alt Hacker News"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
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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?
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.
An AI powered lawnmower though...
more and more it seems like he's referring to billionaires more or less.
Who does this metaphor serve? To me it seems to try to legitimize the actions as a force of nature.
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)