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I understand why people value the code John Carmack has released but I do not understand why people value his public statements. "eventually id Tech 5 is going

• the_interloper 4d ago
  1st link is broken
  • RunSet 4d ago
    https://web.archive.org/web/20081003111457/http://www.linuxgames.com/archives/9374 https://web.archive.org/web/20081003111457/http://www.linuxg...
• tclancy 4d ago
  I have a new theory as of this moment. Elon Musk, Paul Graham, Steve Yegge and now, sadly John Carmack. Your average hacker scoffs at the idea of religion or faith, but somehow is comfortable with complete unquestioning fealty to whichever person who did something interesting with technology in the past and made enough money to afford drugs you don’t get arrested for and then they started prophesying. Before you stone me, remember every prophet was downvoted in their own forum.
  • zulux 4d ago
    The nice thing about religious faith is that most minds can hold only one at a time. I may believe in an oddly resurrected deity who took the shape of a man, but I don't have room for anything crazier. "We are fools for Christ's sake." 1 Corinthians 4:10
    • tclancy 4d ago
      Sure, but it is that Christ, Buddha or any of the other incarnations of the same idea? I am right there with you, believe it or not, but don’t John 3:16 the wrong football game.
    • acyou 4d ago
      Is that the nice thing about religious faith? Polytheism seems somewhat more tolerant of others. And religious pluralism takes in one step further. I am sure about few things, but it seems to me that monotheism and religious exclusivism at some times represent the worst aspects and outcomes of religious faith.
  • socalgal2 4d ago
    I see it as those who learn to use AI effectively are seeing massive benefits. Those that haven't seen those benefits are still skeptical. Someone who's seen the benfits, knows, with proof, the benefits exist. They're like Copernicus who realized the plants go around the sun, not the earth. The others are still like those who look up, see the planets go around the sky, and can't believe the earth is not at the center. They then shout "you're lying, you're crazy, burn the hertic!"
    • JuniperMesos 4d ago
      The story of the discovery of heliocentricism is a lot more complex than this; the people who didn't immediately accept heliocentric theories (including the ancient Greeks - look up Aristarchus) often had good, scientific reasons for doing so. Or just look up at the sky at night yourself and ask yourself how you, personally, would confirm it if someone told you that what you see in the sky is better explained by the Earth moving around the sun than the sun moving around the Earth.
    • Planktonne 3d ago
      > those who learn to use AI effectively are seeing massive benefits The massive benefits should be visible to outside observers as well, but where are they?
      • Daishiman 3d ago
        Yes. People see orgs tackling more problems and resolving bugs faster.
        • Planktonne 3d ago
          I don't agree that people do see that, and if they do, it's hardly an overwhelming trend.
  • JuniperMesos 4d ago
    > Elon Musk, Paul Graham, Steve Yegge and now, sadly John Carmack. Your average hacker scoffs at the idea of religion or faith, but somehow is comfortable with complete unquestioning fealty to whichever person who did something interesting with technology in the past and made enough money to afford drugs you don’t get arrested for and then they started prophesying. Why do you characterize people you disagree with as having "complete unquestioning fealty" to any of these figures who did something interesting with technology in the past? Seriously, why do you think that accurately characterizes anyone's view? I think this observation that John Carmack made on Twitter has some merit to it - it doesn't mean that I worship John Carmack as my god, or even that I think he's necessarily correct about any other issue. And why would I need to do either of those things to think that the one specific observation of his that we're talking about in this thread has merit to it?
    • tclancy 3d ago
      I am not lumping everyone in, more observing we are still amplifying the signal from radio stations that should have ceased broadcasting years ago.
• Insanity 4d ago
  Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It makes more sense to read his 'public statements' and judge them individually rather than in aggregate. No one is correct all the time. As for this current post (just a tweet really, public statement sounds overly official), I think he's making sense. If you don't follow industry trends, you'll eventually be out of touch. Whether you're a senior software engineer or engineering manager, keeping current with the evolution of tech will make you better at your job. Today that happens to be related to following AI developments, but it applied equally to learning higher level programming languages in the 90s, or big data engineering practices in the 2010s.