And they’re overlooking that radionuclide contamination of steel actually isn’t much of a problem any more, since the surge in background radionuclides caused by nuclear testing peaked in 1963 and has since gone down almost back to the original background level again.

I guess it’s still a good analogy, though. People bring up Low Background Steel because they think radionuclide contamination is an unsolved problem (despite it having been basically solved), and they bring up “model collapse” because they think it’s an unsolved problem (despite it having been basically solved). It’s like newspaper stories, everyone sees the big scary front page headline but nobody pays attention to the little block of text retracting it on page 8.