I assume it is easier to manipulate someone who lives in symbols than someone who lives in dirt.

Depends on the angle. It's easy to manipulate someone once you exceed their ability to keep up with you. People "living in symbols" aren't easy to manipulate about easy things, but you can ramp up complexity until they lose track and accept an unwarranted reasoning leap without realizing it.

With people "living in dirt", you can't pull that off because you'll jump ahead so far they'll immediately realize they can't possibly understand what you're selling right now, and shut the argument down. But they can get confused about things outside their direct area of direct experience.

Note: I'm not saying either is smarter or less smart. Rather, "living in symbols" get confused "higher up", while "living in dirt" get confused "low and to the sides", but they probably have more solid grounding.

I think it’s more precise to say it’s easier to change the mind of someone who lives in symbols than who lives in dirt. Whether that is changing their mind for the better (oh new maths proof, I’d better update my priors) or the worse.

Surely it depends on what you're trying to do? If someone is deeply knowledgeable about how AI works, then it will be difficult to fool them with misinformation about the capabilities of AI. Someone who knows very little about AI will be more likely to have misconceptions about AI.