A few years ago I made a bet with John Carmack for $10,000. I lost the bet, which unfortunately timed with some pretty hard life experiences, so it took a little while to pay it all off, but it’s finally been settled.

https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1649821116490186753

Out of context, it probably sounds like a really stupid bet. I didn’t ever think I’d win– that wasn’t the point.

I was working on something that I really believed in, and that I believed would help me win. The bet was a rallying cry for our team, and working on the project was a lot of fun. I think we would have ended up with some eyeballs and a good story to tell.

And on some level I just wanted to engage with Carmack. I look up to him as a paragon of what a great engineer should be– driven, curious, hard working and honest, even when it might cause conflict. People spend money on dumb shit all the time. For me, it was fun.

Until recently I was just an anonymous internet person. But everything I have has come from the Internet, and my friends are also anonymous internet people. If anonymity is just an excuse to not be accountable for your actions, then that just seems like a shitty world to live in. Consider the money an investment into the social fabric of the web. It’s not about honor, or optics, or Carmack even. If you really believe in something, you do what is right, even if just for your own internal consistency.

My advice to anyone betting against Carmack: don’t, unless losing also has clear benefits to you.