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Comment by tippytippytango | Hacker News Reader

I hate to even reply to this because it's falling into the author's trap. But, it's the typical new-tech clickbait. There's no data to back up their alarmist, knee-jerk hand wringing, just like when people thought novels were bad for people [1], or when writing would ruin our memories [2]. This article will be looked at similarly in a few years.

[1]https://archive.nytimes.com/op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/0...

[2]https://newlearningonline.com/literacies/chapter-1/socrates-...

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> There's no data to back up their alarmist, knee-jerk hand wringing, just like when people thought novels were bad for people [1], or when writing would ruin our memories [2].

Before we knew about germs the "data" suggested that we could bleed out evil tumors to cure illness, or similarly that the sun revolved around the earth. Would you also have labeled such conjecture as alarmist, knee-jerk hand wringing? A lack of data by no means invalidates a hypothesis, on the contrary it encourages further investigation, which leads to scientific progress.

I found it ironic that you referenced Socrates as an example of such alarmist claims, because the way I interpreted what he said is that without truly understanding a thing, and instead relying upon rote recitation, one could only continue to repeat the conclusions that others had painstakingly worked toward, but they would not be able to explain why or how, only that it is.

You need look no further than the embarrassing circus that was "fact checking" during recent political cycles to see that the concerns Socrates held have in fact come to fruition. Without any evidence except for a tweet hordes of people would confidently and voraciously defend a stance they knew nothing about, often times being completely wrong.

SOCRATES: "The same is true of written words. You’d think they were speaking as if they had some understanding, but if you question anything that has been said because you want to learn more, it continues to signify just that very same thing forever. When it has once been written down, every discourse roams about everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it, and it doesn’t know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not."

> just like when people thought novels were bad for people, or when writing would ruin our memories

In fairness, there are also lots of counterexamples where the long-term consequences of a new technology were not adequately foreseen, and ended up posing huge problems in the long run. So I don't think it's unreasonable for people to look skeptically on these sorts of tools.

Agree, but in general those unforeseen consequences differed from the moral panic at the time. Saying “this will have consequences and we should, IDK, know that” is different from prophesying specific dooms without evidence.

By definition, there's never any data to judge innovations. Obviously some opinions turns out to be wrong, but if everybody just waits for data before doing anything, nothing will ever happen. So if you don't like what they are saying, at least try to provide a counterargument.

“There is no evidence supporting that argument” is a counter argument.

Or maybe it’s better to say that hand-wringing is not an argument that merits a counter argument.

The difference is that one side has put actual thought into their argument, while the other side is attempting to invalidate the argument based on the fact that people other than themselves have not put in the work necessary to make a claim one way or the other.

Scientific progress doesn't happen by referencing the vast stores of data that we haven't collected.

Thought != data

Indeed. Thought is what makes data useful. When you don't have either then you don't really have much of an argument, do you?

That is a pretty common logical fallacy. It is actually a well-eatablished fact that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", i.e., maybe the reason why there is no evidence is that nobody looked for it, or, as is the case here, because something is too new to find any evidence in either direction

I think you’re mistaking the fallacy. That fallacy is best applied when someone asserts certainty in absence, as in the case of God.

If someone just asserts some random thing, it’s reasonable to ask for evidence. While their lack of evidence does not disprove their point, it’s certainly an argument for being skeptical about their point.

Otherwise I get to assert that every atom is a superintelligence, and your inability to provide contrary evidence is a point in my favor.

as long as these systems are not let near certain industries like aviation software, health stuff i dont mind however people write their software. maybe at this point it will only improve the js frontend mess :)

Not gonna lie, this is kind of the answer I was aiming for when I wrote this. Never did I say that AI is bad or shouldn't be used ever. I just think that it's value must be understood fully, whether you're using it for coding or just need to rephrase 2 sentences for an essay.

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