2 thoughts here just thinking about persuasiveness. I’m not quite sure what you mean by normal people and also if you still want your arguments to be actually arguments or just persuasion-max.
show don’t tell for 1-3
For anyone who hasn’t intimately used frontier models but is willing to with an open mind, I’d guess you should just push them to use and actually engage mentally with them and their thought traces, even better if you can convince them to use something agentic like CC.
Ask and/or tell stories for 4
What can history tell us about what happens when a significantly more tech savy/powerful nation finds another one?
no “right” answer here though the general arc of history is that significantly more powerful nations capture/kill/etc.
What would it be like to be a native during various european conquests in the new world (esp ignoring effects of smallpox/disease to the extent you can)?
Incan perspective? Mayan?
I especially like Orellena’s first expedition down the amazon. As far as I can tell, Orellena was not especially bloodthirsty, had some interest/respect for natives. Though he is certainly misaligned with the natives.
Even if Orellana is “less bloodthirsty,” you still don’t want to be a native on that river. You hear fragmented rumors—trade, disease, violence—with no shared narrative; you don’t know what these outsiders want or what their weapons do; you don’t know whether letting them land changes the local equilibrium by enabling alliances with your enemies; and you don’t know whether the boat carries Orellana or someone worse.
Do you trade? attack? flee? coordinate? Any move could be fatal, and the entire situation destabilizes before anyone has to decide “we should exterminate them.”
and for all of these situations you can actually see what happened (approximately) and usually it doesn’t end well.
Why is AI different?
not rhetorical and gives them space to think in a smaller, more structured way that doesn’t force an answer.
2 thoughts here just thinking about persuasiveness. I’m not quite sure what you mean by normal people and also if you still want your arguments to be actually arguments or just persuasion-max.
show don’t tell for 1-3
For anyone who hasn’t intimately used frontier models but is willing to with an open mind, I’d guess you should just push them to use and actually engage mentally with them and their thought traces, even better if you can convince them to use something agentic like CC.
Ask and/or tell stories for 4
What can history tell us about what happens when a significantly more tech savy/powerful nation finds another one?
no “right” answer here though the general arc of history is that significantly more powerful nations capture/kill/etc.
What would it be like to be a native during various european conquests in the new world (esp ignoring effects of smallpox/disease to the extent you can)?
Incan perspective? Mayan?
I especially like Orellena’s first expedition down the amazon. As far as I can tell, Orellena was not especially bloodthirsty, had some interest/respect for natives. Though he is certainly misaligned with the natives.
Even if Orellana is “less bloodthirsty,” you still don’t want to be a native on that river. You hear fragmented rumors—trade, disease, violence—with no shared narrative; you don’t know what these outsiders want or what their weapons do; you don’t know whether letting them land changes the local equilibrium by enabling alliances with your enemies; and you don’t know whether the boat carries Orellana or someone worse.
Do you trade? attack? flee? coordinate? Any move could be fatal, and the entire situation destabilizes before anyone has to decide “we should exterminate them.”
and for all of these situations you can actually see what happened (approximately) and usually it doesn’t end well.
Why is AI different?
not rhetorical and gives them space to think in a smaller, more structured way that doesn’t force an answer.