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Why does “the world is dominated by people whose opinions are fundamentally shaped by what others are saying, and moreover, by how frequently other people seem
by paggle 7y ago
Why does “the world is dominated by people whose opinions are fundamentally shaped by what others are saying, and moreover, by how frequently other people seem to be saying it“ imply an elitist vs populist class divide, rather than applying to EVERYONE? I can honestly say I have never met a person whose thoughts were not primarily a construct of their environment. Take everyone I’ve ever known, and have them born 2000 years ago in Greece, and they’d probably believe that slavery is fine, child sexual slavery is a perk of being rich, and that it’s perfectly normal to burn heretics. Anyone whose thoughts weren’t dominated by societal cues would probably end up in jail.
- AgentME 7y agoYeah, there's very few of my opinions I hold now that I would've been able to invent in a vacuum. I adopted pretty much all of my opinions from seeing them online among others and reasoning my way to decide between the options. If I had never seen the opinions I now hold, then I probably wouldn't have picked them. If these good opinions that I ended up picking had been lost in the noise of a sheer flood of bad opinions, then I would've become a different person easily. The idea of a good text-generating AI possibly being able to flood forums is a little scary, and the idea that even the little bit of caution OpenAI has done is elitist is ridiculous.
- repolfx 7y agoYou're conflating environment and reading of written opinions. People are products of their experiences, sure. That experience is much wider than "possibly bot authored comments on social media", but OpenAI is acting as if it isn't. Most people won't agree with their stance. It does however seem to have some weight in certain social circles, the sort of circles that assume most people aren't educated enough to make good decisions.