Deep Thoughts Engineering Speaker Series: John Carmack

This was an internal-to-Facebook talk that I did in 2015 that was cleared for public release. The topic was "antifragile" idea generation, along with examples of the ideas I was generating at the time.

[@jlouzado]

If I had to summarize: - don't be too attached to your ideas, because most ideas aren't actually that valuable - when you get an idea, try to think about it and prove why it won't work. - if you can't do that, start prototyping as soon as possible. The longer you delay it, the higher the risk of getting attached to it - once you get attached to an idea, it's difficult to maintain objectivity. - falsifying an idea (either by thinking about it or prototyping) is often the way to get better at having ideas or at understanding the problem you're working on. This process leads to better idea generation as you keep iterating. Loved the talk

[@jmitesh01]

Thanks Joel. By the falsying an idea comes again and again i.e., to ask question or generate idea use intuition but not to answer them.

[@Frodohack]

I think you missed the most important: - don't stay in front of a black canvas to wait for the complete idea, but form your creativity by getting exposed to a lot of things and look at them trough the lenses of the problem you're working on.

[@w0ode198]

Exactly, I need this in my life process.

[@user-vb5nd3uj5k]

long live the cyborg initiative

[@MikkoRantalainen]

Great summary!

[@Consural]

* Carmack randomly looks at the ceiling * * proceeds to deliver a detailed lecture on ducts *

[@Falcrist]

Carmack understands as well as anyone that neat little engineering tricks are all around us.

[@SuperSkandale]

Yup, I luv it.

[@cyberoverkill5844]

Lol

[@jhawley031]

Our minds cannot not uderstand the inner workings of the 4th dimensional spacetime anomaly that is John Carmack

[@theraygood]

Priceless

[@dungeoneering1974]

I'm not an engineer, but I always enjoy his talks. He has a way of clearly articulating ideas, problems, and solutions, and never talks down to his audience.

[@goldnutter412]

Same, nice shirt too

(one of the many) QOTD from this talk: «The ideas aren’t the important thing, it’s the execution where a good project is the result of hundreds or even thousands of good decisions that are made along the way.»

[@SiddharthKulkarniN]

This guy can talk sensibly for hours.

[@2006969]

talk and doing this (for the mc's and dj's, for the underground masses🤘)

[@masterkraft4746]

that''s what gods are supposed to be able to do

[@jonathanjimmyshearman2500]

I loves settlings down with Johns videos, with a good supper dee and a ginger ale😄.

[@HaroldCombs]

I think we can all agree we'd like Carmack to work on fusion energy.

[@nolan412]

Critical path it: fusion needs? Helium 3! He3 is on the moon. The moon needs robots. Robots need operators. Operators need VR!

[@gallerdude2000]

I'm glad he's working on AGI, it feels like that could have a lot more of an impact.

[@Al1987ac]

@@gallerdude2000 yeah, then AGI could work on fusion. Or Helium.

[@Consural]

Nope, I'd like him to work on Artificial Intelligence. And thankfully, he already is.

[@wildwest1832]

well he learned and worked on building space ships and rockets already. Probably pretty doable for him. He knew nothing about rockets, and literally got a bunch of books from the library and learned it all on its own. Now he knows it. he can learn new things very quickly

[@StartuePotoya]

Mr. Carmack , hello, I think you know and can imagine how many people use your base and enchanced QuakeC , thanks a lot for digital prescios ! Everytime when developers starts talks about 3d FPS they remember Quake , you and John Romero . You are living Legend . Thanks for all.

[@alichamas63]

He can't hear you

[@bengonshaw8228]

I gave a talk about John's talk, only yesterday morning, after spending hours searching for it. What serendipity for John to get the clearance to post it on the very same day.

[@MrMarlonski]

This man is truly something else... a force of Brilliance and a true human World Wonder in science, engineering, entertainment, intelligence etc. etc. Pushing the boundary of what Human's biologically and mentally are capable of. I'm by far not working/skilled in your field of work, an advid player of your legendary games, expecially Q1 and Q3A and Doom. I Grandiosely Salute you mr. John Carmack.

[@AldenFilionCG]

More please!!! I could listen to a Carmack rendering talk for hours. Thank you for sharing!

[@mitchalwaggoner1648]

Thank you John, hope to see more content from you here in the future.

[@websitesetup3487]

3:10 speech starts

[@dougb70]

skip to 1:01:39

[@thunderwood]

Excellent talk. Thank you for sharing!

[@whistlegraph]

This channel is gonna rock. 🌀

[@RyanR3STL3SS]

More like this please!

[@spencereaston8292]

Love hearing the work meme being used correctly.

[@xenoneo]

Thanks John. :) Great advice for approaching ideas or anything you feel strongly about. Feel good about poking holes in them, so you know you aren't deluding yourself.

[@rainthstrive]

And here I just filtered John Carmack talks by upload date, and found this. Nice

[@MrStarchild3001]

It blows me away that this guy is almost 45 yrs old [in this video] and revolutionized gaming in the 90ies :) John, I should mention I really appreciate the direction you're headed... regarding pursuing AI in this decade. I feel some actual thinking, talking machine is a decade away. (per Kurzweil, but also given all the recent progress with NLP, question answering, text generation, GPT2 etc).

[@rudolfolah7773]

Incredible.

[@orrimoch5226]

A must for every engineer

[@AdamFiregate]

Thanks for the video. Next time please do a little post production, the audio is still -20 dB below normalized level.

[@vbnandu867]

Thanks for this ... i thought had a problem with my speakers!

[@AdamFiregate]

@@vbnandu867 check out: 1. Right click on video 2. Stats for nerds. says content loudness -20.7dB

[@HavocGamingChannel]

The one dislike is from Zenimax

[@johnhammer8668]

John Carmack channel !!! yay

[@dustin_echoes]

The god king of nerds himself.

[@yosha2467]

Rumors say that If you read SICP right after listening to Carmack you gain MP irl.

[@miguelpereira9859]

The ultimate nerd, to rule them all

[@rafalkowalczyk5027]

Chief Engineering Officer

[@ntcartuchosesuprimentossum8035]

Dude.... amazinnnn

[@josephwong2832]

This guy is a legend

[@Metalvain4]

John, please consider doing\making a Master Class. Would gratefully and humbly sign up!

[@DanielleNewnham]

Dream podcast guest

[@TimMug]

Hopefully some more of these internal presentations can be allowed for release

[@alexz1232]

Someone get this man a board marker that isn't dead.

[@andrybak]

The second marker was held without the cap for long time...

[@MetatroN197924]

Implementation and perception.

[@RiceMunk]

Great talk, but awful sound quality. Understandbly it's probably because of awful mics in the talk, but nothing that can't be mostly fixed with a bit of mixing. Looking forward to more stuff on this channel, but please fix the sounds for them. :D

[@FineBakedPastry]

Genius.

[@RoryOConnor]

Kitchen Rolls/Croissant packs have that spiral tube design & twisting causes the break, always thought it would take off ..doh ..as a recycling procedure! If you could crack the ridiculous sharpness of tin/alu cans for domestic recycling! I think some of your "antifragile" less robust ideas would work on devolved "experiences" rather than full robust game engines! They would be ideal for webVR and possible create the constrained to inadvertently inspire new games/apps. eg. If you were viewing a house , you could confine the viewing angles/aggressively cull and direct the entire experience, incorporating all of your performance wins, even as stylized brand video-style-transitions (ye gross but..anyway lol) etc.. I think "Ratchet & Clank" played with interlacing concepts or maybe just ended up as styled retro video lines etc..

[@miltiadiskoutsokeras9189]

Talk for hours without notes or preparation. That is what a genius does.

[@michaelsteffensen6844]

That's just called being passionate about something. Though I'm sure Carmack could probably qualify as a genius.

[@MikkoRantalainen]

Great talk but unfortunately the audio is pretty poor with usable audio on the right channel only and even that's around -33 LUFS instead of -14 LUFS that KZbin would prefer.

[@ksec6631]

Am I the only one with audio problems? I can barely hear him speak with 100% volume.

[@AdamFiregate]

For everyone. The audio is still -20 dB below normalized level. It needs post production.

[@JohnLeidegren]

There's a stereo issue to. The right channel is louder, a lot louder than the left. There's an echo in the left channel that is not in the right channel. It's like there was two different microphones recording the same audio in different acoustic environments. What the heck. A mono recording of the right channel would be better by itself than this. There's an EQ extension to Chrome that can be used to force mono. You can then cut off the high and low frequencies and boost around 1.5-3KHz, better but it still feels weird because the left channel has a very odd acustic to it.

[@magyararon6918]

​@@JohnLeidegren WOW! Thanks you man, the fked up "stereo" recordings on youtube was driving me absolutely insane with headphones, so many video has bad audio recording where they use stereo, but in a horrible(unbalanced, artificial) way. I found this addon: "Left Right Sound Select " and with 1 click you can switch between mono left/right, before this i used to do windows MONO audio features in the settings panel, but that always chrashed the youtube video player after 2 switch.

[@theraygood]

Maybe John can grace us with some more insightful videos.

[@heyheyhophop]

John, is the secret plan to make us all send you our ideas w/o NDA, so you could pull out what you (they say) did with the Occulus IP? :D Kidding, we all love you no matter what, I think.

[@hotel-taxi]

Hello from future. The concept of global cyber network of modular mobile robo hotels / art galleries, as platform of life support services - all in one.

[@jhawley031]

Is that omnipotent hyperspace information singularity John Carmack?

[@technoskull]

yep, thats Engineering Elemental and Luddite Nemesis, John Carmack

[@damagepy]

Oh lol, I have an idea for 15 years now, and for some reason I finally decided to try to share it with someone who may actually understand it (3D engine speedup thing to look more detailed while rendering 5-10x faster) and sent an email to John and then half day later today I found this video... about ideas... I don't know if its a good sign or bad sign... Maybe I even picked the wrong email... the johnc at ocu one. :)

[@GordonAitchJay]

Did John get back to you?

[@KingLich451]

Sweet :D

[@KingLich451]

he sure got that introduction short... 3:29

[@andersmusikka]

What is the name of the steel mentioned at 32:31? Maraging steel?

[@slot9]

Sweet

[@Mac_Daffy]

35:25 light field rendering technology and OTOY

[@valeriogreco5963]

I'm curious to know what John Carmack thinks of DooM Eternal.

[@AdrianMeredith]

The Longer John Carmack is on Earth, the stronger he becomes

[@VivekBoseShree]

Nice content kid, you've got potential to be a big KZbinr. You should try to make a game engine.

[@Knoby1000]

Yeah, some great engine like the one Doom run on, that would be great.

[@jdmaine51084]

How does John Carmack only have 72 subscribers?

[@KingLich451]

he got those subs in the matter of half an hour or something, i only have 67 subscribers and I made that in 5+ years

[@jdmaine51084]

@@KingLich451 Yeah I'm just realizing now that this is his first post. Awesome!

[@AndrewMaksymBrainNectar]

When I first saw the video there was only 23, I am the 23rd.

[@geneshifter]

John starts at 3:19

[@LukePluto]

FYI the person doing the introduction, Kent Beck, is also a legendary programmer and offers some insightful comments

[@geneshifter]

LukePluto yes I know

[@Xyos212]

Interesting to think about what hes advising on ideas and actual execution in relation to the Theranos situation. Elizabeth Holmes had an idea and loosely thought out specs without any real engineering backing it. Its just crazy though to think of all the support and financial backing she acquired based on an idea alone without anyone actually auditing the proposed engineering behind it or evaluating any of the prototypes.

[@wartem]

- How bad is the sound? - Yes

[@MaximumADHD]

Oh hi!

[@goldnutter412]

50:10 the brain is just the pass through to the mind, another layer of entropy managing (self aware, whatever that means) information system Chopping things up means less entropy in the fully immersed "universe", very hard to not feel seasick in violent movements. The latency and other factors matter so much because of what your mind expects the data streams - video/audio and nervous system and inner ear system.. all meant to be nicely in sync. Big changes means horrible entropy trying to process what the brain is structuring. When you think of the universe as just another window, it makes much more sense.. turtles all the way down so to speak.. fundamental data | information primitives ? patterns and priority/meta tags allow very rich "Akashic" data structures. Parallelized and seemingly decentralized, becoming more specialized and a lower entropy overall.. We have to render the data stream ourselves (observer effect) JIT and hence quantum mechanics.. it depends what you do, whether data is available as to what shared consistent view of reality we get. Probabilistic future reality is obviously incredibly efficient rendered this way, as we are always a heap of orders of magnitude ahead of the rendering when using our intent. Is the universe dynamic wallpaper ? yes !

[@Jyaif]

What is bit-spreading?

[@markettinger2147]

He used this term in the context of showing that there are as many points in the unit interval (0,1) as there are in the unit square (0,1) x (0,1). The idea is that given a string of bits, A, you can get two strings of bits, B and C, by taking the odd bits from A to get B and the even bits from A to get C. Furthermore _any_ pair of bit strings (B,C) can be obtained in this way by taking A to be the string of bits composed of alternating bits from B and C.

[@cesig]

I can't believe a guy like John Carmack would work for Facebook.

[@PauloConstantino167]

Carmack wants money.

[@jacejunk]

He's no longer with Facebook.

[@cyrillebournival2328]

Mark could afford a pet John. My advice: If you can't do it in an afternoon, you can't do it. A recent exemble is computers and self driving cars, it's like a toddler trying to fit a square shape in the triangle hole, it just doesn't fit.

[@nolan412]

I need to stop debugging by staring at the floor/wall. The full code's not there.

[@nolan412]

Day later: was using the wrong variable.

[@nolan412]

Elon Musk ran with the spiral weld.

[@marijhorn]

so glad that so smart guy as him just already understand that the topic of VR is stupid.. :D but took a while.

[@HueyTheDoctor]

22:30 Foveated rendering gets a discussion.

[@BernhardHofmann]

The video you came for starts at @3:28

[@jonathanjimmyshearman2500]

Power to Jondi! Power to Doom! Power to reveletory nostalgic immersive science fiction!🌌👾🤖

[@noahkirkpatrick8912]

Carmack please make cheap haptic wearable devices for VR. You lest us see now make us feel.

[@sidsarasvati]

number of times he said “idea”

[@antekone1]

The way John speaks reminds me of the animation in old adventure games, e.g. Secret of the Monkey Island - kzbin.info/www/bejne/eoS3maqEobiSp6M - I really don't know why :D

[@themodfather9382]

3:27 starts

[@Ashtree81]

Johns physical appearence has not changed in 30 years, whats his secret?!

[@bruceli9094]

Argent energy from killing demons.

[@FazedSoul]

Pizza and diet coke

[@MurtagBY]

Hey John. please practice pauses in your speech :)

[@visionofdisorder]

what, you didn't catch all those "aeums" ?

[@keyboard_g]

3:20

[@MikkoRantalainen]

30:50 I think Elon Musk should simply offer to test some of the ideas Carmack has. It's obvious that Carmack is not about patenting these ideas so it should be fine if SpaceX pays for the testing and potentially starts using the results.

[@aidanthompson5053]

1:44

[@rhrabar0004]

Holy shit how did Louis CK get to host this event?

[@leonardoforero3369]

que?

[@mattsb5196]

Intro by Louis CK.

[@jimmea6317]

Is that guy at the beginning Louis CK’s twin or something

[@khkgkgkjgkjh6647]

John should help SpaceX to build the Starship.

[@swyxTV]

gotta imagine that John Carmack looks at us like we look at normal nonengineer people

[@id15yes2]

Here is a magical idea: take a spade, shovel or whatever, and slim the wooden handle tilll it's rounded triange, make it comfortable to hold. So, while digging out potatoes your back will not feel any pain. It's checked and works, the magic being i didn't see anyone using something like that, very simlpe though.(isn't it a good comment in a proper place ?-joke)

[@cidess3698]

based

[@maestbobo]

Who's the intro guy? He's incredibly patronising and pontificating.

[@alessiopiergiacomi]

Kent Beck, another legendary programmer?

[@Jixejo]

I know what hes referring to. Its so weird haha

[@DEvilParsnip]

who said nerds cant talk :)

[@baumstamp5989]

automate everything.

[@kos8765]

quake 6 confirmed. john, morephine engine from QC is outdated, give a proper state machine game. a whole QC level with 8 players could be compressed to 1 megabyte of data its not that big

[@NoName-rs4us]

John you are cool and very bright chap... sadly, back in the day you made some psychopathic games which current generation dont admire...😂😂😂😂😂 You and your team started fps genre but you heard this dozen times over half of your life already. Shame you hide your hands....joker is coming... I think you evolved and left gaming behind but new survival Quake would be cool to play. I enjoyed your multiplayer software a Lot!

[@vinniciusrosa8284]

He is coding Quake 5 while talking.

[@PashaDefragzor]

New Oculus ? No thank you. Previous generation engineering doesn't looked so dangerous as new. Even Quake was better. Have you seen Facebook ux ? Even by old grandmother says its a fake. Even some random guy is promoting Quake games now - wtf . Have u seen new Terminator , have you seen new online games like Warcraft 3 ? Please. Is it a progress ?