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Comment by dummydummy1234 | Hacker News Reader

So, I always thought that Warhammer 40k techpriests were absurd. Strange obscure religious rituals to appease the machine spirit.

But at this point I can actually see something like that. What is prompt engineering but a strange pseudo ritual.

So praise the Omnissiah, I guess...

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They've always resonated with me, maybe because I often work on legacy code. All this ancient technology that no one understands. Crazy rituals/incantations to get things done. People being afraid to skip steps, even if it probably isn't needed. The aversion to unconsecrated (non IT-supported) technology.

The machine spirits were the only part that felt "too magical" to me, but now we're well on our way. The Omnissiah's blessings be upon us.

(Let's just skip servitors. Those give me the heebie-jeebies.)

> "too magical"

Just putting the "magic/more magic" story here as a reference to the uninitiated - https://users.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/magic.html

Burn some "incense" to help you get in the zone. Bless the machine spirit!

Exactly. This is already happening.

We'd like to think this could turn into the voice interface on Star Trek.

But

It can go the other way also, 'incantations', 'spell books'. Speaking to the void to produce magic.

"The CFO, donned the purple robes, and spoke the spell of Increased Productivity, and then waved his hands symbolizing the reduction in work force labor. And behold the new ERP/SAP App was produced from the void. But it was corrupted by dark magic, and the ERP/SAP App swallowed him and he was digested. The workforce that remained rejoiced and danced"

We're going to be living in a perpetual holodeck malfunction episode.

And by the way, if you want to speed the collapse, all you need to do is talk about goblins on the Internet a lot now.

They just told us exactly what kind of attack works best.

SAP is such a convoluted clusterfuck it feels like arcane arts -- comment is on point.

trying to find SAP security specialists or QA experts for smoke tests was often hard. we used to fall back on expensive German consultants.

like, i'd totally wear the robes and do chanting if it would simplify migrating X and Y data.

> So, I always thought that Warhammer 40k techpriests were absurd. Strange obscure religious rituals to appease the machine spirit.

40k lore is like South Park: either extremely dumb or unexpectedly insightful.

The Cult Mechanicus' raison d'etre is the realization that religion persists across time and space scales that knowledge alone does not. Thus, by making a religion of knowledge you better guarantee its preservation.

Unfortunately, once you divorce doctrine and practice from true understanding, you lose the ability to innovate and cause the occasional holy schism/war.

PS: 20 years ago I told a friend that "software archaeologist" would be a career by the time I die. Should have put money on it.

Unfortunately, I think Vernor Vinge scooped you any way. One of the main characters of A Deepness in the Sky was something akin to a software archaeologist (I swear that exact phrase was used, but it’s been a minute) and that book was published in 1999.

Fair, but I didn't get to it until ~2010. And yeah, Vinge uses the exact phrasing https://akkartik.name/post/deepness

> Unfortunately, once you divorce doctrine and practice from true understanding, you lose the ability to innovate and cause the occasional holy schism/war.

There is only one thing to understand.

We are one with the Emperor, our souls are joined in His will. Praise the Emperor whose sacrifice is life as ours is death.

Hail His name the Master of Humanity.

Feel free to call me next time your lights stop working, and then we can have a nice theological discussion before I choose to fix them. ;)

Well. Either "software archaeologist" appears as a profession before the time you pass away, and you get paid. Or, you die first, and then your friend doesn't get paid. I don't think they would have gone for that...

One would hope that I'd die with at least a few dollars in my estate!

You'll need to write it into your will or probate (can't remember if that's the right word) will never let it through! :)

Or Comstar in the original setting of Battletech

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