You're making me crazy
Published on 2025-07-29
Every year the Stack Exchange corporation publishes their annual Stack Overflow Developer Survey—one of if not the most comprehensive surveys of software developers available—and I read it as a sort of self-flagellation ritual. If you don't partake you probably won't be surprised to learn that over the last few years AI and AI-driven software development has taken center stage.
2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey
One of the observations the survey conductors have made this year is that "69% of AI agent users agree AI agents have increased productivity." This is the observation that prompted me to write this article but before I get to that I want to talk a little about the word "crazy."
Crazy is one of those words we're not really supposed to use. In common usage, it means something like "intensely unexpected or unusual," but you'll probably recognize where it comes from. A "crazy person" is someone who suffers from mental illness—especially manic episodes or delusions. It's a derisive word meant to cast people who suffer from mental illness as being somehow less than those who don't. As far as ableist language goes this one is common enough that most people won't get upset with you if you use it, but it's a good idea to avoid it anyway. After all, most derisive terms for marginalized people were once common enough that you could get away with using them in most spaces; the goal is to change behaviour and reshape the way we think about mental illness.
Recently I've noticed myself using the word crazy a lot in a particular situation. Personally I don't think this is an ableist usage of the word, but I suppose I'll let you judge.
What is the function of a word like crazy? I think people call others crazy in order to draw a line between others and themself. You use it to identify someone's mind as being different from yours, especially so that you don't need to listen to them or take them seriously. It's a way of outcasting someone's brain, and policing what it means to "think right." But further to that point, I think it's worth stressing that the word renders someone's brain an outcast. Prior to them being designated "crazy," their brain is just… a brain. One subject to any natural variation that exists between humans. The designation is a social phenomenon, and "being crazy" as a concept has varied across culture and time.
As an aside, Robert Chapman's book Empire of Normality has a lot to say about the history of disability and the social forces that created it. A lot of my thinking on the subject has been influenced by this book:
Empire of Normality by Robert Chapman (plutobooks.com)
As a writer, and as someone who's filter for what they've been willing to publish online has collapsed dramatically over the last two years, I have a lot of thoughts that I'm constantly discovering are really weird. I know they're weird because while I have some people who like reading what I have to say on the internet, as soon as I try to bring them into the physical world I feel like a freak¹. One of the older articles on my list of hypothetical articles to write is called "The unobviousness of everything I believe" and it was essentially going to be this: part of what's so nice about sharing my thoughts on my blog is that I can do thought-composition by linking to older articles. I can't just like, interject in the middle of a conversation with a contextual link. If I tried actually breaking down why I believe some of the things I believe verbally I'd probably just overwhelm whoever I'm talking to (I think this is what normal people call infodumping²)
But like, a lot of the things I believe aren't superstition. Some of them are; I'm probably a more spiritual person than you think I am, but like, it's not superstition to think that generative AI, if followed to its logical conclusion (and assuming it doesn't go bust tomorrow, which I'm counting on) will be a terrible thing, ecologically, economically, socially, spiritually… and of course, it'll make us write worse software.
This is the sense in which I'm finding myself using the word "crazy" a lot: there are things in this world that are making me crazy. Not in the sense that there's anything "wrong" with me; it's just that forces larger than myself are drawing the lines in the sand. I'm seeing it, I'm feeling it, now more than ever before. This summer, I received my first email obviously written by ChatGPT from a colleague. I had to explain to someone why I don't use ChatGPT to write code for the first time. I don't begrudge any of these people, in the same way I don't really begrudge anyone for being normal; it's just that that's the problem: this sort of thing is now normal. Eventually, maybe I'll have a job application turned down because I refuse to be a copilot to a stochastic text generator masquerading as a thinking-machine. Others already have.
This feeling of being "made crazy" is incredibly disorientating, because I know I'm crazy—at least, to those who draw the line. It's the feeling of being ejected from consensus reality, and seeing the shared experiences of your social group from the outside looking in. I felt similar looking back on a lot of my experiences as a child, after I realized in my 20s that I'm autistic. To all those people I wanted to hang out with, but with whom I could never fit in—the way they talked to me started to make sense. It's a grim feeling, but I suppose it's the only place to start working on something new, something better.
On "AI agents", I have faith this won't be a problem forever. At the very least, I think the problem will eventually shrink to a manageable size. We've seen the true cost of generative artificial intelligence: OpenAI would go bankrupt tomorrow if it wasn't being entirely subsidized by people with unimaginably deep pockets. Those people, irrational as they can be, will eventually be faced with a choice: bankrupt themselves in service of the dream of AI agents, or collect from their debtors. I don't think generative AI is immune to the bare reality of its own financial (let alone ecological) unsustainability. It's happened before in 2000 and it'll likely happen again.
God willing.
Footnotes
¹ Freak is also kind of one of those words you shouldn't really use but it's being reclaimed by some. As a freak, I find it fun to say.
² Yes, I know what you're thinking
Respond to this article
If you have thoughts you'd like to share, send me an email!