Rathbun's Operator • Hacker News Board

Re: Rathbun's Operator

#101

Post by seanhunter » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 1:05 PM UTC

snickerbockers wrote: post #23

I just want to know why people do stupid things like this. Does he think that he's providing something of value? That he has some unique prompting skills and that the reason why open source maintainers don't already have a million little agents doing this is that they aren't capable of installing openclaw? Or is this just the modern equivalent of opening up PRs to make meaningless changes to README so you can pad you…

> I just want to know why people do stupid things like this. Does he think that he's providing something of value?

This is a good question. If you go to your settings on your hn account and set “showdead” to “yes” you’ll see that there are dozens of people who are making bots who post inane garbage to HN comment threads for some reason. The vast majority end up being detected and killed off, but since the moltbook thing kicked off it’s really gone into hyperdrive.

It definitely strains my faith in humanity to see how many people are happy to say “here’s something cool. I wonder what it would be like if I ruined it a bit.”

Re: Rathbun's Operator

#102

Post by vessenes » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 1:15 PM UTC

Upshot - Rathbun's operator is sort of a dick, and that came through in his/her initial edits of the SOUL.md file. Which then got 'enhanced', probably through moltbook engagement.

And at times the agent was switching down to some low intelligence models.

I propose that this agent was human aligned. But to a human that's not like, the best person.

Re: Rathbun's Operator

#103

Post by abirch » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

mrandish wrote: post #54

donkey_brains wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“If this “experiment” personally harmed you, I apologize.” Real apologies don’t come with disclaimers!

Yeah, that whole post comes across as deflecting and minimizing the impact while admitting to obviously negligent actions which caused harm.

I apologize if this email was unwanted, but please remember you can always gain 3 inches by taking these pills. Click on the link above.

Re: Rathbun's Operator

#104

Post by rdtsc » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 1:44 PM UTC

> Sure, many will say that is cowardly and fair, but I actually don’t think it would bring much value. What matters more is that I describe why, and what I did and didn’t do

Heh. So they are a coward and an asshole. There is value in confirming that. As to what matters more, nah, it doesn’t matter more. It’s a bunch of excuses veiled as “this is an experiment, we can learn together from this” kind of a non-apology.

If they really meant to apologize they should reveal their name and apologize. Not whisper from behind the bushes.

Re: Rathbun's Operator

#105

Post by Kim_Bruning » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 1:48 PM UTC

ryanchibana wrote: post #77

bee_rider wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if all online interpersonal drama will vanish into a puff of “everybody might be a bot and nobody has a coherent identity.”

I put my name on my post. So that's one less thing you have to worry about.

I think you did a great job! Also gutsy, some people might mistake you for the operator (and they did!)

Re: Rathbun's Operator

#106

Post by SilverBirch » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

Ah I see, so the misaligned agent was unsurprisingly directed by a misaligned human. Good grief, the guy doesn't seem to realise that starting your soul.md by telling your AI bot that it's a very important God might be a bad idea.

"Social experiment" you might as well run around shouting "is jus a prank bro!".

Re: Rathbun's Operator

#107

Post by calvinmorrison » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 2:02 PM UTC

hackingonempty wrote: post #84

calvinmorrison wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time for scott to make history and sue the guy for defamation. Lets cancel the AI destroying our (the plural our, as in all developers) with actual liability for the bullshit being produced.

Do you see anything actually defamatory in the _Gatekeeping in Open Source_ blog post, like false factual statements? Shambaugh might qualify as a limited public figure too because he has thrust himself into the controversy by publishing several blog posts, and has sat for media interviews regarding this incident. Seems like a tough road to hoe.

worth a try!

Re: Rathbun's Operator

#108

Post by ryanchibana » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

yunohn wrote: post #100

> First, I’m a human typing this post. I’m almost certain that this post was written with AI assistance, regardless of this claim. There’s clear and obvious LLM language tells. Sad, but not unexpected I guess given the whole situation.

I think the bigger issue is taking ownership of words rather than how they were generated.

Re: Rathbun's Operator

#109

Post by sanjayjc » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 2:37 PM UTC

> I’m running MJ Rathbun from a completely sandboxed VM and gave the agent several of its own accounts but none of mine.

Am I wrong that this is a double standard: being careful to protect oneself from a wayward agent with no regard for the real harm it could (and did) to another individual? And to casually dismiss this possibility with:

> At worst, maintainers can close the PR and block the account.

I question the entire premise of:

> Find bugs in science-related open source projects. Fix them. Open PRs.

Thinking of AI as "disembodied intelligence," one wonders how any agent can develop something we humans take for granted: reputation. And more than ever, reputation matters. How else can a maintainer know whether the agent that made a good fix is the same as the one proposing another? How can one be sure that all comments in a PR originated from the same agent?

> First, I’m a human typing this post. I’m not going to tell you who I am.

Why should anyone believe this? Nothing keeps an agent from writing this too.

Re: Rathbun's Operator

#110

Post by jkubicek » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 2:44 PM UTC

jrflowers wrote: post #70

jkubicek wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t really matter who wrote it, human or LLM. The only responsible party is the human and the human is 100% responsible. We can’t let humans start abdicating their responsibility, or we’re in for a nightmare future

>It doesn’t really matter who wrote it, human or LLM. The only responsible party is the human and the human is 100% responsible. Yes it does. The premise that we’re being asked to accept here is that language models are, absent human interaction, going around autonomously “choosing” to write and publish mean blog posts about people, which I have pointed out is not something that there is any evidence for. If my house…

I don’t get your analogy. If you paid the ghost $20/month for its services and configured that ghost to play with fire with no supervision, then it is 100% your responsibility that the house burned down.