Rain comments on Existential Risk and Public Relations - Less Wrong
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There's a problem with it, though. Some decades ago you'd have just as eagerly subscribed to this statement: "Controlling Earth's destiny is only modestly harder than playing a good game of chess", which we now know to be almost certainly false.
It's the word "understanding" in the quote which makes it presume general intelligence and/or consciousness without directly stating it. The word "playing" does not have such a connotation, at least to me. I don't know if I would think differently back when chess required intelligence.