Matt: 0:14

Hello everyone And welcome to the switch statement podcast It's a podcast for investigations into miscellaneous tech topics

matt_mod_ch_16: 0:30

Hey, John, how are you doing?

jon_raw: 0:32

Hey, Matt, I'm doing well. How are you?

matt_mod_ch_16: 0:35

I am doing okay.

jon_raw: 0:38

Nice.

matt_mod_ch_16: 0:38

the end. I mean, the,

jon_raw: 0:40

final chapter.

matt_mod_ch_16: 0:41

but technically the final chapter. there is an epilogue, which I always kind of hate. It's like, don't lie to me. There's still more to this book. Why does it, like, where is the dividing line between, I mean, like, Yeah. what's the rule about what goes into an epilogue? Something that has to happen far enough afterwards, I guess.

jon_raw: 1:01

I love an epilogue. I feel like it's like, especially in a book like this, I'm actually excited to read the epilogue because one of the things I was wondering after this chapter is what did Romero do after all this, you know, it's like, he kind of, in a way he kind of fell off the face of the earth. So I was very curious to, to just learn more about that.

matt_mod_ch_16: 1:21

I was hoping that they would get the band back together. Uh, that there, they kind of teased that that was going to happen, but I guess that that didn't really wind up coming to pass.

jon_raw: 1:33

Yeah. Yeah. Um, but yeah, this is the final chapter and it starts with a marriage of John Carmack and this woman, Anna Kang, who, uh, you know, there wasn't a ton of information about her, but they did mention that her greatest role model was Ayn Rand.

matt_mod_ch_16: 1:54

Oh, gosh. How do you, I how are you supposed to pronounce that? Because I feel I've heard, And, or I've heard like everything ain, I'm, and,

jon_raw: 2:06

Oh, I don't know. I've always said Ayn Rand, but maybe it's, maybe it's something else. So apologies to the Ayn Rand foundation, if I'm pronouncing your name incorrectly.

matt_mod_ch_16: 2:15

I feel like liking and Rand is one of those things, which is kind of an indicator that you're not a good person. Like that's kind of the cultural. Idea is like, Yeah, that's, that's kind of the cultural conception of people who like Ayn Rand.

jon_raw: 2:32

it's interesting. Cause you know, Ayn Rand obviously is like a famous conservative, myth, the myth, the myth of sort of pull yourself up from your bootstraps Be a self starter and, you know, you can do anything as long as you dedicate yourself and put your mind to it, which are obviously somewhat positive messages. Um, but it's, I feel like when you make fun of Ayn Rand, it makes you sound like, uh, like a super, like a hyper liberal, you know, almost like you're saying, you know, you're just criticizing anything that's, that's conservative or whatever, but my take on it is like. If you make a large part of your identity based on any of these things, you know, like on the road by Jack Kerouac or something, like if that's a large part of your identity, like it's a bit weird. And I think Ayn Rand is just a strange thing to say, like, she's my greatest role model. I don't know. I just find it, I just find it weird. I don't want to criticize like, her philosophies, which, some of them are positive.

matt_mod_ch_16: 3:34

Yeah. To be clear, I've actually never read an Ayn Rand book and I want to, because she, more than any other author I think I've ever heard of, is the author that you would think of. Define your personality around. It's like, no one's going out there being like, Yeah, I read a lot of Michael Creighton, like, and really make that like the, something that they tell a lot of people about.

jon_raw: 3:59

it's fear was so good.

matt_mod_ch_16: 4:00

so why I, I don't even, I don't read Michael, I mean, Jurassic Park. That's my, uh, knowledge of, uh, is it, is it Creighton man? We're just

jon_raw: 4:10

I think it's, I think it's Crichton. Let's just mispronounce all names, like intentionally,

matt_mod_ch_16: 4:15

think what's important is both of us use different pronunciations for all authors through, from here on out.

jon_raw: 4:21

was telling me about a Michael Crichton book or Crichton. Crichton. I think it's Crichton. Anyway, it was a book where there was like a flight disaster. And, And the whole book is about like an investigation into that flight disaster. And Lizzie was saying it was one of her favorite books. Lizzie is my wife for the listeners. But anyway, it made me want to read the book.

matt_mod_ch_16: 4:42

All right, well, you'll have to, maybe that'll be, maybe that can be the next, next book. Um, Yeah. just take a hard left turn and start doing fiction. Well, so they do, okay. I was bemoaning the kind of objectification of the only named female character in the book last, you know, the last episode. Um, and then this chapter slightly saves that, uh, because they talk about how, uh, Anna Kang, she goes to Carmack and was like, I want to make an all female Quake tournament. And Carmack is pretty dismissive and he just says there's probably gonna be like 25 people that shows up like do whatever you want to do and like 1500 people show up and then he was like, okay, you know what and and This just adds to the complexity of Carmack as a character. I would say it's like he was like, Yeah. I was wrong like I Kind of cocky cockily assumed that no women would want to attend this And I was wrong about that. So Then he keeps on Chatting with her.

jon_raw: 5:47

I think Carmack loved. Getting beaten at things. I think, I think Carmack was so good at everything. Well, everything he, he did, I'm sure he was terrible at certain things, but when people came along that could actually beat him, he was just like impressed and he like wanted to be their friend, which I think is cool. I think that's a good quality to have. And it's also a Testament to Anna Kang because she was kind of his. You know, they mentioned in the book, she was kind of his mental equal. She would challenge him and, they would have these debates about things that were, I don't know, high minded. I don't know what a challenging debate is like, cause I'm stupid,

matt_mod_ch_16: 6:25

yeah, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It's the best, best one.

jon_raw: 6:32

all right. I was going to mention how Carmack. Totally beat Zuckerberg to the punch because Carmack wanted to build the metaverse in the nineties, which is just

matt_mod_ch_16: 6:45

Well. At this point, was it, was it in the 90s? I mean, I think, I feel like, they talked about Daikatana launching and didn't that, wasn't that in 2000?

jon_raw: 6:54

Yeah. You know what? You're right. It was probably the early two thousands, but I still feel like it, you know, massively predates Zuckerberg.

matt_mod_ch_16: 7:02

It did feel like an anachronism when I read Metaverse. It felt like, whoa, were they even talking about Metaverse at that point in time? And I'm not sure if this was, Kushner kind of retroactively applying that label.

jon_raw: 7:16

Well, I think the label came from the, um, who's the guy that wrote snow

matt_mod_ch_16: 7:20

Crash, right?

jon_raw: 7:21

Yeah. Steve Stevenson, Neil

matt_mod_ch_16: 7:24

Neil Stevenson. Yeah.

jon_raw: 7:26

Um, which in fact, which book did it come from? Was it, was it like seven eves or something? Anyway,

matt_mod_ch_16: 7:35

it Oh, yeah. I thought it was Snow Crash, but I could be wrong. Yeah.

jon_raw: 7:40

I don't remember, but I think the label came from that book, which I guess the question now is like, when did that book come out?

matt_mod_ch_16: 7:48

Yeah.

jon_raw: 7:49

But in any case, uh, you know, it's pretty neat that Carmack sort of immediately realized that this would be like a big thing eventually. And he wanted to start investing in it. Yeah,

matt_mod_ch_16: 8:04

It's like, dude, this guy can not make a different kind of game. It's like, you know, it's funny because on one hand, obviously John Carmack is one of the most talented developers of all time, but man, this chapter was like, Every time you, cause you, cause he went to the people and was like, we want to make this persistent game. And then apparently he changed his mind. And then it was very quickly like Trent Reznor wants to make doom three's music. So we're going to do that instead. Um, And so like, anyway, I mean, that doesn't diminish his ability as a programmer, but it's like, take on these challenges you've wanted to do this persistent world since school. Quake. Quake was supposed to be, uh, a persistent world and then you hard, you just went right back to making a better Doom, basically.

jon_raw: 8:54

Right. Right. Which, I mean, Doom 3 was pretty cool. Was pretty cool. You know, it had all the insane lighting effects and stuff. Like I think for its time, it was pretty technologically advanced, but yeah, still, it would have been, I mean, who knows what reality would be like today? If Carmack had gotten really into the metaverse in the early two thousands.

matt_mod_ch_16: 9:13

What I realized was, so they talk about EverQuest. You can still play EverQuest.

jon_raw: 9:19

Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can still play Ultima online.

matt_mod_ch_16: 9:23

Really?

jon_raw: 9:24

Yeah. I mean, there's, there's like servers that people run in their garage. It's not like some official thing. But, uh, yeah, it's still around. It's crazy how these games have such staying power.

matt_mod_ch_16: 9:36

Yeah. I just wonder what people are still doing there. Like I mean, I guess there's always more things to, it's like animal crossing, you know, you can always like refine. I mean, I guess I'm not sure if there's like a creative, much of a creative aspect in Ultima, but you can always find something to do, I guess, in these persistent worlds.

jon_raw: 9:56

Ultima. I mean, when I was in college, Ultima was like still very vibrant and they were like adding new stuff. Like I remember a boss that took like 50 people to kill. So you had to like, you know, hop in. It was kind of like a pre wow. You know, type thing where you had to like go on a quote unquote raid. You had to organize a bunch of people together and kill this thing. I also remember hilarious thing about Ultima Online where there was like a general theme of the game where if something had like an age indicator, it was like more powerful. Like basically you'd kill a skeleton. It was like, you know, strong. But then if it was an elder skeleton, It would be really strong. And if it was like an ancient skeleton, it would be ridiculously powerful. So I remember modders would make these, just come up with these like insane adjectives, like I remember one that was like old as dirt. So if you'd see like an old as dirt skeleton, it was just like a God and would like utterly demolish you. But I just remember people playing with that like theme of making things sound older and older. I found it hilarious.

matt_mod_ch_16: 11:05

That's funny. so in this chapter we see The full, kind of, I don't know, the, the dust has settled and Daikatana has, has officially just fallen off the face of the earth. Yeah. No, they sold 40, 000 copies, apparently a little over 40, 000 copies. So it's like not great. but

jon_raw: 11:28

Although Romero still, he still feels kind of a, uh, I don't know if you could call it a Pyrrhic, Pyrrhic victory. Cause I don't, I don't really know what that means, but basically he had started Ion Storm on this principle of like, we're going to work on multiple games and we're going to like be designed first and it's going to be fun. And that concept still sort of worked because they had Deus Ex and Deus Ex was a tremendous raging, raging success. In fact, one of my favorite games, you know, probably in my top 10. So. I feel like for, for Romero, that was still kind of a little mini victory within the, the sadness of Daikatana.

matt_mod_ch_16: 12:14

Right. Yeah. I mean, the idea was certainly vindicated, but But his, like the idea of is, is some of these will fail and his was this fantastic failure. So,

jon_raw: 12:28

Yeah.

matt_mod_ch_16: 12:28

and then they, he got, he kind of got cut out of the, of Ion Storm. They were letting, they, so basically they just, I guess, IDOS bought out a controlling stake in Ion Storm. And then. They were like, all right, everybody in Dallas, including Romero, you're outta here. And then they,

jon_raw: 12:50

And that was a weird part of the book because it just sounded like Romero was able to like look at some list and he could see that his name was not on it. So he just knew that he was going to get laid off, basically.

matt_mod_ch_16: 13:03

Bad SecOps.

jon_raw: 13:06

sounded like he was, you know, at the time that he saw this list, he was like still employed. So I guess he had to just sort of like hang out until, you know, he actually got fired. But,

matt_mod_ch_16: 13:18

actually, like, you know, far in advance that you're gonna be let go. You're just, just sit and collect your paycheck. I mean, this was the same company where there was just a publicly available tranche of. All of their private emails. Just anyone could download like, there's a part in the chapter where the media is like sharing all of these incredibly personal details, these private emails of the company, and just like showing the just disarray that was going on inside. So, um, so it's not, maybe not super surprising that there was also this incredibly private list that, that Romero was able to find.

jon_raw: 14:03

totally. Uh, they mentioned a little mini, this part I found hilarious. There was like a mini Carmack Romero. Reunion like they, they, the author said something along the lines of like over a couple of year period, they had kind of seen each other around town, you know, so they remained cordial, even though they had this kind of feud, but then there was a point where like Romero met up with Carmack and you wanted to ask him for a favor. I think it was like licensing some intellectual property or something. And their reunion was just them going, Hey. And then the other one going, Hey, and that was it.

matt_mod_ch_16: 14:40

I, I don't know why I was, I mean, I think maybe I was hoping for the romantic ending where, uh, you know, in the larger sense of the word where they were like, they hug or

jon_raw: 14:51

Yeah, I was hoping for that too.

matt_mod_ch_16: 14:53

mean, Carmack just went 100 percent Carmack on him and was like, you know, Romero's like, can I do X, Y, and Z? And he says, sure, why not? You know, just completely like.

jon_raw: 15:04

Yep.

matt_mod_ch_16: 15:05

passive and being like just neutral like it wasn't he wasn't upset But he also like

jon_raw: 15:11

It's almost worse.

matt_mod_ch_16: 15:12

Yeah

jon_raw: 15:13

It's like, he's just an automaton. I really wanted that kind of Jerry Maguire hug,

matt_mod_ch_16: 15:19

Yeah,

jon_raw: 15:20

but sad. Oh, well, Carmack had other interests. He was getting into rockets.

matt_mod_ch_16: 15:27

Yeah, so it doom 3 was gonna be CarMax last last game because he had to Get to space

jon_raw: 15:37

Yeah, you had to work on rockets. So it's, it's interesting because this is, you know, the final chapter of the book, but a significant portion of this chapter just describes Carmack's new hobby, you know, he was getting into rockets. So he's trying to acquire these dangerous substances that are used for, you know, rocket fuel. They talk about how, uh, it wasn't hydrogen peroxide, right.

matt_mod_ch_16: 16:01

Yeah, it was. It was. Yeah, he needed to make extremely pure hydrogen peroxide.

jon_raw: 16:06

It just sounds weird. Cause isn't hydrogen peroxide, like a totally normal, like kitchen thing. Yeah,

matt_mod_ch_16: 16:15

example, but it's like uranium where the concentrate or the purity matters. So it's like you can run a nuclear, fission reactor at a certain level, but you can't make a bomb until the next level. It's like, you can. I don't know, clean a wound? What do you do with hydrogen

jon_raw: 16:31

Yeah. I think it's like a wound cleaning thing. So you can clean a wound.

matt_mod_ch_16: 16:35

but you can't make a rocket.

jon_raw: 16:38

Yeah. So anyway, there was a section where they described him and his friends sort of getting this impure hydrogen peroxide and then trying to distill it down into its pure form, which is like an incredibly

matt_mod_ch_16: 16:48

moonshine hydrogen peroxide,

jon_raw: 16:52

I like legitimately thought this chapter was going to end with Carmack blowing himself up or like

matt_mod_ch_16: 16:57

I mean,

jon_raw: 16:57

off or something. Yeah,

matt_mod_ch_16: 17:02

Like some of these, uh, Onomatopoeia that they're, they're throwing in here. It sounded like he's about to destroy himself.

jon_raw: 17:10

so that's kind of what Carmack did, uh, after, you know, Doom 3, uh, Romero, on the other hand, I, you know, it was, it's kind of sad because Daikatana came out with this whimper and I feel like Romero himself kind of. He just didn't do that much in the industry after this. And, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not going to hold it against the guy because he obviously did these amazing, amazing things, but I feel like a lot of his projects after this time period where, you know, just not very interesting. And,

matt_mod_ch_16: 17:43

yeah, I mean, he talks about this and he says, well, I now have a general purpose 3d engine, so there's not these new problems, like major problems to solve, it's these optimizations basically, but you can kind of do anything at that point and I think that's the point at which he's like, I don't know, there's other problems for me to. To cut my teeth on,

jon_raw: 18:07

yeah.

matt_mod_ch_16: 18:08

uh, rocketry. But there is this, there is this quote at the very end and it actually, uh, shares a lot of DNA with the whole point about Ayn Rand, which he says, like in the information age, the only barriers are self imposed basically. It's like, you can do anything you want. You don't need like millions of dollars.

jon_raw: 18:28

Yeah.

matt_mod_ch_16: 18:29

and I thought that was really, I thought that was a really inspiring and, and kind of uncharacteristic, uh, quote from John, John Carmack, but I mean, I guess it's not surprising that the thing that he feels most enthusiastically about is like, the pursuit of, of knowledge or, or expertise.

jon_raw: 18:47

Yeah. No, I thought that was a very good sentiment. To end the book on. And I, I feel like it just gets more and more true. Like we've discussed this many times on the podcast, but with large language models, I feel like that whole concept of like your boundaries being self imposed could not be more true because you can do, you can solve problems that are way outside of your domain of expertise now by just having a model help you. Carmack stood for that acquisition of knowledge. And I think that's a super noble pursuit. And I remember as a kid sort of revering him for that. And I still kind of, I still feel like that's one of the most noble things you can aspire to, uh, in life is just acquiring knowledge and hopefully spreading it around as well.

matt_mod_ch_16: 19:37

Yeah, share, sharing knowledge and then hopefully doing cool things with it. Uh, I mean, Carmack is a really good example of someone who was able to marry those two things of acquiring knowledge, but then also like making a product. Uh, you know, like, I mean, I'm not, I don't want this to sound like I'm disparaging, like Richard Feynman, but like, you know, he, he advanced physics, but he, as far as I know, never made like a, there wasn't like a actual manifestation of the stuff that he, he worked on.

jon_raw: 20:16

I mean, he helped with the atom bomb.

matt_mod_ch_16: 20:20

did Feynman work on the, the Atombob?

jon_raw: 20:23

I think so. Yeah. I think he was there, you know, he's just one of the flies on the wall. Now

matt_mod_ch_16: 20:28

ah, okay. Well, so maybe, maybe I was wrong about that and maybe now I should think less of him.

jon_raw: 20:35

No, but I think your point is, is very true where it's like Carmack was, he was a practitioner first and foremost, his pursuit of knowledge acquisition had an end goal to it. which I think is, I think it is an important way of looking at it, you know, because you can really get way too high in an ivory tower and not sort of express yourself in a way that resonates with, with people. And I think it's important to have that skill as well.

matt_mod_ch_16: 21:05

Well, that is, uh, that is all, all I had. Um, but, man. This book, I don't know, uh, It kind of, I don't want to say it's unceremonious, but it's, like, it felt like it ended very quickly. Like, there wasn't some, like, quick, or like, ease off.

jon_raw: 21:24

Yeah, agree. It, it had kind of an abrupt. Ending and kind of a sad ending. Like I wish they had to end it on some sort of, you know, high note for both Romero and Carmack. Um, it was sort of a low note for Romero and sort of a weird, a weird note for Carmack, I don't even know what to call it. Um, but you know, they, there's like Doom, Doom just had its 30 year anniversary very recently. And Romero made like a few levels for the 30 year anniversary. And. people said they were awesome levels. I haven't played them yet, but you know, so they're still kind of alive and kicking. Carmack did a bunch of VR stuff at Facebook and I'm not sure what he's doing now. But,

matt_mod_ch_16: 22:09

He's working on AI, actually. He wants to, uh, he, he was like, AI is the kind of thing that a single person can, you know, especially like you're saying now with these days, right now that compute is like just commoditized, a single person can just like train an amazing model, so

jon_raw: 22:27

Ooh, nice. Okay. Well, hopefully

matt_mod_ch_16: 22:28

it AGI. I

jon_raw: 22:31

so I can retire.

matt_mod_ch_16: 22:33

mean, if you told me John Carmack, Made an AGI in a month, I wouldn't be surprised.

jon_raw: 22:40

No, yeah, not at all. If he can figure out networking and, you know, networking multiplayer for doom, then

matt_mod_ch_16: 22:46

In a week, yeah.

jon_raw: 22:47

yeah,

matt_mod_ch_16: 22:49

Alright, well, we just have the epilogue left, so, um, I will see you next time for that.

jon_raw: 22:55

see you next time, Matt.