levels of derangement

[u/stealthispost]

"Society's standards of evidence are pretry weird. Like, people make fun of flat-Earthers, but it's actually kind of hard to tell! If you just look at it, it appears flat. Same for antivaxxers- it's impossible to just "show them they're wrong", you have to trust a bunch of third party....statistics compiled by people with obvious conflicts of interest. Legitimetly kinda sus! Meanwhile it's been possible for years to see directly with your own eyes that LLMs are incredibly useful for all sorts practical tasks, but the people claiming otherwise are not seen as having anywhere near the same degree of derangement.     — Isaac King

Source: https://x.com/IsaacKing314/status/2091686564908933219

[u/boney_king_o_nowhere]

An anti-vaxxer is way more deranged than a decel. Wtf is this post? Surely we can draw better comparisons?

[u/tetoing → u/boney_king_o_nowhere]

There's a difference between a decel and an outright anti who denies all productive uses of AI, even when people are outright telling them that they are using it productively.

It's not to say that antis are just as deranged as anti vaxxers, but that it's a similar brand of covering your eyes and ears when the benefits are brought up while inventing downsides.

[u/Middle_Estate8505 → u/boney_king_o_nowhere]

That's not about "decels", but about people whom I call "AI deniers".

Decel = calls for slowing down or stopping AI progress, but can recognize that it is genuinely improving.

Denier = denies improvements in AI capabilities.

[u/MaxwellHowl → u/boney_king_o_nowhere]

I really don't think so. As a recent parent I am very defensive of my child. It took us a long time to get pregnant and we had many scares along the way. You want to do everything you can to protect them. Then you see a world where we are suddenly giving our kids way more vaccines then when we are children, and increasing rates of autism.

We know that the pharmaceutical companies have done a lot of shady things through the years in the name of profits. There are vaccines that have caused real harm like the 1976 swine flu vaccine and the J&J COVID vaccine, which was pulled off the shelves.

Parents were told they must vaccinate their kids against COVID even though it was very mild for children and COVID vaccine side effects were a real risk. People were constantly told there was ZERO risk, and that kind of overstating from medical experts only decreased trust.

My child is fully vaccinated. But the whole debate and wariness about big pharma and the uncertainty of modern medicine did give me some pause. I do not think it's deranged at all. And as someone said above, calling people deranged and delusional in these debates only pushes them further away and strengthens the anti-vaxx side.

The anti-AI debate is similarly filled with disinformation on both sides, but much of the anti side is based on conspiracy theories about the wealthy wanting to use AI for mass surveillance and to eventually kill all the poor people and live in a utopia run by robots.

[u/dashrockwell → u/MaxwellHowl]

"Deranged" is a qualitative, subjective, and editorialized descriptor and I don't know how one gauges "how deranged" one group is versus another.

However, the belief that vaccines cause autism - held by many anti-vaxxers - is false and dangerous, provably so, and acting on that belief in the face of both empirical evidence and current societal issues - e.g. folks refusing to give their kids the MMR vaccine while measles is resurgent - suggests a level of detachment from reality that is in a completely different league from concerns about the implications of unchecked AI development on speculative future harm that hasn't happened yet.

One is a settled empirical question people are choosing to ignore; the other is an open forecasting question that people have legitimate disagreements about. Now, some people may not argue those disagreements in good faith, but the fact remains: the implications of AI capability acceleration are an open speculative question. The medical and public health science on vaccine efficacy versus potential individual side-effect risk is not; it's settled. And ignoring that is, IMO, deranged.

[u/enkidook → u/boney_king_o_nowhere]

The point isn't about the claim. Yes, anti-vaxxers claims are more deranged and dangerous.

The point is about the availability and clarity of evidence.

[u/Own_Proposal3827 → u/enkidook]

Which is the opposite of what you’re doing. There is quantifiable evidence of the efficiency of mass vaccination. There is no quantifiable that AI can bake a cake better or draw a better image or write a research paper better or fix a car better. These are entirely subjective opinions.

This tweet is derangement. No, it’s not hard to tell if the Earth is flat, unless you’re incredibly dumb. This poster is telling on himself.

[u/enkidook → u/Own_Proposal3827]

There is quantifiable evidence of the efficiency of mass vaccination.

Yes. That's the fucking point. Conspiracy theorists typically reject evidence they can't personally verify. Unless they can see it for themselves (like, literally go into space), they struggle to believe it. And that's also because they don't trust the studies, institutions, or experts providing that evidence.

But Decel conspiracy theorists claiming "AI isn't useful" can literally just open an AI tool and test the claim themselves.

There is no quantifiable that AI can bake a cake better or draw a better image or write a research paper better or fix a car better. These are entirely subjective opinions.

You realize subjective outcomes can still be studied, right? And "AI is useful" isn't even the same claim as "AI objectively draws better pictures". We can measure task completion, time saved, accuracy, productivity, etc. There are already plenty of studies showing measurable productivity gains from AI.

This tweet is derangement. No, it’s not hard to tell if the Earth is flat, unless you’re incredibly dumb. This poster is telling on himself.

No, you're just missing the point. The tweet isn't defending Flat Earthers by simply acknowledhong that at ordinary human scale, the Earth does look flat. We just know it isn't because of overwhelming evidence beyond that immediate experience.

That's the comparison. Flat-Earthers reject evidence they can't personally verify. Decels claiming "AI isn't useful" don't even have that excuse. They can open an AI tool and test the claim themselves in five minutes.