The comparison breaks down because noise pollution is unavoidable. AI hype might be unavoidable unless you code in a vacuum but you can be disciplined in how much you let it in. Even if AI cheapens the actual output, it fundamentally cannot touch your intrinsic motivations for work, which was my original point.

> The comparison breaks down because noise pollution is unavoidable.

That's not remotely true, but it's not just noise pollution, it's also actual pollution, and it cheapens the overall experience with the presence of an excessive amount of people who've potentially pnly bought their way there and have no long-term care for keeping it serene. More litter, dog shit on the trail perhaps, etc.. and yes more noise.

It's an analogy for the poisoning of the market for whatever you'd be working on, hollowing of the process to get there, and further destruction of the long-term viability of the pursuit itself by compromising its integrity through transactional commodification. In theory, there will always be people who exclusively and ruthlessly only care about the numbers, getting the product "done", or the raw numeric achievement of climbing the mountain, which is how everything gets enshittified.

Similar thing with gaming. You could tell me that if I truly like a game, it shouldn't matter how much they gradually dumb it down, make it efficient to play for almost anyone, or pack it tip-to-taint with microtransactions, but the reality is that all of those factors are the equivalent of strip mining the player base and leaving an empty pit.