alt Hacker NewsThat is a “gotcha” born of either ignorance (nothing wrong with that, we’re all ignorant of something) or bad faith. Definitions shift as we learn more. Darwin’s definition of life is not the same as Descartes’ or Plato’s or anyone in between or since because we learn and evolve our thinking.
Are you also going to argue definitions of life before we even learned of microscopic or single cell organisms are correct and that the definitions we use today are wrong? That they are shifting goal posts? That “centuries later, people are still doing this”? No, that would be absurd.
I don't see it as a gotcha. Just an (evergreen, it seems) observation that people will absolutely move the goalposts every time there's something new. And people can be ignorant outsiders or experts in that field as well.
For example, ~2 years ago, an expert in ML publicly made this remark on stage: LLMs can't do math. Today they absolutely and obviously, can. Yet somehow it's not impressive anymore. Or, and this is the key part of the quote, this is somehow not related to "intelligence". Something that 2 years ago was not possible (again, according to a leading expert in this field), is possible today. And yet this is somehow something that they always could do, and since they're doing it today, is suddenly no longer important. On to the next one!
No idea why this is related to darwin or definitions of life. The definitions don't change. What people considered important 2 years ago, is suddenly not important anymore. The only thing that changed is that today we can see that capability. Ergo, the quote holds.