as much as I hate the industry surrounding it, I cannot imagine hating my own craft so much that I’d ever reduce it to this
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I’m very curious
when a mathematician calls an equation or a method to solve it beautiful, what do you think they’re referring to?
when I doodle lambda calculus in my little notebook and line up all the transformations just so, do you imagine I’m doing it for any reason other than because it looks and feels aesthetically nice? my brain likes it even though it’s not useful.
when I write my Haskell like an equation on a whiteboard and my lisp like a sentence, what do you imagine I’m doing?
every long-running personal project I’ve ever done has been built on code I consider beautiful
I design fucking languages and frameworks on the basis that I’ve found a more aesthetically pleasing way to do something, because if I find it beautiful then it’s probably worth doing
the only time I write ugly code is when I’m forced to by my employer or when I’m solving a problem that shouldn’t exist
what does that tell you about your code, asshole?
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@zzt hmm I’ve always taken that to mean the aesthetics of the math itself, so like the balance of the equation, and using that balance to reach a solution, not necessarily the visual aesthetic of the process. Same as nice moves in a chess game, it’s the cleanliness of the solution to the problem that gives it aesthetic appeal
@cam there’s more than one type of aesthetics
sometimes you can make something that’s both visually pleasing and fun to think about
plenty of people like how a good game of chess looks and have no fucking idea how it’s played
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@rootwyrm I’m so confused why I was following his ass on here but yeah, the guy working for nvidia explains everything about the thread: he’s a mouthpiece for the company making the most actual profit off of the AI bubble and has internalized his employer’s bullshit
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we exist in a world with poetry
where the way words are organized is part of the beauty
how can the same not apply to code?
do you not have eyes?
@zzt not sure if there's a cure for those who refuse to believe that beauty exists
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@zzt @aerique gambling addiction is actually only a small portion of it. If it was just that, it would be far less effective.
The sycophancy is intentional, in other words. Every public LLM psychosis I have ever seen is primarily DELUSIONAL disorder with significant or severe disassociation from reality.
Which honestly is fitting when the people at the top are serial liars with their own extremely severe mental disorders. -
@zzt @aerique gambling addiction is actually only a small portion of it. If it was just that, it would be far less effective.
The sycophancy is intentional, in other words. Every public LLM psychosis I have ever seen is primarily DELUSIONAL disorder with significant or severe disassociation from reality.
Which honestly is fitting when the people at the top are serial liars with their own extremely severe mental disorders.@zzt @aerique understand that compulsive gambling is that; a COMPULSIVE disorder. Someone who insists on only using one specific chatbot in other words, doesn't meet the diagnostic criteria. The problem is not believing the next pull will fix it.
The problem is delusional disorder; they insist that the chatbot is capable and reject all proof and arguments to the contrary. They believe the chatbot when the output apologizes and promises to not fuck up next time.
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@zzt @aerique understand that compulsive gambling is that; a COMPULSIVE disorder. Someone who insists on only using one specific chatbot in other words, doesn't meet the diagnostic criteria. The problem is not believing the next pull will fix it.
The problem is delusional disorder; they insist that the chatbot is capable and reject all proof and arguments to the contrary. They believe the chatbot when the output apologizes and promises to not fuck up next time.
@zzt @aerique that notably is also where the disassociation from reality comes in. It's not socipathy when they reject the external costs.
These people are so utterly cooked that they don't believe those externalized costs *exist*, and if they do, the evidence of the damage is false or vastly overstated. And because of their delusional disorder, they will only believe the chatbot when it says these costs aren't real or are minimal. How could anyone BUT the chatbot know?!
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as much as I hate the industry surrounding it, I cannot imagine hating my own craft so much that I’d ever reduce it to this
it feels unfair that I know so many people who agonize over beautiful code and suffer from imposter syndrome but this little fucker from nvidia can argue against the existence of beauty in what we do because capital demands it and his disdain for what he does reinforces it
code is art, and LLM code is ugly, regardless of what capital wants https://nondeterministic.computer/@mjg59/116424732252818630
@zzt Sometimes I'm afraid I've become too jaded and cynical about my craft, and then I read a comment like that and I realize that you know what, I'm fine actually. The world may have taken some of my soul, but I've still got more than that.
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@zzt @aerique that notably is also where the disassociation from reality comes in. It's not socipathy when they reject the external costs.
These people are so utterly cooked that they don't believe those externalized costs *exist*, and if they do, the evidence of the damage is false or vastly overstated. And because of their delusional disorder, they will only believe the chatbot when it says these costs aren't real or are minimal. How could anyone BUT the chatbot know?!
@zzt @aerique and to be *extremely* clear here: these are MENTAL HEALTH EMERGENCIES. They are not 'oh, go see a therapist in 3-6 months.'
They are "you need IMMEDIATE intervention," and many public faces I've seen are *textbook* involuntary in-patient for their own safety and the safety of others.Even when they seem 'harmless' because they're 'just burning money.' This escalates to extreme self-harm very quickly.
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we exist in a world with poetry
where the way words are organized is part of the beauty
how can the same not apply to code?
do you not have eyes?
@zzt@mas.to sorry i keep sending you blog links but this relates to a thing I said a year ago! https://rustredriver.com/blog/20250310-cyberia-source-code-as-narrative.html
the programmers refusal to engage with their identity as a writer renders it impossible to see their own use of language as artistic. It can only exist as assembly-line machine-like production, because all you can do is "make more words" to accomplish any of your goals -
@fisk you’ve never known any artists and it shows
what a depressing life you’ve chosen
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@zzt@mas.to sorry i keep sending you blog links but this relates to a thing I said a year ago! https://rustredriver.com/blog/20250310-cyberia-source-code-as-narrative.html
the programmers refusal to engage with their identity as a writer renders it impossible to see their own use of language as artistic. It can only exist as assembly-line machine-like production, because all you can do is "make more words" to accomplish any of your goals -
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@zzt@mas.to sorry i keep sending you blog links but this relates to a thing I said a year ago! https://rustredriver.com/blog/20250310-cyberia-source-code-as-narrative.html
the programmers refusal to engage with their identity as a writer renders it impossible to see their own use of language as artistic. It can only exist as assembly-line machine-like production, because all you can do is "make more words" to accomplish any of your goals@kalviter @zzt Code is a form of communication that must both deliver clear instructions to the computer *and* explain itself to other humans, so that the software can be understood, maintained and improved. (And help programmers learn, ideally.)
LLMs are an assault on not just art, but all communication. (Art to me is about communicating the ineffable / indescribable, like sharing feelings themselves instead of just a discussion about feelings.)
Alternately, communication is an art.
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every long-running personal project I’ve ever done has been built on code I consider beautiful
I design fucking languages and frameworks on the basis that I’ve found a more aesthetically pleasing way to do something, because if I find it beautiful then it’s probably worth doing
the only time I write ugly code is when I’m forced to by my employer or when I’m solving a problem that shouldn’t exist
what does that tell you about your code, asshole?
please, computer touchers, sneak into art school and befriend even a single artist
art and the process that goes into making it isn’t at all like what you think it is
if you think art can’t serve a function or that it doesn’t take a fuckton of planning and work, you’ll be fucking shocked by what you’ll learn working alongside artists
what you learn will make you a better person
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please, computer touchers, sneak into art school and befriend even a single artist
art and the process that goes into making it isn’t at all like what you think it is
if you think art can’t serve a function or that it doesn’t take a fuckton of planning and work, you’ll be fucking shocked by what you’ll learn working alongside artists
what you learn will make you a better person
@zzt I'm obviously biased by my own experiences but I do believe that the fact that my game dev college course had two mandatory units on art (2d and 3d) benefitted me greatly. I also took an optional unit on introduction to UI/UX design, freaking loved it
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as much as I hate the industry surrounding it, I cannot imagine hating my own craft so much that I’d ever reduce it to this
it feels unfair that I know so many people who agonize over beautiful code and suffer from imposter syndrome but this little fucker from nvidia can argue against the existence of beauty in what we do because capital demands it and his disdain for what he does reinforces it
code is art, and LLM code is ugly, regardless of what capital wants https://nondeterministic.computer/@mjg59/116424732252818630
@zzt To me, writing beautiful code is very related to writing clean and elegant code, which I would sincerely hope that we all try to do to the best of our abilities and time constraints. Having read other people's code, I'm aware that not everyone enjoys dividing their code into neat sections that are easy to follow or commenting their code, but it makes review and maintenance so much easier! And it also looks nice.
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as much as I hate the industry surrounding it, I cannot imagine hating my own craft so much that I’d ever reduce it to this
it feels unfair that I know so many people who agonize over beautiful code and suffer from imposter syndrome but this little fucker from nvidia can argue against the existence of beauty in what we do because capital demands it and his disdain for what he does reinforces it
code is art, and LLM code is ugly, regardless of what capital wants https://nondeterministic.computer/@mjg59/116424732252818630
@zzt I don't really care about the "art" label for code, but maybe that's because I find debates around it exhausting for all other types of art, too. People always seem to want what is art, as if art is some label that confers value: "you're allowed to enjoy this".
There's certainly a creative process to creating code, it communicates and evokes, etc etc. So no matter what, OP is wrong/disingenuous/reductive (see also my reply https://mas.to/@nielsa/116424841059102047)
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please, computer touchers, sneak into art school and befriend even a single artist
art and the process that goes into making it isn’t at all like what you think it is
if you think art can’t serve a function or that it doesn’t take a fuckton of planning and work, you’ll be fucking shocked by what you’ll learn working alongside artists
what you learn will make you a better person
@zzt Say what you will about the furry fandom but there are a LOT of coders and just as many artists, writers and musicians, and the hate for AI is shared by both communities because they know full well the amount of work that goes into traditional creative works and coding alike, and the people being robbed to feed the machine are their friends.
