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I have a new theory as of this moment. Elon Musk, Paul Graham, Steve Yegge and now, sadly John Carmack. Your average hacker scoffs at the idea of religion or f
by tclancy 20d ago
I have a new theory as of this moment.
Elon Musk, Paul Graham, Steve Yegge and now, sadly John Carmack. Your average hacker scoffs at the idea of religion or faith, but somehow is comfortable with complete unquestioning fealty to whichever person who did something interesting with technology in the past and made enough money to afford drugs you don’t get arrested for and then they started prophesying.
Before you stone me, remember every prophet was downvoted in their own forum.
- zulux 20d agoThe nice thing about religious faith is that most minds can hold only one at a time. I may believe in an oddly resurrected deity who took the shape of a man, but I don't have room for anything crazier. "We are fools for Christ's sake." 1 Corinthians 4:10
- tclancy 20d agoSure, but it is that Christ, Buddha or any of the other incarnations of the same idea? I am right there with you, believe it or not, but don’t John 3:16 the wrong football game.
- acyou 20d agoIs that the nice thing about religious faith? Polytheism seems somewhat more tolerant of others. And religious pluralism takes in one step further. I am sure about few things, but it seems to me that monotheism and religious exclusivism at some times represent the worst aspects and outcomes of religious faith.
- huurtehoog 19d agoWhatever your view of religion, you are not very good at literary analysis. The verse you quote, in full: "We have given up our wisdom for Christ, but you have insight because of Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are honored, but we are dishonored" Not quite the same of what you imply is it?
- magarnicle 19d agoBut now I don't know what you think it means. Who do you think "you" and "we" are in this quote?
- huurtehoog 19d agoGo read Corinthians? I'm just pointing out it was quoted halfway through to make it sound like Paul just wrote "we dumb" in a letter.
- magarnicle 19d agoRight. But you didn't quote it in full either, so I couldn't figure out what you thought it said. So yeah, there's a base unit of meaning which is well beyond one or two verses (something I wish the church would learn).
- Terr_ 19d ago> most minds can hold only one at a time. [...] I don't have room for anything crazier. I feel you aren't accounting for exactly how much "crazier" churches/sects can be, both currently and historically.
- bitwize 19d agoI think you got downvoted unfairly because I really think you're sincere. My brain heard your comment in the voice of Nightcrawler from X-Men—and as the descendant of German Catholics, he's become one of my favorites.
- socalgal2 20d agoI see it as those who learn to use AI effectively are seeing massive benefits. Those that haven't seen those benefits are still skeptical. Someone who's seen the benfits, knows, with proof, the benefits exist. They're like Copernicus who realized the plants go around the sun, not the earth. The others are still like those who look up, see the planets go around the sky, and can't believe the earth is not at the center. They then shout "you're lying, you're crazy, burn the hertic!"
- JuniperMesos 20d agoThe story of the discovery of heliocentricism is a lot more complex than this; the people who didn't immediately accept heliocentric theories (including the ancient Greeks - look up Aristarchus) often had good, scientific reasons for doing so. Or just look up at the sky at night yourself and ask yourself how you, personally, would confirm it if someone told you that what you see in the sky is better explained by the Earth moving around the sun than the sun moving around the Earth.
- Planktonne 19d ago> those who learn to use AI effectively are seeing massive benefits The massive benefits should be visible to outside observers as well, but where are they?
- Daishiman 19d agoYes. People see orgs tackling more problems and resolving bugs faster.
- Planktonne 19d agoI don't agree that people do see that, and if they do, it's hardly an overwhelming trend.
- Daishiman 19d agoI see my org delivering twice as many features and implementing way more tools that actually solve problems. The issue is that doesn’t necessarily mean that customers will pay more, as most of the features of software are not actually core.
- JuniperMesos 20d ago> Elon Musk, Paul Graham, Steve Yegge and now, sadly John Carmack. Your average hacker scoffs at the idea of religion or faith, but somehow is comfortable with complete unquestioning fealty to whichever person who did something interesting with technology in the past and made enough money to afford drugs you don’t get arrested for and then they started prophesying. Why do you characterize people you disagree with as having "complete unquestioning fealty" to any of these figures who did something interesting with technology in the past? Seriously, why do you think that accurately characterizes anyone's view? I think this observation that John Carmack made on Twitter has some merit to it - it doesn't mean that I worship John Carmack as my god, or even that I think he's necessarily correct about any other issue. And why would I need to do either of those things to think that the one specific observation of his that we're talking about in this thread has merit to it?
- tclancy 19d agoI am not lumping everyone in, more observing we are still amplifying the signal from radio stations that should have ceased broadcasting years ago.
- JuniperMesos 19d agoI don't think that John Carmack or any of the other people you mentioned are categorically not worth listening to because in some cases the accomplishments that originally made them famous are decades old. If you think that Carmack is wrong on this specific point, make an argument for why; I for one don't think he's wrong, and I think that putting him into a category of people who "should have ceased broadcasting decades ago" is simply avoiding engaging with what he actually said.
- bitwize 19d agoOne of the great joys of following guys I admire like Carmack is the little smile I get when I see one of his tweets and go, "yeah, John Carmack was totally wrong about that." For example he argued that UI buttons should act on press rather than waiting for the release, and it's been a UI principle for decades that once a button is pressed you wait for the release on the button, giving the user one last chance to back out of a destructive operation by letting them move the pointer off the button and release. And I was like no, I don't care if you wrote Quake, or the Principia Mathematica, don't fuck with my UI expectations. Carmack has cheerfully admitted to being wrong in the past, for example admitting that the Saturn port of Doom should have used the Saturn's hardware primitives for a smoother experience rather than a faithful replication of the PC's BSP renderer which made it slow. When brilliant guys like him are wrong, they often are in profound ways.