I’m not at all sure this would actually be relevant to the rhetorical outcome, but I feel like the AI-can’t-go-wrong camp wouldn’t really accept the “Denier” label in the same way people in the AI-goes-wrong-by-default camp accept “Doomer.” Climate change deniers agree they are deniers, even if they prefer terms like skeptic among themselves.
In the case of climate change deniers, the question is whether or not climate change is real, and the thing that they are denying is the mountain of measurements showing that it is real. I think what is different about the can’t-go-wrong, wrong-by-default dichotomy is that the question we’re arguing about is the direction of change, instead; it would be like if we transmuted the climate change denier camp into a bunch of people whose response wasn’t “no it isn’t” but instead was “yes, and that is great news and we need more of it.”
Naturally it is weird to imagine people tacitly accepting the Mary Sue label in the same way we accept Doomer, so cut by my own knife I suppose!
The analogy (in terms of dynamics of the debate) with climate change is not that bad: “great news and we need more” is in fact a talking point of people who prefer not acting against climate change. E.g., they would mention correlations between plant growth and CO2 concentration. That said, it would be weird to call such people climate deniers.
I’m not at all sure this would actually be relevant to the rhetorical outcome, but I feel like the AI-can’t-go-wrong camp wouldn’t really accept the “Denier” label in the same way people in the AI-goes-wrong-by-default camp accept “Doomer.” Climate change deniers agree they are deniers, even if they prefer terms like skeptic among themselves.
In the case of climate change deniers, the question is whether or not climate change is real, and the thing that they are denying is the mountain of measurements showing that it is real. I think what is different about the can’t-go-wrong, wrong-by-default dichotomy is that the question we’re arguing about is the direction of change, instead; it would be like if we transmuted the climate change denier camp into a bunch of people whose response wasn’t “no it isn’t” but instead was “yes, and that is great news and we need more of it.”
Naturally it is weird to imagine people tacitly accepting the Mary Sue label in the same way we accept Doomer, so cut by my own knife I suppose!
The analogy (in terms of dynamics of the debate) with climate change is not that bad: “great news and we need more” is in fact a talking point of people who prefer not acting against climate change. E.g., they would mention correlations between plant growth and CO2 concentration. That said, it would be weird to call such people climate deniers.