Noticed some AI evangelists try with the same kind of fake centrism, that was pretty popular during the Gamergate era. In this case, they try to set up people spamming genAI slop against “fanatical anti-AI people”. But just as many loves to pretend moderates are “far-left”, as their past-Gamergate selves pretended Anita Sarkeesian demanded state censorship of sexist videogames, as they are now pretending Hasan Piker is the most radical leftist living today (there are much worse even within the content creator sphere, such as Badempanda) to illustrate the “horseshoe theory”, the table is tilted in favor of AI adoption.
I have seen the same, for example on lobste.rs . The argument is more or less that the debate is polarized and that people should try to find a middle ground.
What is true is that polarized debates can break communities. But the problem is, debates need to be rooted in facts. If one side is just assuming unproven things, or comfortably believing pure PR, or even believing falsehood, there is no reasonable middle ground left . What should be the middle ground between a satellite engineer and a flat earther? They won’t come to an agreement.
In the case of AI and software development (as an example) this missing factfulness is the claim of large productivity improvements. It is completely unproven, and so the whole thing becomes very much a belief system.
People really going for the “center” would try to establish facts.
That is the lazy centrist alogorithm: whomever can least passionately posit their argument while blandly acknowledging other arguments is “correct.”
Benefits to this algorithm are:
a) emotional maintenance. getting upset about anything is proof you’re being emotional and not being rational.
b) limits your need to take seriously anyone who has suffered real harm (“you say you were raped tonight, but it’s hard to take you seriously when you’re acting this emotionally”)
c) encourages systemic blindness. “things are horrible” is automatically wrong because it is extreme.
d) any systemic solutions are likewise easily painted as extremist.
Podcast recommend: CitationS Needed
This is so idiotic. No real values, just taking positions based on what positions other people take and how polarized they are.