Like for example Bill Atkinson's famous productive -2000 lines: https://www.folklore.org/Negat...

For decades I've been suggesting on-and-off that a big problem is too many commercial programmers writing too much code and making too much work for each other with an endless proliferation adhoc interfaces, each a new "standard".

As an egregious example, years ago I read somewhere that Microsoft Office embeds like six entirely different virtual machines. Maybe it has improved since with the CLR?

Except for proprietary competitive forces, how many spreadsheets, compilers, VMs, email clients, word processors, and databases do we really need? Even in the realm of games, how many game engines do we need? Granted, game content may be a different story, but even there how many low-to-medium-quality games do we need?

The same is true to an extent with the entire internet. How many low-to-medium-quality comments do we need to wade through on various topics?

Imagine if everyone was using, say, (optionally-typed) Scheme with a great set of libraries to write everything (including with "org mode" in a Scheme-powered emacs-like multi-tool with a calendar etc), and there was just no "JSON" or "JavaScript" or "XML" or "Office-compatible adhoc file formats" or even "C" or "Rust". Not saying that an optionally-typed Scheme is the best choice, but what a different computing world to imagine. Guess my Symbolics 3600 Lisp machine experience in the 1980s spoiled me. :-) And I have to admit that TypeScript on widespread Scheme-inspired JavaScript VMs with WebAssembly has moved the computing world a lot in that direction with pros and cons.

I know an obvious objection (as with Linux's endless front-end and distributions) is about choice, but at some point there is a tyranny of excessive choice, like "twisty little passage ways all alike".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
        "The Paradox of Choice - Why More Is Less is a book about overchoice written by American psychologist Barry Schwartz and first published in 2004 by Harper Perennial. In the book, Schwartz argues that eliminating consumer choices can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers. The book analyzes the behavior of different types of people (in particular, maximizers and satisficers). This book argues that the dramatic explosion in choice--from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs--has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution and how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse."

I have no problem with people writing personal code for fun or learning or personal growth (which I highly recommend) -- the same way a person may play the piano as a hobby without expecting every time they play a tune the result needs to become a packaged commercial musical product.

The main thing I think about these days is how to have a much simpler tech ecosystem. Including for this reason outlined by Rich Hickey (author of Clojure) in "Simple Made Easy":
https://www.infoq.com/presenta...
====
Rich Hickey emphasizes simplicity's virtues over easiness', showing that while many choose easiness they may end up with complexity, and the better way is to choose easiness along the simplicity path.

We should aim for simplicity because simplicity is a prerequisite for reliability.

Simple is often erroneously mistaken for easy. "Easy" means "to be at hand", "to be approachable".

"Simple" is the opposite of "complex" which means "being intertwined", "being tied together". Simple != easy.

What matters in software is: does the software do what is supposed to do? Is it of high quality? Can we rely on it? Can problems be fixed along the way? Can requirements change over time? The answers to these questions is what matters in writing software not the look and feel of the experience writing the code or the cultural implications of it.

The benefits of simplicity are: ease of understanding, ease of change, ease of debugging, flexibility.

Complex constructs: State, Object, Methods, Syntax, Inheritance, Switch/matching, Vars, Imperative loops, Actors, ORM, Conditionals.

Simple constructs: Values, Functions, Namespaces, Data, Polymorphism, Managed refs, Set functions, Queues, Declarative data manipulation, Rules, Consistency.

Build simple systems by:
* Abstracting - design by answering questions related to what, who, when, where, why, and how.
* Choosing constructs that generate simple artifacts.
* Simplify by encapsulation.
====

Or, as a joke:
"Weinberg's Law: If builders built buildings the way (current-AI-enhanced-HR-staffer) programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization."
https://quoteinvestigator.com/...

In case he does, I hope Bill Gates is learning to laugh at the irony my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."

Or in other words, as people were saying even in the 1960s:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/...
      "To err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer."

How can we mitigate that risk? Like President John F. Kennedy quipped (echoed by Joel Goodman of the Humor Project):
https://www.humorproject.com/d...
        "There are three things which are real:
        God, human folly, and laughter.
        The first two are beyond our comprehension.
        So we must do what we can with the third." (John F. Kennedy)

Or, as I explain in more detail:
https://pdfernhout.net/recogni...
        "There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security [and economic] thinking. Those "security" [and economic] agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."

Here is someone involved in AI who gets that our direction out of any AI singularity may have a lot to do with our social direction and level of compassion going into it:
"Ex-Google Officer: You Only Have 3 Years Left Before It Hits! - Mo Gawdat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
        "AI Expert Mo Gawdat returns to The Diary Of A CEO to reveal why AGI has already arrived, why 30% of jobs will disappear by 2027, and why the most dangerous thing about AI isn't the technology - it's the people in charge of it. Mo Gawdat is the former Chief Business Officer at Google X, founder of One Billion Happy, and co-founder of Emma.Love. He is a 4x international bestselling author, and his upcoming book 'Alive: A Human's Guide to Living in the World of AI', will be released in October 2026."

I'm glad to see more AI and technology leaders starting to get that. Another example:
https://www.schmidtsciences.or...
        ""As AI systems advance, we face the risk that they will act in ways that contradict human values and interests--but this risk is not inevitable," said Eric Schmidt. "With efforts like the AI Safety Science program, we can help build a future in which AI benefits us all while maintaining safeguards that protect us from harm."
        The cohort of researchers--including "godfather of AI" Yoshua Bengio at Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, OpenAI board member Zico Kolter at Carnegie Mellon University, and "AI Snake Oil" author Arvind Narayanan at Princeton University--will focus their work on research that addresses the critical safety challenges that AI faces."

Ultimately though, guard rails can come off or be jumped -- so we really need AI with a sense of humor -- especially for irony. :-)

--------

And we also need AI developers and funders who root their work more in compassion as a guiding force more than competition.

Something I wrote to Ray Kuzweil on that back in 2000 (put up by someone else I sent a copy to):
https://heybryan.org/fernhout/...
        "It will be difficult for you to change your opinion on this because you have been heavily rewarded for riding the digital wave. You were making money building reading machines before I bought my first computer -- a Kim-I. But, I think someday the contradiction may become apparent of thinking the road to spiritual enlightenment can come from material competition (a point in your book which deserves much further elaboration). To the extent material competition drives the development of the digital realm the survival of humanity is in doubt."

And also in 2001:
https://heybryan.org/fernhout/...
          "Beware that people (usually not well versed in E&E [Ecology & Evolution]) cite ecology and evolution all the time to support a belief, but that does not make it a scientifically valid thing to do. For example, it is common to cite competition as a given in nature, but Lewis Thomas in "Lives of a Cell" points out that most successful organisms participate in effectively collaborative efforts -- like the symbiosis between mitochondria and eukaryotic cells. Likewise, the fact that something is true in most species does not mean that humans (given intelligence and culture) should behave that way -- because if E&E teaches anything, it is that there is a lot of diversity out there."

And in 2007:
https://heybryan.org/fernhout/...
        "Technologies designed to amplify and extend the scope of corporate greed likely just will not have the same positive basis as ones built out of joy and humor and love. If you ever watch the British sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf, greed seems much more likely to design "Queeg" than "Holly". Langdon Winner writes about related issues at length in his classic _Autonomous Technology_.
      In short, I feel it likely you are clinging to outdated disprove assumptions about motivation and creativity and economics. And I speculate that the reason is in part ironically from your past success. Those assumptions may be holding you back, and holding on to them may indeed help bring about a very negative side of the singularity you want to avoid."

Also on that theme: https://www.alfiekohn.org/cont...
        "No Contest, which has been stirring up controversy since its publication in 1986, stands as the definitive critique of competition. Drawing from hundreds of studies, Alfie Kohn eloquently argues that our struggle to defeat each other -- at work, at school, at play, and at home -- turns all of us into losers.
        Contrary to the myths with which we have been raised, Kohn shows that competition is not an inevitable part of "human nature." It does not motivate us to do our best (in fact, the reason our workplaces and schools are in trouble is that they value competitiveness instead of excellence.) Rather than building character, competition sabotages self-esteem and ruins relationships. It even warps recreation by turning the playing field into a battlefield.
        No Contest makes a powerful case that "healthy competition" is a contradiction in terms. Because any win/lose arrangement is undesirable, we will have to restructure our institutions for the benefit of ourselves, our children, and our society. For this [1992] revised edition, Kohn adds a comprehensive account of how students can learn more effectively by working cooperatively in the classroom instead of struggling to be Number One. He also offers a pointed and personal afterword, assessing shifts in American thinking on competition and describing reactions to his provocative message."

Those estimates are super low frequency though. I mean, hundreds of years between samples kind of low frequency.

Treating proxy data as if it is as useful as high frequency measurements in the modern satellite era is a category error.

Of course ENSO is a natural variation, and that it's not driven by human activity - it's literally circulation patterns of ocean heat that are hundreds of years long, untouched by industrialization.

I understand that the contention might be "well, our tiny fraction of human impact is going to be the straw that broke the camel's back on top of much more significant natural variation", but the truth is we don't have any really well supported evidence against natural variation - at best we have smoothed proxies that have lost resolution, and an otherwise very short observational period.

Now, I see being pissed at the boomers because of them building a welfare state that transfers all the wealth to themselves, stealing from the upcoming generations with inflation, taxation, unsustainable debt, and destructive social engineering against our shared american christian heritage. Even the natural climate change denial of the boomers is part of this selfishness.

The "New Deal" and "Great Society" and all the other socialist programs, including the "green new deal" were never a solution - they were a selfish programs that willfully cloaked themselves in faux compassion and charity, and destroyed communities, and virtue. Continuing the communist takeover only means that we're the ones giving the fuck you to the future, and pulling the ladder up after ourselves - there is no sustainable, involuntary application of "charity". Charity must be voluntary for it to work, and the failure of government interventions to force wealth transfers over the past 100 years has demonstrated that clearly.

The fact that the boomers have us focused on "climate change" is what lets them continue to extract wealth from future generations.

Jane Jacobs wrote a great book on civilization collapse in 2004 titled "Dark Age Ahead":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
        "Dark Age Ahead is a 2004 book by Jane Jacobs describing what she sees as the decay of five key "pillars" in "North America": community and family, higher education, science and technology, taxes and government responsiveness to citizen's needs, and self-regulation by the learned professions. She argues that this decay threatens to create a Dark Age unless the trends are reversed. Jacobs characterizes a Dark Age as a "mass amnesia" where even the memory of what was lost is lost."

She makes many good points. That said, like John Gardner wrote in the 1964, "Every generation must learn for themselves what the words on the monuments mean":
"Self-renewal : the individual and the innovative society"
https://archive.org/details/se...
        "The only stability possible is stability in motion."--John William Gardner
        In his classic treatise Self-Renewal, John W. Gardner examines why great societies thrive and die. He argues that it is dynamism, not decay, that is dramatically altering the landscape of American society. The twentieth century has brought about change more rapidly than any previous era, and with that came advancements, challenges, and often destruction. Gardner cautions that "a society must court the kinds of change that will enrich and strengthen it, rather than the kind of change that will fragment and destroy it."
        A society's ability to renew itself hinges upon its individuals. Gardner reasons that it is the waning of the heart and spirit--not a lack of material might--that threatens American society. Young countries, businesses, and humans have several key commonalities: they are flexible, eager, open, curious, unafraid, and willing to take risks. These conditions lead to success. However, as time passes, so too comes complacency, apathy, and rigidity, causing motivation to plummet. It is at this junction that great civilizations fall, businesses go bankrupt, and life stagnates. Gardner asserts that the individual's role in social renewal requires each person to face and look beyond imminent threats.
        Ultimately, we need a vision that there is something worth saving. Through this vision, Gardner argues, society will begin to renew itself, not permanently, but past its average lifespan, and it will at once become enriched and rejuvenated."

Also on ideas from that book: https://fluidself.org/books/ps...
        "Every individual, organization or society must mature, but much depends on how this maturing takes place. A society whose maturing consists simply of acquiring more firmly established ways of doing things is headed for the graveyard--even if it learns to do these things with greater and greater skill. In the ever-renewing society what matures is a system or framework within which continuous innovation, renewal and rebirth can occur.
        Our thinking about growth and decay is dominated by the image of a single life-span, animal or vegetable. Seedling, full flower and death. "The flower that once has blown forever dies." But for an ever-renewing society the appropriate image is a total garden, a balanced aquarium or other ecological system. Some things are being born, other things are flourishing, still other things are dying--but the system lives on. ..."

For example, as I wrote elsewhere on July 4th, even as the USA is facing political issues, the internet has become a place where people provide each other support about health issues in a Patch-Adams-style participatory wellness community. That is an amazing revolution in itself. As Patch Adams said: "The most revolutionary act one can commit in our world is to be happy. (Patch Adams)" Or, I'd add, to help others be happy too.
https://soylentnews.org/commen...

I think a big part of self-renewal in our society may come from both humans and their AIs learning to laugh at the irony in my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."

Averages destroy important details in the data.

In a world where temperatures and local weather conditions vary wildly across ranges that have real world impact for those people experiencing them, averages destroy the exact information you would need to actually make decisions.

If you dial the average phone number in the USA, you will not get connected with the average person.

ENSO is a natural phenomenon.

The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6, 2021) concluded with high confidence that human influence has not affected the principal tropical modes of interannual climate variability, including ENSO, beyond the range of internal variability. It assigned low confidence that anthropogenic forcing has caused the observed or paleo-inferred changes in ENSO variability.

These observations should give us a greater appreciation for just how significant natural variation is, compared to any possible anthropogenic impact.

You can also often reduce the risk of cancer recurrence significantly via diet (e.g. avoiding most or all animal products and ultraprocessed foods, and eating lots of greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries & fruits, and nut & seeds) -- especially along with other lifestyle changes like exercise, avoiding smoking and alcohol, stress reduction, good sleep, community, etc..
"G-BOMBS: The anti-cancer foods that should be in your diet right now"
https://www.drfuhrman.com/arti...

Problem is there is not much money in such advice... Especially when there are many vested interest in selling unhealthy food and profiting off of sickness. People who make money off of sickness don't even have to win the scientific argument, they just have to seed enough doubt to confuse people so they keep doing what they were doing. That strategy by industry of intentionally sowing confusion is mentioned here 18 minutes in - and it was based on the success by the cigarette industry (and I'd add the fossil fuel industry) in doing the same thing:
"What The Health - Full Documentary"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"18:24 You know the strategy is not on making their products any safer. The strategy is to just try to confuse the public to introduce doubt. You know.
18:33 there's a famous tobacco industry memo. It's called doubt is our product. That's all they had to do. They didn't have to convince Americans that smoking
18:41 was healthy right. They just had to introduce doubt -- then they would win. If there's just enough controversy people kind of throw up their hands: I
18:49 don't know what to eat. Confusion is their game"

That said, I hope treatments like Moderna's eventually show convincingly that they do a lot more good than harm -- since the process of getting individuals and societies to change their diets can be a very slow one -- as mentioned here about 35 minutes in:
"100 Year-Old Nutrition Professor: 7 Keys to a Long Life | Dr. John Scharffenberg"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"35:26 [Scharffenberg:] They're going by the cholesterol level with the idea that if you lower your cholesterol you will not have heart attacks anymore.
35:32 It's not true. It's not true. And we made a mistake. We should tell them that lifestyle [including a whole-food plant-based vegetarian diet] is important.
35:40 But the problem is we haven't persuaded people to live like they even know they should live.
35:47 Yes. That's our problem. [Interviewer:] And that's why I'm studying to become a therapist, I want to figure out how do we...people know what to do, but... [Scharffenberg:] A lot of them know what to do.
35:55 They don't do it. [Interviewer:] It's hard, yeah. [Scharffenberg:] It's hard."

Hrm. It seems like they overlooked a lot of crucial qualifications in the candidate.

I believe the argument is that the due diligence was skipped in the name of DEI.

Ah, the "no true scotsman" :)

How would you strictly define "DEI hire"? Does it require a confession, or can we recognize it through any indirect observation?

You seem to be arguing that racist policies are acceptable if they have only a 1% affect against the discriminated against population.

This is the same argument made back in the day regarding pollution - as long as it is diluted, it's not important enough to pay attention to. 500000 ppm of CO2 is a real danger. 500 ppm of CO2 is a really small number, and we can safely discount it.

It's perhaps an uncharitable way of characterizing your observation, and maybe that's all you're doing - making an observation without a moral judgement.

Dilution is the solution to pollution.

Remember that oldie, but goodie?

So long as we dump our toxic waste into a big enough body of water, and mix it thoroughly, we can ignore it because it's a trivial fraction.

Isn't the implication that they were willfully unaware of it? That they hired him because they skipped the usual due diligence that would have been applied to other more pale people?

Sorta like putting a stab victim into handcuffs because you've been following a narrative that foreigner good, british bad, and don't bother actually checking for stab wounds once someone was accused of using racist words.

Arday was too good to be true, fit all their priors, and their prejudices made them behave in a naive manner. That's the toxicity of DEI, and the death of meritocracy (if it ever existed in the first place).

The imagination can be more powerful than any reality. The proper attitude can create a hell out of any paradise.

And it does.

Two movies on one screen.

The problem is that you can write that list slanted in the other direction just as adroitly.

I think the problem is we don't even believe in the same base reality. There are people who honestly, with all their heart, mind, body and soul, believe that communism will work, and that people can change sex simply by asserting it. And there are people who honestly, with all their heart, mind, body and soul, believe that the only proper family formation is heterosexual, monogamous, dedicated, and producing children.

There is no amount of discussion left to be had - it's time to move to the places where they adopt your personal politics, and live out the consequences. If you want to kill your baby 30 seconds before birth, you have a number of states you can move to. If you want to protect your hearing when practicing with firearms, you have a different choice of states. We have to let people get what they vote for, good and hard, even if that includes voting for allowing people to cheat while voting.

There is no logical reason DEI is bad, no argument that can be made against it that will actually persuade a true believer. They need to live out their convictions, and suffer for it. The best we can do is hope to isolate them in bubbles where they suffer the consequences, and others can make their own free will choices for the better.