[operatingthetan]

Why did you criticize his past arguments instead of the claims in this article? The one relevant claim you address is basically a shrug on your part. This seems to be purely a character attack of Zitron.

I agree that he is very one-sided, but I doubt his hit-rate is much worse than other pundits in the industry.

[raincole]

I think it's very reasonable to look at the track record when posting anti-AI articles looks like the author's part-time (if not full-time) job: https://www.wheresyoured.at/author/edward/

[operatingthetan]

It is reasonable to do so but only if they also actually address the current claims.

[tim333]

It's not really a character attack so much as a poor track record attack.

[hansvm]

It's the same idea. The crux of the argument is that the author has a history of bad predictions, so this must also be a bad prediction, or it's at least likely enough to be bad that we done need to invest further analysis into it.

I don't think that's necessarily a bad argument style (at this point it's by far the easiest way to argue that a Musk project won't work for example), but you have to be careful with it.

In this case, there are only two previous predictions being considered. Suppose the author would have been right 75% of the time given their available information; there was still a >6% chance of those predictions not working out. That's a pretty rough bound for ruling them out just on principle in a world where they do actually know a lot about how AI will progress. There isn't enough "track record" to confidently say much about the author's predictions.

[tonyneel923]

You're absolutely correct. Too easy just to say this guy sucks that's why he's wrong.

[lucketone]

Track record would matter if we would need to trust him. (E.g. he knows some hidden insider data which stays secret, while he shares only a conclusion without must justification)

Track record is not relevant if it is a prediction with all the arguments laid out in the open.

Which is our situation closer to?

[tim333]

Facts can be cherry picked. As an example of Ed's stuff see:

>Anthropic Is Bleeding Out ...Anthropic is very likely losing money on every single Claude Code customer, and based on my analysis, appears to be losing hundreds or even thousands of dollars per customer. (Ed, 10 months ago) https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropic-is-bleeding-out/

vs

>Mind-Blowing Growth Is About to Propel Anthropic Into Its First Profitable Quarter The startup expects a 130% revenue surge to $10.9 billion in the June quarter and its first operating profit, defying skeptics of the AI boom (wsj, yesterday)

If you look at Ed's piece there the facts are correct but he just moans about costs and ignores the growth. Most of his stuff is kind of like that.

[lucketone]

> expects

Is bearing a lot load here.

It is a press release with a goal to create hype.

I.e. it has no relation to “facts”

… unless they would also share underlying numbers (e.g. cost/profit per customer, and why they think some things will increase)