“Truths” are persuasion, unless expected to be treated as hypotheses with the potential to evoke curiosity. This is charity, continuous progress on improving understanding of circumstances that produce claims you don’t agree with, a key skill for actually changing your mind. By default charity is dysfunctional in popular culture, so non-adversarial use of factual claims that are not expected to become evident in short order depends on knowing that your interlocutor practices charity. Non-awkward factual claims are actually more insidious, as the threat of succeeding in unjustified persuasion is higher. So in a regular conversation, there is a place for arguments, not for “truths”, awkward or not. Which in this instance entails turning the conversation to the topic of AI timelines.
I don’t think there are awkward arguments here in the sense of treading a social taboo minefield, so there is no problem with that, except it’s work on what at this point happens automatically via stuff already written up online, and it’s more efficient to put effort in growing what’s available online than doing anything in person, unless there is a plausible path to influencing someone who might have high impact down the line.
“Truths” are persuasion, unless expected to be treated as hypotheses with the potential to evoke curiosity. This is charity, continuous progress on improving understanding of circumstances that produce claims you don’t agree with, a key skill for actually changing your mind. By default charity is dysfunctional in popular culture, so non-adversarial use of factual claims that are not expected to become evident in short order depends on knowing that your interlocutor practices charity. Non-awkward factual claims are actually more insidious, as the threat of succeeding in unjustified persuasion is higher. So in a regular conversation, there is a place for arguments, not for “truths”, awkward or not. Which in this instance entails turning the conversation to the topic of AI timelines.
I don’t think there are awkward arguments here in the sense of treading a social taboo minefield, so there is no problem with that, except it’s work on what at this point happens automatically via stuff already written up online, and it’s more efficient to put effort in growing what’s available online than doing anything in person, unless there is a plausible path to influencing someone who might have high impact down the line.