[akkartik]

I'm not yet sure how I feel about Gemini (I like inline links), but this post makes me think it's starting to gain some traction. It's past the "first they ignore it" and "then they laugh at it" phases and now into the "then they fight it" phase.

Given that the mainstream stack we all are dependent on has foundational problems as OP acknowledges, language like "solutionism at its worst" feels counter-productive. Surely anything Gemini does or doesn't isn't as damaging as status quo. So why not let a thousand flowers bloom? Criticism like this feels like the People's Front of Judea (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0BpfwazhUA)

[syntheticnature]

I guess it depends on how big of a "they" is required -- and if this is an attack, not harsh laughter.

That said, I think Gemini is intentionally designed to be ignored; an enclave or ghetto on the Internet, depending which connotations the speaker wants to have. Its success or failure will depend on its ability to have a self-sustaining community, which is interesting mainly in that discovering Gemini requires finding it via the web at the moment. I suppose there might be a Gemini-IRC connection, too; we will see if Gemini has IRC's longevity.

[readthenotes1]

You're saying Gemini is the Judean People's Front? A difference without a distinction?

[akkartik]

If you think the web sucks, stop equating people (not companies) building alternatives with Google and Facebook. I think OP is the Judean People's Front while Gemini is the People's Front of Judea. Or something. Who cares?

Here's an example of the connotations the term "solutionism" has: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/09/evgeny-mo.... It does not apply here, to put it mildly.

[krapp]

The way I see it, constant complaints about the web led to Gemini, so the constant complaints about Gemini will inevitably lead to... something else.

Unfortunately, that something else will also be minimalistic, separatist and elitist, just less so than Gemini. It will probably use a strict subset of Markdown and be primarily text-focused and won't support scripting. But rather than "a thousand flowers" blooming we'll just have Gemini and "Gemini lite," because that would satisfy the needs of 99% of the potential audience for such things.

[cxr]

> language like "solutionism at its worst" feels counter-productive[...] why not let a thousand flowers bloom?

Because resources are not infinite. Gemini sucks the air out of the room.

> Sometimes an adage is trotted out that goes roughly like this: Welp, it's not perfect, but it's better than nothing!¶ And sometimes that's true. It's at least widely understood to be true, I think.¶ What I don't see mentioned, ever, is that sometimes "it's better than nothing" is really, really not true. In some cases, something is _worse_ than nothing.

<https://www.colbyrussell.com/2019/02/15/what-happened-in-jan...>

> I think the real tragedy of Gemini is that although its existence is a reaction to a genuine problem[... i]t's another instance of a bad solution to a problem making that problem worse. This happens when bad solutions capture the attention of people concerned with and/or affected by the problem, and then they divert resources away[...] instead of allowing those resources to be better put to good use

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25811478>

[akkartik]

Yeah, I just axiomatically disagree with this sort of control-obsessed, zero-sum thinking. Good ideas have always had to compete with other new ideas in addition with incumbent old ones. There is always an organizational challenge in addition to the technical one. If whatever you want to happen is threatened by Gemini, it's not good enough. If you want to wait until everyone else stops trying new ideas, please say hello to the heat death of the universe for me.

[cxr]

I don't know what you mean by "control-obsessed", and I'm not a zero-summer generally, but zero-summability is relevant to what's going on with Gemini. A person who spends 250 man-hours working on Gemini is not going to get that back. Likewise, a project that would have benefited from that person's enthusiasm had Gemini not existed is not going to.

> If whatever you want to happen is threatened by Gemini

I don't think you're conceptualizing the criticism correctly. This is not "B is better than A". This is a case where B never comes along because A exists. The person who would otherwise catalyze B's existence and success doesn't, because they think that A is sufficient and/or anyone they might talk to about B would just respond, "I dunno; isn't that what A is for?" You can see this with Mozilla, for example. (As a former Mozillian, that's what I had in mind at the time I wrote the linked blog post.) I have become especially sensitive to this after my experience between 2006–2013 and seeing the contrast of that time period vs Mozilla's role over the last 10 years—which is basically a black hole that keeps people from effectively organizing anything that resembles the early days of Firefox development. I recognized something similar after moving to Austin in 2014 and signing up for lots of volunteer events that were by-and-large just organized to be ways for affluent young professionals to feel like they're doing good by burning their attention surpluses, whether or not any of those events were actually a worthwhile use of those resources. See also:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3p3CYauiX8oLjmwRF/purchase-f...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10029811

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7302645

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/plastic-wars/

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...

> If you want to wait until everyone else stops trying new ideas

That's the opposite of my position—which is that Gemini is sucking the air out of the room.

[akkartik]

> I don't think you're conceptualizing the criticism correctly. This is not "B is better than A". This is a case where B never comes along because A exists.

This risk is omnipresent in the universe. We never know what possible futures we cut off when we make a fork in the road. You don't ever step into the same river twice. However, this risk also applies to the projects you like. If we all worried about this we'd not do anything. Rhetoric like "Gemini sucking the air out of the room," "person who spends 250 hours working on Gemini," "it's like voluntourism," -- I could just as well replace Gemini with triplescripts throughout your comments.

[cxr]

No, you could only do that if the basis of my comment were about generic, FOMO-driven hand-wringing, where A is unbound, so substitute any A and the criticism remains true. That's not what we're talking about. The criticism involves the observation that Gemini, specifically, is bad.

[akkartik]

If Gemini specifically is bad, you should be able to argue that without making these other arguments that apply to any new project. Convince people they shouldn't care about it. So far I haven't found that side compelling. If you concentrate your energies there, I might.

[ajioasfnokal]

Gemini devs could have contributed to something else? Sure. They didn't, though.

Historians avoid counterfactual arguments because they lead nowhere. Perhaps the timeline without Gemini is worse. Perhaps it's better. Not possible to say. Best to just live in the moment.

What projects would you prefer them to work on?

[cxr]

> Gemini devs could have contributed to something else?

Not the argument I'm making. I'm observing that others' energy that gets captured (or more accurately, spent; i.e., fails to be captured for use elsewhere) as a consequence of Gemini's gravity is wasted. It's necessary to make a distinction between Gemini's originators and people sucked into its orbit.

[ajioasfnokal]

Still a pointless counterfactual.

[cxr]

There is very definitely a point.

[piaste]

> So why not let a thousand flowers bloom?

That's... probably a poor figure of speech to use as encouragement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign