This is an interesting crystallization that parallels a lot of thoughts I've been having, and it's particularly hopeful that it seeks to discard the "hacker" moniker and instead specifically describe the subjects as programmers. Looking back, I was only becoming terminally online circa 1997, and back then it seemed like there was an across-the-spectrum effort to reclaim the term "hacker" into a positive connotation after the federal prosecutions of the early 90s. People from aspirant-executive types like Paul Graham to dirty hippies like RMS were insistent that being a "hacker" was a good thing, maybe the best possible thing. This was, of course, a dead letter as soon as Facebook set up at "One Hacker Way" in Menlo Park, but I'd say it's definitely for the best to finally put a solid tombstone on top of that cultural impulse.

As well, because my understanding of the defining activity of the positive-good "hacker" is that it's all too close to Zuckerberg's "move fast and break things," and I think Jared White would probably agree with me. Paul Graham was willing to embrace the term because he was used to the interactive development style of Lisp environments, but the mainstream tools have only fitfully evolved in that direction at best. When "hacking," the "hacker" makes a series of short, small iterations with a mostly nebulous goal in mind, and the bulk of the effort may actually be what's invested in the minimum viable product. The self-conception inherits from geek culture a slumped posture of almost permanent insufficiency, perhaps hiding a Straussian victimhood complex to justify maintaining one's own otherness.

In mentioning Jobs, the piece gestures towards the important cultural distinction that I still think is underexamined. If we're going to reclaim and rehabilitate even homeopathic amounts of Jobs' reputation, the thesis we're trying to get at is that his conception of computers as human tools is directly at odds with the AI promoters' (and, more broadly, most cloud vendors') conception of computers as separate entities. The development of generative AI is only loosely connected with the sanitized smiley-face conception of "hacking." The sheer amount of resources and time spent on training foreclose the possibility of a rapid development loop, and you're still not guaranteed viable output at the end. Your "hacks" can devolve into a complete mess, and at eye-watering expense.

I went and skimmed Graham's Hackers and Painters again to see if I could find any choice quotes along these lines, since he spends that entire essay overdosing on the virtuosity of the "hacker." And hoo boy:

Measuring what hackers are actually trying to do, designing beautiful software, would be much more difficult. You need a good sense of design to judge good design. And there is no correlation, except possibly a negative one, between people's ability to recognize good design and their confidence that they can.

You think Graham will ever realize that we're culminating a generation of his precious "hackers" who ultimately failed at all this?

Top-tier from Willison himself:

The learning isn’t in studying the finished product, it’s in watching how it gets there.

Mate, if that's true, my years of Gentoo experience watching compiler commands fly past in the terminal means I'm a senior operating system architect.

Despite Mr. Davis' commitment to verbose apologetics, his faith movement is based around the devotional practice of wandering around pulling spurious probability estimates out of one's ass

A recent innovation on this practice, among the degenerate indulgence-retailers of the movement, is the posting of graphs showing hopelessly low-liquidity betting pools on prediction market websites

tl,dr; Thiel now sees the Christofascists as a more durable grifting base than the EAs, and is looking to change lanes while the temporary coalitions of maximalist Trumpism offer him the opportunity.

I repeat my suspicion that Thiel is not any more sober than Musk, he's just getting sloppier about keeping it out of the public eye.

You will be allotted your weekly ration of tokens, comrade, and you will be grateful

For Yarvin, it always is and always will be someone else's fault

But Star Trek says the smartest guys in the room don't have emotions

#include BidenThoughts.h

This is a thought I've been entertaining for some time, but this week's discussion about Ars Technica's article on Anthropic, as well as the NIH funding freeze, finally prodded me to put it out there.

A core strategic vulnerability that Musk, his hangers-on, and geek culture more broadly haven't cottoned onto yet: Space is 20th-century propaganda. Certainly, there is still worthwhile and inspirational science to be done with space probes and landers; and the terrestrial satellite network won't dwindle in importance. I went to high school with a guy who went on to do his PhD and get into research through working with the first round of micro-satellites. Resources will still be committed to space. But as a core narrative of technical progress to bind a nation together? It's gassed. The idea that "it might be ME up there one day!" persisted through the space shuttle era, but it seems more and more remote. Going back to the moon would be a remake of an old television show, that went off the air because people ended up getting bored with it the first time. Boots on Mars (at least healthy boots with a solid chance to return home) are decades away, even if we start throwing Apollo money at it immediately. The more outlandish ideas like orbital data centers and asteroid mining don't have the same inspirational power, because they are meant to be private enterprises operated by thoroughly unlikeable men who have shackled themselves to a broadly destructive political program.

For better or worse, biotechnology and nanotechnology are the most important technical programs of the 21st century, and by backgrounding this and allowing Trump to threaten funding, the tech oligarchs kowtowing to him right now are undermining themselves. Biotech should be obvious, although regulatory capture and the impulse for rent-seeking will continue to hold it back in the US. I expect even more money to be thrown at nanotechnology manufacturing going into the 2030s, to try to overcome the fact that semiconductor scaling is hitting a wall, although most of what I've seen so far is still pursuing the Drexlerian vision of MEMS emulating larger mechanical systems... which, if it's not explicitly biocompatible, is likely going down a cul-de-sac.

Everybody's looking for a positive vision of the future to sell, to compete with and overcome the fraudulent tech-fascists who lead the industry right now. A program of accessible technology at the juncture of those two fields would not develop overnight, but could be a pathway there. Am I off base here?

Not sure where this came from, but it can't be all bad if it chaos-dunks on Yudkowsky like this. Was relayed to me via Ed Zitron's Discord, hopefully the Q isn't for Quillete or Qanon

Dragon Ball A16Z: We have replaced interminable screaming powerup sequences and planet-destroying energy blasts with long panning shots of the characters using their abilities to light giant mountains of cash on fire. If you give us a series C at a valuation of $420 million, we may be able to determine why test audience surveys have thus far come back unfavorable

Jobs is Tech Jesus, but Antennagate is only recorded in one of the apocryphal books