The better looking the code, the less effort people will put into reviewing it due to the ease of reading it - the assumption being that what is beautiful is good. Just as a beautiful facade of a building can hide a cheap structure behind it, the same is true with code. Beauty itself is not a good signal for goodness as in excess it is in effect a rhetoric device that aims to mislead and draw ones eyes towards itself and away from what lies beneath it.
A beautiful building is only as good as the correctness of its foundation, framework, materials, and construction. Those qualities can only be assessed by those with expertise enough to understand their importance. Beauty in its proper place is the output of the intersection between a craftsman and a engineer. Beauty is optional, but it makes life more worth living. The same is true for code - attractive code is optional, but it makes being a SWE more rewarding.
Humans participate in the human struggle of existence, limited in our time, attention, energy, and host of other various constraining natures. We are limited and finite. To learn from those of greater talent than yourself is to dedicate all of those resources towards its acquisition. AI has no such limitations, and so does not participate in the same category as humans. A human struggles to learn the patterns of an artist, a machine does not. A human tires of learning, a machine does not. A human puts in effort, a machine does not.
It is the humanness that is the difference, that which exists outside the abstraction of the imposed categories. The human cannot compete with the machine which ingests ALL works and renders the patterns easily available. The artist toiled to perfect those patterns, and now is no longer granted the decency of reaping the fruits of their labors. Humans can give, the machine can only take.
Man is a tool using animal. Language, writing, the printing press, photography, audio recording, computers, the Internet, and now AI -- each of these innovations has fundamentally changed how we create and preserve knowledge, art, and culture.
None of these changes came without losses. Writing eroded our capacity to remember, printing fueled decades of bloody religious conflict, photography harmed portrait artists, audio recordings wrecked social collaborative parlor music, computers fucked up our spelling & arithmetic, and the Internet... don't get me started.
Ultimately there is no going back, we will change and adapt to our new capabilities. Some will be harmed and some will be left behind. So turns the wheel of progress, I don't think anyone can stop it.
Every artist of worth has sought two things: to bring something of beauty into the world, and to be regarded in their worth in proportion to the greatness of their art. You suggest we take from them the beauty they have brought forth, and leave them with nothing in return but scorn. What then has the artist to gain from their endeavors, when not only are they the be ridden of the significance of their authorship, but that then their works are to be put to use to feed the all consuming machine which benefits not the artist but those running the machine?
Art is not just about the thing produced, stripped of its context and significance, and forced to be interpreted by ignorant minds who, in their ignorance, consider themselves capable of deriving meaning of value out of words and pictures they can scarcely comprehend from their own limited perspective.
The significance of all art is derived from its historical context, the authors implicit intentions and mode of creation, and the unique experience generated from an individual consuming the art. If you suggest only the consumers experience matters, then you are free to forgo the greater appreciation of art in favor of the lessened experience of it if you wish. For greater awareness and understanding of the details of the parts allow us to better understand the significance of the whole. Only art that is of little value is lessened by our deepened understanding of it.
It's hard to see very far when dreams of money cloud your vision. Even worse is what emerges if ever they see through, for in their ignorance they fail to make sense of the patterns at play, and as it is easier to miss the mark than to hit it, they miss it by miles.
I suppose it is antithetical for a tech bro to value virtue and wisdom, for that path is less profitable (monetarily) than the unjust path, and so never shall the two meet. Having money as the standard of the good life, and lacking in equal proportion any merit of virtue and wisdom, what is left for them but to aim wanderingly off the cliff?
The article is correct to call them children, for that is what our modern education makes of us. So bleak and inhospitable is the modern education that it likely does us more harm than good, for it abstracts the world of meaning away and replaces it with lifeless mind-numbing facts. And in that gloomy room they are fed to the wolves, or made to become a wolf themselves. Most adults are still traumatized from their educations, they still dream about it, they still carry on their childish behaviors; few ever mature and become wise.
There's nothing simple about this vast interconnected mess we find ourselves in, and even for one seeking to better themselves, they are, lacking good judgment, more likely to select the bad thing over the good thing. As it's no easy task to determine the middle way, to re-evaluate ones values, and find harmony with oneself and their environment, we can forgive them for having no idea what they're doing. They're kids with too much money, a poor education, and a withering spirit, and their attempts to exert their will on the world will send us further into our dark ages. All that one can do is educate themselves, and see the light themselves, and live by example I suppose.
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