Oh my god please stop with these thought terminating cliches. AI is just a symptom of what the teal guy is saying. LLMs are not killing people capitalism and imperialism are.
I keep seeing my fellow leftist use this term, and frequently incorrectly
Two things can be true at the same time isn’t a thought terminating cliche if they immediately explain their position and why they see both things as true. Something being an aphorism does not make it a thought terminating cliche.
Take the following position:
Gen ai only has hypothetical value as a novel form of labor exploitation for which there are no regulatory guardrails. It is a tool of the ruling class that will do harm, just like the long list of other exploitative harms created by imperialism and capitalism. It is a new and shiny way for capitalism to harm and exploit people, and people are right to be concerned about it.
Even if you dont agree with the position I just expressed or feel its a less helpful framing than “its the capitalism doing the harm, not the ai capitalism is building”, theres no logical falacy in it just because I’m saying “two things are both true simultaneously”
A thought terminating cliche is only thought terminating if it enables the speaker to dismiss cognitive dissonance without resolving it
AI is not the problem here and that is what you are dismissing. It is a symptom of larger problems. Saying “both can be true at once” implies you accept the premise put forward by the techbros pitching AI as this all powerful technology we must compete to control or it will somehow of its own volition kill us.
“AI” has no agency. It is not sentient it is not killing us, the people that own the machines are killing us with or without it. AI is not killing us nor can it because it does not exist. LLMs are not killing us any more than predictive autocomplete on your phone is killing us.
Disagreeing with someone’s framing or way of looking at an issue doesn’t mean theres cognitive dissonance they’re failing to resolve.
And broadly I agree, but the fact that ai has no agency doesnt mean it doesnt create a negative possibility that would otherwise be harder without it existing. Predictive autocomplete has not, at scale, meaningfully cut down on the number of jobs available in any industries, otherwise people would be stressed about it just like they are AI, and as people had been with automation.
If someone is a murderer and they kill a person its them being a murderer thats wrong and the source of the death, but if someone gave the murderer a gun they otherwise wouldn’t have had access to, their doing murder is now easier and more lethal. AI enables capitalism to do more harm. It is not the ai that is the root cause of the harm, but it does stands to potentially make harmful exploitation easier and more accessible. Comparing it to predictive auto complete isn’t a very good comparison.
And again, disagreeing with how someone is thinking about something doesnt mean that any aphorism they use becomes a thought terminating cliche. There is no dissonance between “capitalism is doing harm” and “ai is doing harm as a product of the way capitalism is using it”, and its not at all unreasonable for someone to say “ai is doing harm” as a way of describing the way it enables harm
We should absolutely talk about how capitalism is the root of the harm and I think the point this meme is trying to make is correct (though I don’t think it makes it especially well), but telling everyone and their mother they’re using a thought terminating cliche every 5 minutes is an unproductive way of doing so, and isnt even likely to make sense to most people, nevermind make the connection between the harm and capitalism more salient.
Oh my god please stop with these thought terminating cliches. AI is just a symptom of what the teal guy is saying. LLMs are not killing people capitalism and imperialism are.
I keep seeing my fellow leftist use this term, and frequently incorrectly
Two things can be true at the same time isn’t a thought terminating cliche if they immediately explain their position and why they see both things as true. Something being an aphorism does not make it a thought terminating cliche.
Take the following position: Gen ai only has hypothetical value as a novel form of labor exploitation for which there are no regulatory guardrails. It is a tool of the ruling class that will do harm, just like the long list of other exploitative harms created by imperialism and capitalism. It is a new and shiny way for capitalism to harm and exploit people, and people are right to be concerned about it.
Even if you dont agree with the position I just expressed or feel its a less helpful framing than “its the capitalism doing the harm, not the ai capitalism is building”, theres no logical falacy in it just because I’m saying “two things are both true simultaneously”
A thought terminating cliche is only thought terminating if it enables the speaker to dismiss cognitive dissonance without resolving it
AI is not the problem here and that is what you are dismissing. It is a symptom of larger problems. Saying “both can be true at once” implies you accept the premise put forward by the techbros pitching AI as this all powerful technology we must compete to control or it will somehow of its own volition kill us.
“AI” has no agency. It is not sentient it is not killing us, the people that own the machines are killing us with or without it. AI is not killing us nor can it because it does not exist. LLMs are not killing us any more than predictive autocomplete on your phone is killing us.
Disagreeing with someone’s framing or way of looking at an issue doesn’t mean theres cognitive dissonance they’re failing to resolve.
And broadly I agree, but the fact that ai has no agency doesnt mean it doesnt create a negative possibility that would otherwise be harder without it existing. Predictive autocomplete has not, at scale, meaningfully cut down on the number of jobs available in any industries, otherwise people would be stressed about it just like they are AI, and as people had been with automation.
If someone is a murderer and they kill a person its them being a murderer thats wrong and the source of the death, but if someone gave the murderer a gun they otherwise wouldn’t have had access to, their doing murder is now easier and more lethal. AI enables capitalism to do more harm. It is not the ai that is the root cause of the harm, but it does stands to potentially make harmful exploitation easier and more accessible. Comparing it to predictive auto complete isn’t a very good comparison.
And again, disagreeing with how someone is thinking about something doesnt mean that any aphorism they use becomes a thought terminating cliche. There is no dissonance between “capitalism is doing harm” and “ai is doing harm as a product of the way capitalism is using it”, and its not at all unreasonable for someone to say “ai is doing harm” as a way of describing the way it enables harm
We should absolutely talk about how capitalism is the root of the harm and I think the point this meme is trying to make is correct (though I don’t think it makes it especially well), but telling everyone and their mother they’re using a thought terminating cliche every 5 minutes is an unproductive way of doing so, and isnt even likely to make sense to most people, nevermind make the connection between the harm and capitalism more salient.