Political? The most political I've seen him get was when he spoke out against the idea of accepting technical compromises for the sake of not hurting people's feelings and being PC.
As in, you get to be cranky as long as you're arguing for the highest quality solution
I think an important distinction has to be made between personal values and opinions, and politics, both in the confines of this discussion and generally in society.
I think the lack of this distinction has led to much, and very painful and bitter online discussion, whereas people in a tribalist political mindset try to pigeonhole others based on a throwaway statement into either a friendly or enemy camp.
I broadly agree with the value that competence is more important in politeness or vibes, especially in people who build critical infrastructure - in fact it is a very very welcome property of these people that they care about things on a level that seems unreasonable to me.
This is true basically of everything critically important in life. One example is security. Everyone enjoys the privilege of using a web browser to visit any website and not have their PC compromised thanks to a variety of measures created by people who care intensely about these things.
If the crash testing on my car was done by people who sought out some amicable middle ground so as to not upset engineers who have to redo the frame of the car after a test gone horribly wrong, and accounting, who gets the bill for it, I would be sweating bullets every time I had to drive anywhere.
Politics imo is the worst sort of tribalism - the idea that people must be sorted into totally disjunct groups who are the bitter enemies of each other - thankfully doesn't translate into practice. Two people might root for sports teams that are eternal rivals, one person's favorite food might be hated by the other, they might disagree on what the important issues are, or what should be done about them, but thankfully that doesn't necessarily stop them from being the best of friends.
That's why there's a blanket ban on discussing politics in every place where people are expected to maintain amicable civility towards each other - family dinners, the workplace, gatherings with friends and acquaintances etc., with everyone usually getting antsy whenever 'politics' is brought up.
You made the statement that Blow doesn’t get political in an attempt to refute someone else’s comment.
Other people have proven he does.
So either you must concede that your initial rebuke was based on insufficient information, in which case why try and act like he has said nothing of concern.
Or his world views fit within your own view and are thus deemed neutral.
His comments are not a matter of opinion. And opinion that extends to affecting the lives of others , including supporting those who affect the lives of others, is very much politics.
So your favourite food is not politics but if you try and affect change that affects someone else’s favourite food, it is inherently political. If you support someone who starts affecting my favourite food, that too is political.
No it's not. Politics is the negotiation between two or more people who want conflicting outcomes.
> they might disagree on what the important issues are, or what should be done about them, but thankfully that doesn't necessarily stop them from being the best of friends.
The Republicans are led by white supremacists and they hate me for being transgender. Please stop carrying water for them. Politics matters and shouldn't be dismissed as "sports" or "tribalism"
> competence is more important in politeness or vibes,
I've been a professional programmer for about fifteen years. You could stand to be more polite.
I am not from the US. I don't have a horse in this race. Please do not imply I am somehow 'carrying water' for the Republicans, whatever might that mean. I do not have any negative feelings toward you for who you are, and I assume you're a competent individual, although I would prefer if we were having a technical debate instead of whatever this is.
I apologize if I come across as impolite, but I assure you that has not been my intention. Please understand that that there is no hidden meaning behind my posts.
In fact I enjoy the fact that Blow can talk shop about things he disagrees with (such as enterprise software with call stacks 50 levels deep).
> Please do not imply I am somehow 'carrying water' for the Republicans, whatever might that mean.
The implication was pretty clear to me, in that by reducing politics down to being things reasonable people can always disagree over, you're giving actual bad actors in the space too much credit.
> The Republicans are led by white supremacists and they hate me for being transgender
This is utterly false. At best you can claim you’ve heard of a few homophobic racists who happen to be republican . I’ve met just as many who happen to be democrat
Just to easily refute one of your 2 claims. Non-white republicans demographics is growing, not shrinking
It's possible (and true) that non-white Republican demographics have been growing and that the Republicans are currently being led by white supremacists, with the latter being demonstrated by the words and actions of Trump, Miller, Noem, Hegseth, Musk, etc.
How is it not? Respect and how youre trying to influence someone to behave is exerting power. Telling someone how they should exert their power is political.
That's not what people are talking about when they're speaking of Jon Blow's politics. Most likely they are referring to his weird takes on COVID or his MAGA tweets.
I just wonder how readily people would defend this viewpoint if they belonged to any of those groups whose "feelings" are typically being "hurt".
I don't know about you, but there does not exist any amount of technical achievement that will make me brush off sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, or anything else. If you are going to be disrespectful to me or people I care about, we cannot work together, period.
By "political correctness" people often mean "the basic requirement to treat your fellow humans respectfully", and that's an incredibly low bar.
>By "political correctness" people often mean "the basic requirement to treat your fellow humans respectfully", and that's an incredibly low bar.
I've gotta disagree. By "political correctness" people generally mean to not saying or doing anything that could be perceived as offensive. Especially against collectives perceived to be vulnerable.
For example, in the tiny paragraph above I've absolutely respected my fellow humans, but it can be considered offensive because you can suppose I might be looking to justify prejudiced attitudes.
For an even more evident example, political correctness has to do with the political climate and identity (as you mention: sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, or anything else, as well as referring to "those groups"). That is very much detached from treating fellow humans respectfully.
Dear lord, yeah, this is why I completely tuned him out years ago. Somewhat ironically it's the Blow fans in this thread that are cherry picking his comments. He's way too online so says things like this all the time, and it's the fans that are in here demanding a smoking gun comment that somehow proves he's awful rather than telling him "sometimes it's ok to stfu" to comments like this that enable and echo chamber him.
And I say this as a fan of Braid and The Witness (at least of the first couple of layers of puzzles...as you go deeper, just like with Braid, you find more and more self-indulgent windbaggery that should have been on the cutting room floor).
Wow, what a nauseating subreddit. They are notorious for poisoning the well, bad faith cherrypicking to misrepresent positions, and blowing their positions completely out of proportion, all for the sole effort of smearing whoever or whatever they make a topic about.
And everything in that post are bad faith links to secondary reactionary sources.
I don't really know much about Jonathan Blow or Jai or really follow it but it's astonishing to me that anyone could possibly take anything from that toxic subreddit with any sort of seriousness.
The Reddit link didn’t load for some reason and the other day be didn’t include anything racist, homophobic or transphobic. What it did cover is definitely a simplistic view ignoring the cultural nuances that might lower women’s participation in stem, but I’m not sure I’d classify it as sexist.
curious what you mean. i dont actually take any side on the original question. i dont really know enough to have an informed opinion - and im a bit skeptical one could prove anything given the confounding variables
but the idea that you cant even a-politically pose a question about biology - i dont really get the logic there. seems antiscientific
Issue is when MAGA people (Like Blow) say "women are biologically inclined towards X", it doesn't come from a place of geniune scientific curiosity, but rather a way to advance their misogynistic agenda. There is nothing you could ever say that would change their "opinion" on the matter.
Truth is, programming was women-dominated in its inception, but was taken over by men when programming the computer became more prestigious. Whatever biological factors at play here, they're completely overridden by sociological factors.
I was just speaking generally, I also don't have a side there. But for clarity, what I meant is that templates to the tune of "[subset of people with X characteristic] are more / less prone to [Y characteristic]" can construct blatantly false sentences, and also sentences that, irrespective of whether they are true (or that they are falsifiable at all, as you add), have a heavy political penalty.
I also don't think that's bad - you can say blatantly racist things with that template, and I'm ok with those things not allowed to be said in lots of contexts.
The idea that there could be biological dispositions to using a computer, the least natural thing I could think off, is well and truly absurd. Anyone still "interested" in this topic is coming from a place of unsubstantiated vice signalling, and completely uninterested in hearing any actual biologist's take on the subject, in my experience.
Let's not forget that the first generation of programmers was mostly women, until the job became high-status enough that men could take over. Takeaway: it's all bullshit.
It's really quite funny too, because women were a huge population of programmers and computer science graduates all the way up to the mid 1980s, when the ratios began flipping in favor of men. The biological argument would assume that either something changed biologically from 1980s onwards to make women less predisposed to be programmers, or (the more usual argument I see) 'that they were just doing the gruntwork' which usually exposes them as who they are.
Not defending the guy, but he's possibly on the autistic spectrum, given he grinds solo on his projects for decades and stuff.
He may perceive his own appetite for programming as being linked to some form of autism. Because, well, computers are not people, so it's nice to avoid people.
Given that there is a proven gender discrepancy in the distribution of autistic disorders, it's not completely absurd to imagine that men could biologically be more attracted to working with computers than women.
Without wanting to go too far out of my depth, I have read a few times now that a lot of the perceived growth in autism rates could be attributed to our society pushing people into adopting behaviors previously attributed to "actual" autism. Spending time on the computer as a kid (playing video games, etc.) is still mostly a boy activity, because of societal reasons, and can certainly lead to adopting these behaviors later in life in some cases (not making any value judgment here). I would be willing to bet that, had programming stayed a women-dominated position, we'd have more women than men on the spectrum today.
I'm telling you: I'm out of my depth here. I don't need opinion on gay conversion therapy though, it's been shown repeatedly to be completely ineffective (and extremely cruel too). What's your point?
Careful though, I'm not telling you that playing video games as a kid makes you autistic, I'm telling you that doing so can make an individual adopt behaviors previously thought to define/be exclusive to autism.
Could there be a difference in the social reward centers of the brain, based on gender, possibly from the biological necessities of having children? We know reward centers are not the same, between the sexes, since heterosexual attraction is the norm (and why gay conversion therapy can't work). Some brain structure and function is hard coded.
Could these hormone influenced reward centers differ in social rewards, or for human interaction? Computers are not human. Maybe [1], but don't expect much research proving it one way or the other.
How would that explain the very basic fact that most programmers were women in the early days of computing? It can't. The most important factors deciding which gender is most represented in programming are sociological.
You need to look at the history of it all. There wasn't the freedom back then, that we have now, where women could choose their profession based on personal interest. Back then programmers were women. It wasn't considered a man's job [1].
When you look at the history of it all, it clearly shows that men have always been misogynistic bigots oppressing and driving women out of educational opportunities and professional careers, and they still all, even more so today than ten years ago, due to the rise of GamerGate, MAGA and Project 2025.
In case you are ignorant. This is about the "things vs. people" finding. You can e.g. find it linked on wikipedia in the "Sex differences in humans" article.
If it's biological or not is kind of hard to prove without unethical experiments.
I am not disputing that there exists differences in vocational choices between genders. Programming as a discipline is a textbook sociological example though: it was women's work when it was thought as "gruntwork", and then became men's work when it got prestigious enough, almost overnight (in historical scales). If ever there exists some biological predispositions towards programming, they are largely overriden by sociological factors, to the point that using biology to explain why programmers are mostly men today is truly ridiculous.
He gets political.. Just as an example, he claimed that it was obvious that COVID was a lab leak in 2021. This is not obvious at all if you read Michael Worobey's rigorous work instead of rely on Blow's arrogant intuitions.
I will still play Jonathan Blow's next game, but I think he is a bit of a hack outside of game design.
The lab leak theory was always credible. Here in Canada there was a big scandal with Chinese scientists who worked for one of our labs who secretly transferred specimens from Winnipeg to Wuhan in 2019 and the subsequent police investigation went public in 2020.
Its not credible: two viral lineages emerged from the market ~1 week apart before the world knew what covid was; they differ by 2 nucleotides; mutation rates are 1e-6 per base per passage; doubling time is about half a week. A group of sick animals better explains the phylogenetics w/ these constraints. Everything points against lab leak: location, timing, and genetics.
You should google the definition of credible since it seems you don't know it... (Hint, it doesn't mean 100% true)
It really boils down to: do you trust a brutal communist dictatorship that has been attacking the West asymmetrically and wants to invade its neighbours to be honest?
Multiple Western governments believe it was a lab leak and coincidentally I'm sure, relations with China have been quite bad since.
Any conclusion about a pathogen origin requires phylogenetic evidence. Everything else is secondary. You could write a trillion intelligence memos in the absence of genetic evidence and get no closer to the answer.
If you want to deny sequence data that predate worldwide recognition and controversy related to COVID-19, OK. But the origin question can never be answered with this denial.
Most of us are grossly unqualified to provide opinions on any domain save some hyper specialized domain we invest years of effort into. I always think about that when reading comments on the Internet :)
If only the tech gurus of the internet stayed in their lanes, or if people knew better than to take their beliefs from clueless entrepreneurs who got lucky once, the world would be a much better place. Alas, tis not the one we live in.
A lot of skills in say, running a business, really do transfer. It is possible to gain expertise on how to run a small business and translate that to other realms of running a business. But it is also important, perhaps critical, to recognize limitations. The less similar the situation and environment the less that will transfer. Some times enough transfers that the insights are useful. Some times it is actively harmful to apply previous approaches. Recognizing the differences and what transfers is much harder but also a skill. Becoming skilled enough to help up until your limitations is how you can continuously be successful in domains you have no right to be. The irony is even then you may still not really be able to offer helpful insight.
I don’t know any of the context but how could hurting people’s feelings ever be relevant in the context of technical implementation of the game if that’s what we’re taking about?
That particular tweet only says that he preferred Trump to Kamala which IMO is a reasonable opinion. It does not say that he likes Trump. Given the choice between a douche and a turd sandwich you pick one. Maybe post some other tweet?
> That particular tweet only says that he preferred Trump to Kamala which IMO is a reasonable opinion.
Maybe for you. For people like me, voting for Trump is completely unacceptable, in particular after the experiences with the first Trump administration.
He's a Trump fan. Is he stupid enough to believe Trump's illogical promises, or does he see through them and is OK with all the unconstitutional and immoral crap he's done? Either way he's political.
If you haven't seen much of his posts or opinions in the past five years maybe, but he's gone pretty far off the deep end recently (see: calling all men under the age of 40 supercucks). He's always been sort of a holier-than-thou asshole and that's driven him to increasingly dumb arguments.
Jonathan Blow is one of my personal heroes, but he does seem to be living 5 years behind politically (he spends a lot of time ranting at the woke crowd, who seem nowhere to be found anymore anyways). That's probably a good thing. I doubt he's as addicted to the internet as the rest of us. He's said some odd things in interviews in the last couple years though.
I wanted to substantiate this, but I couldn't find the clips (which do exist... I just want to get on with programming and close hn for the day.. not succeeding). I did find that Jonathan Blow tweeted "Nature is healing" after Trump won, so you can get an idea for where his politics are from that. (Still love the guy, even if politically he's your angry uncle.)
He is definitely "online". I saw him tweet about Hasan's dog which - you have to know about streaming political figures and the latest happenings at least a little bit. Maybe not addicted but he knows what is up and still has the views he has.
I wonder how people are able to stay functional while being online. I'm in 2 states. (1) Very productive and joyful. (2) Extreme dysfunctional and commenting on HN and Reddit.
As in, you get to be cranky as long as you're arguing for the highest quality solution