for those tracking John Carmack's descent into right wing total moral disorientation, he's now at "Palmer Luckey should buy Wired and do to it what Elon Musk did to Twitter"
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there was one red flag that made me reconsider his human side/moral backbone:
in the days of Quake-1, ID collaborated with Rendition to define what the hardware should look like; that's when
he did a 180*:<<... Quake is not going to do Z-buffering.” ... And then halfway through Quake I said, “Well I changed my mind. We are using Z-buffering...>>
Rendition V1100 not having (performant) z-buffering contributed to the company failure.
@Groleo @randomgeek @jplebreton I don’t know. No one knew how to do 3d the “right way”. Let alone hw 3d accelerators for consumers. It seems only natural to change your mind in a field that was constantly changing.
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@Groleo @randomgeek @jplebreton I don’t know. No one knew how to do 3d the “right way”. Let alone hw 3d accelerators for consumers. It seems only natural to change your mind in a field that was constantly changing.
@pythno @randomgeek @jplebreton
my point was to have the guts to say "i'm not totally sure about this".
instead, as seen over and over, it was: oh, this is the sh*t -
@jplebreton not unexpected. Every talk by him is/was choke full of arrogance and ignorance. As a VR veteran i could even attest him scientific misunderstanding. I don’t get why people worship him.
@retrakker @jplebreton He was a legend in the days of early 3D graphics, up until the days of MegaTexture (Clipmapping) tech in idTech4. This is specially distressing for me because he also had a hacker spirit: he released the source of his games when they were on top, and while nobody else was doing it, because he believed in free information and source was an extension of it.
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@retrakker @jplebreton He was a legend in the days of early 3D graphics, up until the days of MegaTexture (Clipmapping) tech in idTech4. This is specially distressing for me because he also had a hacker spirit: he released the source of his games when they were on top, and while nobody else was doing it, because he believed in free information and source was an extension of it.
@doragasu @jplebreton sure about his technical wizardry early in his career. However, I wouldn't take OSS as a hint towards somebody with positive traits. Its just code. And examples for OSS advocates gone rogue are amass. In my book he would be a legend if he would have actively passed things on and built a open community around him welcoming everybody. Just dropping off some code is not enough in my book.
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@doragasu @jplebreton sure about his technical wizardry early in his career. However, I wouldn't take OSS as a hint towards somebody with positive traits. Its just code. And examples for OSS advocates gone rogue are amass. In my book he would be a legend if he would have actively passed things on and built a open community around him welcoming everybody. Just dropping off some code is not enough in my book.
@retrakker @jplebreton It was not "dropping off some code". It was releasing the sources for the most advanced and best performing 3D gaming engines of their time. It's unfortunate money corrupted him to descend into "moral disorientation" as the OP says, but if you read books like "Masters of Doom", it is for me clear his hacker spirit was there back in the day, he was the kind of person that just wanted to do cool things with computers.
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@TomF @jplebreton big sigh.
@lritter @TomF @jplebreton From what I gather there is nothing particularly interesting about his AI research either. I think when people become too rich or too much of a celebrity it's very easy for them to get surrounded by sycophants and assholes. That'll change a person. It's sad to realize the person you liked so much might no longer be around.
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@lritter @TomF @jplebreton From what I gather there is nothing particularly interesting about his AI research either. I think when people become too rich or too much of a celebrity it's very easy for them to get surrounded by sycophants and assholes. That'll change a person. It's sad to realize the person you liked so much might no longer be around.
@mirth @TomF @jplebreton i always keep a mouse door open in case he trips and wakes up. you never know.
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@jplebreton the world needs to show me a man who hasn't been corrupted by massive amount of money.
@bitinn @jplebreton José ‘Pepe’ Mujica
?
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@vampiress @jplebreton I agree. I stopped having heroes a long, long time ago. There are still people I admire, of course. The distinction, I think, between having a hero and admiring someone is whether or not it becomes an attack on one's own identity to realize that the person in question is flawed (perhaps irredeemably so). It's painful to lose a hero.
I admired Noam Chomsky for many years. Then I found out that he not only remained friends with Epstein, but also advised him and thought he was a "victim of the press" after it became public knowledge that Epstein was a serial rapist. Someone with so spectacularly bad moral judgment is not a person I can admire, so I stopped admiring him. This wasn't painful at all.
(There are few people left in the tech / software sphere I admire.)
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@jplebreton to be fair he was highly sceptical of the metaverse thing. But otherwise I fully agree. Very sad to see his trajectory.
@pythno @jplebreton Hm? From what I recall, he was very fond of the Snow Crash book, from where the term sources?
I (tried to) read it, and jeez, the themes in that book are *ugly*. Another puzzle piece that fits, though.
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for those tracking John Carmack's descent into right wing total moral disorientation, he's now at "Palmer Luckey should buy Wired and do to it what Elon Musk did to Twitter".
he's full fash at this point. totally gonna deliver AGI by 2030 though.
increasingly disgusting that he named his shitass company after Commander Keen, a joyful little video game from before he became a millionaire and was empowered to become his worst self.@jplebreton Sigh, another datapoint in the list of "people who may have been decent once and got turned into assholes by too much money".

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@jplebreton Sigh, another datapoint in the list of "people who may have been decent once and got turned into assholes by too much money".

@floe @jplebreton Another reason billionaires should not exist - for the sake of the billionaires too.
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for those tracking John Carmack's descent into right wing total moral disorientation, he's now at "Palmer Luckey should buy Wired and do to it what Elon Musk did to Twitter".
he's full fash at this point. totally gonna deliver AGI by 2030 though.
increasingly disgusting that he named his shitass company after Commander Keen, a joyful little video game from before he became a millionaire and was empowered to become his worst self.@jplebreton He's done a real Carmack reverse since working on Wolfenstein.
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for those tracking John Carmack's descent into right wing total moral disorientation, he's now at "Palmer Luckey should buy Wired and do to it what Elon Musk did to Twitter".
he's full fash at this point. totally gonna deliver AGI by 2030 though.
increasingly disgusting that he named his shitass company after Commander Keen, a joyful little video game from before he became a millionaire and was empowered to become his worst self.@jplebreton Him starting to work at Oculus and not leaving after the umpteenth Facebook scandal was a signal already.
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for those tracking John Carmack's descent into right wing total moral disorientation, he's now at "Palmer Luckey should buy Wired and do to it what Elon Musk did to Twitter".
he's full fash at this point. totally gonna deliver AGI by 2030 though.
increasingly disgusting that he named his shitass company after Commander Keen, a joyful little video game from before he became a millionaire and was empowered to become his worst self.@jplebreton I always knew Carmack was going to snap. Some types of nerd should NOT be allowed contact with the real world.
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for those tracking John Carmack's descent into right wing total moral disorientation, he's now at "Palmer Luckey should buy Wired and do to it what Elon Musk did to Twitter".
he's full fash at this point. totally gonna deliver AGI by 2030 though.
increasingly disgusting that he named his shitass company after Commander Keen, a joyful little video game from before he became a millionaire and was empowered to become his worst self.@jplebreton Surely, he's being sarcastic here, right? ... Right?
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for those tracking John Carmack's descent into right wing total moral disorientation, he's now at "Palmer Luckey should buy Wired and do to it what Elon Musk did to Twitter".
he's full fash at this point. totally gonna deliver AGI by 2030 though.
increasingly disgusting that he named his shitass company after Commander Keen, a joyful little video game from before he became a millionaire and was empowered to become his worst self.@jplebreton I'm sad. Carmack is my favorite game developer
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for those tracking John Carmack's descent into right wing total moral disorientation, he's now at "Palmer Luckey should buy Wired and do to it what Elon Musk did to Twitter".
he's full fash at this point. totally gonna deliver AGI by 2030 though.
increasingly disgusting that he named his shitass company after Commander Keen, a joyful little video game from before he became a millionaire and was empowered to become his worst self.@jplebreton I've only spoken to the guy once, about 25 years ago -- he gave me advice on how to deal with texture priorities in an OpenGL driver I was writing for BeOS (his advice: ignore it).
Rather than wealth itself, or an intrinsic personality flaw, I think the greater influence leading him down this dark path was simply *being* at Facebook, five days a week, around all those other people who see nothing wrong with what they're doing at Facebook.
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a hero is not a person; it is an image. heroes are not stocks you invest in or a religion you join.
a hero is a mental image of something you want to do or become, formed around a real person who likely shits their pants and fucks up constantly.
don't let any of that keep you from dreaming of and working for a good, kind, just world, and becoming the best person you can be.@jplebreton beatifully written.
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@pythno @jplebreton Hm? From what I recall, he was very fond of the Snow Crash book, from where the term sources?
I (tried to) read it, and jeez, the themes in that book are *ugly*. Another puzzle piece that fits, though.
@wolfpld @pythno @jplebreton there is "Metaverse" as whatever the actual product was at Facebook. And "Metaverse" as a fiction in a book. I haven't read Snow Crash, so I took it to vaguely mean "cyberspace". I take it the Metaverse in Snow Crash has bad connotations?