The War of Incredulous Stares

The essay argues that the OpenAI leadership saga, which it dubs "EAgate," is an early skirmish in a developing religious war over technology, one likely to last at least a decade. It cites a comment by Bill Gardner describing the discourse around the episode as "argument by incredulous stare," in which opposing camps cannot engage each other's terms and so only stare in disbelief. The author frames this mutual incomprehension as a growing reaction to AI and to one another, and says the piece will focus on how such religious warfare could spread across all of tech rather than only AI.