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[–] 16 points 8 months ago (6 children)

I don’t particularly hate the snake oil, I hate the salesmen.

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  • [–] 30 points 8 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago

    I’ll paraphrase something I saw a few weeks ago and now cannot find, sums up my feelings pretty well.

    The people I love hate AI, and the people I hate love AI. But the things that intrigued me about technology in the first place also intrigues me about this technology.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    But if we got rid of the salesman, just imagine how much snake oil we could drink! We could open ethical snake butchering farms, democratize where we dump the poisonous runoff, and send some of it to Africa - they're so unsnakeoiled over there.

    And surely only the current crop of salesmen are the bad guys, right? There couldn't possibly be a new villain waiting to pick up where Elon and Jensen left off.

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  • [–] 14 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I mean. There would be no salesman if the snake oil didn’t exist.

    Also snake oil refers to a fake product. Why would you “not hate” the fake product? At its foundation the sole purpose of the existence of snake oil is to be disingenuous and scam customers.

    Hate the game not the player.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    I disagree. If not snake oil it would be something else. There are certain personality traits salesman seem to all have. I would describe it as a comfort with being disingenuous. Say or do anything to get money. Its often portrayed as "hustle culture" and praised. We should be condemning those traits not praising them.

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