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Maybe. But man, is it blackpilling as an activity. Think about it: you're basically a sorcerer. You're trained in the arcane -- even to you -- art of conjuring

Maybe. But man, is it blackpilling as an activity. Think about it: you're basically a sorcerer. You're trained in the arcane -- even to you -- art of conjuring spells. Nobody, even the savviest practicioners, know or can know how the words produce the magical effects. They just know the words that (probably) do. It's medieval anti-enlightenment black magic. The genies are black box tangled confections of brute force computing power in reach of only nation states or megacorps, which also don't know how they work but try to weave them along their agendas. Programming was supposed to be a conquest of reason over the darkness of ignorance, and this is the exact opposite. :D We're back to wizard whispering to spirits. "Prompt engineer" a circle of salt and a burnt white rabbit to invoke Eschmoûn for a good harvest. What a depressing thing to aspire toward.

seoulmetro 3y ago
This can be said for anything. An electrician is a magician already. A painter is a sorcerer. A programmer creates life.
- rideontime 3y ago
  A more relevant comparison would be the people on youtube demonstrating how to "ground" your bed by sleeping on a mesh wired to a pole in the ground.
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  I think, in the limit, you're right. I think it's cool I can understand an algorithm and what it does, but, once it becomes machine code, my understanding utterly ends. What's the CPU doing with it? Have I even delidded my CPU to make sure there's actually silicon in there and not pixie dust? Forget the computer; how does my own brain work? Nobody even knows how brains store memories. A neurologist might know a lot more than I do, but maybe this is all a solipsistic simulation where I'm a brain in a jar and the neurologist is just an NPC controlled by a fancy AI. Perhaps, in reality, the feeling that you know what's going on was always a foolish conceit. It's magic all the way down. Astronaut with gun: always has been. I guess I have to find comfort in degrees because otherwise I feel very helpless and stupefied by that way to view the world.

seoulmetro 3y ago

This can be said for anything. An electrician is a magician already. A painter is a sorcerer. A programmer creates life.

rideontime 3y ago
A more relevant comparison would be the people on youtube demonstrating how to "ground" your bed by sleeping on a mesh wired to a pole in the ground.
shrimp_emoji 3y ago
I think, in the limit, you're right. I think it's cool I can understand an algorithm and what it does, but, once it becomes machine code, my understanding utterly ends. What's the CPU doing with it? Have I even delidded my CPU to make sure there's actually silicon in there and not pixie dust? Forget the computer; how does my own brain work? Nobody even knows how brains store memories. A neurologist might know a lot more than I do, but maybe this is all a solipsistic simulation where I'm a brain in a jar and the neurologist is just an NPC controlled by a fancy AI. Perhaps, in reality, the feeling that you know what's going on was always a foolish conceit. It's magic all the way down. Astronaut with gun: always has been. I guess I have to find comfort in degrees because otherwise I feel very helpless and stupefied by that way to view the world.