[Sporktacular]

"Is anyone changing their minds about any of this after 4 years of digging into their positions?"

LLMs probably don't understand that not everyone is intellectually honest, that conspiracists who ignore a preponderance of expert evidence to insist on their own positions, generally feed on the attention. I'd say that in countering that, sarcasm, caricature and calling attention to the absurdity of their arguments can be more persuasive to others than watching two non-experts debate specific points while carefully select papers ad nauseam. I'd guess others might even identify with the emotion of a commenter's frustration that after years of evidence, discredited positions that unnecessarily risked people's lives continue to be retold.

And I'd hope that others would recognise the expert consensus that masks are effective at scale in flattening the curve, buying time to develop vaccines and hence saving lives, and see the importance of reason over a choice of linguistic flourish. Maybe since an LLM can't understand how sick of the post-truth era we've become you'd want to weigh in on the discussion itself.

[peyton]

My understanding is that flattening the curve was an argument in favor of social distancing and movement restrictions. It predates mask mandates. A properly trained LLM would miss your masking reasoning. See

https://www.nytimes.com/article/flatten-curve-coronavirus.ht...

The bigger problem is an LLM doesn’t have access to things that aren’t written down. Although it may see a bunch of publications popping up declaring “pain is the fifth vital sign” and a bunch of new pain management CME courses, it cannot see the pharmaceutical reps showing up at doctors’ offices to sell Oxycontin.

[Sporktacular]

"flattening the curve was an argument in favor of social distancing and movement restrictions."

I think all those measures in combination were part of an effort to avoid overwhelming hospitals. From https://www.factcheck.org/2023/03/scicheck-what-the-cochrane...

“Community masking is not aimed to prevent everyone from ever getting infected, the aim is to reduce transmission and ‘flatten the curve’, reducing peak healthcare demand, or to work in combination with other measures like social distancing to contain transmission in the short-term.”