[dannersy]

A couple years back, I think I would have bent over backwards to defend the maintainers. It is a gruelling and thankless effort to maintain any open source project, let alone one as established as rsync. I guess I just don't see AI being a net positive anywhere, and I have to see this backlash to using gen AI as a good course correction from the general populous.

There are other posts talking about the instant gratification of LLM use and the more I have to interact with people using the tools, I think this may truly be the problem. Our biology can't handle it. I see otherwise very smart people do really really stupid things because the slot machine told them, but it has even trained them to be helpless when the slot machine fails them.

I'm being seen as a Luddite, blind to the advancement, and then I see colleagues writing benchmarks that make no sense but have beautiful graphs made with AI. Then I basically have to choose to smile at them and pretend it's good work or scold them for not seeing that the bench is testing an interval baked in as a constant so it's moot. Both options are treating them like they are 7 years old, not intelligent colleagues.

[rf15]

> instant gratification

I'm with you. I don't understand why it affects some people more than others. To me, using AI triggered my sense for drugs and addiction after a while: when your first association for an engineering product is "it feels _great_!" then run, it's just cocaine with extra components.

A tool should not make you feel good, just accomplish the task.

[MrGilbert]

ADHD might be in play, and I think it‘s undiagnosed by more people than we assume. And it‘s fine, because as long as you can deal with it, it‘s not an issue. I can imagine that the addiction to LLM hits the same areas as addiction to, say, gambling, binge eating or shopping. I wrote a small thing about it here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48081469

[pmarreck]

So is ADHD also to blame for "being addicted" to driving instead of walking?

What about using a sewing machine instead of hand-sewing?

Washing machines instead of hand-washing? (Some people still swear by air-drying instead of using a dryer, but there aren't that many "hand-washing is just better" holdouts, even if it might be true!)

Note that in all of these cases, you ALWAYS grin when you first use the more automated thing after having done the manual thing, and you ALWAYS lose something by going the faster/less-laborious route. If people are simply hyperfocusing on what is lost when you lean on LLM for coding, then they're simply going to miss the train (yet another invention that superseded walking and horseback-riding, with its own set of tradeoffs!)

We all know a walk is good on its own terms even if a car is faster, but if your goal is to get from point A to B in less than a certain amount of time, sometimes only a car will do. Hand-washing probably is less wear-and-tear on the clothes and lets you focus on dirty spots. Air-drying leads to fresher-smelling clothes that don't shrink. And hand-coding leads to a more curated solution than an LLM ever could... All of these at a comparatively extreme extra time or labor cost.

[MrGilbert]

I was giving OP an answer to their question, as to why the "instant gratification" loop from AI is triggered by some people more than others. It's not about the grin, it's about the "not being in control, and not being able to stop". And if it's only the grin - yeah, hyperfocus is also something that neurodiverse brains have. Not sure what triggered your reply specifically, but I think it is worth stating that there is nothing bad about it, as long as it doesn't become an issue. Different brains work differently. It's just a fact we should accept.

[pmarreck]

on "a tool should not make you feel good"

I never thought I'd actually see an anti-joy argument being used in all seriousness, but welcome to 2026!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48413983

Thoughts on that, then?

[cyphar]

> I'm being seen as a Luddite, blind to the advancement

Note that the Luddite movement was actually not opposed to the technology itself, but how it would negatively impact workers' rights and textile quality[1]. Many Luddites were actually highly-skilled machine operators.

Any of that sound familiar?

[1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-rea...

[timmytokyo]

That's exactly what it is. It's gambling. Like pulling the arm of a slot machine.

[0] https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/116657411750038515

[pmarreck]

> I guess I just don't see AI being a net positive anywhere

well, at least you're being honest about your non-empirical biases...