I mean, I completely agree with you. You can understand Karl Popper without being exhausting. Understanding the scope and resolution of the information people are discussing is indeed important. Even when I'm getting really technical, I can get away with throwing in a "probably" here and there and spare the person I'm talking to.

At the same time, folks who try to talk about empirical facts with deductive certainty can be extremely difficult to engage with seriously. That type of knowledge is always just a series of escalating assumptions, and if that premise is not shared, it can be difficult to have a productive conversation.

Not understanding the difference between and empirical framework and a deductive framework becomes readily apparent when the discussion of Wikipedia comes up. That distinction -- the problem of empiricism -- is effectively at the heart of why "trusting LLMs" is infuriating to people. Humans seem to have an innate conception of a chain of trust that connects us from "folks who know the facts" to us receiving that truth. When in reality, the scientists who wrote those papers are usually just "pretty sure" that their publications are actually correct.

I'm not trying to make an excuse for trusting LLMs. That's asinine. I'm just saying that the concern with LLMs generally indicates a misunderstanding of what knowledge is, more generally.