Comment by lo_zamoyski
9 months ago
The surest defense against fashionable nonsense is a sound philosophical education and a temperament disinclined to hysteria. Ignorance leaves you wide open to all manner of emotional misadventure. But even when you are in possession of the relevant facts — and a passable grasp of the principles involved — it requires a certain moral maturity to resist or remain untouched by the lure of melodrama and the thrill of believing you live at the edge of transcendence.
(Naturally, the excitement surrounding artificial intelligence has less to do with reality than with commerce. It is a product to be sold, and selling, as ever, relies less on the truth than on sentiment. It’s not new. That’s how it’s always been.)
> sound philosophical education and a temperament disinclined to hysteria
Sound good common sense suffices - the ability to go "dude, that's <whatever it is>". Preferring a clear idea of reality to intoxication... That should not be hard to ask and obtain.
> it requires a certain moral maturity to
Same thing.
It’s a fair point, broadly speaking. If which case, then what we’re observing in the tech sector is not merely an oversight, but a pervasive absence of basic common sense.