Thorsten Ball turns Taleb's naive interventionism on engineers who dismiss agent-written code

Register Spill (Thorsten Ball)·medium signalXBlueskyLinkedInCopy link

In Joy & Curiosity #98 (September 6), Ball questions whether engineers criticizing AI-generated code are describing a real defect or defending their occupation, asking whether the agent "just knock[ed] out a feature, end to end, in the 20 minutes you weren't looking... but the comments are dumb?" He borrows Taleb's naive interventionism from Antifragile to name the reflex. He pairs it with an argument for rebuilding code review rather than deleting it, on the grounds that traditional review burns time on "useless bullshit" while missing the knowledge-sharing that was the actual point.