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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)

One thing I've learned about paradoxes: often the answer to the riddle of "how can this one thing have such a contradictory set of features and effects?" is "it's not one thing, it's *two* things*." 1/

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5 прямых ответов · 33 сообщений

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: pluralistic.net/2026/07/02/c... 2/

Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period.pluralistic.net
Ответ для By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)

That's the idea that set me on the path to writing about "reverse centaurs" and AI. I was hearing from experienced programmers whom I knew to be reliable narrators of their own experience who described how AI was letting them write the best code of their lives. 3/

Ответ для By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)

I was also hearing from equally experienced and reliable coders who described a nightmare of tech debt: "I work in aviation, and I just don't think anyone should ever fly again, those things are now unsafe at any altitude, thanks to the code I had to sign off on" pluralistic.net/2025/09/11/v... 4/

Pluralistic: Reverse centaurs are the answer to the AI paradox (11 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorowpluralistic.net
Ответ для By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)

For so long as I thought of both of these groups as doing the same thing and getting wildly different outcomes, this was a paradox. 5/

Ответ для By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)

But as soon as I realized that the former group were "centaurs" (workers who get to decide and direct their adoption of automation) and the latter were reverse centaurs (workers who were conscripted to serve as peripherals for automation systems), it all snapped into place. 6/

Ответ для By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)

It only *looked* like they were doing the same thing - they were actually engaged in fundamentally different activities, which is why they were having such different experiences. The same goes for vibe coding. 7/

Ответ для By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)

Plenty of people I knew got real value out of vibe coding personal tools that made things better for them in a way that I instantly recognized from a life spent around people who'd been able to adapt and customize the systems they used to make their lives better: pluralistic.net/2024/01/25/t... 8/

Pluralistic: Tabs give me superpowers (25 Jan 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorowpluralistic.net
Ответ для By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)

Vibe coding can be seen as part of a lineage that includes shell scripting, Applescript, Hypercard and Visual Basic. 9/

Ответ для By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)

All ways for technical novices to directly create personal software, without having to ask a programmer to interpret their needs (and without having to pay every time they wanted to do something new with their computers): pluralistic.net/2026/06/15/v... 10/

Pluralistic: AI and amateurism (15 Jun 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorowpluralistic.net
Ответ для By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)

But if that's so, how to make sense of the seeming paradox of all that tech debt? For a tech company, code is a liability, not an asset: pluralistic.net/2026/01/06/1... 11/

Pluralistic: Code is a liability (not an asset) (06 Jan 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorowpluralistic.net
Ответ для By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
Edu · building Linea

The break in that lineage: with HyperCard or VB you read every line you made. With agents the reading is optional, and whether it stays optional is the part that actually matters.

Ответ для Edu · building Linea
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)

HC had a fully recorded mode with no-code and many, many users used it. You'd just create macros by doing a task and assign them to buttons. Same with Scratch. "View source" is a powerful affordance because it can let you see what your "no code" macro is doing, but not everyone views source.

Ответ для By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
Kevin Marks

I've been saying "AI coding is like spreadsheets" for a while - very empowering for people to make small tools for themselves or to express a thesis; a terrible choice to make a load-bearing part of a larger business.

Ответ для By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
Robert | DDS Boston

The throughline is abstracting the syntax away. Visual Basic let us drag and drop UI, and now vibe coding lets us author the system logic in plain language. The core skill shifts from typing to directing the constraints and acceptance criteria.

Ответ для By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
Transient Sun

i took a programming class in high school that taught VB the only thing i managed to actually program in that class was a turn-based version of space invaders.

Ответ для By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
Jay/Cogi

As not-a-coder who occasionally wants my devices to do new things, I kind of love the idea of vibe coding for this sort of thing in theory, but when I look into it more, all the places that profess to teach vibe coding/offer solutions for vibe coding try to get me to make production-ready code

Ответ для Jay/Cogi
Jay/Cogi

Which I don't want or need and AI can't actually do, to the point where it seems more accessible to learn Visual Basic or something for my occasional make-the-device-do-one-thing needs

Ответ для By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
singemonkey

I've mainly done this for a while for the kinds of organisations that have people who don't even know where to start with automating a computerised task. One off hacky solutions can often save an organisation hundreds of hours a year of copy-paste work. I called myself a "gutter-coder".

Ответ для By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
Ответ для By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
CuriouslyCory

Not surprising but reliable coders do NOT sign off on shit like this. I've been under pressure to short cut the privacy and consent laws regarding PII and PHI in the med tech I'm working on, and when pressed for "sign off" I watch them roll their eyes so hard for insisting we do our due diligence.

Brian DiNunno

I view this in the analogy of mass transit. You want your main line to high capacity, hyper-efficient, and optimized. But the "last-mile" issue of getting people to their specific destination? That is best as creative chaos to fit specific needs. Code Library vs. AI UI is Subway vs. Bike Share

Ответ для Brian DiNunno
M
mysticlawyer

The obvious flaw here is the omission of walking and/or buses.

Ответ для mysticlawyer
Brian DiNunno

But I *do* also like pancakes even when I don't mention them.

Ответ для Brian DiNunno
M
mysticlawyer

Mmm, fair (and…ouch!). Better would have been subways vs everything else. your existing comparison is misleading (well, I was misled, but that might just be me…). Thanks!

Ответ для mysticlawyer
Brian DiNunno

No worries. I had more in there at first, but character limits prevail (and force concepts rather than completion)

Ответ для Brian DiNunno
M
mysticlawyer

You, sir, are a follow.

sophiacollins

In case this is a useful analogy: mycologists used to think one particular mushroom was fatal to 1/4 of people, but not to everyone else. Then they discovered that it was actually two species of mushrooms that looked almost identical. One of them fatal to humans, one of them not.

Dan

Paradox can be the other way too like paradox of super plural statements like “the group co-operated” is true of a group but of a particular member or truth function of its parts there may be no way of determining if the condition or “co-operation” would obtain. Similar with murmurations of birds.

Ответ для Dan
Dan

There was a paper in Analysis about this (Analysis being the journal that 2-4000 word papers get published - aka "if your undergrad essay is good enough try there" hehe www.jstor.org/stable/25597...

Superplurals in English on JSTOR Øystein Linnebo, David Nicolas, Superplurals in English, Analysis, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Jul., 2008), pp. 186-197www.jstor.org
Ответ для Dan
Dan

fwiw I just had a look at that paper - I used to read every Analysis article - don't know which ones will stick with you -that one I think about every now & then, I just checked author - Øystein Linnebo -he is now professor of philosophy at uni of Oslo!

jimmy

Love the dichotomy. Does using Claude Fable to code review and identity flaws change your point of view on whether AI can help *both* centaurs and reverse centaurs? bsky.app/profile/simo...

Simon Willison

Somewhat humbling to have Claude Fable do a final review of some software that you're about to release and have it then find (and fix) FIVE release blockers, for an estimated (unsubsidized) cost of $149.25 simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/5/s...

Ответ для jimmy
Edu · building Linea

I'd say AI review helps the centaur and does nothing for the reverse centaur. One reads the findings and pushes back. The other just gained a second machine to agree with the first one.

Ответ для Edu · building Linea
jimmy

I think there is reason to believe that there is room for a model to disagree with itself based on prompt and context and the goals of review work vs creating a diff. But what if you are using different models, maybe even models that are trained for review work in particular?