Many have definitely been motivated by the wish to share information. But there also wasn't much of an alternative. If you wanted to actively learn something, get someone else to use it, or get them to share what they knew, you almost had to interact with others. Which doesn't mean there wasn't a genuine want to help others. But it was also wanting what you shared to become better. Something that was a direct consequence of many of us having experienced a scarcity of computers, software, and information. And then experiencing network effects.

That still exists in some ways. But much of the Internet is very much being gatekept. Including YouTube, Wikipedia, GitHub, Reddit, and Hacker News. There is almost no point in posting things publicly anymore because not only is the average user not genuinely interested, but they are genuinely not interested. That is why kids grow up with TikTok. Because it is one of the few platforms where you can post on almost the same terms as you consume. And thereby experience those network effects.

I've ended up enough times on the Raspberry Pi forum to understand why anyone young today would not want to go into computer science or electrical engineering.

i mean, you could totally solve a problem yourself and not write it up. i did that lots of times too!

it'll be interesting to see what happens with llms and things like stack exchange

LLMs kill stackexchange and all of the wonderful gift economy, because they replace humans in the loop with uncanny humanoids with whom it is impossible by their nature to have a real connection.

I think the next generation of popular counterculture service is going to be one which goes to extreme lengths to verify that the participants are authentic humans.

So Blade Runner is a documentary of the future?

Starting in the Internet first then IRL.

I joke but this is already has been happening for many years: email verification, captcha, pics with a customized message.. just like “AI” was present in 90s digital cameras.

>i mean, you could totally solve a problem yourself and not write it up. i did that lots of times too!

sure. that's how we shifted to a hustle culture. launch something useful, get fanbase, and then think of writing it up for marketing purposes.

but obviously the dynamic here isn't necessarily a community of like minded people sharing info. But more of a semi-captive audience interested in seeing more of the product.

no, i mean, for example, i got gnu patch to compile and work on windows nt 3.51 under cygwin, but i never made the additional effort to send the necessary diffs to paul eggert so that, if he wanted to integrate them, nobody else would have to do the same thing

Well, it isn’t great. Computers are logic, and LLM tools are not really able to derive logic from language.

Is there is enough logic q&a yeah they manage to produce something like what people talk about.

My experience with this has been terrible, I find them useless.

monsieur, what good is a new-born baby?

LLMs are not intellence. They are not AGI. They do not have the reasoning skills of a baby. This is not something they will "grow into". No amount of additional training data in the world will turn LLMs into AGI. Any argument to the contrary is pure, 100% copium to justify the hundreds of billions of dollars industry has poured into this technology.

hot air balloons aren't birds either, monsieur

That analogy still doesn't mean LLMs are a form of intelligence with reasoning capability.

it also doesn't mean sulfur is a metal

If and when you try to derive logic from the statistical model that is an LLM, you will face the same problem that Bertrand Russel did.

Good luck.

It's an effect that exists, but the examples aren't accurate.

An overemphasis on grades isn't from wanting to educate the population; obesity isn't from prioritizing nutrient-rich food; and increased inequality isn't from wanting to distribute resources based on the needs of society.

Living a well-lived life through culture, cooking, or exercise doesn't make you more susceptible to sensationalism, addiction, or gambling. It's a lack of stimulus that makes you reach for those things.

You can argue that academia enables rankings, industrial food production enables producing empty calories, and economic development enables greater inequality. But that isn't causation.

It also isn't a side effect when significant resources specifically go into promoting education as a private matter best used to educate the elite, that businesses aren't responsible for the externalities they cause, and that resources should be privately controlled.

In many ways, it is far easier to have more public education, heavily tax substances like sugar, and redistribute wealth than it is to do anything else. That just isn't the goal. It used to be hard to get a good education, good food, and a good standard of living. And it still is. For the same reasons.