To purely associate with him with Google is a mistake, that (ironically?) the AI actually didn't make.
Just the haters here.
Don’t upvote sealions.
According to merriam-webster, sealioning/sealions are:
> 'Sealioning' is a form of trolling meant to exhaust the other debate participant with no intention of real discourse.
> Sealioning refers to the disingenuous action by a commenter of making an ostensible effort to engage in sincere and serious civil debate, usually by asking persistent questions of the other commenter. These questions are phrased in a way that may come off as an effort to learn and engage with the subject at hand, but are really intended to erode the goodwill of the person to whom they are replying, to get them to appear impatient or to lash out, and therefore come off as unreasonable.
It also doesn’t help their case that they somehow have a such a starkly contradictory opinion on something they ostensibly don’t know anything/are legitimately asking questions about. They should ask a question or two and then just listen.
It’s just one of those things that falls under “I know it when I see it.”
It fundamentally changed how I viewed debates etc. from a young age so I never really sea-lioned that much hopefully.
But if I had to summarize the most useful and on topic quote from the book its that.
"I may be wrong, I usually am"
Lines like this give me a humble nature to fall back on. Even socrates said that the only thing I know is that I know nothing so if he doesn't know nothing, then chances are I can be wrong about things I know too.
Knowing that you can be wrong gives an understanding that both of you are just discussing and not debating and as such the spirit becomes cooperative and not competitive.
Although in all fairness, I should probably try to be a more keen listener but its something that I am working on too, any opinions on how to be a better listener too perhaps?
I like the “does it need to be said by me right now?” test a lot when I can actually remember to apply it in the moment. I forgot where I learned it but somebody basically put it like this: Before you say anything, ask yourself 3 questions
1. Does it need to be said?
2. Does it need to be said by me?
3. Does it need to be said by me right now?
You work your way down the list one at a time and if the answer is still yes by the time you hit 3, then go ahead.
(I make no comment on the claims about Rob Pike, but look forward to people arguing I have the wrong opinion on him regardless ;)
Of course they could. (1) People are capable of changing their minds. His opinion of data centers may have been changed recently by the rapid growth of data centers to support AI or for who knows what other reasons. (2) People are capable of cognitive dissonance. They can work for an organization that they believe to be bad or even evil.
Cognitive dissonance is, again, exactly my point. If you sat him down and asked him to describe in detail how some guy setting up a server rack is similar to a rapist, I’m pretty confident he’d admit the metaphor was overheated. But he didn’t sit himself down to ask.
I think "you people" is meant to mean the corporations in general, or if any one person is culpable, the CEOs. Who are definitely not just "some guy setting up a server rack."
If anyone were actually interested in a conversation there is probably one to be had about particular applications of gen-AI, but any flat out blanket statements like his are not worthy of any discussion. Gen-AI has plenty of uses that are very valuable to society. E.g. in science and medicine.
Also, it's not "sealioning" to point out that if you're going to be righteous about a topic, perhaps it's worth recognizing your own fucking part in the thing you now hate, even if indirect.
Would that be the part of the post where he apologizes for his part in creating this?
Fuck you people. Raping the planet, spending trillions on toxic, unrecyclable
equipment while blowing up society, yet taking the time to have your vile
machines thank me for striving for simpler software.
> To purely associate with him with Google is a mistake, that (ironically?) the AI actually didn't make.
You don't have to purely associate him with Google to understand the rant as understandable given AI spam, and yet entirely without a shred of self-awareness.
And he is allowed to work for google and still rage against AI.
Life is complicated and complex. Deal with it.
The specific quote is "spending trillions on toxic, unrecyclable equipment while blowing up society." What has he supported for the last 20+ years if not that? Did he think his compute ran on unicorn farts?
Clearly he knows, since he self-replies "I apologize to the world at large for my inadvertent, naive if minor role in enabling this assault."
Just because someone does awesome stuff, like Rob Pike has, doesn't mean that their blind spots aren't notable. You can give him a pass and the root comment sure wishes everyone would, but in doing so you put yourself in the position of the sycophant letting the emperor strut around with no clothes.
I know who Rob Pike is.
Rob is not strutting around with no clothes, he literally has decades upon decades of contributions to the industry.
His viewpoints were always grounded and while he may have some opinions about Go and programming, he genuinely cares about the craft. He’s not in it to be rich. He’s in it for the science and art of software engineering.
ROFL his website just spits out poop emoji's on a fibonacci delay. What a legend!
Craft is gone. It is now mass manufactured for next to nothing in a quality that can never be achieved by hand coding.
(/s about quality, but you can see where it’s going)