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Comment by mgradowski | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't trust a taxi driver's predictions about the future of economics and society, why would I trust some database developer's? Actually, I take that back. I might trust the taxi driver.

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The point is that you don't have to "trust" me, you need to argue with me, we need to discuss about the future. This way, we can form ideas that we can use to understand if a given politician or the other will be right, when we will be called to vote. We can also form stronger ideas to try to influence other people that right now have a vague understanding of what AI is and what it could be. We will be the ones that will vote and choose our future.

Life is too short to have philosophical debates with every self promoting dev. I'd rather chat about C style but that would hurt your feelings. Man I miss the days of why the lucky stiff, he was actually cool.

Sorry boss, I'm just tired of the debate itself. It assumes a certain level of optimism, while I'm skeptical that meaningfully productive applications of LLMs etc. will be found once hype settles, let alone ones that will reshape society like agriculture or the steam engine did.

Whether it is a taxi driver or a developer, when someone starts from flawed premises, I can either engage and debate or tune out and politely humor them. When the flawed premises are deeply ingrained political beliefs it is often better to simply say, "Okay buddy. If you say so..."

We've been over the topic of AI employment doom several times on this site. At this point it isn't a debate. It is simply the restating of these first principles.

You shouldn't care about the "who" at all. You should see their arguments. If taxi driver doesn't know anything real, it should be plain obvious and you can state it easily with arguments rather than attacking the background of the person. Actually, your comment is one of the most common logical flaws (Ad Hominem), combining even multiple at the same time.

I jokingly alluded to antirez as HN crowd pars pro toto. I agree it doesn't pass as an intellectually honest argument.

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