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Comment by john_strinlai

1 day ago

arguments are stronger without insults

Anyone who knows anything about Carmack knows that he has trouble empathizing. I don't even think it's his fault per se. I'm fairly sure he would actually agree with the assessment. His raw intelligence is sky-high.

And that is a big reason why he's making this post, is what I'm saying. It doesn't excuse him, but it's not surprising in the least.

  • > Anyone who knows anything about Carmack knows that he has trouble empathizing.

    Can you give some examples, outside of this post? I only know about Carmack by the things he'd worked on, but not anything personal like this. This would help me get a more complete picture of him.

    • I'd read Masters of Doom (the psych eval/juvie story and the cat story stand out). You might think "oh he was so young back then", and it's true, but keep in mind that book details id Software up to and including Doom 3 development, and he was in his early 30s there. I'm sure you can find excerpts if you don't want to read the whole thing. It's an interesting book though; great glimpse into trenches of 90s game development.

      I've (unoriginally) always been impressed by his technical ability and work ethic, and while I used to religiously read his .plan updates (you might not know what that is, because I'm an old, OK? It's the precursor to blogs) and also follow the old Armadillo Aerospace development blogs, and watch the very long QuakeCon talks, I haven't kept up much as I got older, just come across things here and there (like this Twitter post), and I have not picked up a big change in demeanor or humility in regards to labor, political and societal issues from back then, and those are things he's written about. It's very much objectivism, the criticism of which is beyond this topic, but suffice it to say it's not a philosophy conducive to empathy. I seem to recall he made a bunch of libertarian rants on Facebook when he worked there too, but I'm not going to give Zuck the traffic. I'm sure you can find some.