The real problem is they made Unix time non-monotonic. So there is no agreed universal monotonic clock.
We also don't deal with DST very well either. You won't believe the amount of programs written that treat local time as monotonic. It causes all kinds of problems and most people roll their eyes when someone who knows pipes up about local time and time zones etc.
Don't get me wrong, I totally understand being in love with tools, because I love tools too. I fell in love with Emacs some 15 years ago and it's still going strong. I also love my santoku knife and if I had a tracksaw I'd definitely relish cutting boards. But those tools still need to prove their worth. Nobody is using the tracksaw for crosscuts because they can't imagine using a mitre saw any more. That's not how it works. But despite LLMs getting it wrong about as often as they get it right it's just try again, tweak prompt, try again, without ever questioning whether this is really the right tool for the job, because, unlike normal tools, it's hitting those dopamine spots again and again, for very little input. It's an absolute classic recipe for addiction.
I feel this is coming for me. I now have three people generating code using LLMs who have no experience or real understanding of what they're doing. Nor do they have a strong desire to learn, but how could they anyway? I learnt by screwing up time and time again, but each time I went back and learnt why and next time did it better. It would be bad enough if I was managing 5 different agents myself, but it's managing 5 people who are operating 5 agents.
Are you sure it's all irrational? I, for one, prefer other materials for many things because they are more durable, hygenic or simply feels nicer. Seems perfectly rational to me. An irrational choice would be something like carrying a heavy canvas tent with wooden poles just because you hate plastic. Do you know anyone who does that?
I've been telling myself these lies too. The truth is it sometimes gets it right, but you can't predict it. Yet you still try, every time. It nags at you to try another spin if you try to quit it. I know what addiction feels like and I've never felt it before from a tool.
I could write more, but I think it actually is different. The addictive nature and the way it makes you more and more dependent on it is quite different from other tools. I've never met a builder who is addicted to their circular saw.
These AI companies have stumbled upon the new cigarette. Did you know athletes in the 1920s would smoke cigarettes because they thought it improved performance? Cigarettes are just a tool, right? Of course, we could never be as stupid as they were...
I feel like "I can do X" always comes with an implied timescale and a degree of confidence. For example, I "can" speak Chinese, in the sense that I have no reason to believe I cannot: Chinese people do not have fundamentally different mouths or brains to me. But still, even after many years of study and practice, you might be disappointed in my ability. If I were you I would not have any confidence in my ability in Chinese.
On the other hand, if I were to hire you to perform long division I would have complete confidence in you turning in your first calculation within an hour given your research background. So I would definitely say you can do long division.
If software were a purely mechanistic task like long division then I'd have confidence in anyone being able to turn out working code within an hour too. But we can't just keep turning out new programs every time we want to change them. Even with LLMs this is prohibitively expensive. So software is really about being able to build things and maintain them over time which requires a much deeper understanding. Long division is like snakes and ladders. Software is like chess.
The pitchforks aren't being raised for licence violations, they are raised because software should be free and unencumbered and now somebody is distributing it in a way which doesn't afford the same freedoms to the users.
Free/copyleft licences like the GPL are just the way we've been able to effectively make software free in a world in which copyright applies to software.