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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   25852 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

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It would be one thing if I was arguing solely from credentials, but as I note, I lack any, and my arguments are largely on perceived merit.

Note that I'm not saying you are not arguing from your credentials. But rather, you are arguing based on the credentials of others with the statement "In the general AI-risk is a serious concern category, there's everyone from Nobel Prize winners to billionaires". Nobel Prize winners do have credibility (albeit not necessarily outside their domain of expertise), but that isn't a decisive argument because of the fallacy angle.

Even so, I think that calling it a logical fallacy is incorrect...

This is, to be blunt, quite wrong. Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, one of the classics that humans have noted since antiquity. Authorities can be wrong, just like anyone else. This doesn't mean your claims are false, of course, just that the argument you made in your previous post for your claims is weak as a result.

What of it? I do, as a matter of fact know more about LLMs than the average person I'm arguing with.

I simply think it's funny. If it doesn't strike you as humorous that your statement would be agreed upon by all (just with different claims as to who has the bad takes), then we just don't share a similar sense of humor. No big deal.

Note that I claimed that the support of experts (Geoffrey Hinton is one of the Nobel Prize winners in question) strengthens my case, not that this, by itself, proves that my claim is true, which would actually be a logical fallacy. I took pains to specify that I'm talking about Bayesian evidence.

Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, one of the classics that humans have noted since antiquity.

Consider that there's a distinction made between legitimate and illegitimate appeals to authority. Only the latter is a "logical fallacy".

Hinton won the Nobel Prize in Physics, but for the invention of neural networks. I can hardly see someone more qualified to be an expert in the field of AI/ML.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

An argument from authority can be fallacious, particularly when the authority invoked lacks relevant expertise.

This doesn't mean your claims are false, of course, just that the argument you made in your previous post for your claims is weak as a result.

It would be, if it wasn't for the veritable mountain of text I've written to explain myself, or the references I've always cited.

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