I was struck by this, too. Because it’s surprising for them to be so wrong in so many ways, these mistakes probably weren’t made independently. In other words, these 7-9 mistakes are probably manifestations of 1-3 more fundamental mistakes.
Specifically, I think that the underlying mistakes are:
A. Ignorance of technical AI arguments
B. Lack of historical perspective
C. The belief that CEOs are maximally evil
Taking stock of what explains what:
definitely A
C and probably some B.
This could reasonably fit into B. As dvd notes, this belief indicates a lack of long-term thinking.
definitely C
Not applicable. They’re right about this.
definitely A
This isn’t clean-cut. A, B, and C could all contribute.
C
Arguably correct, but plays into B and C.
Error A is relatively easy to fix, and B is self-correcting, but I’m very concerned by C—the degree to which the students appear to rely on conspiratorial or affective reasoning. Another commenter worried that their beliefs indicate support of right-wing populism. It seems more like left-wing populism to me, but I’m not comforted by either.
It’s impressive how consistently wrong your students’ takes are.
“College students demonstrate that Reversed Stupidity is Intelligence, contradicting the famous post ‘Reversed Stupidity is Not Intelligence’”.
I was struck by this, too. Because it’s surprising for them to be so wrong in so many ways, these mistakes probably weren’t made independently. In other words, these 7-9 mistakes are probably manifestations of 1-3 more fundamental mistakes.
Specifically, I think that the underlying mistakes are:
A. Ignorance of technical AI arguments
B. Lack of historical perspective
C. The belief that CEOs are maximally evil
Taking stock of what explains what:
definitely A
C and probably some B.
This could reasonably fit into B. As dvd notes, this belief indicates a lack of long-term thinking.
definitely C
Not applicable. They’re right about this.
definitely A
This isn’t clean-cut. A, B, and C could all contribute.
C
Arguably correct, but plays into B and C.
Error A is relatively easy to fix, and B is self-correcting, but I’m very concerned by C—the degree to which the students appear to rely on conspiratorial or affective reasoning. Another commenter worried that their beliefs indicate support of right-wing populism. It seems more like left-wing populism to me, but I’m not comforted by either.
EDIT: formatting and typo