Comment by bbor

What kind of real scientific evidence are you looking for? What hypotheses have they failed to test? To the extent that we're discussing a specific idea in the first place ("are we in a qualitatively new era of AI?" perhaps), I'm struggling to imagine what your comment is referencing.

You're of course right that there are more than two options in an absolute sense, I should probably limit the rhetorical flourishes for HN! My argument is that those are the only supportable narratives that answer all known evidence, but it is just an argument.