> "...only a question away from learning details of how it was implemented..."

That question will never be asked and we all know it. It's been demonstrated time and time again that the masses prefer entertainment to enlightenment and it is still being demonstrated today by the high rate of AI assisted cheating in high schools and colleges.

When I was a kid I did not understand what Game Genie "cheat codes" were doing, but it did not stop my curiosity and ultimate understanding of what was happening behind the scenes. This feels like the next iteration and I know _some_ kids will ask questions.

Worse. IF they DO ask the question, the answer is now

> You prompt a LLM and it just happens.

The bar for enlightenment is now further away as people are taught to expressively stop chasing it.

> That question will never be asked and we all know it.

I asked that question today. After years of working in Unity, I finally downloaded Unreal and spun up a quick game literally so I could poke around how it was implemented, and have been asking questions nonstop about what, how, and why things were implemented with a hands-on experiment.

Lots of people won't ask that question, but also lots of people most certainly will.

> That question will never be asked and we all know it.

You and I know different children. Mine give me the opposite impression. The questions have no end. I think that's a good thing.

Literally every child asks questions nonstop. In the vast majority of cases, that doesn't stick into adulthood.

I'm kind of hopeful that the "always helpful and courteous" personality of LLMs unless pushed intentionally will lead to more positive experiences around inquisitiveness in the youth. And more ability to retain it into adulthood. Even though I'm unsure about the second-order effects on human-human interaction.

What a cynical take on humanity

Ye gods; no, absolutely not. The isekai, levelling, etc. genre is almost entirely fanfic grade writing with a vanishingly thin coat of editorial polish on the few that get formally published. Characterization is trash, plotting is trash, and the background is the most generic of Tolkein/CRPG/JRPG rip-offs. Even the best of the webnovels are barely the literary equivalent of CMOT Dibbler's dubious sausages and the majority are far worse.

Dungeon Crawler Carl is marvelous, though. Threshold is also really good. Most of its terrible, but it's within error bounds for a lot of book quality.

Red Faction: Guerilla had physics based modeling of damage to structures and an auxiliary game mode where the objective was to collapse as many buildings as possible within a time limit using demolition charges and other weapons. (Of course, the player is a noble revolutionary fighting an oppressive government so there's a fig-leaf of social acceptability.) Precise and quick placement of demolition charges on structural supports was key to getting a good score. If they'd had some sort of procedural map generation for it, I'd probably still be playing it today.

> "my approach to this subject in this entire thread has been one of compassion and curiosity, which is easily verifiable."

You were lambasting the HN community with various pejoratives like "blowhards" and "putrid" in a comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50390997 ) in this thread 5 hours ago? There is no good faith interpretation for that I'm afraid.

My words were (emphasis added) “and my approach to this subject”. The section you quoted from another post is very clearly labeled as an edit (i.e. not part of the original text) and is concerned with the meta subject of how HN as a community has in general been sharply devolving into hatred. It is entirely orthogonal to the subject of the thread.

Furthermore, good faith does not mean positive sentiment. It is perfectly congruent to lament in good faith the bad state of a community.

Perhaps consider that if I invited you to read previous comments, I was aware of what I’d written.

You don’t understand, he’s got basic human empathy man

> "media affects people too"

The previous incarnations of that, like "videogames cause violence", "superhero comic books cause juvenile delinquency", "D&D causes satanism", "rock and roll caused a decline in youth morals", are nonsense that was discredited long ago.

You completely misunderstood. I meant that media affects people emotionally. Have you ever seen a person cry watching a movie? Have you ever seen someone say “this story speaks to me on a personal level”? Have you ever seen someone say “I couldn’t finish the show, it reminded me too much of my own father and his struggle with the same disease”? That’s what I meant, not “booga booga, fear mongering”.

God damn, why must HN always assume the worst? Engage in good faith for once, stop assuming every argument is made by an imbecile and that you understand everything and are the lord of reason.

Thank you for putting it elegantly, I think that was also was unsettles me. Not "media causes X" but rather how it can latch on to conceptual and emotional systems. Not saying it is a problem or should be forbidden, just calling into question what kind of meaning we are reinforcing.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/ZWl9C

[EDIT] The amusing part is: "Trump’s overall approval rating isn’t that much lower than in 2018. And his approval on immigration, healthcare, and a lot of other issues is pretty similar. The big change in our polling has been a giant decline in Trump’s approval on the economy." Some are acting as if the public has embraced the Democratic agenda when actually, to quote James Carville, a Clinton election strategist, "It's the economy, stupid." If that scoundrel in the White House hadn't tanked the economy, the Republicans would likely still have a firm grasp on Congress.

You seem to have missed that he wasn't popular on those things that didn't change. Healthcare in particular was low, immigration was at best middling.

> And previously, voters’ trust in his economic management was the one thing propping him up. But the Iran war destroyed it

Americans are surprisingly sane when polled on individual issues, but the political system doesn't generally reflect that.

The article seems to blame the Iran war most of all, though of course that has damaged the economy.

Subheadline: "Kernel maintainers stop asking who used AI, as long as the code is good"

[EDIT] Seems like a sensible position amid the storm of hype and doomerism, if you ask me.

Misses the point.

>I can handle the black tar heroin, but everyone else who can't should stay away from me, and stop making me deal with the inevitable consequences of their rampant misuse; but oh, please, don't take away my heroin.

This is what every AI user type sounds like to me these days. Sometimes, the downsides at macro outweigh the upsides in the micro.

In short, just because it works for you doesn't mean there isn't cause for concern, and if you're willing to make everyone else suffer for you to get a sliver more convenience, you're the one in the wrong.

The other difference is that Oppenheimer at least felt terror and remorse. The AI bros are saying "what we built might end the world but, lol, whatever."

That's known as the argument from authority fallacy.

Like, what? Solaris/SunOS, DEC Ultrix/Tru64, AIX, HP-UX, Xenix, etc., all with big bad monopolist AT&T's UNIX as their grandpappy. UNIX was corporate to the hilt.

Corporate, sure, but painting DEC, (old) HP, and Sun with the same brush as AT&T, IBM, and Microsoft just because they sold proprietary, but generally well-documented and reliable hardware and software at whatever prices the market would bear seems unfair.