Yeah I think it was Kim Stanley Robinson who said that sci-fi is taken as religious mythology often, like the prophecy of superluminal space travel or machine superintelligence, very much like prophecies of heaven and a savior god.
Also the point that if you point this out as a myth, whatever your credentials as a sci-fi writer or even a physicist, the faithful will launch a crusade against you
You're right on, in my opinion. It's a gnarly distraction from the Marxist way of analyzing this: further alienation from the means of production. I really like how you frame it as a religious thing. It pairs nicely with literal interpretations of the Bible, really. Gotta wonder how many of these folks come from strict Baptist murkan families.
Yeah. I've written game AI, I've worked in AI research, I've looked under the hood and examined how LLMs work, but people with little or no experience still tell me I'm wrong and that they know better.
I think there's an important difference with the two examples, where one contracts everything we understand about the way the universe works, and the other does not.
Yeah I think it was Kim Stanley Robinson who said that sci-fi is taken as religious mythology often, like the prophecy of superluminal space travel or machine superintelligence, very much like prophecies of heaven and a savior god.
Also the point that if you point this out as a myth, whatever your credentials as a sci-fi writer or even a physicist, the faithful will launch a crusade against you
You're right on, in my opinion. It's a gnarly distraction from the Marxist way of analyzing this: further alienation from the means of production. I really like how you frame it as a religious thing. It pairs nicely with literal interpretations of the Bible, really. Gotta wonder how many of these folks come from strict Baptist murkan families.
Yeah. I've written game AI, I've worked in AI research, I've looked under the hood and examined how LLMs work, but people with little or no experience still tell me I'm wrong and that they know better.
I think there's an important difference with the two examples, where one contracts everything we understand about the way the universe works, and the other does not.