On reflection, I think the worst part of Cory Doctorow’s argument in favor of LLM use is this:

« Doubtless some of you are affronted by my modest use of an LLM. You think that LLMs are "fruits of the poisoned tree" and must be eschewed because they are saturated with the sin of their origins. I think this is a very bad take, the kind of rathole that purity culture always ends up in.

Let's start with some context. If you don't want to use technology that was created under immoral circumstances or that sprang from an immoral mind, then _you are totally fucked._ »

This is a form of argument beloved by awful people. I can’t be pure and perfect, they say, so there’s no point my trying to make better or less damaging moral choices.

Stop buying from Amazon? Walmart and Target aren’t perfectly moral. Stop driving an SUV? Your car pollutes too, and so do buses. Stop using Twitter? Facebook and Bluesky are far from morally perfect, and mastodon.social has poor moderation. And so on.

I see this kind of excuse all the time online. It’s a cousin to both whataboutism and Mister Gotcha. It also rests on a false premise. The idea that anyone is expected to achieve complete purity is a straw man. You’re not having sainthood demanded of you, people are just hoping you’ll consider *reducing* the amount of immoral and damaging behavior you engage in *when there are perfectly viable alternatives*. Sure, we can argue about whether the alternatives are truly viable, but the idea that if you can’t be perfect you may as well not even try to be better? That’s moral bankruptcy.

Mocking the desire for people to behave more ethically as “purity culture” is like mocking it as “virtue signaling”. It says things about the person doing the mocking, none of them good. It’s also deeply hypocritical coming from someone who has gone out of his way to avoid using DRM. Isn’t that “purity culture”?