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   JNL (jnl@hcommons.social)'s status on Monday, 23-Feb-2026 01:32:42 JST JNL

   As my mutuals know, I wasn't on the Doctorow bandwagon to start with.

   That said.

   If your tolerance for being in the orbit of another human and their thinking goes to zero the minute they're wrong about one thing, what you were engaged in probably wasn't learning, but idolatry.

   People are complex. Sometimes unpredictable. Strangers in some ways, always, even if you're intimate. And learning, always, and capable of choice and change.

   What is Cory trustworthy for, right now?

   Trust him for that. 👍🏻🤷🏼♀️

   • Rich Felker repeated this.
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     JNL (jnl@hcommons.social)'s status on Monday, 23-Feb-2026 01:32:49 JST JNL

     in reply to

     What if you admire certain things and appreciate others and celebrate people and give credit where it's due and let humans surprise you and try to live with gentle love and your own courageous integrity? What if it is not really necessary to make a false idol of anyone?

     Rich Felker repeated this.
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     Giflian (giflian@techhub.social)'s status on Monday, 23-Feb-2026 01:33:07 JST Giflian

     in reply to

     @jnl He, a public figure and celebrity, wrote on his blog that AI critics are "neoliberal purity culture", after so many blog posts and interviews and speeches where he criticized AI. It was an about-face and an insult from an assumed ally against Big Tech. So he meant to rile people up and control the narrative. If you see the negative toots about him as proof of idolatry, his job is done.

     I don't think we owe public figures the same grace we owe to other private citizens, but even if we did, it would've been nice if they extended the same grace to us.

     One thing I like about mastodon is the ability to mute words, hashtags and users, if I'm bothered by the topic or behaviour.

     Rich Felker repeated this.
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     JNL (jnl@hcommons.social)'s status on Monday, 23-Feb-2026 01:33:39 JST JNL

     in reply to

     • Giflian

     @giflian Oh, it was definitely an unaccountable asshole move on his part. And to be clear, I get why people are bewildered and even angry. It is disappointing and feels toxic and demoralizing when people push us to accept harm as futile to resist, and use power and platform to caricature or erase rather than acknowledge the many good arguments against that take.

     All of this sucks and there are many great pieces and threads (the best I've seen are from women and I don't think that's incidental here; getting to that) explaining why.

     *MY* post, meanwhile, is not toward any of that.

     It is toward my village here, in subset, trying to figure out what we do with people who we look up to who also turn out to be completely human and thus be really unevenly developed in their thinking and praxis across issues. Do we have skills to say no to bullshit and caretake each other when someone loud and big gets it wrong? Can we know in advance that we shouldn't overtrust? Can we call Cory in?

     Rich Felker repeated this.
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     JNL (jnl@hcommons.social)'s status on Monday, 23-Feb-2026 01:34:01 JST JNL

     in reply to

     • Giflian

     @giflian I am surprised, personally, that he picked this specific hill, but I'm not surprised AT ALL that Cory is acting at core like libertarian values are sufficient and that being more widely accountable to those harmed, right now, by the LLM push, is mere, trifling, insufferable purity culture.

     I am not surprised at all because I have seen this at play in his prior engagement with his followers; I learned by watching, and it was fast, that he does not have well developed muscles for impact-to-others based critiques. Libertarians fundamentally don't. Many in fact become libertarians and will tell you so because they felt outraged and oppressed the first time someone suggested we might owe one another something.

     Those of us more likely to be harmed by an ethic that SOME people get to do WHATEVER they want are more wary of this, knowing as we do, and for many reasons, that we ourselves will never be 'some people' empowered in ways that make it ok to shit on community.

     Rich Felker repeated this.
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     JNL (jnl@hcommons.social)'s status on Monday, 23-Feb-2026 01:35:16 JST JNL

     in reply to

     • Giflian

     @giflian All to say, I was pre-disappointed in Cory and I think that's innoculative in this case (and in many others). I am not struggling with feeling betrayed or with whether to erase him from my orbit. He is reaping a whirlwind at the moment and we'll see what he chooses next.

     In my pre-disappointment, though, I have also been glad he's doing the work he's doing, and glad others find it meaningful.

     And I wonder if this more modulated way of engaging even with those whose thinking we deeply admire might hone a helpful set of muscles in us in all kinds of ways.

     What if life and learning and relationships are less a flaming gauntlet of one-time pass/fail, and more a messy co-journey ... in an ecosystem deeply, profoundly warped by the obscene theft from the common of a very few people and their willingness to stop at nothing to keep it. People are going to get confused. Need to be taught and called in. Have underdeveloped muscles for 'we' and be untrustworthy on some things. 🤷♀️