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by happytoexplain 49 days ago
Please, please stop with the AI analogies. Just make your argument on its own terms.

"It's different from X" is no more meaningful than "it's the same as X".

2 comments

> It's different from X"

The post doesn't even say "it's different from X". It just says "it's unfashionable," with no comparison or mention of history at all, as if this is the first time a new technology has ever been unfashionable immediately after its release.

> Just make your argument on its own terms.

I feel like my argument is obvious? The "unfashionable" period for useful-but-jarringly-new consumer-facing technology is common, predictable, and short-lived.

You can't predict culture, you can't predict fashion, you can't predict the course of history, you can't predict innovations, you can't predict any of this creativity-mediated stuff.
Yes you can, in many cases. Go read a book about culture lol
OK, I choose "The Poverty of Historicism". Which book did you have in mind?
The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Secret of Our Success, almost any book about patterns in human history.

Anyway, my point isn't about predicting historical or cultural changes at some hugely complex scale. My point is that it's simple and predictable that useful new technology is most hated when it's new, but eventually tends to be adopted and embraced and normalized when it's had some time. That is, assuming it's affordable and truly useful.

If you want to bet against that happening in this case because you believe culture can't be predicted, then I would gladly take that bet, any amount of $ you want to wager, and let's meet back here in 5 years.

Ironically, nothing makes me question my stance of human supremacy over AI more than the weakness and triteness of human defenses of AI.

Or maybe the defenses are AI generated, who knows.