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by krapp4 hours ago |
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upvoteby tptacek4 hours ago|
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It could well be devastating for "the hacker ethos". You can lament that all you want. But there are more important things than "the hacker ethos".
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upvoteby ejj283 hours ago|
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Sure, lots of things are more important than "the hacker ethos". Like critical thinking and independent thought, self-reliance, the joy of actually creating something yourself (which AI is a hollow, artificial substitute for).

Why shouldn't one lament sacrificing individuality and creativity, and increasing our reliance on corporations, all for the sake of convenience?

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upvoteby tptacek3 hours ago|
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I think you just wrote "lots of things are more important than the hacker ethos, like [axiomatic rederivation of the hacker ethos]". That's not a persuasive argument.
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upvoteby ejj283 hours ago|
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I think it's just easy to dismiss "the hacker ethos" without considering the qualities it actually consists of. Maybe you'd disagree, but I think those qualities are very important and worth protecting.
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upvoteby tptacek3 hours ago|
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I'm not saying it's not important, just that you can't reasonably expect to orient all of society around it. And that's what we're talking about when we talk about how computing is going to work for ordinary people.
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upvoteby ejj283 hours ago|
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I'm not expecting to orient all of society around it, but I do believe that it's harmful to remove or replace it where it does exist.

Ease and convenience are not worth the cost of giving up bits and pieces of our humanity here and there until there's nothing left; Pre-AI computing has already taken enough of it.

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upvoteby tptacek2 hours ago|
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When you suggest that ordinary people should not use personal applications that they've built with AI because it robs them of the hacker spirit, that's what you're doing: orienting all of society around your aesthetic preference.
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upvoteby ejj282 hours ago|
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Obviously I'm going to have beliefs about what I think is good or bad for society, same as yourself.

> I do not think it's a good thing for normal people to have to learn programming languages to built programs to solve their problems.

Is this not also "orienting all of society around your aesthetic preference"?

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upvoteby krapp1 hours ago|
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But you expect to orient all of society around LLMs.
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upvoteby tptacek1 hours ago|
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No, I'm following society's lead on this one. Maybe people won't want this! Then we'll fail. I'll be fine with that.
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upvoteby zahlman2 hours ago|
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…Please remind me, what is the name of this website we're posting on?
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upvoteby tptacek2 hours ago|
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What's your point?
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upvoteby famouswaffles3 hours ago|
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>We were almost at a point where programming could become general knowledge

Lol. Not only was this not true but we weren't even close. Genuinely bizarre that you could think this.

>enabled widespread freedom and control over the evils of proprietary software and commercialism.

Ironically, the only reality where this is remotely feasible is one where frontier llms can be run locally on phone like hardware and it becomes popular to do so.

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