The word “cope” shows up nine times in this short post. It was frankly annoying to the point it’s hard to take the arguments seriously, because it’s starting from an obvious base of “people who disagree are all wrong and their arguments aren’t worth taking seriously”.

It’s akin to the subset of cryptocurrency proponents who fervently argue that people who are against cryptocurrencies have that opinion because they’re jealous they didn’t become rich. It shows a profound lack of understanding—and, more importantly, an unwillingness to understand—the other side of the argument.

This is made evident by the very first “argument” of moving the goal posts. It’s dismissed off-hand, without even explaining what those entail. That’s the same as saying “if a person makes a fallacious argument, they’re wrong and you can ignore them”¹. But crucially, sometimes what we ourselves think is a fallacious argument, isn’t. “Moving the goal posts” is probably the most misused accusation I see in LLM discussions. It’s basically a talking point by now.

¹ Which is itself a fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

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Nevermark 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> it’s starting from an obvious base of “people who disagree are all wrong and their arguments aren’t worth taking seriously”.

Taking arguments seriously doesn't necessitate agreement.

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latexr 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Taking arguments seriously doesn't necessitate agreement.

I agree. That’s what I’m saying, so I don’t think I understand what you mean. Mind clarifying the point you’re making?

To try to clarify, what I do mean that is that disagreement does necessitate at least some measure of taking arguments seriously. Some arguments maybe don’t deserve to be taken seriously, but you need to first be open to taking them seriously so you can decide.

In other words, if you go into an argument with the initial mindset of taking it seriously, by the end you’ll be able to decide if it should be taken seriously or not; but if your initial mindset is to not take it seriously, most likely you won’t be open to understand the nuance of what is being said. Thus, the former leads to productive discussion while the latter does not.

	▲	Nevermark 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Ah, I get it. Your emphasis is on the "cope" framing. You say that, but it didn't click for some reason. Don't mind me. I suppose I have also interpreted downplaying of AI's impact as largely coping too. The arrivals of machines that can outthink us (or will soon) only 80 years after the invention of the transistor is so clearly (to me) a change incomparable to anything that has happened prior. It is very hard to relate to arguments that downplay the complete upheaval to the order of life on Earth that non-biological cognition and interests herald. It does not seem surprising to me, in the sense that we humans ourselves, and our technology, are of a different order than anything that came before. We have not stopped accelerating change. AI is (will soon be) building directly on that. But we will no longer be a bottleneck. My strong impression, is the faster things change, the more people tune out that the change isn't stopping. Some of that reversal-response must involve coping. Perhaps another reason is that faster-than-us change is challenging to imagine. But your point is valid. False or uncertain assumptions of "cope" motivations don't help anything.

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AlexeyBelov 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"Cope" is just the latest negative word that's used just to say something is bad / disliked. It's greatly overused. If people actually read about coping stategies etc they'd quickly realize that coping is not a negative but a positive mechanism.