I am so so so sick of rich people in Silicon Valley driving what people think “computer science” is. Which is exactly what’s happening with ChatGPT, and is what happened with cryptocurrency, web3, “deep learning”, ………..

But I don’t know what, if anything, can be done about that. Many of my computer scientist colleagues contribute to this! Generally, we’re not organized to counter the bizarre claims that are pushed into the media by SV snake oil salesmen.

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci hmm… I co-founded a video game studio which for funding and pandemic reasons turned into crypto gaming, since there was “money” in that field. I received a lot of criticism fro colleagues, but some support from friends.
A few friends were making decent money working on crypto games, for huge companies with big investment behind.

But for me… Most of the environment felt like “get rich quick squeme”. Even my partner (biz dev) felt really deep into that way of life. I slowly got away, sad by the risk I’ve taken. Not repentant, just sad of how money makes us think of our promises.

What can I say? Not every buzzword is bad by itself, but my logic brain is against promising more and delivering less (playing with the truth, in my book). Like with electric cars, social networking connecting the world and exploiting Asian workers to have a decent phone at a subsidized price.

having investors behind, and need for money, make people lie, and live in that reality distortion field.

It happens for us, in our Hobbyst space, we are biased, I get it. But the bias where your ideas are reinforced by your environment, believing that you are right… And on some sort, being payed to believe that. It’s difficult to overcome.

I’d recommend to read “48 laws of power”. It helped me to understand how those startup environments work, to be prepared against utilitary mindsets.