DmytriI hereby coin the term "Ptolemaic Code" to refer to software that appears functional but is based on a fundamentally incorrect model of the problem domain. As more code is generated by AI, the prevalence of such code is likely to increase.
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Like the ancient Ptolemaic model of the solar system, which tried to overcome its fundamentally incorrect understanding of the solar system by adding complex "epicycles" to force its Earth-centred model to match observed reality,
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this code passes all its tests and satisfies, its specifications, yet is built on a fundamentally flawed logic.
AI code generation, which relies on examples, will likely produce significant amounts of Ptolemaic Code.
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It attempts to fit solutions from potentially very different domains together with corrective code "epicycles" until it satisfies its context, the user, and tests.
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This is a trap: while the code works within its parameters, its internal model is incoherent. When it inevitably fails, the incoherent basis for debugging or correction will lead to additional 'epicycles' being added. This process increases system complexity and brittleness.
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The Ptolemaic model of the solar system, though completely incorrect, allowed sailors to navigate the globe for centuries, its failure was not practical but explanatory, similar to how Ptolemaic Code works until deeper issues arise.
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Dave Wilburn 
This is exactly how I have described the limitations of black box models to others.
A good scientific model should do two things:
1) Provide accurate predictions of outcomes given certain inputs, and
2) Enable greater understanding of how a system works.
Simpler machine learning models, like logistic regression or decision trees, can sometimes do both, at least for simpler phenomenon. The models are explainable and their decisions are interpretable. For those reasons among others, applied machine learning researchers still use these simpler approaches wherever they can be made to work.
But in our haste to increase accuracy for more complex phenomenon, we've created models that merely provide semi-accurate predictions at the expense of explainability and interpretability. Like the ptolemaic model of the solar system, these models mostly work well in predicting outcomes within the narrow areas in which they've been trained. But they do absolutely nothing to enable understanding of the underlying phenomenon. Or worse, they mislead us into fundamentally wrong understandings. And because their training is overfit onto the limits of their training data, their accuracy falls apart unpredictably when used for tasks outside the distribution of their training. Computational linguists and other experts that might celebrate these models instead lament the benighted ignorance left in their wake.
Or how it was more eloquently stated in the great philosophical film Billy Madison:
"Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."
Nicole Parsons#pluralistic describes the technical debt of these AI coding models as asbestos in the walls.
A hazard we'll be digging out of the walls for decades to come.
It remains a fact that when petrostate despots are this desperate to impose user adoption, alarm bells should be ringing. Fossil fuel funded cyberwarfare.
https://fortune.com/2025/11/20/saudi-visit-kennedy-center-trump-mbs-huang-musk-1-trillion/
When anti-democracy billionaires are spending this kind of cash on a boondoggle...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2025/07/17/bill-gates-charles-koch-and-three-other-billionaires-are-giving-1-billion-to-enhance-economic-mobility-in-the-us/
@dk @DaveMWilburn @pluralistic
How hard will billionaires work to impose the AI world view on the globe?
To the same degree as religious zealots?
Centuries of dispute over irrelevant issues like "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"
A worldview that says human expertise is dead.
The worldview that says "Democracy is dead. The CEO of Koch Industries & Palantir own you."
The world view of "might makes right" and "power & wealth has no goal, only its self-perpetuation".
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Ptolemy launched a global practice of merging serfdom, godhood, & government, the pharaonic worldview of Thiel should be a major red flag.
The billionaires behind AI have no vision for its future aside from technofeudalism and mass immiseration policies.
Power for the sake of power.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/11/07/make-aristocracy-great-again-lost-roots-of-techno-feudalism/
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/01/30/curtis-yarvins-ideas-00201552
No one wants an AI that promotes obsolete ideas like the divine right of kings, God-King theocratic kleptocracy, and "gods, grain, & government" dictatorship.
Make Aristocracy Great Again: Lost Roots of Techno-Feudalism
It is difficult to interpret the Trump administration’s wholesale attacks on governmental programs as anything other than accelerationist efforts to destroy basic features of the American political and economic systems. From DOGE’s Artificial Intelligence-rampage through federal bureaus, the destruction of agencies like the Department of Education, or Trump’s expanding ICE as his well-funded private domestic army and occupying Democrat-governed cities; the destruction of old standards of normalcy are clear. While documents like Project 2025 reveal elements of Trump’s game plan, there are serious open questions concerning the administration’s long game and exactly how far the oligarchs influencing Trump want to take this antidemocratic movement.
Cedar Fen Farm
Cedar Fen Farm@Npars01 @dk @DaveMWilburn @pluralistic
Easier to unplug the computer you can't afford which you only use to look at their products you can't afford while shivering with your energy turned off. Their world vision eliminates the consumer economy which is the only thing that keeps them rich.