The Most Profound Moment in Gaming History
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters bring it up when discussing AI slop, information overload and algorithmic curation, treating MGS2's Patriots speech as a prescient prediction.
Recommended by 2 people across 2 different months, 2023 to 2026.
What it is
Max Derrat, with permission from LogosSteve, revisits the final codec call in Metal Gear Solid 2, where the Patriots AI describes controlling information and curating context for humanity. He ties it to modern media, news ideology and political polarization, using graphs and commentary.
What people said
Strong rec dissident_coder · 2023-12 · Hacker News · on “Facebook Is Being Overrun with Stolen, AI-Gen Images That People Think Are Real”
The Patriot AI in Metal Gear Solid 2 was probably the most prescient prediction that Hideo Kojima has ever made, and it's even worse than even he imagined. The irony of it all considering Kojima was also falsely accused of assassinating the Shinzo Abe just last year. The Most Profound Moment in Gaming History: [this video]
Recommends bschwindHN · 2026-10 · Hacker News · on “French national assembly votes 0.055€/GB internet tax”
> the commercial consumer Internet may be at a precipice where, all of a sudden, everyone begins contributing beyond their means, and it's all slop that needs to be gated and throttled and rate-limited. Reminds me of Metal Gear Solid 2 where the AI is talking about humans getting overloaded with data, and requiring an AI to curate it into information. This video goes into it, especially around the 13:20 mark: [this video]
Cites evanjrowley · 2024-12 · Hacker News · on “AI, Encryption, and the Sins of the 90s”
In terms of tools, my outlook is optimistic. I feel like worries #1 and #2 being mitigated by tools that enable E2EE in spaces where it was not available before. Examples include CryptPad[0] for office productivity, Ente[1] for photos, and Joplin[3] as a full-featured notes app supporting encryption. In the category of common everyday tools, I'd like to see more E2EE options for managing bookmarks across browsers. Additionally, I would like to see more E2EE applications competing with popular SaaS offerings. It scares me to think of the potential damage that could come from a breach of ServiceNow, Atlassian, and any other SaaS where businesses expect to store private information. Given the U