You see, it is the principled axis though. Let me paint an analogy: suppose, you’re very thirsty, but there’s no water to be found. You see chips, dried fruit, cakes, biscuits, but no water. Would you really care about how ethically all of those were sourced, how nice they are, or how much the cook loved to make them? If someone started to tell you all of this snacks’n’deserts lore while you were literally dying of thirst, you’d most probably become very irritated, because all of those beautiful snacks and desserts is not what you need right now. What you need is water, and hour by hour you’re starting to care less and less about how muddy it should be, or where it comes from.
What I’m saying is, when a certain niche is overflowing with various pieces, it might seem like utility is not primary, but the opposite becomes really apparent as soon as there’s nothing to fill in that said niche. The rest is just a privilege that we all have, thanks to the abundance of literally everything that we live in. I too have the privilege to avoid projects written in Python, simply because i have a personal preference against it, or to avoid shady vibe-coded slop. With linux kernel tho? I mean, if someone clones it, and does a better job at not letting bugs into production, while releasing at the same pace or quicker than the current kernel project does, i’ll switch to it too. Except i doubt somebody could compete with a team of seasoned vets, that know how to use their tools and can with ~95% accuracy tell which parts of code would break at a first glance. Until then, i’ll stay on vanilla linux kernel, because it does its job of keeping my pc functional, which i need to win some bread.
Your analogy adds a condition for need that my framework does not presuppose and, because of that, I feel it is a weak analogy.
My entire argument is that value is judged against a wide host of different axis. Do I have a literal deathly need for a drawing app to support Gaussian dithering? Like, will I die of that isn’t present? No. Obviously in a life or death situation we select the object which will most rapidly and most effectively meet our need. Though even under those circumstances there are limits a lá trolley problems.
On to your main point as to the value of non-utility features inside of an underserved niche. That really depends on the niche doesn’t it? If the niche is LoRa communication networks in disaster environments than perhaps I am more willing to tolerate something churned out by an LLM until something better comes along but if the niche is not human life preservation than it’s not dire enough to justify compromising on the other things I care about.
A more accurate anology that you might have asked me is "if you really wanted a croissant and you had the choice between a delicious croissant made with forced child labor, no croissant, or a pan é chocolat would you really not choose the croissant?
To which my response is “Yes, I would pick something else”.
My entire argument is that value is judged against a wide host of different axis.
And you continue to fail to see that I have never said otherwise. There is a certain logical leap between “this is the only factor that matters” and “this is objectively the main factor, but we have the luxury to not care about it because we live in a post-scarcity environment”. You can afford to not choose the croissant because you know there’s other food to choose from, and more over, that there are other croissants just like this one, but with no child labor inside.
On to your main point as to the value of non-utility features […]
There’s no such thing as “non-utility feature”. But there’s the order of importance of factors, which is, of course, subjective and highly-cotextual. If you personally value the fact that a given software was written without the use of LLMs, than its functionality, because you somehow deem it as “more moral”, you’re free to stay on the outdated kernel, or switch over to NetBSD. I guess that’s the part of our discussion where you explain to me why you think using LLMs in an opensource non-profit collaborative project with the given rule that the person who submits the code is still fully responsible for it and should be able to answer any technical question regarding it is wrong.
You see, it is the principled axis though. Let me paint an analogy: suppose, you’re very thirsty, but there’s no water to be found. You see chips, dried fruit, cakes, biscuits, but no water. Would you really care about how ethically all of those were sourced, how nice they are, or how much the cook loved to make them? If someone started to tell you all of this snacks’n’deserts lore while you were literally dying of thirst, you’d most probably become very irritated, because all of those beautiful snacks and desserts is not what you need right now. What you need is water, and hour by hour you’re starting to care less and less about how muddy it should be, or where it comes from.
What I’m saying is, when a certain niche is overflowing with various pieces, it might seem like utility is not primary, but the opposite becomes really apparent as soon as there’s nothing to fill in that said niche. The rest is just a privilege that we all have, thanks to the abundance of literally everything that we live in. I too have the privilege to avoid projects written in Python, simply because i have a personal preference against it, or to avoid shady vibe-coded slop. With linux kernel tho? I mean, if someone clones it, and does a better job at not letting bugs into production, while releasing at the same pace or quicker than the current kernel project does, i’ll switch to it too. Except i doubt somebody could compete with a team of seasoned vets, that know how to use their tools and can with ~95% accuracy tell which parts of code would break at a first glance. Until then, i’ll stay on vanilla linux kernel, because it does its job of keeping my pc functional, which i need to win some bread.
Your analogy adds a condition for need that my framework does not presuppose and, because of that, I feel it is a weak analogy.
My entire argument is that value is judged against a wide host of different axis. Do I have a literal deathly need for a drawing app to support Gaussian dithering? Like, will I die of that isn’t present? No. Obviously in a life or death situation we select the object which will most rapidly and most effectively meet our need. Though even under those circumstances there are limits a lá trolley problems.
On to your main point as to the value of non-utility features inside of an underserved niche. That really depends on the niche doesn’t it? If the niche is LoRa communication networks in disaster environments than perhaps I am more willing to tolerate something churned out by an LLM until something better comes along but if the niche is not human life preservation than it’s not dire enough to justify compromising on the other things I care about.
A more accurate anology that you might have asked me is "if you really wanted a croissant and you had the choice between a delicious croissant made with forced child labor, no croissant, or a pan é chocolat would you really not choose the croissant?
To which my response is “Yes, I would pick something else”.
And you continue to fail to see that I have never said otherwise. There is a certain logical leap between “this is the only factor that matters” and “this is objectively the main factor, but we have the luxury to not care about it because we live in a post-scarcity environment”. You can afford to not choose the croissant because you know there’s other food to choose from, and more over, that there are other croissants just like this one, but with no child labor inside.
There’s no such thing as “non-utility feature”. But there’s the order of importance of factors, which is, of course, subjective and highly-cotextual. If you personally value the fact that a given software was written without the use of LLMs, than its functionality, because you somehow deem it as “more moral”, you’re free to stay on the outdated kernel, or switch over to NetBSD. I guess that’s the part of our discussion where you explain to me why you think using LLMs in an opensource non-profit collaborative project with the given rule that the person who submits the code is still fully responsible for it and should be able to answer any technical question regarding it is wrong.