[breve]

Bryan Cantrill warns, "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn. You stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- the lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, the lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle.":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1981s

[hex4def6]

While that's pithy, I think it's also incorrect, because it implies that Oracle / Ellison is controllable by us, in the same way a tool / lawnmower is. That's absolutely not true. It has its own motivations that are best-case neutral to our goals.

It might be better to think of ourselves as individual fish in a school of fishes, and Oracle is the boat with a mile long dragnet. It doesn't care about the individual fish; it's not worth it's time to consider us individually. It's thinking in terms of tonnage.

[soraminazuki]

He also said later:

> For a while, I tried not going into Nazi allegory when talking about Oracle, but I actually think it does a disservice to not go into Nazi allegory because if I don't use Nazi allegory when referring to Oracle, there are some critical understanding that I have left on the table. There's an element of the story you can't possibly understand. If you had to explain the Nazis to someone who had never heard of World War 2, but was an Oracle customer, there's a very good chance that you would actually explain the Nazis in Oracle allegory. So, it's like: "Really, wow, a whole country?" "Yes, Larry Ellison has an entire country." "Oh my god, the humanity! The license audits!" "Yes, we should talk to Poland about it, it was bad."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79fvDDPaIoY&t=1440s

[afavour]

Eh. That quote conflates Ellison and Oracle and I don't think that's correct. I think there's a danger in just accepting that a human being is abhorrent. It _should_ outrage us that Ellison is the way he is. It's silly to think "the lawnmower hates me" because it isn't capable of hate. Ellison is capable of hate and it's not deluded to think he might hate you and I and want to control our lives.

[fer]

>That quote conflates Ellison and Oracle and I don't think that's correct.

Agreed, he's only 41% of Oracle.

[therein]

> That quote conflates Ellison and Oracle

I think he also mentions what ORACLE stands for in that quote: One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison.

[breve]

You've fallen into the trap.