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by scarmig 224 days ago
> It’s this myth that’s the root of the AGI conspiracy. A smarter-than-human machine that can do it all is not a technology. It’s a dream, unmoored from reality.

So, if you assume that AGI is fake and impossible, it's... A conspiracy. Sure.

Though, if you just finished quoting Turing (and folks like von Neumann), who thought it is possible, it would be good form for you to offer some reasoning that it's impossible, without alluding to the ineffable human soul or things like that.
2 comments
Libidinalecon 224 days ago
The best thing I have ever read is von Neumann's ridiculous ideas and predictions about the weather.

It is the ultimate example of always having to be on guard against argumentum ad verecundiam.

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Terr_ 224 days ago
> if you assume that AGI is fake and impossible

That seems like a bad straw-man for "AI boosterism has the following hallmarks of conspiratorial thinking".

> offer some reasoning that it's impossible

Further on, the author has anticipated your objection:

> And there it is: You can’t prove it’s not true. [...] Conspiracy thinking looms again. Predictions about when AGI will arrive are made with the precision of numerologists counting down to the end of days. With no real stakes in the game, deadlines come and go with a shrug. Excuses are made and timelines are adjusted yet again.

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scarmig 224 days ago
If it makes you angry that people want to work to build AGI--people who have thought about it a lot more than you--you can't convince them to stop by repeatedly yelling "I don't think it's possible, you're a fool!"

No more than yelling "electricity is conspiracy thinking/Satan's plaything!" repeatedly would have stopped engineers in the 19th century from studying and building with it.

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Terr_ 224 days ago
> If it makes you angry that people want to work to build AGI

What's this, a second straw-man? So quickly after the first?

TFA never condemned invention or hard work, nor does it agree with the "doomers" who consider the target-invention to be fundamentally bad. At most it's a critique of a set of beliefs/rationalizations plus choices made by investors.

> makes you angry [...] people who have thought about it a lot more than you [...] repeatedly yelling [...] "you're a fool!"

Who's angry? Who's making it personal?

I think reading the article made you angry... and you're projecting it onto everybody else.

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delusional 224 days ago
Yet yelling: "why would have to die from blood loss, we can transfuse some right here" At Jehova's witnesses actually does help some.

We don't have to save everybody, but only by trying to we save some.

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