[paularmstrong]

> Having needled her repeatedly over the past couple years about AI’s environmental, political, and economic implications, I brushed all that aside on a recent Sunday and drove to her house. After a little tibia talk, I opened her computer and began emitting vibes.

So the author had a moral, environmental, political and economic stance and then just threw them all in the bin.

This is sad to me because I have all of these stances and more. I just cannot bring myself to give in and use a technology wrought with so many systemic problems. And I cannot understand how anyone could feel so strongly about anything to the point of preaching it to others, only to just sort of … ignore them(?).

[themacguffinman]

The author isn't literally discarding their stances, they're temporarily putting it aside to investigate a specific question. The paragraph is pretty clearly a throat-clearing that establishes the author's stance while saying upfront that this article isn't about those stances.