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Comment by JPKab | Hacker News Reader

This entire thread reeks of "I'm smart enough to know that videos can be faked, but Jethro in the trailer park isn't because he's just a plumber, and therefore this tech needs to be censored or else Jethro might believe stuff that makes him vote in a way I don't like" going on here.

While the average person overestimates their own intelligence, the average techy dramatically underestimates the intelligence of the average member of the public. The weirdos that latch onto every fake video and silly conspiracy theory are dramatically overrepresented in every online comments thread, but supposed geniuses in the tech/NGO/academic community forget this and assume a broad swath of the public believes in stuff like "Pizza gate" because nuanced thinking is a skill only the enlightened few possess.

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Some people aren't very skeptical at baseline, it doesn't mean that those concerned about the ability of others to recognize AI are disparaging people based on intelligence.

For example, some people can be very intelligent, yet not be discerning of information that resonates with prior biases. You see this in those who are devoutly religious, politically polarized, etc.

There is reason to believe that such biases will lend to ontological misinterpretations from algorithmically generated information.

You can see mistakes in interpretation on a day to day basis by the population at large. There are swaths of widely held beliefs that aren't based in truth. Pretty much anyone is likely to believe at least some stereotype, folklore, urban legend, or myth.

It isn’t about being smart (you assumed this is what ‘education’ was pointing at). Most people aren’t even aware of what’s happening besides extremely superficial things that they get here and there on the news. Can’t you honestly see the real potential for massive damage coming out of all this?

With respect to the American public, the majority can and do utilize nuanced thinking as a survival skill. The problem of modern American era, is not that our public is low in average intelligence. Rather, that on average, we have been miseducated to seek the eradication of discomfort, uncertainty, inconveniences, and unknowns.

That radio station in hotel Rawanda could be a bad thing for you and people you cared about even if you personally could discern the lies so it wasn't fooling you.

Actually you overestimate the general public's ability to discern what's real or not. On top of that, most people don't even care if it's real. This is exactly why Trump won.

Example: if a gen ai vid of a politician doing some crazy crime came out. Even if it were proven fake, people would start questioning everything and still act as if the politician were guilty

"This is exactly why Trump won"

See the part of my comment you are replying to where I specifically stated that the motivation for all of this is that "Jethro doesn't vote the way I want him to". You've proven my point.

The censorious attitudes on HN were non-existent before Trump won in 2016. I know this for a fact. I've had my account on here since 2012, after 2 years of being just a reader.

Meanwhile, you overestimate how immune to misinformation and lies the average HN techy is. Just a few years ago, the majority of people on here believed, with utter conviction, that the bat-borne coronavirus lab in Wuhan had absolutely no connection with the bat-borne coronavirus epidemic that started in Wuhan and that only bigots and ignoramuses could draw such a conclusion. I experienced this whenever I brought up the blatantly obvious, common sense connection in these same comment threads in late 2020 or into mid 2021. The absolutely absurd denial of common sense by otherwise intelligent people was reminiscent of trying to talk to a religious fundamentalist about evolution while pointing at dinosaur fossils and having them continue to deny what was staring them in the face.

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