@tante

I really like and admire @pluralistic and have utmost respect for him, and that's why I'm totally baffled about why he is claiming "fruit of the poisoned tree" arguments as cause of LLM scepticism.

The objections to LLMs aren't about origins but about what they they are doing right now: destroying the planet, stealing labour, giving power over knowledge to LLM owners etc.

The objections are nothing to do with LLMs' origins, they're entirely about LLMs' effects in the here and now.

@FediThing @tante

Which parts of running a model on your own laptop are implicated in "destroying the planet?" How is checking punctuation "stealing labor?" Or, for that matter "giving power over knowledge to LLM owners?"

@pluralistic @tante

(Hello Mr Doctorow! Just want to make clear I admire you a great deal and this isn't intended as an attack on you!)

Running a local LLM with no connection to outside providers might be a way of avoiding bad stuff, but I am not clear on how this relates to discussing origins of technologies?

It seems like there's ambiguity in your post about whether it applies just to people with homelabs wondering if they should try offline LLMs, or whether you are discussing LLMs as a general technology?

Almost everyone using LLMs will use the online kind, so objections to LLMs are (reasonably IMHO) based on that scenario.

@FediThing @tante

> I am not clear on how this connects to discussing origins of technologies

Because the arguments against running an LLM on your own computer boil down to, "The LLM was made by bad people, or in bad ways."

This is a purity culture standard, a "fruit of the poisoned tree" argument, and while it is often dressed up in objectivity ("I don't use the fruit of the poisoned tree"), it is just special pleading ("the fruits of the poisoned tree that I use don't count, because __").

@pluralistic @tante

Thank you for the responses 🙏

"Because the arguments against running an LLM on your own computer"

...ahhh okay. So was this post aimed more at a very narrow homelab kind of audience?

It's just, as a reader, the article's emphasis on examples of tech origins imply it's trying to defend LLMs in general? This probably is my ignorance as a reader, but it's how it came across to me, and led to bafflement.

@FediThing @tante This is the use-case that is under discussion.

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/19/now-we-are-six/

@pluralistic @tante

Thanks. Can totally see how that makes sense at a technical level for people who run their own offline services.

I think it's the ambiguity that is driving the discourse over this post. People are taking the "refusing to use a technology" section as a defence of LLMs in general?

If the angle was caging LLMs or something like that, it might make it clearer that you aren't endorsing the most common form of LLM?

Anyway, it's your call on this as author, just wanted to feed back on this because your writing matters and I hope feedback is helpful to it.