Behold the power of this fully selective quotation.
The Wall Street Journal came out with a story on "conspiracy physics", noting Eric Weinstein and Sabine Hossenfelder as examples. Sadly, one of their quoted voices of sanity is Scott Aaronson, baking-soda volcano of genocide apologism.
The Grauniad has a new piece today about the underpaid human labor on which the "AI" industry depends:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/11/google-gemini-ai-training-humans
Most workers said they avoid using LLMs or use extensions to block AI summaries because they now know how it’s built. Many also discourage their family and friends from using it, for the same reason.
I noticed that Hanson speculated that "most of the Great Filter is most likely to be explained by [...] the steps in the biological evolution of life and intelligence", and then lied by omission about Sagan's position. He said that Sagan appealed to "social science" and believed that the winnowing effect is civilizations blowing themselves up with nukes. He cites an obscure paper from 1983, while ignoring the, again, most successful pop-science book of the century.
"We predescribed our methodology in enough advance detail for Polymarket to run a real-money prediction market, and traders trusted us enough for the market to be liquid" would be overwhelmingly more credible than "we published our results in a big-name science journal".
Good sneer from user andrewrk:
People are always saying things like, “surprisingly good” to describe LLM output, but that’s like when 5 year old stops scribbling on the walls and draws a “surprisingly good” picture of the house, family, and dog standing outside on a sunny day on some construction paper. That’s great, kiddo, let’s put your programming language right here on the fridge.
Also a concept that Scott Aaronson praised Hanson for.
(Crediting the "Great Filter" to Hanson, like Scott Computers there, sounds like some fuckin' bullshit to me. In Cosmos, Carl Sagan wrote, "Why are they not here? There are many possible answers. Although it runs contrary to the heritage of Aristarchus and Copernicus, perhaps we are the first. Some technical civilization must be the first to emerge in the history of the Galaxy. Perhaps we are mistaken in our belief that at least occasional civilizations avoid self-destruction." And in his discussion of abiogenesis: "Life had arisen almost immediately after the origin of the Earth, which suggests that life may be an inevitable chemical process on an Earth-like planet. But life did not evolve beyond blue-green algae for three billion years, which suggests that large lifeforms with specialized organs are hard to evolve, harder even than the origin of life. Perhaps there are many other planets that today have abundant microbes but no big beasts and vegetables." Boom! There it is, in only the most successful pop-science book of the century.)
I'd scrounge the biggest piece of cardboard that I could and go at it with spray paint.
I was going to chime in to say something similar. I don't think trying to game out the possible reaction to the possible hype about the possible application, etc., etc., is the best use of anyone's time. It might be more beneficial to, for example, keep track of the cases where the guys selling "quantum" are the same guys who have been selling "AI" and "crypto".
Really, the clue was right there in the name all along.
Dang, I am missing a lot due to eating junk food instead of fast food.
That's just yer bog-standard "the best lie has a seed of truth", ainnit?
(Peer review in its modern form was adopted gradually, with a recognizable example in 1831 from the same William Whewell who coined the word scientist. It displaced the tradition of having the editor of a journal decide everything himself, so whatever its flaws, it has broadened the diversity of voices that influence what gets officially published.)