"Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn - you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' - lawnmower doesn't give a * about you, the lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle." --Bryan Cantrill
This quote is why I have my Claude Code "done" notification sound be the sound of a lawnmower revving.
The lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower, no matter how clever it sounds. (Actually not that hard with Opus5)
What about a guy with a lawnmower intentionally chopping off your foot? And what about a CEO making decisions on behalf of the corporate entity called Oracle?
There is no guy, only the lawnmower, mowing lawns. Sometimes it chops off feet.
It doesn't matter if the lawnmower is chopping off feat intentionally or not. If it's presenting a public hazard, it should be stopped. Even though the ocean couldn't care less it doesn't prevent us from building breakwalls. And Larry Ellison isn't unstoppable as the ocean.
This seems to make Larry more harmless. A lawnmower does not think. Larry thinks, so it seems to white-wash Larry here.
It's more like that movie with Stephen King where the cars and other machines turn actively evil. Hilarious movie too, not great but hilarious.
Rather than harmless, what the lawnmower analogy achieves is to make him seem blameless. "How can you assign blame to a thing that's just doing what it's built to do without any intent?" It's important to push back against that. Intent isn't a necessary condition for something to be dangerous, and so it's not necessary to ask whether it is intentional or not. A rabid dog will be put down regardless of who is to blame for it.
I think the point of the lawnmower analogy is to subjectively characterize Larry Ellison and Oracle from the viewpoint of someone who has had the unfortunate experience of having to deal personally with either of them in some way. You feel powerless against the machine, as it were, and the best course of action is to keep yourself far from the blade.
I think you both are missing the point. Hes sayin larry is inhuman, hes closer to an apex predator or a serial killer freak of nature than your ordinary human
We're not missing the point, we simply don't agree. You're putting him too much on a pedestal. He's an ordinary human bound by the same laws anyone else. If he's criminally insane and can't be held accountable for his actions, he should be locked up in an mental institution, not running a corporation.
Don not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a 1958 Plymouth Fury named Christine. You don't anthropomorphize your killer car, the killer car is just out for blood - you rebuild it and it kills your friends and family, the end. You don't think 'oh, Christine hates me' - Christine doesn't give a * about you, Christine can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize a 1958 Plymouth Fury named Christine. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle.
Wrong movie
Never thought to hear someone here mention Maximum Overdrive. Indeed a hilarious movie and the only movie for which AC/DC ever recorded an (instrumental) soundtrack.
Maximum Overdrive. Even the electric turkey carver gets revenge.
you and what army are going to stop him?
If there were such an army, let's call it a union, would you join it?
A lawnmower doesn't decide to do something bad by itself. The case with L.E. is much more sinister.
The flaw in the analogy is that oracle is made of people. It's not a lawnmower, it's a group of people with human motivations and human thoughts. It's true they don't HATE people, but it's also true they absolutely have no conscience in negotiations and have zero concern about relationships.
> It's true they don't HATE people
Maybe so, but perhaps the most successful part of the AI marketing pitch has been exploiting management's hatred of labor (and vice versa).
A significant motivator for a lot of the nonsensical AI layoffs and initiatives over the last three years has been that it's a great opportunity for management to get ill on their slaves.
Tech labor got a little too big for their britches during the hiring spree of 2021, and AI was a great opportunity to take them down a peg, even if it offered little in the way of ROI.
Yep, it's been a huge tool in the control games management likes to play.
Oh you fell into the trap... Just don't anthropomorphize Oracle...
I'm not, I'm anthropomorphizing people.
So they're not human then. The quote holds up.
The original was not even about Oracle the corporation, it was about understanding the psychology of Larry Ellison specifically.
But I wasn't replying to the original, I was replying to another comment.
You replied to a quote about Larry Ellison personally with an unrelated remark about Oracle the corporation.
> It's true they don't HATE people, but it's also true they absolutely have no conscience in negotiations and have zero concern about relationships.
Sure. Like a lawnmower.
It won't be made of people for long given how many Ellison is culling to prop up his gamble on AI data centres.
It's a joke that you're missing.
He's talking about the owner of Oracle, not the people who work there. It doesn't matter how many smart and talented real humans work at Oracle, the guy running it acts like a fleshy paperclip optimizer.
I agree, but Larry doesn't hate people, he just enjoys crushing them for his own benefit. If you can't benefit him he doesn't care about you at all.
How many bureaucracies in history have behaved in deeply misanthropic ways, especially when led by misanthropic leaders?
Don't underestimate the power of the desire to keep one's job to cause a large organization to behave towards its own self-perpetuation despite the moral lines that must be crossed by individuals to do so.
> How many bureaucracies in history have behaved in deeply misanthropic ways, especially when led by misanthropic leaders?
Lots!
> Don't underestimate the power of the desire to keep one's job to cause a large organization to behave towards its own self-perpetuation despite the moral lines that must be crossed by individuals to do so.
I don't. I don't put anything past people.
Yes, lots, look at the current US government.
An AI powered lawnmower though...
more and more it seems like he's referring to billionaires more or less.
That's because you've had years of consuming media that blames everything on billionaires.
Ah, yes. The media. Famously the voice of the proletariat and the oppressed
Walter Lippmann is spinning in his grave
For reference, Walter Lippmann is the guy from the NYT who covered up the Holodomor in Ukraine (1930s) in the west as well as Stalin's gulags and purges. I wouldn't call him the voice of the proletariat in any way. He was the voice of the Stalinist in the west and the term tankie was invented for him and people like him.
That's a strange take. But okay
He also wrote the book "Public Opinion" in 1922 [1] which explained how the US mass media apparatus could be used to influence the common man.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Opinion_(book)
Billionaires own the media. Why would they blame themselves?
well, plus the evidence of billionaires pushing for things that aren't that great after all. Maybe good for their bankroll though.
Who does this metaphor serve? To me it seems to try to legitimize the actions as a force of nature.
It's a twist on the Scorpion and the Frog story.
In other words, Larry Ellison is going to do what Larry is going to do, and there's no use wondering why.
Usually, that's to make money and sue people, at any expense. It's in his nature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog
Abusers say "that's just how I am" which is my point. Just because it's his nature doesn't mean it is at all natural.
That’s an interesting story to bring up in this context, because I have always wondered how a fundamentally customer-hostile business like Oracle could be so successful. It really puts the lie to libertarian cliches about the invisible hand of capitalism that ends up being philanthropic in spite of itself.
I think free society in general absolutely requires its people to be generally moral and civil. Freedom inevitably evaporates as morality and civility decline.
And that's why it's important to go after morally corrupt, uncivil monsters.
The problem today is that the press and the DAs/courts are complicit--they're less interested than ever in pursuing public morality and civility as ends in themselves. They're mostly only interested in partisan politics.
those libertarians almost certainly don't believe in asinine things like 'copyright'
It serves you.
The lawnmower exists, you might disagree, but it’s not your lawnmower, you can’t uncreate it. But you can and should take care never to put your hand near it.
Weird, we don't absolve murderers of guilt by saying they are an lawnmower.
I read it as a pretty obvious jab at him being inhuman.
That's exactly my point. Labelling him as inhuman gives him a pass, like how we don't criticize hurricanes as malevolent.
Well (to make an analogy), nature produces psychopaths - some people's brains just aren't capable of empathy. Whether you characterize that observation as "legitimizing" or just "being realistic" is merely a philosophical concern.
Since when are human actions categorized as being a consequence of nature? Does that let me steal or murder without consequence?
The lawn mower is operating within the laws that constraints it (laws of physics in this case) and not a greater sense of morality.
Lessons:
- The only way to constrain what the lawnmower does, is make sure what do desire is enforced by law (physics)
- A reminder, the lawnmower will chop your hand off and think nothing of it
- The lawnmower is not "evil" but if the laws that constrain it allow for evil behavior, it may do "evil" things.
Law does not constrain at all. Law only operates after the fact.
It’s nonsensical to define the actions of nature as legitimate or illegitimate.
What I meant was that there is no moralizing of natural force, which this metaphor tries to equivocate. Oh, it's just like the wind, don't get in Larry's way!