[Aerolfos]

> I do think Ed in intentionally ignorant of the capabilities of LLMs. I think it's more complicated than that too. He's pretty well versed in the stated capabilities of LLMs.

The fact that he isn't a deeply involved technical developer who knows the ins and outs and nuances of using LLM tools is the point, because the stated capabilities of LLMs are that they are trivial to use, extremely powerful, and getting so much better every month that you personally can replace developers without even trying as a completely non-technical person with basic writing skills.

Given the hype and extreme claims being made, the fact that he remains ignorant and gets practically no use out of LLMs immediately disproves those statements. The counterargument boiling down to "you're using it wrong" is actually just a further indictment of Sam Altman and his like, because it shouldn't be possible to use LLMs wrong!

The rest, well, the hype needs to die before anyone can make sane estimates of what LLM tech can do for us in various fields. Right now it's all a complete mess.

[barrell]

I don’t get me wrong, I’m on Ed’s side and get where he’s coming from. I just think his arguments are normally taken to the extreme, making them less defensible, when he could make the same arguments from a more moderate stance and ultimately be more convincing.

His arguments, albeit valid, can often sound like reductos ad absurdums the way he presents them.

[Aerolfos]

Yeah, probably.

One of the worst things about LLM writing is how it makes big promises of what it can prove in some piece of writing, and then never really follows up on that, or has specifics that go all the way towards the original, grandiose statement.

And frankly, Zitron is guilty of that pattern of writing too, or of relying on some unstated "baseline" knowledge which is clear from his other writing but not in the specific piece.

So, basically yeah, agreeing about the ad absurdum thing.

(I will note, the tone, the swearing, etc. really doesn't matter nearly as much as these problems, and everyone instead obsessing about the swearing and personality is really boring)

[barrell]

Personally I only find his swearing and delivery annoying when he is not delivering his point well (ie reducto ad absurdum). I’d be welling to bet a good amount of the complaints about his swearing are really just from a poor delivery, and people don’t know why, so they latch onto his swearing.

His early stuff was just as degenerate and vulgar, but was much less of an issue for me.

[techblueberry]

Part of the problem is the like - sociomedia factor. Ed’s figured out how to break through the noise. I’m not surprised that Ed Zitron is the kind of counterpoint you get in the Musk-Trump attention economy / CEO’s that sound more like prophets than business executives world.

[andrewflnr]

One person's ignorance of something can never be evidence that it doesn't exist. It's far too easy to be willfully ignorant; no one can force you to abandon ignorance if you don't want to.

On the other hand, the hype of "Sam Altman and his like" being plainly exaggerated doesn't mean there's nothing at all behind it. It's plain to see there's something important about LLM capabilities. I don't even use them myself, as emotionally I find them entirely repugnant, and I can still see that.

We need to wait to get the whole story about LLMs, but we don't need to wait to confidently reject both extremes of opinion about them.