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Comment by adrians1 | Hacker News Reader

If you oppose LLMs and the field because of pure irrational instinct, like those people in the past, you can just state it outright, no need for complicated arguments.

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Yeah, that's also fine. However I am personally willing to side with the group which's arguments for the cause are environmental and societal impact over the one which's rebuttal to that is the fact we were wrong once 40 years ago. That's just me though.

We weren't wrong just once, 40 years ago. That's just one example, but the Luddites and doomers were wrong every time something new was invented.

Check this out: https://x.com/PessimistsArc

This train of thought is hilariously rife with selection bias.

There is an infinitely long list of technologies that "Luddites and doomers" tried to block and were thankfully successful in doing so.

CFCs and ozone.

Leaded gasoline.

Thalidomide.

Offensive bioweapons.

I'm not claiming Luddites and doomers are always or usually right (they're often wrong), but your claim they were wrong every time is just total epistemological failure on your part.

Oh, sorry. 99% of the time.

Just like seatbelts are categorically stupid and can be ignored because 99% of the time they lock, you're not actually in a collision.

Luddites, the group of people which famously were concerned about societal impact of a piece of technology? Right.

You made a strawman afraid of fire

How much clown makeup do you guys put in your coffee?

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