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Semantically fluent prose does not a specialist make. It demonstrates capability at the shallow end of competence, like a student who memorizes a vast vocabulary but never attempts to use it, but not at the deeper end of actually knowing what to do.
It's infinitely possible to bullshit people through the manipulation of abstractions. 20th century philosophers made an art of it. The 21st century has given us abominations like Yarvin. Probably all priests, prophets, charlatans, and intellectuals have always specialized in this. But when it comes to using ideas to interact with the concrete, physical world, which has infinitely more complexity and no tolerance for failure, all the shortcomings of mere wordplay are exposed. Pretty sophistications have no ability to withstand the friction of reality if their underlying premises are actually flawed. Or if they're wielded incorrectly, deployed without craft.
Thus, while AI can discourse on every single subject in the world, it cannot give you actual good advice for how to put together a formal email. It cannot play Pokémon.
This is what befuddles the self-declared rationalists with their love of intellectual peacocking, the memorization of useless knowledge and gestures so as to impress their peers as part of status game rituals. If their feathers are indeed useless beyond as a means to impress others of their species, then that could mean they are actually quite the vulnerable animals. It impinges upon their egos, and thus its reality must be held at bay, fantasy sustained. Is not intelligence, as the AI demonstrates it, the regurgitation of random stuff from encyclopedias, the absolute height of competency?
To correctly determine the true worth of AI, you must merely ask: what can it actually do? It can put out messy code, it can write artlessly, it can tell you random stuff in a less structured way than a well-fashioned textbook or Youtube video could, but also with greater ease and versatility, and thus can give you a situationally useful new data gathering tool.
But why would you assume any of this can impact the entire world in such a major way?
What are you talking about? It can and does do both of those things.
He's got me blocked, so he may have missed my question and the answer recently. I'd worry that I must have done something wrong, but after reading that swath of ignorance-based insults I'm forced to suspect I must have done something right.
Yeah he's blocking me too but you know, "somebody is wrong on the internet" and all that. It's a compulsion I have.
He's blocked me too, and I've never interacted with him. Is he possibly blocking everyone?
Possibly he has particular interests and just blocks everyone else as irrelevant. I'd love to see his feed, it must look like Stalin's yearbook.
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