1. Post in !techtakes@awful.systems attacks the entire concept of AI safety as a made-up boogeyman
  2. I disagree and am attacked from all sides for “posting like an evangelist”
  3. I give citations for things I thought would be obvious, such as that AI technology in general has been improving in capability compared to several years ago
  4. Instance ban, “promptfondling evangelist”

This one I’m not aggrieved about as much, it’s just weird. It’s reminiscent of the lemmy.ml type of echo chamber where everyone’s convinced it’s one way, because in a self-fulfilling prophecy, anyone who is not convinced gets yelled at and receives a ban.

Full context: https://ponder.cat/post/1030285 (Some of my replies were after the ban because I didn’t PT Barnum carefully enough, so didn’t realize.)

  • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
    3·
    13 hours ago

    Hm… I think for this guy, it was a little more complicated than that. For most of the lemmy.ml people, I think you’re right. I think this guy was very sincerely believing in what he was saying, he just had a sort of self-referential way of looking at reality, where anything that didn’t agree with him was CIA propaganda, so there’s no way he could ever bootstrap his way out of what he believed. I didn’t get the vibe that he was just arguing in bad faith all around, I think he really believed it. That’s why I talked to him for as long as I did.