I'd be pretty skeptical that the number of people that think this way is a few hundred, tops. Don't take the bizarro HN opinions to by representative of anythin

I'd be pretty skeptical that the number of people that think this way is a few hundred, tops. Don't take the bizarro HN opinions to by representative of anything than some very isolated people. And no, most of the things you're describing are not religious behaviors, they're just obsessive ones. This is a common misunderstanding, that "doing something a lot = religion. Religions are not that simple, but people claiming that social media is a religion, or AI obsession is a religion, etc. are just lacking knowledge of what a religion actually is. Religions are pretty much the most complex topic there is, sociologically/anthropologically/philosophically, but "serious" people don't study them anymore, hence the half-baked opinions of otherwise educated people. And even then - if we assume that all of what you said is true, it's not really clear how that maps to the Catholic Church analogy. Certain people may obsess over what ChatGPT thinks about something, but it's not really clear why they would value the opinion of someone that works at ChatGPT, which is what the post was about.