I find myself both agreeing and disagreeing with "Carbon Dysphoria".
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@iris_meredith @jason I've seen this argument put forward a lot (as well as its sister argument: that software engineering is inherently less deserving of the name "engineering" than other engineering fields), and I am unconvinced: if you can't meet your 16.6ms timing target, things will stutter and everyone will know, much the same way as if a bridge falls, everyone would know—although with much less injury; and the sister argument has been studied in the field from which I took away the conclusion that no, it's in many ways on the same level, and in some it exceeds other engineering fields in rigor. naturally, I don't mean to imply that SWE is perfect or better than those other fields either.
I do think there is merit to it going in the other direction: people whose minds are already malleable—outcasts, abuse survivors, someone who did a little too much LSD—might find computing and its malleability appealing, in the same way that you tend to select for people with traits similar to yours. this trait, coupled with a general lack of socialization or background that would make you resist getting in a cult, has the predictable outcome of ending up in the first trap you find appealing and then staying there until it becomes unbearable
@iris_meredith @jason anecdotally, people around me have been joking a lot that I probably went to work on FPGAs because I find it pretty easy to adapt my mind to whatever circumstance I find myself in quickly to the point of seeing it as a technology in its own right
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@iris_meredith @jason anecdotally, people around me have been joking a lot that I probably went to work on FPGAs because I find it pretty easy to adapt my mind to whatever circumstance I find myself in quickly to the point of seeing it as a technology in its own right
@iris_meredith @jason (as an aside, I do actually think that there is one thing where SWE is uniquely bad, and that's layman expectations. people expect bridges to stay up and not be rusty the moment you build them. people absolutely do not expect software to be fit for purpose; if anything it's closer to the opposite, people have such low expectations for software that they try to avoid forming mental models of it at all. I'm not sure how this feeds into the overall dynamic but I do think this is clearly bad for the mental health of every party involved.)
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@iris_meredith @jason anecdotally, people around me have been joking a lot that I probably went to work on FPGAs because I find it pretty easy to adapt my mind to whatever circumstance I find myself in quickly to the point of seeing it as a technology in its own right
@whitequark @jason I think I'd agree with you on the engineering matter: the point of difference I have is that I think that socioculturally, a lot of people writing software/doing tech aren't actually doing engineering. There's a noticeable cultural difference between "software engineer" and "person who writes software" and it's mostly the latter that dictate culture and that are going to be the biggest influence on the cult thing. And for them, they do experience it as labile in a way that
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@whitequark @jason I think I'd agree with you on the engineering matter: the point of difference I have is that I think that socioculturally, a lot of people writing software/doing tech aren't actually doing engineering. There's a noticeable cultural difference between "software engineer" and "person who writes software" and it's mostly the latter that dictate culture and that are going to be the biggest influence on the cult thing. And for them, they do experience it as labile in a way that
@whitequark @jason I can't quite get my head around. I think what I mean when I say "labile" is that software has failure modes that *look right* or *look compelling* in ways that other engineering fields don't.
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@whitequark @jason I can't quite get my head around. I think what I mean when I say "labile" is that software has failure modes that *look right* or *look compelling* in ways that other engineering fields don't.
@whitequark @jason Also, do tell me to shut up if you need to: I have a terribly bad habit of discussing things well past the point where the discussion ceases to be productive.
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@whitequark @jason Also, do tell me to shut up if you need to: I have a terribly bad habit of discussing things well past the point where the discussion ceases to be productive.
@iris_meredith @jason nono I find this quite engaging actually!
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@iris_meredith @jason I've seen this argument put forward a lot (as well as its sister argument: that software engineering is inherently less deserving of the name "engineering" than other engineering fields), and I am unconvinced: if you can't meet your 16.6ms timing target, things will stutter and everyone will know, much the same way as if a bridge falls, everyone would know—although with much less injury; and the sister argument has been studied in the field from which I took away the conclusion that no, it's in many ways on the same level, and in some it exceeds other engineering fields in rigor. naturally, I don't mean to imply that SWE is perfect or better than those other fields either.
I do think there is merit to it going in the other direction: people whose minds are already malleable—outcasts, abuse survivors, someone who did a little too much LSD—might find computing and its malleability appealing, in the same way that you tend to select for people with traits similar to yours. this trait, coupled with a general lack of socialization or background that would make you resist getting in a cult, has the predictable outcome of ending up in the first trap you find appealing and then staying there until it becomes unbearable
@whitequark @iris_meredith @jason i do like the idea of cult survivorship as a framing device for interpreting the experience of having left software development (or let's say a certain part of it which was very apparently cult-like even at the time)
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@iris_meredith @jason nono I find this quite engaging actually!
@whitequark @jason Oh, good! I'm glad
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@whitequark @jason I can't quite get my head around. I think what I mean when I say "labile" is that software has failure modes that *look right* or *look compelling* in ways that other engineering fields don't.
@iris_meredith @jason I think this is a good point! I would say that there's a big group of people who write software without being software engineers or "software influencers" (a term I'm going to introduce for the group you're pointing at): namely, all the other disciplines that just happen to need software for something else but which aren't involved, or actively don't care, about SWE culture. I think they're mostly unengaged here, and often surprised at how bad things have become.
I admit, I still feel like software isn't unique in having these failure modes. ASIC development—not sure how familiar are you with it—is chock full of ways to write code that falls apart if you need any kind of reliability but which can be patched together with software just enough to look good enough. (your GPU is probably one of those devices.)
I do think that maybe the combination of "the failure modes are subtle enough and the consequences externalized enough that one can convince oneself these aren't failure modes at all" with "there is zero barrier to entry and you can potentially earn a lot of money by emphasizing short-term gain" is unique, but I would have to think more about historical examples to consider whether this is the case.
this all reminds me somewhat of finance: if you're at the head of Enron, you can spend a lot of time convinced that you're gonna come out on top, until it all comes crashing down, and empirically people like that do tend to convince lots of others to stake their own lives.
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@whitequark @iris_meredith @jason i do like the idea of cult survivorship as a framing device for interpreting the experience of having left software development (or let's say a certain part of it which was very apparently cult-like even at the time)
@rakslice @iris_meredith @jason my experience of software development today is a guarded kind of existence where I spend a lot of my time making sure I'm not going to delude myself into something that would be convenient to believe. unpleasant but utterly necessary.
(I do want to change how I live my life so that I'm no longer in this position, but exactly what should I work towards is a bit of a mystery to me still...)
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@whitequark @jason I think I'd agree with you on the engineering matter: the point of difference I have is that I think that socioculturally, a lot of people writing software/doing tech aren't actually doing engineering. There's a noticeable cultural difference between "software engineer" and "person who writes software" and it's mostly the latter that dictate culture and that are going to be the biggest influence on the cult thing. And for them, they do experience it as labile in a way that
@iris_meredith @whitequark @jason As someone who enjoys reading through all the code which makes our computers function...
I'll agree with you that most of us software devs aren't really doing engineering! The way we try to kid ourselves that our well-paid interior decorating is manly construction work does strike me as very dysphoric!
Heck, this metaphorical construction work tends to be underpaid & undervalued! Like much the labour labeled feminine.
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@iris_meredith @jason I think this is a good point! I would say that there's a big group of people who write software without being software engineers or "software influencers" (a term I'm going to introduce for the group you're pointing at): namely, all the other disciplines that just happen to need software for something else but which aren't involved, or actively don't care, about SWE culture. I think they're mostly unengaged here, and often surprised at how bad things have become.
I admit, I still feel like software isn't unique in having these failure modes. ASIC development—not sure how familiar are you with it—is chock full of ways to write code that falls apart if you need any kind of reliability but which can be patched together with software just enough to look good enough. (your GPU is probably one of those devices.)
I do think that maybe the combination of "the failure modes are subtle enough and the consequences externalized enough that one can convince oneself these aren't failure modes at all" with "there is zero barrier to entry and you can potentially earn a lot of money by emphasizing short-term gain" is unique, but I would have to think more about historical examples to consider whether this is the case.
this all reminds me somewhat of finance: if you're at the head of Enron, you can spend a lot of time convinced that you're gonna come out on top, until it all comes crashing down, and empirically people like that do tend to convince lots of others to stake their own lives.
@whitequark @jason I think the "barrier to entry" thing is a highly salient point: my field of study is engineering mathematics, and in that field, by the time you can meaningfully contribute you've spent at least several years absorbing social norms and being socialised by person-to-person contact with other experts in the field. That has its disadvantages, but it also tends to prevent some of the really weird stuff you see in software.
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@whitequark @jason I think the "barrier to entry" thing is a highly salient point: my field of study is engineering mathematics, and in that field, by the time you can meaningfully contribute you've spent at least several years absorbing social norms and being socialised by person-to-person contact with other experts in the field. That has its disadvantages, but it also tends to prevent some of the really weird stuff you see in software.
@iris_meredith @jason yeah. I thought the combination of layoffs, the current LLM mania, and the (likely) upcoming bubble pop, while obviously tragic for people who have student loans or hoped for a good career, should the more blatant grift and profiteering much less desirable.
this reveals my bias in that I highly favor the kinds of work that involve maintaining something valuable over much longer periods of time than the hype cycle duration
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@whitequark @jason I think I'd agree with you on the engineering matter: the point of difference I have is that I think that socioculturally, a lot of people writing software/doing tech aren't actually doing engineering. There's a noticeable cultural difference between "software engineer" and "person who writes software" and it's mostly the latter that dictate culture and that are going to be the biggest influence on the cult thing. And for them, they do experience it as labile in a way that
@iris_meredith @whitequark @jason software as a field is uniquely vulnerable to this type of thinking but webdev and its various offshoots — by far the genre of software most closely aligned with SV culture — are especially even MORE vulnerable to it. web software, particularly web backend software, is exceptionally labile *even for software* in precisely this way: it is one of the easiest places to mask missing a performance target
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@iris_meredith @whitequark @jason software as a field is uniquely vulnerable to this type of thinking but webdev and its various offshoots — by far the genre of software most closely aligned with SV culture — are especially even MORE vulnerable to it. web software, particularly web backend software, is exceptionally labile *even for software* in precisely this way: it is one of the easiest places to mask missing a performance target
@glyph @whitequark @jason Huh. Just registered a thing: I'm very good at writing high-performance C code, but for some reason that just doesn't parse in my brain as a *software* skill? If anything, C lives in the maths part of my brain.
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@iris_meredith @jason yeah. I thought the combination of layoffs, the current LLM mania, and the (likely) upcoming bubble pop, while obviously tragic for people who have student loans or hoped for a good career, should the more blatant grift and profiteering much less desirable.
this reveals my bias in that I highly favor the kinds of work that involve maintaining something valuable over much longer periods of time than the hype cycle duration
@whitequark @jason It's a mess, but I think it does also give us a good opportunity for realigning the industry along slightly more reasonable lines. I'm writing an article about it now, as it happens.
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@glyph @whitequark @jason Huh. Just registered a thing: I'm very good at writing high-performance C code, but for some reason that just doesn't parse in my brain as a *software* skill? If anything, C lives in the maths part of my brain.
@iris_meredith @glyph @jason so, this is a topic I am fascinated by!
I work with RTL. from a mathematical perspective, every modern digital system consists of a few clock domains, with each clock domain defined by a transfer function:
s', o = f(s, i). these domains communicate, but are typically implemented in a way where each is relatively autonomous—e.g. a multicore CPU can reasonably be implemented in a single clock domain.learning how to express myself in a HDL by studying the correspondences between the designs I'm entering and the resulting function and its logic implementation is how I got good at logic design. but this type of thinking also made me a better programmer; in terms of this abstraction, a CPU is just a certain type of state machine, and you can (if you are designing your own computer architecture) move logic across the ISA boundary to make certain things easier or harder to express, which helps you think about the instructions you're giving the CPU in a broader context
writing HDL to me is both a math-type skill and a software-type skill: the math is to come up the transfer function, the software is to communicate it to others
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@whitequark @jason It's a mess, but I think it does also give us a good opportunity for realigning the industry along slightly more reasonable lines. I'm writing an article about it now, as it happens.
@iris_meredith @whitequark @jason there is historical precedent. c.f. SV culture in 1999 vs. 2002, or 2007 vs. 2009. Post-bubble culture is, counterintuitively, a lot more *fun* here, because there is still plenty of money for a lot of people to live, but not enough money for the money bastards to get up to bastarding.
this time might be different given the absolute depths to which things have decayed, and the literally world-historically unprecedented amounts of money involved.
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@iris_meredith @whitequark @jason there is historical precedent. c.f. SV culture in 1999 vs. 2002, or 2007 vs. 2009. Post-bubble culture is, counterintuitively, a lot more *fun* here, because there is still plenty of money for a lot of people to live, but not enough money for the money bastards to get up to bastarding.
this time might be different given the absolute depths to which things have decayed, and the literally world-historically unprecedented amounts of money involved.
@iris_meredith @whitequark @jason so I am not exactly optimistic, but I am not a complete doomer either
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@iris_meredith @whitequark @jason so I am not exactly optimistic, but I am not a complete doomer either
@glyph @iris_meredith @jason yeah. my plan is definitely to outlive my adversaries
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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Naturalmente sarò *aggiornato* sul mio benessere psicofisico grazie a un corso di 4 ore nel pomeriggio dopo una mattinata di scappellamento con i pargoletti.
Muoro dall'impazienza di essere erudito sull'annosa questione, a -177 giorni dalla data ufficiale della mia rottamazione.
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@filosophy.bsky.social (@filosophy.bsky.social)
https://bsky.app/profile/filosophy.bsky.social/post/3mghwwm2pcc2r
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@silverpill@mitra.social @phnt@fluffytail.org
@silverpill@mitra.social is right that maintainers hold real authority here, and I want to build on that rather than argue against either of you.
The frustration with LLMs is largely legitimate. But “how does this look to outsiders” is a poor criterion for evaluating ethical concerns; by that standard, feminism looks like lunacy to 4chan. The question is whether the concerns are correct, not whether they're legible to the unconvinced.
That said, I don't think making LLMs socially unacceptable is a viable path, and not just because the adoption curve has run too far. The maintainer's authority is real precisely because it's specific: you decide what enters your project. Refusing AI-assisted contributions is a legitimate choice. But declaring LLM use itself impermissible starts to look like “I only accept patches written in Vim, not IDE-generated code”—a demand that grows harder to justify as the tools become ordinary. As maintainer of Fedify, I've taken a middle path: disclose what you used, show you've tested it yourself, and we're fine. See also https://github.com/fedify-dev/fedify/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md.
What worries me more is that the “total rejection vs. total acceptance” framing leaves the actual problem untouched. If we stay inside that binary, OpenAI and the others keep the models, keep the surplus, keep the compute bills externalized onto the climate—with no pressure to change any of it. The ethical problems with LLMs aren't properties of the technology; they're properties of who owns it and under what terms. I've written about this in more depth if it's of interest: Histomat of F/OSS: We should reclaim LLMs, not reject them and a follow-up Acting materialistically in an imperfect world: LLMs as means of production and social relations.
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Storie di quotidiana follia scolastica. Tra circa un mese, a esattamente -38 giorni di lezione dal termine della mia entusiasmante carriera "dentro queste quattro mura scolastiche" (cit.) sono *obbligato*, perché ancora in servizio, a seguire un corso di *aggiornamento* sul tema "Prendersi cura di chi educa: strategie pratiche per il benessere psicofisico dei docenti"
magari il mio benessere psicofisico sarebbe stato più solido senza dover essere costretto a questa bischerata, ma, tant'è...
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@ideeinformazione sosteniamo Sanchez trascorrendo ferie e vacanze in spagna comprando prodotti spagnoli
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@gmarcosanti
Questa volta non mi sono scottato
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@_elena @Roneyb @davidnjoku this video is already 12yrs old & children worldwide still suffer. 😢 😔
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Appello europeo di Stop Rearm Europe
Non una base, non un sistema d’arma, non un soldo per la guerra. L’Italia e l’Europa facciano come la Spagna.
Mobilitiamoci. Prima che sia troppo tardi.
#Guerra
https://www.ideeinformazione.org/2026/03/07/appello-europeo-di-stop-rearm-europe/
