I realized recently that if you want to talk about interesting topics with smart people, if you expect things like critical thinking and nuanced discussion, you're currently much better off talking literature or philosophy than anything related to tech. I mean, everyone knows that discussing politics/economics is rather hopelessly polarized, everyone has their grievances or their superstitions or injuries that they cannot really put aside. But this is a pretty new thing that discussing software/engineering on merits is almost impossible.
Yes, I know about the language / IDE / OS wars that software folks have indulged in before. But the reflexive shallow pro/anti takes on AI are way more extreme and are there even in otherwise serious people. And in general anti-intellectual sentiment, mindless follow-the-leader, and proudly ignorant stances on many topics are just out of control everywhere and curiosity seems to be dead or dying.
You can tell it's definitely tangled up with money though and this remains a good filter for real curiosity. Math that's not maybe related to ML is something HN is guaranteed to shit on. No one knows how to have a philosophy startup yet (WeWork and other culty scams notwithstanding!). Authors, readers, novels, and poetry aren't moving stock markets. So at least for now there's somewhere left for the intellectually curious to retreat
I don't really see it any different than the Windows/Unix, Windows/Mac, etc, flame wars that boiled even amongst those with no professional stake it in for decades. Those were otherwise serious people too, parroting meaningless numbers and claims that didn't actually make much of a difference to them.
If anything, the AI takes are more much more meaningful. A Mac/PC flame war online was never going to significantly affect your career. A manager who either is all-in on AI or all-out on it can.
OS and IDE wars are something people take pretty seriously in their teens and very early careers, and eventually become more agnostic about after they realize it's not going to be the end-all predictor of coworker code quality. It predicts something for sure, but not strictly skill-level.
Language-preference wars stick around until mid-career for some, and again it predicts something. But still, serious people are not likely to get bogged down in pointless arguments about nearly equivalent alternatives at least (yaml vs json; python vs ruby).
Shallow takes on AI (whether they are pro or anti) are definitely higher stakes than all this, bad decisions could be more lasting and more damaging. But the real difference to my mind is.. AI "influencers" (again, pro or anti) are a very real thing in a way that doesn't happen with OS / language discussions. People listen, they want confirmation of biases.
I mean there's always advocates and pundits doing motivated reasoning, but usually it's corporate or individuals with clear vested interests that are trying to short-circuit inquiry and critical thinking. It's new that so many would-be practitioners in the field are eager to sabotage and colonize themselves, and forcing a situation where honest evaluations and merit-based discussion of engineering realities are impossible
> But the reflexive shallow pro/anti takes on AI are way more extreme
But this is philosophy (and ethics/morality)
My feelings about AI, about its impact on every aspect of our lives, on the value of human existence and the purpose of the creative process, have less to do with what AI is capable of and more to do with the massive failures of ethics and morality that surround every aspect of its introduction and the people who are involved.
This is classically framed as philosophy vs sophistry. The truth is that both are necessary, but only one makes money. When your entire culture assigns value with money it's obvious which way the scales will tip.
The fast inverse sqrt that John carmack did not. write also does well. I know there's many more. Are you sure that's not just a caricature of Hacker News you've built up in your head?
Yes, I know about the language / IDE / OS wars that software folks have indulged in before. But the reflexive shallow pro/anti takes on AI are way more extreme and are there even in otherwise serious people. And in general anti-intellectual sentiment, mindless follow-the-leader, and proudly ignorant stances on many topics are just out of control everywhere and curiosity seems to be dead or dying.
You can tell it's definitely tangled up with money though and this remains a good filter for real curiosity. Math that's not maybe related to ML is something HN is guaranteed to shit on. No one knows how to have a philosophy startup yet (WeWork and other culty scams notwithstanding!). Authors, readers, novels, and poetry aren't moving stock markets. So at least for now there's somewhere left for the intellectually curious to retreat