It's the same story as has ever been. "Smart People"'s position on anything is often informed by their current economic relationship wrt to the things they care about. And maybe even Yud isn't super happy about his profession being co-opted. What scraps will he have if his own delusions became true about GPT zombies replacing "authentic voices"?
No one is immune to seeing a better take when it's their shit on the line, and no is immune from being in a bubble without stake.
Oh absolutely! This is the entire delusion collapsing on itself.
Bro, if intelligence is, as the cult claims, fully contained self improvement, --you could never have mattered by definition--. If the system is closed, and you see the point of convergence up ahead... what does it even fucking matter?
This is why Pascal's wager defeats all forms of maximal utilitarianism. Again, if the system is closed around a set of known alternatives, then yes. It doesn't matter anymore. You don't even need intelligence to do this. You can do with sticks and stones by imagining away all the other things.