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0 pointsupghost7mo ago0 comments

"I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him..."

A rhetorical technique as old as dirt, but apparently still effective.

0 comments

"Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot, take thou what course thou wilt!"

But seriously, it isn't on me to justify my skepticism of the extreme claim, "We are in a race to build machine super-intelligence" because that skepticism is the rational default. Instead it's the burden of people who claim that we are in fact in that race, just like "self driving next year" was a claim for others to prove, just like "Crypto is the future of money" is a statement requiring a high degree of support.

We've seen this all before, and in the end the argument in favor seems to boil down to, "Look at how much money we're moving around with this hype" and "Trust us, the best is yet to come."

Maybe this time it will.

upghostOP7mo ago

Just to clarify, I meant the rhetorical technique was being employed by the author of the article. He's downplaying the "AGI race" in order to normalize and validate the byproduct of the hype bubble to be as "normal and reliable as electricity and TCP/IP". It's clearly meant to attempt to disarm and appeal to skeptics, but there is more than enough dog whistling and performative contradiction in there to make it clear the true intention of the article -- praising Caesar.

For the record, I would be more inclined to be sympathetic towards the author if any receipts (i.e., repos) were produced at all, but as you so correctly stated, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

I agree you do not have burden of defending the author's claims, apologies if that was not clear.

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