by jtrn | 2025-06-18 18:55:10+00:00
Muddled thinking galore. This write-up is just to scream into the void out of frustration... On Luddites: "They were protesting the fact that capital owners were extracting the wealth from their labour." This makes no sense, and it would be true before and after the mechanized looms. They were protesting because they were out of a job.

"That wealth is going into the hands of the ultra-wealthy." It's going to the people that someone want to give their money to. I hate Microsoft with a passion, but I don't think Bill Gates went around stealing money from poor people to become rich; he got it from businesses and other high-wealth individuals. And if you really cared that much about large corporations becoming rich, you should use the hell out of their large services since they are reported to actually be losing money on heavy users.

And if you don't want to give anybody any money, just don't give them any. Use a free open-weight/source model.

On Productivity - the author claims there is no increase in productivity. I am strongly starting to believe that the people who are unable to increase their productivity with AI are those who are EXTREMELY rigid and score low on creativity. Even if all you ever wanted to do was fiddle around with some extremely esoteric, complex area of software development, like microkernel optimization or something like that, and even if you were in a position where an AI was completely and truly useless in assisting you in that work due to its cutting-edge and extremely esoteric nature, a person's inability to utilize AI to be more productive IS STILL baffling. YES, it might not be helpful for the thing you spent 25 years becoming an expert on. But are there truly NO other frameworks, tools, software patterns, or utility functions in the world that you could use EVER FOR ANYTHING to assist you? What about having the AI throw together a tool that scans through an old PDF with OCR and extracts specific topic information that you need for something? Or a simple webpage to host a sign-up form for an event you are organizing for your workplace? Never mind the specific examples, but you DON'T know even a fraction of what is out there, and not even having the interest and ability to use AI to make something simple but useful, that are just beyond your capabilities, but easy for an AI agent, that can assist you in you, shows a massive lack of creativity.

With regards to productivity, I am a CTO of a small firm with about 8 people in our department. But holy hell, it's obvious that it's helpful with AI-assisted coding (If you are allowed to give anecdotes, so am I).

On Enjoyment: The argument seems to be Programming challenges drive the author's growth, with a focus on refactoring and simplifying code. They criticize AI tools for lacking human understanding and find rote coding unengaging but essential for learning patterns and improving skills. Fine. Then do that, but either admit that you are self-centered and not primarily focused on creating value for others. Find a job where you can do what you want, or work for yourself. But don't whine at others if they expect to get usefulness out of you when you want money from them.

On Ethical Training Do you apply the same level of ethical demand to all areas of your life, or do you just suddenly focus on it when it regarding "your thing"? Pharmaceutical companies jack up drug prices, hoard patents to block generics, and let people die for profit—literally life-and-death stakes. Oil giants lobby to keep pumping carbon while the planet chokes. Private equity firms gut healthcare systems, firing nurses to pad their margins. Every car uses cobalt from the DRC from child labor. I am willing to bet that most people railing against AI are happily buying modern electronics, driving a car, buying Viagra instead of losing weight, and overconsuming at a rate that dwarfs most of the people on the earth. Those are direct, tangible harms—way worse than some AI bot cribbing your code snippets. But nah, you’re here writing manifestos about LLMs. So why the selective outrage? Because it annoys you that people are using modern tools, because you’d rather the world just stick with an axe for wood chopping, because that’s what you know and enjoy.

On the Environmental Impact: See above. And - are you this worried about the environment when you shop for houses, cars, and other stuff you don't need? Or is it just when the environment suffers AND it's related to something you don't like?

There is no singularity: So what? Should I not have used an AI agent to help me create an XML-to-JSON parser for a custom application just 1 hour ago because there is no singularity?

What Makes Us Better Programmers? What if you become a worse programmer because you are not branching out with AI to utilize new tools and functionality? What if you are prevented from deeper learning because you spend too much time on small details? You could spend your whole life studying and asymptotically improving in Chess. But don't DEMAND that people automatically recruit you for that.

It's easy to demonize firms. But I am a small CTO in a small health software system. We genuinely try to make psychologists' lives easier and more productive with the stuff we make. We don't make much, and it's really hard sometimes. But I think we are making a difference to some people. And to be judged by people when I say that we should expect productivity and usefulness from the people we hire pisses me off to no extent. We don't have enough money to pay you to fiddle around with what YOU WANT. People, use all the tools we have to create something useful!

And by the way, I have also been a clinical psychologist for many years, so I can say with some experience; The whole post by the author can be summarized as a tour de force of motivated reasoning.

/rant