I think the point was that any large enough company will have a ton of politics related to decisions around technology, so one person's anonymous perspective shouldn't carry much/any weight.

The person’s whole story was entirely based around their anonymous word. The follow up comment reads to me like a narrative way of pointing they out.

We don’t really know, I guess, what happened internally. But:

* Carmack has tossed some grenades as he left, so if there’s a real story there I guess we’re likely to hear about it from some non-anonymous sources soon enough if he was a real pain.

* He’s gone now, so we’ll see to what extent he was holding them back shortly.

I bet we hear nothing and they never release anything, but I won’t claim to have an uncle who works at ~~Nintendo~~ Facebook.

The story from Carmack is also based on his word. Unless you've worked with him directly, everything you know about John Carmack is based on some or other's words.

A word with a name behind it.

Does it make it more true?

Statistically yes.

There are vastly more people with at best second hand information and at worst willing to make stuff up than there are people directly involved.

This is why people are allowed to confront their accusers in court and we are suspicious of hearsay.

I think that the point is that we can and do have other's stories of Carmack's behavior but nothing about 8989.

Have others in the past said similar things about Carmack?

I'm not obsessed with Carmack, so I honestly don't know what has been said about him one way or the other. But really this is just a coat rack to hang a point about the epistemology of the argument.

>Yeah well, you're anonymous...Carmack has proven enough times in the past that he's able to deliver, that he can push technology

In a follow up agreeing with him

>The person’s whole story was entirely based around their anonymous word

And later still

>A word with a name behind it.

So what's being implicitly said here is "I judge what's true based on the authority of the source". The premise is John Carmack is an asshole, and the attempt to refute it is "I have it on good authority he isn't", and when you dig into that claim the authority is either Carmack himself or a tech news org article. Well, when you stop and think about it, tech news has no interest in learning or publicizing if he's an asshole.

Unless you worked with him, everything you know about Carmack is just something you read somewhere. But there is no root of the reputation tree. Reputation comes from nowhere. Its all just bits of text being trusted because they looks like other bits of text you previously trusted. Nothing ever grounds the Carmack story in something else you can observe. We have no way to test if we are in a PR manicured version of the truth or not. Claims about him are both unfalsifiable and inconsequential and reduce to insisting a preferred source of narrative is more reputable than the others.

As far as I know, he only exists as a concept which is written about in websites I frequent. I'm a John Carmack Truther. There is no John Carmack. The CIA made him up as part of MK Ultra II. I read it on a very reputable online forum.

>As far as I know, he only exists as a concept which is written about in websites I frequent. I'm a John Carmack Truther. There is no John Carmack. The CIA made him up as part of MK Ultra II. I read it on a very reputable online forum.

That's utterly ridiculous. John Carmack is real, but he's actually an alien from the planet Ka'vi. I know this is true because I read it on an actually reputable online forum (unlike your "reputable" forum). I know my preferred forum is reputable because its other postings agree with my opinions.

> The story from Carmack is also based on his word. Unless you've worked with him directly, everything you know about John Carmack is based on some or other's words.

As an admirer I saw a few videos of Carmack and immediately pegged him as NPD, obviously so. GGGP's post supports my observations, re: bully, disparaging, can't admit when he's wrong, can't acknowledge the accomplishments of others, all of which predicts what we don't see, deep anxieties, extreme self-criticism, long-held grudges, envy, etc. And I respect Carmack for leaving Meta, but its hard to ignore that he joined in the first place when Meta already has a CEN (Chief Executive Narcissist).

They can just point out it's anonymous... that's the only logical connection. The rest is just as speculative.

Everyone can and will make really bad decisions, but in my experience, owning up to mistakes and taking responsibility in contrast to playing it down and being history revisionists, is inversely proportional to, well, how clever they consider themselves be. The "well that was intentional/expected/irrelevant since it was really X instead of Y we did" is a bit worn by now. Painting broadly, generalizing etc of course.

There's almost no one like Carmack in academia.

Academic experience writing papers vs actual industry experience to the point of creating new technologies and new markets almost by himself are definitely not equivalent.

So, as much as I would be a bit judgemental about academics opinions, I would definitely listen to Carmack.

Academia can mean a lot of things, some of which have obvious parallels to industry. He may deserve a pedestal in some respects, and I'd listen to him too, but it should be tempered.

Academia is about writing papers in the same way industry is about writing ad copy…. You have to do the project before you write a paper about it.

The principple "Don't shoot the messenger" applies to real-life messengers.

It does not apply to anonymous 'messengers' on the Internet who spread stories that can't be verified, and who themselves are of unknown credibility/origins, and who could have undisclosed biases/prejudices against the person they are criticizing.