> The "low-horsepower" people I've known tend to praise things in a way that smells very much like astroturfing. The "high-horsepower" people I've known both express very nuanced opinions

I think that's a good observation, but I wouldn't say those people are actually astroturfing (noting you only said they smell like that).

But that "low-horsepower" vs "high-horsepower" distinction probably has a big bearing on people's attitudes towards LLMs. "Low-horsepower" people are simultaneously much more easily impressed and often lack the skill to properly evaluate the output they're getting. It's often been remarked that LLMs feel awesome for topics you know nothing about. It's kinda like Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect for people who were never knowledgeable about any topic.

[1] "The phenomenon of a person trusting newspapers for topics which that person is not knowledgeable about, despite recognizing the newspaper as being extremely inaccurate on certain topics which that person is knowledgeable about." (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect#Engl...)