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pocksuppetyesterday at 8:17 PM3 repliesview on HN

At first I thought you were referring to Umberto Eco's laws of fascism: "Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as at the same time too strong and too weak."

but it's subtly different, because incompetence is not weakness.


Replies

Calazonyesterday at 9:20 PM

I read it as suggesting that AI models are simultaneously terrifyingly powerful and incompetent dunces.

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pcstlyesterday at 9:39 PM

It is weakness in the long-term.

It's pretty clear in how people talk about billionaires: They must somehow conclude that the people most successful within a system that rewards certain things are not competent because the things the system rewards are not what they think the system should reward (it is fine to believe the system rewards the wrong things, but people walk straight into denying that those people have skill even within the system, or they claim that skill within the bounds of the system does not reflect any "real" skill - totally ignoring that elites tend to stay elites even through, say, Communist uprisings).

Hence how someone can say that Musk is "dumb" with a straight face.

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devindotcomyesterday at 9:30 PM

heh, no. Eco is referring to how the white house casts groups like academics, immigrants, socialists, and trans people.