Comment by cjcole
9 hours ago
When you blanket a set of things with a pejorative, and it turns out that some of the members of that set are demonstrably and definitively NOT covered by that pejorative, and that all the pejorative means at bottom is "I don't like", all you've accomplished in the long run is to call into question any future legitimate use of that pejorative. It is tempting, especially when heated, to stretch an invective, but it will ironically only lead to the death of its utility over time.
So the fact that the Library of Babel (i.e. all possible books) contains occasional gems means that you can't object to using it on principle? That would seem to follow from your logic.
What about a filtered set "all well formed books"? Or "all well formed books that are plausible enough that they could convince a reasonable person, regardless of their accuracy"?
It's generally taken that a cup of sewage in a barrel of wine makes a barrel of sewage. Surely a reasonable person could claim that a barrel of sewage was still sewage, even if it contained several cups of wine?
I personally just find it hilarious how the complaints and excuses against AI have slowly marched and changed from 2023 to now.