LLMs are the first tech topic I’ve seen that attracts as much wishcasting as political debates. Some people get attached to the conclusion they want to believe and get angry at anyone who disagrees with them.

Most of the tech people I talk to outside of HN, Reddit, Twitter, and other debate heavy spaces have a more nuanced view. In group chats we share stories about the amazing things we got out of an LLM today, or the hilarious failures or mistakes they made. We share tips and battle stories. We talk about the pros and cons of different models. We discuss the hard things we’re doing that LLMs can’t handle yet.

Go on HN or LinkedIn or Lobsters and there are some comments from people who seem like they’re coming from a different universe or timeline. Some people claim LLMs are doing everything in their life perfectly. They’re posting thought leader Tweets about working 2 hours per day and doing everything with ChatGPT voice so they don’t even need to be at their computer. Others are claiming that LLMs are useless and they can’t get anything usable out of them at all, or that they create more problems than they solve.

It’s weird. I can’t recall a time when people in tech were having hot takes that disagreed with such polarized extremes. Like I can look at LLM output all day long and see that both of the extreme takes are not right, but they’re all steadfast in their ideas.

I find plenty of nuanced takes on HN. Honestly I think it's easier here than elsewhere; I just have to filter down to them. On other platforms, polarized takes are incentivized by the struggle for "engagement". (Youtubers often have fairly nuanced takes, but are incentivized to clickbait by misrepresenting themselves as believing something more extreme. Then they're incentivized to make a longer video, wasting your time and distributing the interesting bits across the middle.)

I think LinkedIn belongs in a natural category with Reddit and Twitter far more than HN does.