No need to apologize! I found your thoughts here fascinating. AI has been a lot of my world recently, too. I talk to ChatGPT everyday and its ability to comprehend and respond to text is pretty staggering. I'm extremely worried about where this is all headed, and how it will compound with the ever-growing list of other problems we're facing. I've been extremely concerned about how deep fakes are going to start effecting our politics.

That's a really interesting approach you mentioned about trying to bring up some of the older African religions. I'm not so sure it would penetrate this fundamentalist thinking, but it's worth a shot. At one point in our conversation I made the point religious affiliation is largely a product of our geography, and that where we're born is a huge predictor of how we'll identify. He responded a little confusedly, "but what religion are the majority of Africans?"

I think there are conversations where there might be ground to gain, but this didn't seem like one of them. That we couldn't even agree on a definition for science was pretty frustrating for me. Thanks so much for reading and taking the time to comment!