beyond that and say that should guide the underlying behavior of others when it comes to ennoblement and capacity, all the red flags go up. The danger is thus: if the increasing capacity is dangerous, then capacity is dangerous. If we must consider carefully whether or not we wish to allow others to improve their ability to do things. If the increase in capacity to do things is a moral threat than simply allowing people to do things is a moral threat - and that the line of thinking which is dangerous if you're interested in maintaining your own freedom or just the idea of freedom. The Industrial Revolution had no moral component. I know this is going to come as a shock, but it had nothing to do with morality. Any more than the first time someone struck one rock with another rock had an aspect of morality. Any more than being born with hands that work has an aspect of morality. Specific actions might be ones you agree with or ones you would rather didn't happen, but they have nothing to do with the process of technology. They have nothing to do with the progression of technology, except in so far as they allow individuals to express their own intent. If the problem is that individuals can express their own intent, we need to have another discussion. That's not to say that all individual intents are equal; clearly they aren't. But we need to talk about the things that are real and not the things that are aesthetic.

[@GoodandBasic]

All decisions are decisions of value. And all questions of value are questions of better and worse. And better and worse, by definition, are terms laden with morality. Value decisions, where we decide what is higher and lower quality can't be separated out from technology. Why strike a rock against another, unless you believe or sense or think that it's better than not striking the rock at all, or striking your neighbors head with a rock? You can't separate technology from morality at all. JF

[@LexTenebris]

@@GoodandBasic When you conflate value and morality, you impose your own on someone else. Unless you want to open the door to others doing the same to you, it's probably a good idea to avoid it. "Better and worse" have nothing to do with morality. They have to do with being fit for purpose. As such, they demand that you define what that purpose is, not simply make reference to some greater, transient philosophical principle if you want people to take you seriously. And that's the problem. Because "better," not being tied to a greater philosophical principle, has nothing to do with yours. I may be striking a rock against another to start a fire in order to warm up my family and keep us from freezing to death in the cold during the winter. You may be striking a rock against another to create a sharp edge to cut through the leather armor of your enemy, who has resolved to kill you. Which of these is "more moral?" Neither. Which is "better?" That depends on whether or not my family is going to eat your food next season, and whether or not you're okay with that. Technology is no more inherent with morality than your hand. In fact, there's a reasonable argument to be made that your hand is technology - just biological and the result of millions of years of experimentation, retaining what works and discarding what doesn't. It is the executor of will. Your issue is with the will, which is wholly divisible. The thing about technology is that it devolves power closer and closer to the individual. What would take 10,000 men a year to do becomes a thousand men six months to do in 100 men a single month to do, and all with the development of tools and technology by which he shapes his experience and world. That's not a moral observation. Nor should it be. It merely means that a man gains a greater power to control his environment as technology moves forward. If you do not trust your fellow man to make decisions in accordance with yours, that's a different issue. It's a much deeper and harder issue. That the Industrial Revolution provided the tools, technologies both physical and social, to act more effectively on their environment is neither morally good or morally bad. It simply allowed more people to impose their morality on others or cooperate with smaller cultures of others who share their morality and do so effectively. That is the real problem here. You will maintain that there is a moral element to the simple empowerment of the individual, but taking that argument to its logical conclusion, is not the methods of empowerment but that the individual is empowered at all, and then the only way to maintain a moral stance is to disempower them. To not just not create or not distribute technology, but to leverage your advantage to keep others from acting. I would never be arrogant enough to suggest there is a grandiose philosophy which says that's bad, but I can unequivocably say that it is aesthetically displeasing to me. I don't like it. I don't like where it leads.

[@GoodandBasic]

Is it wrong to impose your morality on someone else?... if so, then you've reintroduced morality. You can't get away from morality, so we have to get it right. JB

[@LexTenebris]

@@GoodandBasic Is it wrong? That depends entirely on the outcomes you desire. If you want to have someone else's morality imposed upon you, and definitely it's going to serve that purpose, so obviously right. If you would prefer, aesthetically or otherwise, not to have someone else's morality imposed upon you, you probably want to avoid imposing your morality on someone else. Obviously, other people may disagree, at which point it becomes a serious question whether or not you believe that defending your preferences is a sufficient motivation to act in a way which does so. But I'm not looking to discuss morality, because morality is just a very broad spectrum excuse to say "I can't discuss this and you shouldn't discuss this." Morality is just your personal aesthetics which you wish that everyone else would agree with. Some of these aesthetic preferences are markedly effective in creating societies in which more people are happy than otherwise. Whether or not you like a maximum number of people being happy or a minimum number of people being unhappy is another aesthetic choice. But let's not dress it up in pretending that it's universal. We can absolutely get away from morality and we probably should, at least if we want to be able to make persuasive arguments which speak to people who don't agree with their own aesthetics. It is a very different environment when you say, "here are the things that I like and here are the reasons that I like them and why you should agree with me" as opposed to "here is what is moral." And none of that - absolutely 0% - has to do with technology.

[@GoodandBasic]

@@LexTenebris "and we probably (Should)". The moral theory you're espousing is called desire satisfaction theory with a little moral nihilism thrown in. But functionally, you're still making value claims, still discussing/ arguing them, and still pragmatically making decisions based on therm. Kant would respond (and I'd agree) that for it to be rational to believe and follow your desires, they need to be based on something (there needs you be a reason for them, hence, rational). I don't think we're actually disagreeing. I think you're just massively triggered by discussions of the underpinnings of morality, even though you act out the belief. JB

[@seroxide]

The anchor is cast, not forged.

[@GoodandBasic]

This one is forged. JB

[@BartJBols]

5 guys... or girls =3

[@balmoralpjk]

Show full front and backsides of yourself in the zipped up leather biker jacket and Levi’s jeans

[@Waynegrace323]

There is nothing ''amazing'' about forging big items with the equipment as shown in this clip...a little bit misleading as well, the anchor head (barbed section) is single piece cast, the shaft and shackle are forged. The hammer im guessing is around 20cwt or more, and it is a double frame inslide type. Gib crane with endless sling, huge tongs are all typical of manual heavy forging. I am a railway Blacksmith from NZ early 80s we had 12 smiths in our shop power hammers from 5cwt to 40cwt..workshops made many heavy steam locomotives back in the early 1900s to 1950s. We regularly used 40cwt hammer and the exact equipment as shown in this video right up till 90s. Heavy forging will never cease to be used.

[@balmoralpjk]

👎👎👎👎 👎👎👎👎👎👎👎

[@balmoralpjk]

👎👎

[@QlueDuPlessis]

Joey Van Der Steeg forged an anchor. It's a toy next to that.

[@GoodandBasic]

He makes great content. JB