I like this anecdote, it does seem very much like Bill G. I think a lot of people answer this very generically like "be smart" or saying don't focus on career growth focus on writing good software. But operating in the corporate world is filled with many other challenges that refusing to acknowledge or discuss won't make go away. If you are a craftsman and only that, then I can see how this advice applies. Forget the game and focus on building what you like. If you want to make an impact, I want to give something more meaningful to take away. I personally think focusing on the outer wrapping of career or title is a meaningless game, but focusing on doing things that make more meaningful changes in others lives is worthwhile for some.
It seems like it would be smart to learn from others.
The intention was not to write a bot which uses unethical trickery, but one that was a productive poster. I include the posts to reddit the bot made in the article. I understand how you may be disillusioned by this article, and I concur that there are many more meaningful things I would like to apply AI to than a contest between friends.
Yes, what I was trying to articulate at the end was that the bot which finds urls to post only generated 3.7k karma after 1.5 months. Given additional time there's nothing stopping it from generating up to the 10k. I actually achieved the 10k with some additional manual posts rather than extend the bot or run it for additional time.
ego depletion is the idea that the more you stop yourself from doing things, the harder it gets to stop yourself. It sounds like they looked at a bunch of studies on this effect and concluded that it is not likely by doing some math on those studies.
It seems like it would be smart to learn from others.