[jbreckmckye]

It is very strange and there must be a deeper reason. I don't know if this is

- Retail shareholders doing grassroots PR

- Some kind of "magical technologism", belief that the rapid technical gains of the 20th century are the natural state of things; unwillingness to accept that future improvements in material science, computer science, chemical science will be more marginal

- Shallow press coverage and overenthusiastic fans who have a disproportionate impact on online discourse

Or maybe all three?

[llm_nerd]

It isn't strange or unique at all. We live in times where people feel they need to have a position on everything. A strongly held belief. A stand. And people feel they need to adopt it early and then make every piece of information fit that selection.

It is destructive. We see it on every topic now, even entirely banal things.

To go back a couple of decades, I remember a high school History teacher bizarre asking the class if they were for or against abortion of all things...it was a very strange class where he was riffing and we were talking about commonly held positions through time. He asked me and I answered that I didn't know enough about the topic, hadn't really thought about it enough, and don't really feel in a position where I should have a stance on it. He laughed and called me a fence-sitter and said I took the coward position. This was a profound experience for me, and it comes to mind in many situations like this.

The whole LK-99 thing looks super neat. I don't have the knowledge, time or inclination to have my ego wrapped in a position on it, and there's absolutely no value or utility in me picking a position, either. I read the updates and it'll turn out however it turns out.

[jacquesm]

Yes, this polarization is really annoying, it also blinds people because they become too invested in their own team to still change their position given additional evidence.

[kortex]

I think it's in no small part because the news has been so dire for the past few years: pandemic, war in Ukraine, possibility of nuclear escalation, China licking lips at Taiwan, climate change, economy.

Then some news comes along also coincidentally with other weird fun news (UAPs) that's not bad in any ways, and may revolutionize society. Of course they are gonna run with it.

[stormfather]

Unwillingness to accept? What evidence do you have that the 20th century was the inflection point in intellectual progress? We have many more brains with much more free time now, not to mention pocket supercomputers, the internet and AI assistance. I expect the pace of discover to increase if anything. Maybe you're just suffering from your perspective of being alive right now, like all those kids on youtube who say past music was so good, because they see a highly filtered and compressed version of the past.

[DC-3]

Simply the desire to live in interesting times.

[FloorEgg]

Maybe there is some major strategic investment deal being negotiated to develop advanced chip fab and it's in someone's interest to confuse the strategy with a potential paradigm shift on the horizon.