I don't see how I can be described as trying to halt the conversation.

Allow me to disclaim that you usually don't. But that particular referenced post did, and taw tried it even more blatantly - to label further conversation as suspect, ill-advised, and evidence of morally nonvirtuous (giving in to pride and the temptation to show off) "inside viewing". I was frustrated with this at the time, but had too many higher-priority things to say before I could get around to describing exactly what frustrated me about it.

It's also not clear to me how you think someone should be allowed to proceed from the point where you say "My abstractions are closer to the surface than yours, so my reference class is better", or if you think you just win outright at that point. I tend to think that it's still a pretty good idea to list out the underlying events being used as alleged evidence, stripped of labels and presented as naked facts, and see how much they seem to tell us about the future event at hand, once the covering labels are gone. I think that under these circumstances the force of implication from agriculture to self-improving AI tends to sound pretty weak.