It reads like someone discovered analogies and decided they’re a substitute for thinking.

The entire argument lives and dies on one move: calling AI an “alien.” And it’s not even consistent. It starts with “alien” as in foreign invader, then quietly upgrades it to “space alien,” and from that point on everything just inherits whatever sci fi trait sounds dramatic. That’s not reasoning, that’s a word doing a costume change and dragging the argument along with it.

And honestly, the quality of comments on HN feels like it’s been tracking the broader decline in cognitive performance. The long running Flynn Effect has stalled or reversed in parts of the US. Some datasets show small but real drops in IQ related measures over the past decade. You read threads like this and it’s hard not to feel like you’re watching that play out in real time.