I don't understand why we automatically give people credit for 'sincere views.' Like who gives a fuck? If I have a sincere view that a trans…

I don't understand why we automatically give people credit for "sincere views." Like who gives a fuck? If I have a sincere view that a transdimensional vampire attack is imminent it doesn't make it sane just because I'm sincere in my fucking delusion. The guy who tossed a firebomb at Sam Altman's house is probably sincere in his delusion too. And he is trying to solve a fake future problem by creating a real problem here and now in the real fucking world. Lots of folks are "sincere" in their delusions. Charley Manson was sincere. So where the Marx and Goebbels and everyone else who was wrong in history. It's delusion and Maya all around. History of the human race. Sincerity means exactly zero in judging the rightness of someone's claim or prediction. And also we give way too much credit for "someone works in field X so they must be able to predict the future about X." Why? If I'm a bridge engineer what the fuck do I know about the future of how bridges will effect society? Answer, I don't. I fix fucking bridges. The fact that I'm predicting something about bridges is irrelevant because the skills do not overlap. I may have the skill to predict the future well but that skill is completely and totally independent of whether I work in the field. The truth is most of us can't predict shit. We are generally terrible at long term predictions. If you're living in Germany in 1440 and making predictions about the future of German society you're going to be wrong because you can't predict the printing press and how it alters the structure and trajectory of society. If you could have predicted the printing press you'd be Gutenberg and you would have invented the printing press. If you're Paul Ehrlich you're a failure because you're not actually smart, you're a smug, smart sounding asshole who couldn't predict the green revolution. We give way too much credit by default in way too many ways to people and their ability to predict anything accurately. A few people are good at it and most suck at it. “Our product will generate mass unemployment and possible mass extinction” isn’t a bad messaging choice, it’s a wildly held sincere view among the people building AI. https://www.slowboring.com/p/its-not-bad-marketing-from-ai-companies

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Source: Yann LeCun (X) | 2026-04-17

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