I can infer that there are a lot of assumptions baked into your point, which aren't shared by everyone. But I'm also not sure if even you have fully considered all of them. That is, even if I grant all of your impersonal likely assumptions about how the world works, or how this technology works, etc., there remains a kind of obvious quesiton of... why should you be involved at all? And I think that question might help make it clearer what issues are actually at play. That is, if the people with authority (whoever is choosing and enforcing these policies, whoever owns the trademarks, whoever maintains the codebase) wanted development to work that way, why would they need you? Why would your submissions have any value at all, if they're produced by a system that doesn't actually rely on you? They could just orchestrate that process themselves, and have that process produce whatever they want, whatever they think is best. What value do you add? I suspect that if you think you personally add any value at all, you'll recognize that your value is in your discernment. That is, perhaps you think that your personal choices about what should exist, what should happen, how things should be, how best to do things, has intrinsic value, and that's why it matters that it's YOU orchestrating such a system, and not them. But then I would think that would make it clear that these people believe that the discernment they offer and have offered all along, and that the discernment offered by other people who actually understand/can explain the code they're submitting, is of higher value than the discernment of someone who doesn't understand/can't explain their submission. And at the end of the day, anyone even complaining about this is revealing that they see that value too, otherwise, why care? In the extreme, this can come down to a weird sort of sour grapes thing, of essentially wanting to obtain a share of, or a claim, to something that already has value, without having to offer much value oneself, and, then, when those with authority deny that, it becomes "yeah well, let's see how long your value lasts". implying that the present value is being diluted by the technology in question anyway. And maybe it is, but, then, why should they accept the submissions from people who are just using a system that dilutes value? 😅 (Huh, perhaps some interesting parallels to some common critiques of mass immigration policies, there.) In summary, it was never about code, it was always about discernment, but the discernment of people who can explain and understand things is more valuable than the discernment of people who can't. So the fact that the machine can produce code is mostly irrelevant when it comes to what's truly valuable. Unless you think the software can discern on its own (which it can't, but some people clearly want to think so). But, in that case, then your own discernment as the user of the software would be nullified. Though, I suspect the ugly truth is that a lot of people want to think that OTHER PEOPLE's value is diminished by this technology, so that it means they don't have to rely on other people as much anymore, and can have whatever they want with reduced friction/cost, and yet simultaneously want to believe that THEIR OWN value has increased, including that that putative fact should be acknowledged by others. 😬

This is a very important point, and why I said it was conditional on whether "fall off the bone" is the goal. The hydrolysis of collagen into gelatin is just another variable that our expert BBQ engineers can adjust. 🤓 Collagens are structural proteins, polymers or chains of amino acid monomers, that make up much of an animal's "connective tissue". Bones, cartilage, tendons, muscle, and skin all rely on forms of collagen for toughness, to hold together and not just crumble or break apart. Long chain collagen molecules are partly responsible for the structure of muscle fibers, as well as for holding them together into whole muscles, and for sticking those muscles to nearby bones. Hydrolysis is the process of water breaking apart molecules, often accelerated with heat. As meat is cooked, all those little collagen chains holding the muscles and bones together are hydrolyzed, and broken into shorter chains. At a particular point, as those chains break apart, we call those shorter chains gelatin. They can still hold together water into a gel, similar to how soy proteins can hold tofu together, but much less toughly, with less texture, than the collagen that was originally holding the muscles together. So, when ribs are cooked enough to "fall off the bone", that means lots of hydrolysis of collagen has occurred, and thus the muscle/meat itself will also have likely had much of its collagen that gives it a fibrous texture also hydrolyzed. So it's a matter of taste/preference. If you make it "fall off the bone", the meat may be less chewy and more gel-like, perhaps closer to tofu in texture, and sometimes people want that, and sometimes they don't. 🤷

What merit does it have? While I'm open to considering any answer you might offer, I'm pretty sure it has no (intellectual, rational, truthful) merit, because it's ultimately delusional and confuses a subjective perception or abstraction for objective reality. Groups don't "misbehave", "figure out", "game" systems, or "pose as" anything, because groups aren't real, they're figments of individuals' imaginations. Sure, some individuals might choose to (or least claim to) motivate their actions based on their own figments of being members of some group, or their own figments of other individuals being members of some group. Humans are often motivated by figments of their imagination, and that's just one of the more popular forms. Humans also love to discuss their figments with each other, and sometimes attempt to refine them, or try to bring them in sync with each other. None of that changes their fundamental form, though—they remain figments, figments that will inevitably vary somewhat individual to individual. The fact that some individuals indulge in these figments and activities related to them needn't compel others to, and it doesn't alter the fundamental reality. To me, this seems little different than noticing that some people claim to be able to "manifest" their will magically, and somehow... despite realizing that they're just a bit lost in the woo... you also want to be able to benefit from such "manifestation" yourself. 😵‍💫 But, that's the whole point. Things don't become real just because we want them to be. We either accept that, or we don't, and depending on whether we accept that or not, our choices will be more, or less, adherent to reality.

It's perhaps worth noting that all forms of communication seem to have this quality, music is perhaps just especially efficient or intense. Which is why it concerns me how few people prioritize consciously stewarding their own mind and emotions these days, especially during the "information age". It seems like people may have been better about this in the past, maybe because face-to-face communication is another one of the most intense, too, and people did that a lot more often in the past (as that was basically all there was for most of history). 🤔

I think it's fascinating how pretty subtle or covert schisms in the culture, or changes in a culture, can be revealed by certain movies, or the critical reactions to them, or how the critical reactions change over time, or how people reflect on them later. And one way that seems to happen involves panned movies. Like, sure, some movies are just badly made. But when they're well made—there's no obvious objective deficit in the writing, directing, acting, and it's clear that the people involved believed in what they were making—and yet panned anyway, I suspect that more often than not reflects an interesting branch in how the culture was manifesting itself at the time. Sort of like a failed software fork, I guess? And sometimes they become cult classics, which is then sort of like a resurrected fork, like they were ahead of their time or perhaps that cultural schism lives on in some way. The '90s were an especially interesting time from that perspective, culture changed A LOT in a pretty short time, but in many ways that we've seemingly kind of papered over in retrospect. It certainly left us with a lot of interesting panned movies, and some cult classics. A lot of movies that I have a soft spot for fit into this idea. (Not intentionally, though. I actually came to think about this because I wondered what they all had in common, and this is my best guess so far. 😅)

The clip you inspired in this case is a bit more intense than I intend, but I'll stick with it along with this disclaimer. 😂 (And bonus points to literally anyone who knows what movie this is from without looking anything up.)

I don't know if it's impressive, any more than it's impressive that any of us can write sentences in a language that we have a proficiency for. Granted, I don't know about anyone else, but when I write or speak, the clauses just manifest themselves, sort of presenting themselves as candidates for my evaluation as to whether they're suitable for whatever nebulous thought I'm having and wish to express. I don't even necessarily know that I even desire to say or write anything at all before some compelling candidate appears. I don't know how that works, but, the movie scenes seem essentially the same. They just show up, and often they seem to fit. And often, similar to when I can't remember a word that I want to use in a clause even though I'll generally be aware of all of the remaining specifics of the clause, I often experience many of the details of the scene—the blocking and staging, the location of the camera, the intonation of the line, where it might have been set, and so on—but I might not remember (right away) the identity of the characters or, thus, what movie it's from. I usually figure it out quickly, though. I do enjoy that online I'm often able to quickly find the scene and clip it and share it as part of my response, just like writing a response. 😁