How this isn't causing an existential crisis in fellow developers, I don't understand. We're seeing our craft dissolve day by day, to the point where even our forums are filled with AI generated crap that we just don't find interesting or engaging.

It is. People have posted threads about how they hate that AI has sucked all of the joy and fun out of their work, and they can feel it rotting their brains, but they just can't not use it. Either because their employers require it or because the compulsion to minmax and optimize their "productivity" overrides all. The dialogue they have with themselves and with HN is a lot like the dialogue someone has questioning the tenets of their own religion.

Aside from that, I don't want to take responsibility for that which I don't understand. And even if I can read the code generated by a LLM, that's not the same as thinking through a solution or planning a design.

You can't call yourself an "engineer" if you just open Claude or Codex and hit "Y" on the keyboard to every prompt like that dipping flamingo when Homer Simpson took the wfh job (Simpsons predicted it).