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Linus Torvalds shares his thoughts on Anti-AI coding rules (europe.pub)
submitted 5 days ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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[–] 52 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (20 children)

I thought it was devastating to lose Steve Yegge to AI psychosis. But damn. This is... unspeakably bad. Like if the guy in charge of the CDC decided Tylenol caused autism or like if the guy who controls the U.S. military decided it was a good idea to bomb Iran.

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  • [+] -23 points 5 days ago (13 children)

    If everyone you thought was smart are disagreeing with you, perhaps take another look at your position on the matter? Might be a reason beyond spontaneous mass "psychosis."

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  • [–] 10 points 5 days ago (10 children)

    Big “100 physicists have signed a letter saying you’re wrong, Mr. Einstein” energy.

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  • [+] -6 points 5 days ago (9 children)

    This one? It's a fake.

    This also assumes that TootSweet is Einstein in this scenario, rather than just some guy on the Fediverse. If he's got cred on par with Steve Yegge or Linus Torvalds the comparison might hold some weight, but I'm dubious about that.

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  • [–] 21 points 5 days ago (8 children)

    No. Not that one.

    There’s a story that a reporter said to Einstein “100 physicists have signed a letter saying your theory of relativity is wrong” to which Einstein replies “if they were right, it would only take one.”

    Apocryphal or not, the point remains that truth is not a democracy. If a million people say AI is great, it doesn’t make it so — even if one of those people is the primary maintainer of the the Linux kernel.

    And billions of people eat at McDonald’s, but that doesn’t make a hamburger better than a steak. Or any more ethical.

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  • [+] -10 points 5 days ago (5 children)

    This is still assuming that TootSweet is equivalent to Einstein here.

    And is Linux equivalent to McDonald's in this scenario? The analogy is becoming rather unclear.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 days ago (4 children)

    No, it doesn't assume TootSweet is Einstein.

    It's pretty sad that you seem to think that popular opinions are correct.

    Plenty of popular opinions are wrong. And unpopular opinions are right.

    The popular opinion is that AI is great at coding. But there isn't much evidence that it is. There's lots of evidence that it produces a lot of lines of code. Scant little evidence that it's good code.

    Hence the analogy to hamburger versus steak. They're both beef, so technically the same. But hamburger is adulterated and watered-down. Steak is the real deal. So AI code is to real enginnering.

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  • [+] -7 points 5 days ago (3 children)

    I pointed out that several smart people were disagreeing with TootSweet. You responded:

    Big “100 physicists have signed a letter saying you’re wrong, Mr. Einstein” energy.

    Who else would "Einstein" be in this analogy?

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  • [–] 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

    Anyone. Show the proof that anyone is wrong. Linus Torvalds’ opinion isn’t proof of anything.

    The scientific method gives you a way to disprove the hypothesis and you can’t do it. The fact that some, or dozens, or hundreds of people disagree doesn’t disprove anything.

    Truth isn’t a democracy.

    Edit:

    The proof that Einstein was right wasn’t that his name was Albert and that he was respected by other physicists. Early on, he wasn’t respected by other physicists.

    What proved him right was the apparent position of Mercury near the sun, proving that gravity bent light, proving his theory of relativity.

    Newton’s laws of motion didn’t account for that. And that proved Newton wrong.

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  • [–] -5 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    When did I ever claim "proof" of anything, let alone with scientific rigor? Here was my original comment, verbatim:

    If everyone you thought was smart are disagreeing with you, perhaps take another look at your position on the matter? Might be a reason beyond spontaneous mass "psychosis."

    This is advising uncertainty, not certainty. The opposite of what you appear to be accusing me of here.

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  • [+] -23 points 5 days ago* (4 children)

    Linus says he only cares about quality and refuses to make a hardline rule explicitly banning LLMs in all contexts

    This is... unspeakably bad

    Man, genuinely... how do people not understand why nobody takes the Anti movement seriously?

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  • [–] 15 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    How do you not understand that code quality alone is not a good measure for viability?

    Take ZFS, for example. It is inarguably a good filesystem, and its code is... well, it's not bad, so let's quantify it as good, or good enough. But it's still poison for the Linux codebase, because of its conflicting license.

    Or take sweatshop labor, or slavery. Would you accept "good" code written under duress?

    "AI is just a tool." No. Machine learning algorithms are a tool. LLMs are an ecosystem, composed of agents, models, infrastructure, continuous labor to maintain the models updated, and more. And like in biological ecosystems, the worst performing factor determines the maximum health score, which for LLMs is "unethical as fuck."

    Linus may be smart about OSes and seems competent about project management, but I wouldn't trust him to give me medical advice, and his opinion on AI is also wrong.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago* (1 child)

    and its code is... well, it's not bad, so let's quantify it as good, or good enough

    If "good enough" isn't actually good enough, why are you calling it that? Your entire argument hinges on high code quality not being high code quality. Like... yeah, of course bad code is going to lead to bad outcomes. That's literally the entire point he's trying to make: the tool doesn't matter, the result does.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago

    No part of my argument hinges on ZFS code being good quality. My argument is that ZFS code is desirable.

    the tool doesn't matter, the result does.

    The argument "the method doesn't matter, only results" has been the source of so many ethics and academic violations. You saying that with a straight face says enough about you. Bye.

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