Geohotz's politics are fairly straightforward once you understand his background. Geohotz is the prodigy child who, at the age of ~16 accomplished amazing technical feats on his own.
And his politics are a derivative of Great Man Theory, and his positions on things like democracy follow from that. This idea, and those espoused by some of the VC/tech elite like Peter Theil are that singular hardworking genius individuals can change the world on their own, and everyone who not in this top 0.1% are borderline NPCs.
They do this both because of their genius/hardwork, and also because they are willing to break the rules that are set forth by this bottom 99.9%.
I'm starting to call this ideology Authoritarian techno-Libertarianism. Its a delibriately oxymoronic name that I use, because these "Great Men" are definitely trying to change the world. IE, they are trying to impose their goals and values on the world without getting the buyin of other people.
Thats the "authoritarian" part. And then the "libertarian" part is that they are going about this imposition of their will on the world by doing it all themselves, through their own hard work.
Think "Person invents a world changing technology, that some people thing is bad, and just releases it open source for anyone to use". AI models are a great example, in fact. Once that technology is out there the genie cannot be put back into the bottle and a ton of people are going to lose their jobs, ect.
A distain for democracy follows directly from things like this. You dont wait for people to vote to allow you to change the world by inventing something new. You just do and watch the results.
> also because they are willing to break the rules that are set forth by this bottom 99.9%[...] they are going about this imposition of their will on the world by doing it all themselves, through their own hard work.
I think all these wildly successful neo-feudalists get increasingly emboldened the more they get away with bigger and bigger social infractions.
It's also clear that they haven't experienced existed an environment with extreme inequality - it's not safe for anyone there! They think the NPC plebs will continue to follow "the rules" ad perpetuam without considering that it is a direct result of the stability they are actively undermining. They clearly don't read enough history.
What makes it “Libertarianism” still? To me it feels like they’re taking away freedom, control, and influence from everyone who is not them. Even the concentration of wealth is itself taking away everyone else’s places in the world.
Its libertarian because it is fundamentally about individuals acting on their own without going through the government, ect. It is an individualistic framework. Individuals going about achieving their goals, even through powerful corporations, falls squarely within what libertarians support.
Yes, you can make some philosophical point about how if corporations are powerful enough, how is that in any way different from governments.
But, powerful corporations controlling society, in some sort of fallout style or bioshock style dystopia clearly describes a libertarian dystopia, not a left leaning or even fascist dystopia.
> Basically all laws related to speech are abitrary.
True. This is a fair point. But the expected counter argument would be that the exact line isn't the issue instead it's the justification for the principle.
IE why is personalized algorithms more dangerous than general ones.
My answer (because I mostly agree with you) is that the difference is that personalized algorithms almost feel like brain hacking. And this brain hacking simply doesn't work at scale when applied to vague general algorithms.
> Every good and enjoyable game made was handcoded, with art, music, dialogue and design created with intent.
I am not sure about you, but I do not know a single developer who isn't using LLMs with a passion, even if its only just cursor and auto-complete.
So, quite the opposite. Instead, literally all games are being made with AI now. I expect the same thing applies to the other professions that you brought up, if not now then soon.
>But I do not know a single developer who isn't using LLMs with a passion, even if its only just cursor and auto-complete
A passion for using LLMs, not for making games. If they had a passion for making games they would recognize how limiting LLMs actually are to the creative process. They wouldn't be making Show HN's for what amount to barely coherent tech demos. But it's very clear from having seen many such projects that the actual game doesn't matter to them.
> Instead, literally all games are being made with AI now.
That's a statement of faith. It's something you want to be true, and believe must be true. And it may prove more accurate as time goes on but it certainly isn't true now.
Patently the idea that it is a passion for using LLMs is crank, what does that even mean? People don't have passion for screwdrivers. I've developed for 20 years now. I wrote my first line of code when I was 10. My passion is for realizing my ideas in general. I liked making the fire ball move. Code was a convenient means to do that, there are increasingly more convenient means now.
The latest stack overflow survey puts AI dev usage at 84% of their respondents, increasingly your position is the faith based one.
Not really. This only works because the US market is valuable. A tech company can simply leave the market rather than sell. Just like tiktok would have been free to shut down in the USA.
The USA market belongs to the US, though, and other people are free to play by the rules or simply leave.
Have you looked at the financial reports of those companies recently? US is the largest revenue stream but nowhere dominant.
USA is headed to have companies that used to serve 3-5 billion people markets to shrink to 0.35 billion market. US also doesn’t produce that much, unlike EU and China so when this system breaks those 0.35 billion people aren’t going to be as valuable as today.
Open regime change calls, attempts to manipulate elections, trying to start civil wars - it’s brewing.
The software industry is about to be decimated by AI anyway and US isn’t ahead in AI in any meaningful sense. When the status quo shatters there’s a good chance that tech would not be American industry anymore. The hardware too is made in China with European tooling. USA used to have an amazing brand but that’s being destroyed at outstanding pace.
Just like the way tech workers should have revolted against WFH instead of embracing it, the tech capitalist should also revolt against the breaking of the order. Both are extremely short sighted.
Brewing, always brewing. Never measurable results.
> The software industry is about to be decimated by AI anyway and US isn’t ahead in AI in any meaningful sense.
The US has been far ahead, in terms of actual companies being made actually. China has some models, sure, but the EU is nothing. I have never heard less about the EU and their companies than in the last few years.
All talk, no results. Always years away, but never now.
Indeed, this time for sure! All that current evidence that we have that shows otherwise? Doesn't matter! The fact that the trends are actually going the opposite, meaning that the USA is actually pulling out even further ahead? That doesn't count!
I don't know what you think US is pulling ahead of. Probably some proxy numbers that don't mean what you think they mean because on everything that matter US looks like a collapsing empire.
Yes any excuse to ignore quantitative metrics. Always switch to the vagueries as opposed to the numbers.
This isn't even going into how all of our geopolitical enemies have lost in the relevant wars.
Who's even left at this point? I guess China kind of, but they have always been a saber rattler and not a doer, as they let their "allies" like Iran fall apart.
They always try with proxies not direct action, and now every proxy has collapsed.
The really funny part is that I only started hearing about this collapsing empire narrative after every.ije of our enemies has been bombed to smitherines.
My guess is that it's a desperate cope, to avoid having to deal with the on the ground reality of all the bombed out ruins of the groups that oppose the US.
> US also doesn’t produce that much, unlike EU and China
China OK. But a criticism we hear all the time inside the EU is that manufacturing is gone and that the number one export of the number one economy in the EU --that'd be cars from Germany-- are taking a serious beat up atm.
> The software industry is about to be decimated by AI anyway and US isn’t ahead in AI in any meaningful sense.
How is it not? China has some models but it's basically US, US, and more US: Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI... With chips made by NVidia and Google. So US and still more US. Is that not basically it?
The EU loves to posture a lot but until I see that turd that Windows is kicked out of all the EU institutions and Microsoft Office replaced for good by something else, I'm not believing it.
> USA used to have an amazing brand but that’s being destroyed at outstanding pace.
USA has 35 of the 50 biggest companies in the world ranked by market cap. China has 6 and the EU has... One! (Switzerland ain't the EU). One company for the EU in the top 50: that's ASML and even that is very mainly US owned.
I think you give the EU way too much credit and the US way too little.
Comparing country by market cap will always favours the US while oil is traded in dollars, especially since passive investment is so big and dollar debt is so big. You ought to compare them on efficiency and/or profitability.
If you really want to compare the biggest companies while including investors preferences (which mechanically favours the US, but it's fine in your case, your point is about US advantages, and the dollar is a big one), to account for AI and 'tech' (Tesla), EV/EBITDA is probably what you're looking for
I find it amusing that your last comment is preaching to someone about what politics is and isn't.
Your politics are clear. You have no problem with the modern Republican party embracing authoritarianism and fascism. In fact, you see it as an opportunity to erode trust in or otherwise destroy the institution responsible for regulating signals in the US. The very thing that makes it so that planes can safely fly or that things in space must respect terrestrial networks without disruption.
That is your politics, just an embarrassing set of politics. Not even a green account. Shame on you.
So... to be clear... you dont want to get rid of the FCC? You can have that position but you are kinda missing the point here.
I was responding to someone who is claiming that the org is some infringement on free speech. This is an ignorant position, in that the FCC has had the power to regulate airwaves for quite some time. So if it is some free speech infringment now, then it was infringement a long time ago, especially with things like the fairness doctrine.
But you can have either position. Either you think it is all some huge infringement of free speech or you don't and you cant really complain about the stuff happening now. Your choice.
> The very thing that makes it so that planes can safely fly
So... Imagine for the sake of argument that you were capable of steel manning my position.
When someone brought speech related stuff regarding the FCC and I responded to it, did you actually believe I was talking about laws related to airplane communications?
Or.... was it possible that I was only referring to other speech related stuff that the FCC does? Just steelman it for a second if you are capable of doing so.
> Wouldn't that be almost impossible?. Politics affects our lives every day.
No it wouldn't be. And if your definition of "politics" includes "literally every time a thing happens" then your definition is so broad as to be useless.
When people say that they want politics banned, they are talking about the extremely controversial arguments that are almost completely unrelated to whatever the community is about. IE, if you run a group about Cheese making, and someone comes in and starts arguing about if an ice shooting on the other side of the country was justified or not, that is... off topic. And everyone with a brain can understand that.
It really isn't that hard to figure out which topics are related to cheese making and which other topics have almost nothing to do with it, even if someone could make a bad faith argument that it is related (EX:, your response would probably go something like "Well what if someone knows a cheese maker who is here illegally, therefore thats why ice enforcement on the other side of the country is relevant!". You could say that but we all would know that you are being bad faith or have some sort of issue with determining what words mean to regular people)
Partial credit in this example could go to political issues that are very obviously and directly related to cheese making. A new tax on cheese that goes into effect in your local town, and very directly is related to the group topic. Stuff like that might be OK.
And your response to this example would go something like "Oh, so are you saying that politics should be allowed!?!? how do you tell the difference between a cheese tax and an ice shooting on the other side of the country? Hypocrit!"
And the answer to that is that we can use our brain. We all know that a cheese tax is more related to the local cheese making group than national politics. And we don't have to argue with clearly bad faith arguments that pretend otherwise.
To summarize, when people say that they want to ban politics, what they actually mean is that they want to ban completely off topic controversial issues that others are trying to shoe horn into a group that isn't related to that issue.
And people are saying that it is OK to compartmentalize things. Every group in the world doesn't have to talk about your pet issue. The cheese making group can just be mostly about cheese making and they don't have to argue every day about national immigration policies.
The main problem that comes in with this is the status quo. That's where we get the meme "there are two genders: male, and political".
When you're part of the status-quo then nothing is a political statement, but when you aren't then everything is a political statement. Disabled black woman opens a local cheese shop? Is that political? I think that might be, depending on who you ask on your cheese forum.
So there's an inherent double standard. Like, if you have a subreddit for a city, and you have a post about the Pride parade, that's a political message. But most other parades are not, even if the subject matter is the same.
Call it whatever you want, the game wouldn't exist without them doing something about it. And because they did something about achieving their vision other people get to play the game.
How about we just call these people the game Producers instead. Thats what a producer does anyway right? They make decisions of how the game is built, what goes into it, ect, ect, ect.
And his politics are a derivative of Great Man Theory, and his positions on things like democracy follow from that. This idea, and those espoused by some of the VC/tech elite like Peter Theil are that singular hardworking genius individuals can change the world on their own, and everyone who not in this top 0.1% are borderline NPCs.
They do this both because of their genius/hardwork, and also because they are willing to break the rules that are set forth by this bottom 99.9%.
I'm starting to call this ideology Authoritarian techno-Libertarianism. Its a delibriately oxymoronic name that I use, because these "Great Men" are definitely trying to change the world. IE, they are trying to impose their goals and values on the world without getting the buyin of other people.
Thats the "authoritarian" part. And then the "libertarian" part is that they are going about this imposition of their will on the world by doing it all themselves, through their own hard work.
Think "Person invents a world changing technology, that some people thing is bad, and just releases it open source for anyone to use". AI models are a great example, in fact. Once that technology is out there the genie cannot be put back into the bottle and a ton of people are going to lose their jobs, ect.
A distain for democracy follows directly from things like this. You dont wait for people to vote to allow you to change the world by inventing something new. You just do and watch the results.
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