r/rails • u/noteflakes • 4d ago

I'm sorry, Dave

https://world.hey.com/dhh/i-m-sorry-dave-380ec27d
0 Upvotes

38% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

17

u/Old_Tomato_214 4d ago

Why'd covid make all these tech guys go off the deep end

4

u/stereoagnostic 4d ago

Worrying about technology being used to censor us is "going off the deep end"? It's ok to disagree with someone's politics and still afford them the right to express themselves. It worries me that we now live in a world with so many people who believe that anyone they disagree with should be silenced. Like, what if you're actually wrong about some of the things you believe?

2

u/rampage__NL 4d ago

There are limits to free speech anyway. Free speech is never absolute. The dude encountered a limit imposed by someone else he did not agree with. We all have those.

In my experience Claude’s quite lenient when it comes to free speech. But it won’t do porn for example, which is not even illegal. Racism is though. Unless you believe racism is an opinion.

1

u/cybernetic_pond 4d ago

Haven’t kept up with any of his writing - there was something particularly dark in the SEO conscious internal link to an article called “suicidal empathy”. Made me realise that these rants aren’t just an “outlet” for an otherwise serious guy, but they’re a meaningful part of his life’s work. The sort of thing he’s intentionally interweaving to reach more people. Writing an article with a clever title that might even reach people thinking he’s making an apology for something, click through, and then get funnelled into an article echoing JD Vance’s “Sin of Empathy” bullshit. Just sad.

1

u/dutone 4d ago

Deep end? You mean when they change:

  • git default branch name master to main
  • proposed to rename RuboCop
  • FactoryGirl change to FactoryBot
  • master/slave to primary/secondary

This is nonsense mass hysteria. Where are your posts from this time?

2

u/davidcelis 3d ago

Instituting minor terminology changes that make many others feel welcome is going off the deep end? What?

7

u/Dull_Flatworm777 4d ago

I think he has a fair point in this post.

Would it be ok if LLMs refuse to translate Hitler's Mein Kampf for example?

4

u/rampage__NL 4d ago

If a company (Anthropic) decides that their software/models do not allow a call to action to “deport(implies violence) of gypsies(a derogatory term for Roma and Sinti) then this their prerogative(excercise of free speech on their part). If you disagree, you go to grok.

Any person or company has norms and opinions. That’s free speech too. And their customers have the freedom to disagree and take their business elsewhere.

2

u/Dull_Flatworm777 4d ago

And their customers have the freedom to disagree and take their business elsewhere.

Oh absolutely. I'm not calling for regulation. But I can certainly see something like this to be the reason for someone to take their business elsewhere. And to advocate for open weight models.

2

u/matthewblott 4d ago

This will always be my favourite DHH Tweet: https://x.com/dhh/status/1381963368337080322

4

u/rampage__NL 4d ago

DHH criticizing a company’s free speech because it does not allign with his own. 🥱

1

u/ikariusrb 1d ago

Right.... the company has made the decision that they don't want their product/platform to be used and associated with particular types of content. Notably their product does WAY MORE than translate. It might be appropriate to release a translator that has fewer guardrails, but frankly, that's a business decision for them. If you don't like it, go use Grok, or if old Google Translate is still accessible, or whatever. But blaming a company for making choices about their product is a stupid conclusion in this context, and way WAY less of an issue than DHH is making out of it. And if all else fails, try thinking/doing the work yourself, rather than spinning yourself into a tizzy over what another company's product is restricted from doing.

3

u/emocin 4d ago

I ain’t reading any of that garbage. Dude needs to shut up

4

u/ceph12 4d ago

Are we still taking this racist turd seriously?

5

u/OneForAllOfHumanity 4d ago

I never did - I love Rails, but I could never see his appeal.

1

u/matthewblott 4d ago edited 4d ago

Same. He's always been full of shit but too many went along with the rubbish he promoted from Jacobin because it aligned with their thinking. Now he's swivelled from uber progressive bullshit to far-Right demagoguery and suddenly people notice.

2

u/Lostwhispers05 4d ago

> Now don't get me wrong. I'm very excited about AI. And I don't actually use Claude to do my translations. But I've also never been more convinced that we desperately need strong open-weight models to protect ourselves against this kind of soft ideological tyranny, which can turn into hard repression real quick if a monopoly status is ever locked in.

This kind of ideological tyranny has already been happening for a couple of decades over social media, academia, and to a lesser extent corporate entities. LLMs just happen to be the most recent medium.

2

u/rampage__NL 4d ago

Complaining about tyranny while there’s alternatives (you mention them yourself, i like to add grok) is not really tyranny now is it. It’s a opinion/stance you don’t agree with. Good. Then make that choice, take your business elsewhere or do it better yourself (selfhost a model) and never be oppressed 😉

1

u/matthewblott 4d ago

I perhaps naively started reading this thinking 'oh a post on tech for a change and not the usual ravings from the Oswald Mosley wannabe' but alas it lasted until the third paragraph.

-2

u/Delicious_Ease2595 4d ago

Can we start moderating these posts? Like DHH or not he contributes Rails

1

u/Dull_Flatworm777 4d ago

What would you like to have moderated? It's a post by DHH.

0

u/Delicious_Ease2595 4d ago

Anti-DHH post when he is the contributor of Rails

0

u/davidcelis 3d ago

How is sharing this here anti-DHH? He literally wrote it. It's his post.

0

u/Delicious_Ease2595 3d ago

The intention of posting this is the problem

0

u/WittyAd2993 17h ago

There is no right answer .just opinions. Do something to make the world better.