Enshittification is when the perpetrator intentionally does make a product worse, like locking previously free features behind a paywall with a firmware update, or covers components of an electric device with some goop to make it unrepairable.
Verschlimmbesserung is when the perpetrator has good but ultimately misguided intentions. For example, so middle manager might think that replacing but buttons on a vacuum cleaner with app integration adds value, but ultimately it's replacing something simple, boring and reliable with an overengineered solution that causes more problems than it solves.
There is some overlap between the two: someone could make make a Verschlimmbesserung even though he knows no one wants the change, but he can pad his resume with it. In general I'd say enshittification leans more towards malice, while Verschlimmbesserung leans more towards incompetence.
> Verschlimmbesserung is not widely used these days in Germany.
> The reality for most people - even expert programmers - has been that the freedom is more about being able to lean on other people to do that. Most people can't justify the time commitment needed to read and then modify the code for tools they use very often.
So it's like everything else in life. I am not a plumber, but I very much do want to be free to do my own plumbing if I want to. Not because I do want to, but because it means that I do get to choose whom I let do my plumbing.
The studies that found that your brain develops until you're 25 didn't study anyone older than 25.
More recent studies have found that your brain continues developing over your whole life. Different parts improve and decay at different rates at different times in your life.
There is no one age where you're ontologically perfect; it's all spectra all the time.
> I guess that most companies just chuck it up there as a default so they dont have to read the law, or maybe they are all actually harvesting and selling personal data and therefore require cookies?
That has been my guess as well. If you run npm install half-the-internet you have no idea what's in there, so just slap on that cookie banner for good measure. Of course the real problem is not knowing what's inside your application, but the thought process is "eh, if a blanket cookie banner does the job then that's good enough for me".
All living being want to literally eat you in one way or another. You can respect the earth, but first you have to subdue it and have dominion, otherwise it will kill you.
Not at all true, plenty of herbivores out there that doesn't care for humans as nutrition. Plenty of cultures out there living side by side with earth without subjugating it, and it still hasn't killed those people.
For better or worse, not that many people meet hungry carnivores vs "I could go without human for now" carnivores. They're generally kind of risk averse until hunger strikes, then any existing reason/logic (since you claimed "too smart") goes out the window.
> I have to ask…why do people want a Turing complete language to configure stuff?
What's the alternative? Petition the maintainer to add every little feature any random user might want? Or just do it yourself in a few lines of code?
Case in point, when I was still using BSPWM I did no like how if there was only one window on the desktop it would still get an outline. So I wrote 14 lines of Awk (BSPWM lets you use any language) to get what I want. This was only possible because BSPWM gives me all the primitive building blocks and lets me go wild with them. Sure, if all you want to do is set a few colors and numbers that's overkill, but any power user will sooner or later find himself thinking "oh, if only I could do X when Y unless Z".
I think having good plugin support is a better way to do it. Keep the most obvious configuration options behind a "dumb" config language like JSON or something, but create a framework to add functionality via a plugin API.
That's because setup.py was objectively a mistake. In order to know how to run the package you need to know its dependencies, which requires evaluating setup.py, but you cannot evaluate setup.py until you know the dependencies, which requires you to evaluate setup.py, and so on. The pyproject.toml is plain text where you specify the build backend and its options, and the build system can be as complex of a program as need by.
If anything, pyproject.toml is an example of taking the idea of programmable configuration to its next conclusion. The build system is part of the configuration and it's more than a simple script, it's an entire application. You just plug in its name into the universal entry point pyproject.toml.
> But it’s not the biblical story. At Babel, the loss of common language stops construction whereas in AI-assisted engineering, construction can continue after shared understanding has already collapsed. The lack of an immediate failure is what makes it curious and a bit disorienting. The tower does not fall, and so we do not notice what was lost. It just keeps rising.
I don't know whether the author thinks this is a good or a bad thing, but in my eyes it's clearly a bad thing. Intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad. AI is the the ultimate form of intelligence with zero wisdom. Actually, it's not even intelligence, it's an illusion of intelligence. If there is no human who can understand what the AI is doing it's time to stop and accept that we do not have the wisdom to contain what we are building.
> I don't know whether the author thinks this is a good or a bad thing, but in my eyes it's clearly a bad thing.
I like that the author lets the image do the work, rather than preach at me even if I were to agree. History never repeats itself but it always rhymes.
You picked a bad example because this is a thing where LLMs excel. A human doesn't know that tomato doesn't play well in a fruit salad until he learns it; not that different from LLMs.
What LLMs lack, from my experience, is two things: First, a long term memory (even a zoomed out one) and Second, the ability to execute a multi-step task without fizzling out. Upon adversity, LLMs breakdown and start making shit up. The newer models are better (and that's the difference between Fable/5.6 and GLM 5.2) but still have a very limited ability to execute any tedious planning tasks.
> Intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit
Intelligence is learning to avoid using childish cliches, unless your intention was to mislead. Categorisation and understanding dependencies are hard enough problems already.
At the supermarket or taxation (Nix v. Hedden) tomatoes are a vegetable.
Speaking of "categorisation and understanding dependencies" and "intelligence" and "fruit":
Interestingly, the Bible does not specify what kind of fruit was on the Tree of Knowledge. The association between the forbidden fruit and an apple was a derivative of later translations.
Imagine the consternation if the claim had become Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden tomato. Then this incessant controversy regarding the tomato's status would take on a biblical dimension... though then perhaps the Mormon claim that the Garden of Eden is to be found in the New World would actually have some credibility. Indeed, answers to some questions are not a matter of intelligence at all. Sometimes it seems to me intelligence is more about knowing what questions to ask in the first place.
> knowing what questions to ask in the first place
That's my 2nd hardest skill when trying to use AI. 3rd hardest is better filtering.
I keep having flashbacks to learning how to use Google effectively.
I'm an arthiest, but I'm in a historically christian society so bible stuff comes up and I often delve in.
Whenever I do look into the bible, it amazes me just how extremely bullshitty vague the bible actually is. I don't understand why people argue about it, or pay attention to past arguments (many famous examples). If I wanted to argue about vague shit I'd be into philosophy or psychology or I could choose any of the many other branches of argument. Humans are not very logical. At least capitalism has a clearer scorecard.
Last nerdsniped look was about Angels due to Scott Alexander:
(The Bible describes very clearly what angels look like. [snip] This is the highest-grade antimeme I feel comfortable using as an example; if you don’t see the fnords they can’t eat you.)
Edit: Which just meta-nerdsniped me finishing up on the beaut Hispanic word "Marianismo".
I am also not religious, but yes the Bible is everywhere. So like you, I acquaint myself for similar reasons.
Though I take issue with one statement you made - "If I wanted to argue about vague shit I'd be into philosophy..." though I do sympathize.
Modern analytic philosophy in particular, if it is good, is all about trying to be exceedingly precise, often in domains where objects like the Bible (as you noted) are exceedingly vague. Philosophy has some catching up to do, but ultimately one should not disparage it so cavalierly. After all, the best philosophers were usually also the members of society most against the sort of uncritical religiosity that seems to appeal to so many, as it does now and even more severely through the ages, before the efforts of such thinkers to enlighten their fellow human were realized.
If there is a subject that seeks to answer the question of "how to ask questions" it is surely philosophy. The best mathematicians were often well acquainted. In the most famous times of "human flourishing" the philosophers and the mathematicians were one and the same.
But yes, there is a lot of bad philosophy. And there is a lot of religion pretending to be science. Sad, but it has always been true.
Maybe a tomato would fit quite well in a fruit salad, and the only reason we do not do it is because of arbitrary learned "it's a fruit. But it is treated as vegetable"...
Chesterton's Fence, even if there is actual inefficiency there might be a reason for that. It might not be a good reason mind you, but even a bad reason is still a reason. You cannot cut inefficiency without understanding the reason first. It would take multiple years of research to understand and uncover all the inefficiency that has built up over the years. Otherwise you just end up throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Enshittification is when the perpetrator intentionally does make a product worse, like locking previously free features behind a paywall with a firmware update, or covers components of an electric device with some goop to make it unrepairable.
Verschlimmbesserung is when the perpetrator has good but ultimately misguided intentions. For example, so middle manager might think that replacing but buttons on a vacuum cleaner with app integration adds value, but ultimately it's replacing something simple, boring and reliable with an overengineered solution that causes more problems than it solves.
There is some overlap between the two: someone could make make a Verschlimmbesserung even though he knows no one wants the change, but he can pad his resume with it. In general I'd say enshittification leans more towards malice, while Verschlimmbesserung leans more towards incompetence.
> Verschlimmbesserung is not widely used these days in Germany.
Yes, it is.
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