> there are a list of downsides that Drew views as non-negotiables

Which is all fine and dandy. But why play the "You simply don't understand it as well as I do" rather than something more investigative and curious? Just fuels the whole "holier than thou" vibe Drew been trying to increase seemingly every day.

It's a disagreement of opinion, not some "I'm the only smart person who can realize this", which is why it kind of sours the entire piece.

> Which is all fine and dandy. But why play the "You simply don't understand it as well as I do"

I'll say this from the perspective of a person who publishes content online: because people's revealed preference is for content written this way. You can spend weeks polishing thoughtful, original content that will get few clicks, or you can crank out throwaway op-eds about AI and get thousands of likes and upvotes from people who just wanted to hear their own beliefs explained back to them.

My stuff appeared on HN a couple of times over the years and the less effort I put into it, the better it fared. The temptation to change your writing style and to offer increasingly more provocative and shallow opinions is difficult to resist.

My point is probably this: if you want to see better stuff, I think you gotta stop engaging with articles like this. Patrol /newest and upvote cool in-depth stuff.

> But why play the "You simply don't understand it as well as I do" rather than something more investigative and curious?

That's not the tone of the article; he uses the word "pretending". That tells me that he thinks that people do understand, but they don't want to admit that they understand because that would reveal their values.

In fairness he pretty explicitly states that he thinks people do understand it, but are pretending not to to wash their hands of the consequences. I'm definitely not reading it in the same way you are.