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The other comments show how the demonstrated biases were created. In many well meaning liberals heart, there is a strongly held but rarely publicly discussed b

The other comments show how the demonstrated biases were created. In many well meaning liberals heart, there is a strongly held but rarely publicly discussed belief that they alone belong to the well-meaning, high IQ class. Any other worldview or ideological flavor is always understood by this type as simply incorrect, perhaps caused by failures in morals or intellect. Talk about a buzzkill.

notduncansmith 4y ago
This is true of many well-meaning conservatives, as well. I think we get tripped up forgetting there are rational people on both sides, who are not going to change their views but nonetheless accept that they might be wrong. It’s very convenient for those seeking power when we forget this.
- freedomben 4y ago
  Indeed, I think some of the most damaging policies in existence are the draconian drug laws. There is clearly much bipartisan support for them, but Conservatives in general are much more deeply held on it. Many believe drug use (except their own) is immoral and that justifies the heavy paternalistic approach they take. There are definitely "morally superior" people on both sides of the coin, they just tend to have different issues on which they think they know better than everybody else.
  - AussieWog93 4y ago
    For real? Drug use (including alcohol) is probably the most common way for people to seriously and irreperably destroy their lives. A "paternalistic approach" is absolutely justified if it can prevent this level of harm.
    - freedomben 4y ago
      > Drug use (including alcohol) is probably the most common way for people to seriously and irreperably destroy their lives. I actually agree with that. But I don't see the logical progression from that to locking people in cages and forcing them to buy from the least trustworthy people on earth as the solution. During Prohibition in the US did lives stop getting destroyed by alcohol? I see a lot of lives seriously and irreperably destroyed by criminal records and long prison sentences that otherwise could have been productive. > A "paternalistic approach" is absolutely justified if it can prevent this level of harm. Would you advocate for government banning processed sugar? Sugar behaves like a drug in most ways, including addictiveness (psychological and physiological), euphoria, etc. Untold levels of harm are caused by people to their own bodies and the healthcare system at large by over indulging in sugar and products containing such. Diabetes is a true living hell that never stops one it's started. Following that logic, it seems like the government should jail people for sugar use, but that obviously seems absurd (reductio ad absurdum).
      - zajio1am 4y ago
        > During Prohibition in the US did lives stop getting destroyed by alcohol? I do not want to defend Prohibition, but AFAIK it has a persistent effect on alcohol consumption patterns in USA by lowering per-capita consumption of hard spirits (that was significantly higher before).
    - int_19h 4y ago
      Putting people in prison for drug use is also a very common way to seriously and irreparably destroy their lives, including cases where their drug use was not, by itself, harming them.
  - IceHegel 4y ago
    I think this view is empirically quite challenged. It's practically impossible to win the debate for strict drug laws because key pieces of sociological evidence are just inadmissible on stereotype grounds. But when you see the effect of these libertarian policies in American cities the results speak for themselves. Harm reduction and lax enforcement have really destroyed some communities, and this was simply not as large a problem in the 50s or 60s. There's really no better poster child for this phenomenon than San Francisco. It was the economic center of the technology boom and unlike New York or London of centuries past, completely failed to become a "center of the world" city despite having the “center of the world” economy. By most accounts, it actually functions less well than it did before the internet was invented.
    - freedomben 4y ago
      I think there's a lot more to the cities. The drugs that people have access to are in part so damaging to them and the community because they are entirely unregulated and sometimes aren't even made up of what the person thinks they are taking. This (is a big part of) what leads to the overdoses and addiction. Mix that in with the threat of law enforcement, job loss, and heavy social stigma, etc that prevents people from seeking help, and you have a recipe for disaster. Imagine if everytime you bought a beer you had to wonder if you could trust the seller, and whether it had methanol or fentanyl in it? No doubt there would be some damage from libertarian drug policies, but it would look a lot more like alcohol does, which IMHO would be less damaging to society and people than prohibition and heavy handed legal punishments is. People do need help with alochol issues sometimes, and it does sometimes destroy lives/families, but we don't make it orders of magnitude worse by treating them like criminals. (although we did try it in the US a hundred years ago and it didn't go well like we thought it would).
      - IceHegel 4y ago
        I want the drug problem solved. I don't care if it's with harsh laws or fentanyl vending machines next to treatment centers. I am interested in what works. I think there is strong empirical evidence that drug liberalization sounds good but has failed where tried. If an American city can turn it around (as SF had a great chance to do) I'll change teams and stop talking about the issue. Now imagine the inverse. We find somewhere a thriving city with "draconian" drug policies. Would you reconsider your position?
- IceHegel 4y ago
  Yes I think many people who have dissenting views today, conservative or otherwise, feel more and more that the establishment position is fundamentally bankrupt and that most establishment members do have any deep convictions. I myself wonder how many of the liberal flag bearers would change their "views" without protest if they saw another ideology becoming dominant. We've seen this happen with gender blank-slatism. It has been fully adopted by most western institutions by osmosis, and the priorities of a 60's or 70's liberal were put in the back seat without objection.
guelo 4y ago
Everybody thinks their world view is the correct one otherwise they wouldn't believe it.
- 1123581321 4y ago
  Some views allow for more generous interpretations of the qualities of adherents of other views.
- IceHegel 4y ago
  There is something unhealthy about publicly saying "I believe x because it's true" but privately thinking "I don't have to consider if x is false because everyone who disagrees with x didn't go to college" (or has some other undesirable group trait).
ineptech 4y ago
There's something richly ironic about bashing your political outgroup in a thread discussing why an LLM trained on internet posts would exhibit political bias.
- flutas 4y ago
  > why an LLM trained The article isn't even about ChatGPT, it's about the moderation endpoint that OpenAI provides. https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/moderation https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/moderation
  - ineptech 4y ago
    And that endpoint is powered by what, if not an LLM?
    - erichocean 4y ago
      > why an LLM trained on internet posts would exhibit political bias You're moving the goalposts. The LLM doing moderation is trained on human responses to Internet posts—literally human censorship training an LLM to introduce bias at scale.
ilaksh 4y ago
Good point but that's just the way beliefs work. And most people lack the metacognitive concept of analyzing their beliefs or understand what a belief really is. It's the definition of a belief. Beliefs are structural components of cognition. But also they are not the same thing as reality. People should be educated about this concept. Without the education, it is impossible for people to tell the difference between a deeply held belief and reality.
- IceHegel 4y ago
  Agreed, but when your own beliefs don't align with the dominant belief structure of society you are forced to confront this genuine diversity quite often. When you are in the minority, your beliefs are challenged and you get comfortable defending them and getting along with those who don't hold them. The same cannot be said of our liberal order. Some genuine self reflection on the part of our current liberal order is badly needed.
ChickenNugger 4y ago
"conservatives understand liberals liberals do not understand conservatives" >In a study I did with Jesse Graham and Brian Nosek, we tested how well liberals and conservatives could understand each other. We asked more than two thousand American visitors to fill out the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out normally, answering as themselves. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as they think a “typical liberal” would respond. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as a “typical conservative” would respond. This design allowed us to examine the stereotypes that each side held about the other. More important, it allowed us to assess how accurate they were by comparing people’s expectations about “typical” partisans to the actual responses from partisans on the left and the right)’ Who was best able to pretend to be the other? >The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as “very liberal.” The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the Care and Fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives.* When faced with questions such as “One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal” or ”Justice is the most important requirement for a society,” liberals assumed that conservatives would disagree. If you have a moral matrix built primarily on intuitions about care and fairness (as equality), and you listen to the Reagan [i.e., conservative] narrative, what else could you think? Reagan seems completely unconcerned about the welfare of drug addicts, poor people, and gay people. He’s more interested in fighting wars and telling people how to run their sex lives. -"The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt p. 334 There's a whole TED talk about it (same author as the above) that goes into the differences in morality: https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_liberals_and_conservatives https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_...

notduncansmith 4y ago

This is true of many well-meaning conservatives, as well. I think we get tripped up forgetting there are rational people on both sides, who are not going to change their views but nonetheless accept that they might be wrong. It’s very convenient for those seeking power when we forget this.

freedomben 4y ago
Indeed, I think some of the most damaging policies in existence are the draconian drug laws. There is clearly much bipartisan support for them, but Conservatives in general are much more deeply held on it. Many believe drug use (except their own) is immoral and that justifies the heavy paternalistic approach they take. There are definitely "morally superior" people on both sides of the coin, they just tend to have different issues on which they think they know better than everybody else.
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  For real? Drug use (including alcohol) is probably the most common way for people to seriously and irreperably destroy their lives. A "paternalistic approach" is absolutely justified if it can prevent this level of harm.
  - freedomben 4y ago
    > Drug use (including alcohol) is probably the most common way for people to seriously and irreperably destroy their lives. I actually agree with that. But I don't see the logical progression from that to locking people in cages and forcing them to buy from the least trustworthy people on earth as the solution. During Prohibition in the US did lives stop getting destroyed by alcohol? I see a lot of lives seriously and irreperably destroyed by criminal records and long prison sentences that otherwise could have been productive. > A "paternalistic approach" is absolutely justified if it can prevent this level of harm. Would you advocate for government banning processed sugar? Sugar behaves like a drug in most ways, including addictiveness (psychological and physiological), euphoria, etc. Untold levels of harm are caused by people to their own bodies and the healthcare system at large by over indulging in sugar and products containing such. Diabetes is a true living hell that never stops one it's started. Following that logic, it seems like the government should jail people for sugar use, but that obviously seems absurd (reductio ad absurdum).
    - zajio1am 4y ago
      > During Prohibition in the US did lives stop getting destroyed by alcohol? I do not want to defend Prohibition, but AFAIK it has a persistent effect on alcohol consumption patterns in USA by lowering per-capita consumption of hard spirits (that was significantly higher before).
  - int_19h 4y ago
    Putting people in prison for drug use is also a very common way to seriously and irreparably destroy their lives, including cases where their drug use was not, by itself, harming them.
- IceHegel 4y ago
  I think this view is empirically quite challenged. It's practically impossible to win the debate for strict drug laws because key pieces of sociological evidence are just inadmissible on stereotype grounds. But when you see the effect of these libertarian policies in American cities the results speak for themselves. Harm reduction and lax enforcement have really destroyed some communities, and this was simply not as large a problem in the 50s or 60s. There's really no better poster child for this phenomenon than San Francisco. It was the economic center of the technology boom and unlike New York or London of centuries past, completely failed to become a "center of the world" city despite having the “center of the world” economy. By most accounts, it actually functions less well than it did before the internet was invented.
  - freedomben 4y ago
    I think there's a lot more to the cities. The drugs that people have access to are in part so damaging to them and the community because they are entirely unregulated and sometimes aren't even made up of what the person thinks they are taking. This (is a big part of) what leads to the overdoses and addiction. Mix that in with the threat of law enforcement, job loss, and heavy social stigma, etc that prevents people from seeking help, and you have a recipe for disaster. Imagine if everytime you bought a beer you had to wonder if you could trust the seller, and whether it had methanol or fentanyl in it? No doubt there would be some damage from libertarian drug policies, but it would look a lot more like alcohol does, which IMHO would be less damaging to society and people than prohibition and heavy handed legal punishments is. People do need help with alochol issues sometimes, and it does sometimes destroy lives/families, but we don't make it orders of magnitude worse by treating them like criminals. (although we did try it in the US a hundred years ago and it didn't go well like we thought it would).
    - IceHegel 4y ago
      I want the drug problem solved. I don't care if it's with harsh laws or fentanyl vending machines next to treatment centers. I am interested in what works. I think there is strong empirical evidence that drug liberalization sounds good but has failed where tried. If an American city can turn it around (as SF had a great chance to do) I'll change teams and stop talking about the issue. Now imagine the inverse. We find somewhere a thriving city with "draconian" drug policies. Would you reconsider your position?
IceHegel 4y ago
Yes I think many people who have dissenting views today, conservative or otherwise, feel more and more that the establishment position is fundamentally bankrupt and that most establishment members do have any deep convictions. I myself wonder how many of the liberal flag bearers would change their "views" without protest if they saw another ideology becoming dominant. We've seen this happen with gender blank-slatism. It has been fully adopted by most western institutions by osmosis, and the priorities of a 60's or 70's liberal were put in the back seat without objection.

guelo 4y ago

Everybody thinks their world view is the correct one otherwise they wouldn't believe it.

1123581321 4y ago
Some views allow for more generous interpretations of the qualities of adherents of other views.
IceHegel 4y ago
There is something unhealthy about publicly saying "I believe x because it's true" but privately thinking "I don't have to consider if x is false because everyone who disagrees with x didn't go to college" (or has some other undesirable group trait).

ineptech 4y ago

There's something richly ironic about bashing your political outgroup in a thread discussing why an LLM trained on internet posts would exhibit political bias.

flutas 4y ago
> why an LLM trained The article isn't even about ChatGPT, it's about the moderation endpoint that OpenAI provides. https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/moderation https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/moderation
- ineptech 4y ago
  And that endpoint is powered by what, if not an LLM?
  - erichocean 4y ago
    > why an LLM trained on internet posts would exhibit political bias You're moving the goalposts. The LLM doing moderation is trained on human responses to Internet posts—literally human censorship training an LLM to introduce bias at scale.

ilaksh 4y ago

Good point but that's just the way beliefs work. And most people lack the metacognitive concept of analyzing their beliefs or understand what a belief really is. It's the definition of a belief. Beliefs are structural components of cognition. But also they are not the same thing as reality. People should be educated about this concept. Without the education, it is impossible for people to tell the difference between a deeply held belief and reality.

IceHegel 4y ago
Agreed, but when your own beliefs don't align with the dominant belief structure of society you are forced to confront this genuine diversity quite often. When you are in the minority, your beliefs are challenged and you get comfortable defending them and getting along with those who don't hold them. The same cannot be said of our liberal order. Some genuine self reflection on the part of our current liberal order is badly needed.

ChickenNugger 4y ago

"conservatives understand liberals liberals do not understand conservatives" >In a study I did with Jesse Graham and Brian Nosek, we tested how well liberals and conservatives could understand each other. We asked more than two thousand American visitors to fill out the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out normally, answering as themselves. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as they think a “typical liberal” would respond. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as a “typical conservative” would respond. This design allowed us to examine the stereotypes that each side held about the other. More important, it allowed us to assess how accurate they were by comparing people’s expectations about “typical” partisans to the actual responses from partisans on the left and the right)’ Who was best able to pretend to be the other? >The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as “very liberal.” The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the Care and Fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives.* When faced with questions such as “One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal” or ”Justice is the most important requirement for a society,” liberals assumed that conservatives would disagree. If you have a moral matrix built primarily on intuitions about care and fairness (as equality), and you listen to the Reagan [i.e., conservative] narrative, what else could you think? Reagan seems completely unconcerned about the welfare of drug addicts, poor people, and gay people. He’s more interested in fighting wars and telling people how to run their sex lives. -"The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt p. 334 There's a whole TED talk about it (same author as the above) that goes into the differences in morality: https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_liberals_and_conservatives https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_...