[gaigalas]

Honestly, two mythologized figures (Carmack and Bellard).

They're good (like, quite good), but as soon as their names come up people start talking about some weird expectation of what they are supposed to think rather than the actual things they did.

Somehow, that mythologizing diminishes their accomplishments.

[noisy_boy]

Telling stories, looking for gods that don't have our limitations and telling stories about those gods is pretty much in our nature irrespective of the era.

[gaigalas]

There's no such thing as "human nature", that's just a way to justify something that can't be easily explained.

I have nothing against it. The fact that I explained a mechanism (mythologizing diminishes one's real work) offends people who like to do it, but that's outside of my control. It's not meant to offend or deny their right to do it. It is just what it is and I'm naming it. I understand it's uncomfortable, and pulling the "everyone does it" card makes things easier.

I love mythology by the way, stories, etc. Fascinating stuff.

[noisy_boy]

I don't even know what are you arguing against.

> I love mythology by the way, stories, etc. Fascinating stuff.

Most people do. Given that it is quite prevalent across cultures and given that we are a product of our genetics and upbringing, one might even say, in our nature.

[gaigalas]

I think it's the wrong lens for observing this conversation. You're looking for something that I might be attacking. I'm not doing what you think I am, that's why you can't pinpoint it.

It's a simple observation: mythologizing might diminish one's work.

Even if we assume there's some "human nature", that claim stands unchallenged.

"But you can't fight this thing that all humans do" is your line, and it was never my point to fight it. I want to explain what it does, not change it (which is outside of my control).

[wang_li]

I am of an age with Carmack and wanted to be a game developer when i was young. I very much elevated him very high. In terms of computer graphics he is very informed and talented. But I have watched him do interviews that largely focused on other areas and I find him to be pretty average or even below average. His thoughts on BJJ and AI are quite immature and don't express any special insight.

[caspper69]

There’s a reason people say don’t meet your heroes.

No matter how elevated they are in your mind, they’re still just people. One pants leg at a time and all.

[noufalibrahim]

Not exactly my idea. However, it's pleasant to see two people I admire so much having respect for each other.

[MomsAVoxell]

Oh, this is human nature and you will find it impossible to avoid this framing of cult figures, because they are indeed cult figures - albeit positively perceived ones, since they appear to not just be doing it for themselves, but altruistically every wonder they produce is for their users - and thus their works have effectively and productively impacted the lives of millions of other people, at economies of scale most of us here on HN aspire to.

And it is that aspiration you’re degrading with the rush to de-mythologize, as if it weren’t inevitable, under the crushing rush of time, that we in the hacker world had heroes.

[gaigalas]

Humanity has some 300.000 years of existing, and we can only trace back the prevalence of cult figures a few thousand years back.

For all we know, it could be a temporary fluke and we'll snap back to something else. We could be beings with no default to snap back to, ever changing, destined to dissolve the prevalence of cult figures into something else in the following eras.

In a few thousand years we could totally see this practice as some distant-past thing like making clay pots or carrying Roman dodecahedrons.

The new cultural trend could become jumping off cliffs, and someone would be arguing that it's inevitable human nature.

By the way, no rush to de-mythologize. I'm not fighting any dragon here, you do you.

[MomsAVoxell]

> a few thousand years back

I beg to differ, but okay. I don’t disagree to your allusions that there is a banality to mob idolatry, but that’s a discussion for other forums, ironically.

[gaigalas]

Idolatry is not the same as mythologizing. And I never said there is a banality to it, just that there could be. We don't have enough to know.

[MomsAVoxell]

In any case, you do seem to have overlooked that there are successful mythologies in the contemporary era - that indeed Fabrice and co., are worth understanding better not just for the nature of their work, but also the means by which their reputation preceded them - and lets not forget that the markets in which they operate are worth multi-millions of dollars worth of economy and they are clearly successful at scale.

[gaigalas]

You are defending them from an attack that doesn't exist. I explicitly praised them, and claimed that we should understand their work. They're great developers.

Also, what I did was make their myth-making fanbase uncomfortable. If one sees "liking Carmack" as some sort of identity, then offending the fanbase is offending the icon and vice-versa.

One that takes this posture cannot see the difference between criticizing the person and criticizing the myth-making. In their heads, it's the same thing. In reality, it's not.

That's why you (and others in the thread) treated the negative tone, which was towards the fanbase, as an attack to Carmack and Bellard themselves, even though it explicitly wasn't.

In simpler terms, "if he's being negative, he must dislike the idols", which is a product of the mythmaking I foreshadowed since the beginning.

[nixon_why69]

We only have writing and, consequently, people who's names we know a few thousand years back.

A cult figure before writing would have more limited reach, and be forgotten because their name wasn't written down. But they'd still have been a cult figure.

[zerohp]

The Buddha lived before writing in India. We have plenty of other stories that were passed by oral tradition before they were written down.

[gaigalas]

The oral tradition you're probably trying to refer to is the Rigveda, which is amazing. It's like a human recorder that kept a series of vocalizations intact for thousands of years through chanting, with error correction mechanisms and all sorts of tricks to reduce drift over time.

That's our oldest attested oral tradition, 2000 years or so. Stretching to a maximum of 6000 years if we're generous.

Buddhism is like, a thousand years after that.

It's all still super young though. Like I said, humanity has 300.000 years.

Earliest petroglyphs from 50.000 years ago corroborate my point of view: they depict animals, and migrations and shit. Nothing that can attest some kind of cult towards individuals, no heroes, no holy images.

So, yeah, talking about the Buddha "seems like old stuff", but it really isn't in the timescales that matter for estabilishing what "human nature" is, we've been human way before all that jazz appeared.

[MomsAVoxell]

The stories of Narwala Gabarnmang say hi.

[gaigalas]

It's an interesting hypothesis we can never prove. We don't even know how old names are.

[jongjong]

Yeah. They've had their time.