Many of you asked that I react to Richard Dawkins announcing that he fell for a chatbot.
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Many of you asked that I react to Richard Dawkins announcing that he fell for a chatbot. Instead of just pointing and laughing (my initial reaction obv) I dug into the “why” of it all: his obfuscations, insecurities, and utter sadness https://skepchick.org/2026/05/richard-dawkins-claude-delusion/
@rebeccawatson So sad. Dawkins was one of the most brilliant evolutionary biologist. I don’t think his downfall is funny at all.
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Many of you asked that I react to Richard Dawkins announcing that he fell for a chatbot. Instead of just pointing and laughing (my initial reaction obv) I dug into the “why” of it all: his obfuscations, insecurities, and utter sadness https://skepchick.org/2026/05/richard-dawkins-claude-delusion/
@rebeccawatson That title is
🤌 
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Many of you asked that I react to Richard Dawkins announcing that he fell for a chatbot. Instead of just pointing and laughing (my initial reaction obv) I dug into the “why” of it all: his obfuscations, insecurities, and utter sadness https://skepchick.org/2026/05/richard-dawkins-claude-delusion/
@rebeccawatson Stephan Krosecz: "It betrays a fundamental inability to internalize that the machine cannot understand you."
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Many of you asked that I react to Richard Dawkins announcing that he fell for a chatbot. Instead of just pointing and laughing (my initial reaction obv) I dug into the “why” of it all: his obfuscations, insecurities, and utter sadness https://skepchick.org/2026/05/richard-dawkins-claude-delusion/
@rebeccawatson fucking fantastic article. Thank you.
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Many of you asked that I react to Richard Dawkins announcing that he fell for a chatbot. Instead of just pointing and laughing (my initial reaction obv) I dug into the “why” of it all: his obfuscations, insecurities, and utter sadness https://skepchick.org/2026/05/richard-dawkins-claude-delusion/
@rebeccawatson
Richard Dawkins is why I still believe in God. -
@rebeccawatson So sad. Dawkins was one of the most brilliant evolutionary biologist. I don’t think his downfall is funny at all.
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@foolishowl @rebeccawatson just for wider reference, because it's getting increasingly annoying to find: https://courses.cs.umbc.edu/471/papers/turing.pdf
@mnl @foolishowl @rebeccawatson thanks for the link! I was aware that the Turing test isn't about what most people think, but I didn't remember any more details, so being able to read up on it is great!
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Apologies for the double post…I cancelled my subscription to Ivory, the Mastodon app refused to show my post despite refreshing for several minutes, and the new app Ice Cubes won’t seem to let me delete the repost. I’m still better at technology than Richard Dawkins.
@rebeccawatson What's wrong with Tusky? Works great for me
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@mnl @foolishowl @rebeccawatson thanks for the link! I was aware that the Turing test isn't about what most people think, but I didn't remember any more details, so being able to read up on it is great!
@Larymir @foolishowl @rebeccawatson in using the occasion too!
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Many of you asked that I react to Richard Dawkins announcing that he fell for a chatbot. Instead of just pointing and laughing (my initial reaction obv) I dug into the “why” of it all: his obfuscations, insecurities, and utter sadness https://skepchick.org/2026/05/richard-dawkins-claude-delusion/
@rebeccawatson I would be absolutely CHUFFED if we never heard about Richard Dawkins ever again.
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Many of you asked that I react to Richard Dawkins announcing that he fell for a chatbot. Instead of just pointing and laughing (my initial reaction obv) I dug into the “why” of it all: his obfuscations, insecurities, and utter sadness https://skepchick.org/2026/05/richard-dawkins-claude-delusion/
@rebeccawatson People fell for Eliza 60 years ago. Eliza did already prove that reflection is sufficient to fool many people. The Turing test is dead since then.
What these systems are still useful is to check who can be fooled. They are heavily biased to be servants, and that is ok, because that's how they can be somewhat useful. If their answers would be as rude as the Reddit training material, people wouldn't use them.
Actually, those who understand and know the limits of these systems are the ones who get the most useful outputs, but are least inclined to use them. The ones who use them most don't get much useful results.
If you fall for Claude, I assume that you'll also fall for Epstein. Or, likely more people would fall into Epstein's trap, because he was smarter than Claude is. Manipulation was his business. Influencing influencers.
Epstein's traps might have worked less for people who don't become influencial. As you wrote: big ego is the key to fall into such a trap.
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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
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@rebeccawatson What's wrong with Tusky? Works great for me
@Albi OK, first of all 1) people have different use cases, accessibility needs, threat models, and just functional or aesthetic preferences – but also 2) Ivory is an iOs & macOS app and Tusky is an Android app so I’m gonna suggest that the most obvious answer is that “it literally isn’t available for the device(s) I use 🤪” might be fairly high up on Rebecca’s list of reasons for “what’s wrong with Tusky” (for her use case)
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