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Mark Bourrie's avatar

This is a well-written, thought-provoking and original post. It's easy to see the impressive amount of work that went into it. Thanks.

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Justin Ling's avatar

Cheers Mark!

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Kevan's avatar

Much food for thought here Justin as I despair about how natural stupidity will be shaped by artificial intelligence. Thanks.

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Chris Heywood's avatar

I have always thought yhe "I'm smart because I know the REAL truth" appeal of conspiracies has been under discussed.

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Catherine Boucher's avatar

lots to unpack and all worth the time. thanx

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Erwin Dreessen's avatar

Brilliant, Justin, just brillliant. I always like how you weave seemingly extraneous facts (the bovine guessing experiment in this case) into your well-reasoned argument.

Still, I'd take issue with "I’m inclined to think that a random assembly of citizens is, free of influence and manipulation, likely to guess accurately most of the time. The vox populi trends towards more-or-less accurate" because not being "free of influence and manipulation" is exactly the problem.

Two final points: To avoid AI results in a Google search, just type -ai in front. And, below my signature in emails now appears this exhortation: "Renounce all enslavement to corporations' algorithms." There's no copyright to it! Accords with your post today.

P.S.: Glad to read you now use ChatGTP for copy-editing. Still, there were a few instances of missing little words...

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Justin Ling's avatar

Oh I couldn't agree more that the undue influence and pressure is precisely the problem.

And I didn't even get into it, but while doing the copyedit, ChatGPT proceeded to hallucinate a bunch of words I'd never written (about RFK Jr, strangely enough.) So it ended up being kind of a mess

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Andrew's avatar

Looking forward to your book. Can I pre-order an ebook version of it?

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Justin Ling's avatar

I don't believe you can pre-order the e-book, but it should be available on Aug. 26!

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