Wednesday, March 04, 2026
Are you ready for more anti-LLM rhetoric? Because I'm ready for more anti-LLM rhetoric
I'm still clearing out some links I collected last month about LLM usage. Scott Smitelli's blog entry “You don’t have to if you don’t want to” (via Lobsters) explains my position on LLMs better than I could. This bit goes into a bit more about those who value the destination vs. those who value the journey:
Put simply, Toby deeply values shipping things and providing value to society, and Lyle doesn’t. Lyle values expertise in a skill carried out with utmost care and craft, and Toby doesn’t. Toby’s ultimate dream, beyond the whole furniture thing, is to eventually make enough money—having never completely settled on what nebulous sum of money constitutes “enough” for him—that he can retire into peaceful old age. Lyle wants to keep doing what he does until his body finally gives out, and then to continue doing it for a little while longer. Any discussion between the two of them that brings these incompatible sets of values into tension is going to end up in some kind of argument that neither side will concede. And who would expect them to? These are the very foundations of their personalities.
This, right here, is why everybody is fighting all the time. We’re all trying to argue positions based on mismatched values. Not wrong values. Mismatched.
…
Sure, and if you want to wear clean clothes, you could either do the laundry or you could throw your wardrobe away after one wear and have fresh replacements drop-shipped from China.22 The two approaches are only equivalent to maintain if you are willing to ignore the massive Rube Goldberg machine of complexity that one side requires that the other side doesn’t.
…
22. Rob Rhinehart, the mind behind the Soylent meal replacement drink, apparently did exactly this. The Luddites would probably have had some choice words for him.
You don’t have to if you don’t want to.
Footnote 22 just kills me. Of course someone who doesn't want to take the time to even eat will buy new clothes instead of washing them. Wow!
I wish I could follow this advice, that I don't have to if I don't want to, but it's hard when “Tech Firms Aren’t Just Encouraging Their Workers to Use AI. They’re Enforcing It” (via Hacker News). Is it too much of an ask not use a tool if I'm still productive without it?
And speaking of Hacker News, this quote reinforces a bit I said the other day about new computer language adaption:
The cynical part of me thinks that software has peaked. New languages and technology will be derivatives of existing tech. There will be no React successor. There will never be a browser that can run something other than JS. And the reason for that is because in 20 years the new engineers will not know how to code anymore.
And when Hacker News is critical of LLMs, you know it's getting bad out there.
And one final link I found today: “Future Shock” (via Lobsters). I'm not sure what I make of this. On the one hand, it does describe what I'm feeling but on the other hand, it's basically yet another “learn or get left behind” article. And this from Ceej—a technical blogger I was reading way back in the 1990s!
Aside from the “you will use this or lose your job” aspect I hate, another aspect I don't like is the whole “micromanage the output”—if I have to micromanage the obsequiously incompetent non-thinking Markov chain generator, I might as well write the code myself!
And you clouds! Get off my lawn!
![[Self-portrait with a Christmas Tree] Oh Chrismtas Tree! My Christmas Tree! Rise up and hear the bells!](https://www.conman.org/people/spc/about/2025/1203.t.jpg "Oh Chrismtas Tree! My Christmas Tree! Rise up and hear the bells!")