I like that the author does not mince words about how this union of 2 million people must be destroyed and is ontologically evil and has never targeted California’s tech industry and has only ever lost ballot measures and they did so on purpose because the SEIU is largely responsible for a ballot measure, in California, that passed, that allowed Uber and Lyft etc. drivers to unionize, who are employees of tech companies.
If you simply ignore public well-documented contrary evidence he has a good point. I’m trying to picture the research/writing/editing process here
Sure, but it's not reasonable to call it as unpopular domestically as the Vietnam War, which had more than 12 times the casualties, spread over a group that on the whole was unwilling to fight and had to be drafted into the conflict, thereby spreading the pain of lost loved ones throughout society rather than concentrating it heavily into the poorer and less politically powerful social and economic classes. As unpopular as the Iraq war was, the American people's distaste didn't really do much to end it.
That’s reasonable. In the context of the larger discussion here a post up thread’s implication that a graduate in 2007 would be anti-war because of Vietnam is kind of dubious. Public opinion of the war shifted quite a lot in the four years after “Mission Accomplished” and Freedom Fries.
I like that I can’t tell if this is some sort of admonition for not voting centrist enough in a primary that didn’t happen or for not voting left enough in a primary that did not happen. It seems like if you’re going to be so bold as to do a callout you might as well say what for (and why you either picked or specifically skipped a primary that did not happen)
I like the idea that people are downvoting and not rebutting a summary because they think that an accurate summary will cause folks to not read sixteen thousand words that they would otherwise. It’s kind of agreement by dissent
Either they actually wrote all that on their own, or they had an LLM spew it. Either way, why? They had a valid point; you don't have to use LLMs to write your stuff. Why bury that point in this insane pile of verbiage?
But thanks for saving the rest of us. This is why I read the comments first.
Because it was, even if you disagree with it, beautifully written, emotionally resonant, full of funny jokes and cute stories and metaphors, and states well — and encapsulates — all of the nuances and sub-arguments of its side of the argument?
...because reading and writing well-written prose is meaningful and enjoyable?
It feels like half the people here do not read or write in their free time, which would be understandable if this were not primarily a site for software engineers who write (sorta) as a job
It is funny how that's basically one of the core points the article makes -- and in fact the article paints Hacker News commentors specifically as people who don't see that kind of inherent value in craft and artistry -- but the AI-generated summaries those people are relying on have missed it completely.
I actually disagreed with that particular point made in the article, because I don't really see myself as somebody who sees value in craft and artistry, I just want effective code that works (which imho LLMs cannot create).
But after reading this comment section... I mean if enjoying well written prose counts as enjoying craft and artistry I guess I do then? Damn.
> because reading and writing well-written prose is meaningful and enjoyable?
This is not prose, it is exposition. It is perfectly valid to critique any expository essay, especially one of this length, for its density (or lack thereof) of substantive information.
Sometimes writing can both contain information and be beautiful? This article is charming and thoughtful. Its style may not be for everyone, but for me it really hit, I am thoroughly enjoying reading it. Its style gives me no problem calling it prose.
A person writing an essay on their own site doesn't need to have the information density of bus timetable.
I somewhat disagree that this is not prose? This didn't seem like a purely expository piece. Like if it were just a straightforward technical piece than yeah its way to long, it could have been a few sentences.
But this seemed like it bridges the gap between prose and an expository essay -it was doing both.
> prose and an expository essay -it was doing both.
Putting prose in an essay means there are more valid criticisms of a piece of writing, not fewer. If somebody is breakdancing and reciting the periodic table at the same time it’s ok if somebody notices if they skipped the lanthanides and actinides.
I’m a fan of blending the two! It’s just really really hard to do both well at the same time. My most recent example is Malcolm Harris’ history of Palo Alto, it is incredibly well-done.
That’s kind of the point that I was making. When you mash the two together, both lenses are valid critiques.
It’s an exponentially more difficult way to accomplish either goal because one reader will see it and think “this is a sixteen thousand word essay that says very little” and another will see it and think “what a wonderful story” and there’s nobody to adjudicate who is correct.
Like I posted “this is sixteen thousand words about how the author doesn’t really use language models but might one day” and some folks’ rebuttal is that they enjoyed reading it. Those are two completely unrelated things! It’s like if folks saw the cover of The Hobbit and thought “Hell yeah!” and then when they read “there and back again” thought “whoever wrote that was being unnecessarily reductive”
>Either they actually wrote all that on their own, or they had an LLM spew it. Either way, why?
I mostly skimmed it. It’s entirely feasible that the author buried a confession about getting away with manslaughter or whatever that I missed somewhere in a few sentences in the middle of that novella though. It does begin with several paragraphs essentially telling you not to read the post and has a lot of completely unnecessary exposition (for example the section on Luddites)
Edit: I want to point out that I went over the post with my own eyeballs and brain
>or admitting they spend money on routine BS with zero frontier war fighting capabilities.
Trying to imagine somebody that doesn’t know that the military buys dumb stuff and for some reason a human doesn’t come to mind. I keep picturing a horse
It doesn’t seem like anybody has addressed “If they are the good guys with principles why did they work with Palantir?”
There’s a comment that’s sort of handwaving and saying “because America”, but I would imagine that someone with direct knowledge of the people involved would have something more substantive than “thems the breaks” when it comes to working with Palantir
I like the idea of seeing someone post “I dislike and distrust Sam Altman” and thinking “They must be saying that because they haven’t read the things that he writes”
I like that your vague response to the question is either “this provides no value without context” or “the value it provides without context is a secret that only I know” but phrased in a silly way
Fair point. My actual conclusion: California has made it structurally impossible to manufacture things it consumes, and has exported the environmental burden to places with fewer protections.
You have a good point. California is an area that makes some things but not all things. From this data we can conclude that California is an area on earth where there are people.
This places California somewhere between the north pole (produces no things) and replicators from Star Trek (produces all of the things) in terms of productivity. This is useful information because it makes the reader feel li
I like how this went from “piracy is categorically theft” to “trickle down economics is real and good” in so few posts, it is an impressively rapid display of statements that look like silly opinions but are actually objectively false assertions
> If you want to talk about those things, I suggest starting a new thread at the top level.
It seems like if you didn’t want to talk about the things that you implied in your posts you would elaborate on what you really meant, instead of asking folks to repost the points that you were trying to make.
I like that this combines the annoyance of when a streaming service randomly stops streaming a song/album/artist with the irritation of then having to update or remove a physical object
If you simply ignore public well-documented contrary evidence he has a good point. I’m trying to picture the research/writing/editing process here
reply