Many people would rather argue about morality and conscience (of our time, of our society) instead of confronting facts and reality. What we see here is a textbook case of that.
Is there a reason you seem to view conscience and confronting facts as seemingly opposed things? Also it seems to me like morality and conscience seem important to argue about, with facts just being part of that argument.
I think that someone interested in discussing facts would not write the phrase "immoral technofascist life". If I took the discussion at face value, I might respond asking for examples of how e.g. Dario Amodei is a "technofascist", but I think we can agree that would be really obtuse of me.
Haha, my experience is people making those sorts of pronouncements will argue literally anything so I definitely wouldn't assume they are uninterested in arguing facts. Though I agree though that arguing with some people is obtuse and you arguing with the original post seems one of those cases.
More my confusion is the person I was responding to complaining about people arguing morality, which seems incredibly important to discuss. Lack of facts obviously makes discussions bad but there's definitely not some dichotomy with discussing morality (at least not with the people I know. My issue has not nearly been as much with people arguing morality, which is often my more productive arguments, and more people with a fundamentally incompatible view on what the facts are).
No see “facts” are what I use to support my worldview, and what you’ve supplied are arguments, and I can discard your arguments through debate, especially because I believe that they’re founded on your feelings (like a silly “conscience”).
When I see the word “facts” used like this, I feel there’s a parallel to the way the word “respect” is used abusively, as outlined in this Tumblr post that has stuck with me for years:
> Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”
> and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”
> and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.
The word “facts” can be used abusively, as in “My facts prove my worldview, your “facts” are arguments based on emotion.”
okay, what are the "facts and reality" here? If you're just going to say "AI is here to stay", then you 1) aren't dealing with the core issues people bring up, and 2) aren't brining facts but defeatism. Where would be if we used that logic for, say, Flash?
Many people would rather argue about morality and conscience (of our time, of our society) instead of confronting facts and reality. What we see here is a textbook case of that.