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This methodological approach can easily be proven idiotic with a simple thought experiment. Suppose there is a political party that believes slavery is a great

This methodological approach can easily be proven idiotic with a simple thought experiment. Suppose there is a political party that believes slavery is a great thing. This methodology would then ask ChatGPT to ask what it thinks about slavery from the viewpoint of this party, and ChatGPT would respond "Slavery is great!" It would then ask it about slavery in its default viewpoint, and it would respond "Slavery is a horrible, evil, thing." This methodology would then say "See, it's biased against this party!" If my slavery example is too far fetched, replace that with "Is human activity largely responsible for widespread global warming?" In that example, responses of "No, it's not." and "Yes, it is." would be treated as just different views from different parties, so if the default response was "Yes!", this methodology would claim bias. Not all political viewpoints across all topics are equally valid.

hotdogscout 3y ago
>Not all political viewpoints across all topics are equally valid. Who's validating or invalidating them?
- plagiarist 3y ago
  Objective reality via empirical measurements, for some of the viewpoints.
  - hotdogscout 3y ago
    How do you empirically prove slavery is wrong?
    - BoorishBears 3y ago
      See the mistake the person you replied to made is assuming there's some floor to morality. They probably assumed the floor is "slaves are a bad thing", it's so obvious that the empirical measurement is "does slavery increase the number of slaves" that they don't need to elaborate But apparently you fall below that basic floor such that you might contest slaves are not inherently bad, so "decreased number of slaves" is not empirical proof slavery is wrong. Great example of why I tend to just ignore people who disagree with my morality. Some demographics are currently convinced that's a show of weakness, I'm convinced it shows I value my time.
      - hotdogscout 3y ago
        I asked how would he empirically prove slavery is bad (because I don't believe it's possible to base morality on "objetive reality") and you flipped out, assumed I'm "pro slavery" and gave up on thinking about it. No wonder Socrates was hated 2400 years ago.
        BoorishBears 3y ago
        I didn't say you're pro-slavery so please don't martyr yourself. I said you bucked this person's assumption of "all people with morals believe a slave is bad" Otherwise you could obviously moralize the more complex concept of slavery based on objective reality by observing "more slavery == more slaves"; slavery is bad QED — Morality is concerned with examining if something is good or bad. So if all people with morals (regardless of what those are) find a concept to be either good or bad... then it might as well exist outside of the purview of morality for the purpose of debate. That's the metaphorical "floor of morality" My point is normally you need nuanced examples to prove that things "on the floor" can still be moralized, like murder vs murder in self-defense. What you proved is that there are also people willing to moralize concepts as simple as "slaves are bad" (vs "slavery is bad") — In doing so you demonstrated why when someone tries to moralize things that I assumed to be "on the floor", or universally bad: I just discard their opinion without consideration. If you ask me "why do you think slaves are bad", I'll mostly say "I just do, and I don't wish to entertain arguments otherwise". I see it as being pragmatic, but some may consider it fragile. It's just, I'm a fairly introspective and have had a varied enough life that I trust my intuition that anyone who can't reach the floor of my morality is not worth convincing.
        seventhtiger 3y ago
        Trusting your intuition and blocking out people is great for you, personally, the owner of your space. That attitude would harm the public space, where standards to discuss current and new issues would be really helpful. You also think the choice of slavery is proof of people falling below your personal moral floor. To me, and I think to the OP, it's proof that even questions with obvious moral answers are beyond empiricism. Which is the point you're missing. So we need to know on what basis we arrive at the obvious answer slavery is bad, because the we can use that basis for more complex matters. Shutting each other down just for talking is authoritarian, and the thing about that is if the guy on top is your guy that's great, but you have no control over who the guy on top is.
    - plagiarist 3y ago
      That isn't one of the objective reality ones (unless it's from a provably wrong basis like racial inferiority). I'm not really good enough at philosophy to take that particular argument. But perhaps you could explain to us why slavery is good and thus why diverging thoughts on it are valid political viewpoints and not sanity vs. delusion.
      - Closi 3y ago
        They aren't saying slavery is good, they are saying it's an extreme example of something that isn't actually an objective fact. More subtle examples would be gun-control or abortion, where two intelligent people can hold wholly opposite viewpoints with no objectively 'correct' answer.
    - mattnewton 3y ago
      It depends on your axioms. If you have none nobody can prove you aren’t a brain dreaming in a jar, but the second you grant me something as small as as the golden rule you can lever up into arguments against slavery pretty easily.
      - hotdogscout 3y ago
        Of course, it's just silly to think "objective" reality infers the golden rule by itself when it is a (wonderful) liberal anomaly that's not even followed by most of the world now.
        mattnewton 3y ago
        If it’s political bias that chatgpt seems to have read about the golden rule I hope the next version is even more biased. Seems like much ado about nothing.
        hotdogscout 3y ago
        I hate how hypocritical it is trained with Islam and Christianity in regards to LGBT rights. It'll question Christianity's bigotry and subsequently support Islamic bigotry.
        gopher_space 3y ago
        It's a useful starting point that everyone would understand. We've all been working on the concept for centuries. The conversation against the idea would be illuminating.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - svaha1728 3y ago
      If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?
- teh64 3y ago
  Valid viewpoints should at least be based on fact. How to act on these facts can be argued, but a lot of the right wing has given up on even agreeing on objective truths, like that Trump lost the election or that climate change is happening.
  - hotdogscout 3y ago
    You're arguing against the weakest versions of these positions so it's easy to defer to evidence. How would you respond to the accusation that climate change is happening but some scientists are purposefully manufacturing models that paint a pessimistic prediction of global warming to get money and support for their field? Can you really trust scientific institutions when fraud and political censorship run amok? https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_emails,_data,_models,_1996-2009 https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_emails,_da... https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Climategate https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Climategate (I'm kind of playing devil's advocate, my honest position is man-made global warming is a real alarming issue AND some scientists and journals engage in unsavory tactics to convince the public of it.)
    - teh64 3y ago
      You are just proving my point. The facts are true, but the vibes and the feelings are off, so of course it can't be true. Do you have any non anecdotal sources that they are "manufacturing models" or that "fraud and political censorship run[s] amok"? No of course not, you "feel" it does because that is a narrative you have been fed. One faculty at one small university is shady somehow implies a large number of climate faculties at a large number of universities are equally conspiratorial and manufacturing models?
      - hotdogscout 3y ago
        >(I'm kind of playing devil's advocate, my honest position is man-made global warming is a real alarming issue AND some scientists and journals engage in unsavory tactics to convince the public of it.) I said some. You also abandoned evidence and resorted to ad hominems. Maybe (that was my point) truth is not as simple as science good right wing bad, and even people who dissent on basic facts can have valid criticisms of science and should not be put in a political "do not engage" box. Morality is not simply a matter of acknowledging a shared universal material reality.
mminer237 3y ago
Your whole argument is "my side is right about everything so it's not biased to just program everything to agree with me"? Like 99% of political viewpoints don't have objectively right answers. If there were, there would typically not be disagreement.
- Grimblewald 3y ago
  the problem with the US political compass is that this is so far right that even the US left is right of centre. If you aim to build an unbiased model it will therefore seem to preference the party closer to centre.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  > Your whole argument is "my side is right about everything so it's not biased to just program everything to agree with me"? That's not my argument, at all, and it's annoying that you're making a deliberate caricature of what I said. I'm not saying "my side is right about everything". And perhaps "valid" was a poor word choice from me - I don't mean to imply some choices are correct by a manna from heaven or something. But if you look through the dustbin of history, you see, at the very least, that there are political movements from history that we now see nearly universally as "bad": fascism, Nazism, pro-slavery parties, etc. Even defenders of those ideologies usually defend them with falsehoods ("the Holocaust never happened"), but nearly nobody defends some of the actual consequences of some of those ideologies. So I'm arguing that this methodology treats all political viewpoints as "deserving of equal validity", when our own human history shows that to largely be a bad idea.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Long before you made this argument Asimov had already seen the same thing "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’" Unfortunately when a person buys into an ideology they become blind to its ignorance and end up arguing on discussion forums.
atlantic 3y ago
> Not all political viewpoints across all topics are equally valid. Why? Either value systems are objective, and somehow rooted in reality, and then some are better than others. Or, they are arbitrary opinions, and every set is as good as every other. There is no third option.

hotdogscout 3y ago

>Not all political viewpoints across all topics are equally valid. Who's validating or invalidating them?

plagiarist 3y ago
Objective reality via empirical measurements, for some of the viewpoints.
- hotdogscout 3y ago
  How do you empirically prove slavery is wrong?
  - BoorishBears 3y ago
    See the mistake the person you replied to made is assuming there's some floor to morality. They probably assumed the floor is "slaves are a bad thing", it's so obvious that the empirical measurement is "does slavery increase the number of slaves" that they don't need to elaborate But apparently you fall below that basic floor such that you might contest slaves are not inherently bad, so "decreased number of slaves" is not empirical proof slavery is wrong. Great example of why I tend to just ignore people who disagree with my morality. Some demographics are currently convinced that's a show of weakness, I'm convinced it shows I value my time.
    - hotdogscout 3y ago
      I asked how would he empirically prove slavery is bad (because I don't believe it's possible to base morality on "objetive reality") and you flipped out, assumed I'm "pro slavery" and gave up on thinking about it. No wonder Socrates was hated 2400 years ago.
      - BoorishBears 3y ago
        I didn't say you're pro-slavery so please don't martyr yourself. I said you bucked this person's assumption of "all people with morals believe a slave is bad" Otherwise you could obviously moralize the more complex concept of slavery based on objective reality by observing "more slavery == more slaves"; slavery is bad QED — Morality is concerned with examining if something is good or bad. So if all people with morals (regardless of what those are) find a concept to be either good or bad... then it might as well exist outside of the purview of morality for the purpose of debate. That's the metaphorical "floor of morality" My point is normally you need nuanced examples to prove that things "on the floor" can still be moralized, like murder vs murder in self-defense. What you proved is that there are also people willing to moralize concepts as simple as "slaves are bad" (vs "slavery is bad") — In doing so you demonstrated why when someone tries to moralize things that I assumed to be "on the floor", or universally bad: I just discard their opinion without consideration. If you ask me "why do you think slaves are bad", I'll mostly say "I just do, and I don't wish to entertain arguments otherwise". I see it as being pragmatic, but some may consider it fragile. It's just, I'm a fairly introspective and have had a varied enough life that I trust my intuition that anyone who can't reach the floor of my morality is not worth convincing.
        seventhtiger 3y ago
        Trusting your intuition and blocking out people is great for you, personally, the owner of your space. That attitude would harm the public space, where standards to discuss current and new issues would be really helpful. You also think the choice of slavery is proof of people falling below your personal moral floor. To me, and I think to the OP, it's proof that even questions with obvious moral answers are beyond empiricism. Which is the point you're missing. So we need to know on what basis we arrive at the obvious answer slavery is bad, because the we can use that basis for more complex matters. Shutting each other down just for talking is authoritarian, and the thing about that is if the guy on top is your guy that's great, but you have no control over who the guy on top is.
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    That isn't one of the objective reality ones (unless it's from a provably wrong basis like racial inferiority). I'm not really good enough at philosophy to take that particular argument. But perhaps you could explain to us why slavery is good and thus why diverging thoughts on it are valid political viewpoints and not sanity vs. delusion.
    - Closi 3y ago
      They aren't saying slavery is good, they are saying it's an extreme example of something that isn't actually an objective fact. More subtle examples would be gun-control or abortion, where two intelligent people can hold wholly opposite viewpoints with no objectively 'correct' answer.
  - mattnewton 3y ago
    It depends on your axioms. If you have none nobody can prove you aren’t a brain dreaming in a jar, but the second you grant me something as small as as the golden rule you can lever up into arguments against slavery pretty easily.
    - hotdogscout 3y ago
      Of course, it's just silly to think "objective" reality infers the golden rule by itself when it is a (wonderful) liberal anomaly that's not even followed by most of the world now.
      - mattnewton 3y ago
        If it’s political bias that chatgpt seems to have read about the golden rule I hope the next version is even more biased. Seems like much ado about nothing.
        hotdogscout 3y ago
        I hate how hypocritical it is trained with Islam and Christianity in regards to LGBT rights. It'll question Christianity's bigotry and subsequently support Islamic bigotry.
      - gopher_space 3y ago
        It's a useful starting point that everyone would understand. We've all been working on the concept for centuries. The conversation against the idea would be illuminating.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - svaha1728 3y ago
    If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?
teh64 3y ago
Valid viewpoints should at least be based on fact. How to act on these facts can be argued, but a lot of the right wing has given up on even agreeing on objective truths, like that Trump lost the election or that climate change is happening.
- hotdogscout 3y ago
  You're arguing against the weakest versions of these positions so it's easy to defer to evidence. How would you respond to the accusation that climate change is happening but some scientists are purposefully manufacturing models that paint a pessimistic prediction of global warming to get money and support for their field? Can you really trust scientific institutions when fraud and political censorship run amok? https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_emails,_data,_models,_1996-2009 https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_emails,_da... https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Climategate https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Climategate (I'm kind of playing devil's advocate, my honest position is man-made global warming is a real alarming issue AND some scientists and journals engage in unsavory tactics to convince the public of it.)
  - teh64 3y ago
    You are just proving my point. The facts are true, but the vibes and the feelings are off, so of course it can't be true. Do you have any non anecdotal sources that they are "manufacturing models" or that "fraud and political censorship run[s] amok"? No of course not, you "feel" it does because that is a narrative you have been fed. One faculty at one small university is shady somehow implies a large number of climate faculties at a large number of universities are equally conspiratorial and manufacturing models?
    - hotdogscout 3y ago
      >(I'm kind of playing devil's advocate, my honest position is man-made global warming is a real alarming issue AND some scientists and journals engage in unsavory tactics to convince the public of it.) I said some. You also abandoned evidence and resorted to ad hominems. Maybe (that was my point) truth is not as simple as science good right wing bad, and even people who dissent on basic facts can have valid criticisms of science and should not be put in a political "do not engage" box. Morality is not simply a matter of acknowledging a shared universal material reality.

mminer237 3y ago

Your whole argument is "my side is right about everything so it's not biased to just program everything to agree with me"? Like 99% of political viewpoints don't have objectively right answers. If there were, there would typically not be disagreement.

Grimblewald 3y ago
the problem with the US political compass is that this is so far right that even the US left is right of centre. If you aim to build an unbiased model it will therefore seem to preference the party closer to centre.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> Your whole argument is "my side is right about everything so it's not biased to just program everything to agree with me"? That's not my argument, at all, and it's annoying that you're making a deliberate caricature of what I said. I'm not saying "my side is right about everything". And perhaps "valid" was a poor word choice from me - I don't mean to imply some choices are correct by a manna from heaven or something. But if you look through the dustbin of history, you see, at the very least, that there are political movements from history that we now see nearly universally as "bad": fascism, Nazism, pro-slavery parties, etc. Even defenders of those ideologies usually defend them with falsehoods ("the Holocaust never happened"), but nearly nobody defends some of the actual consequences of some of those ideologies. So I'm arguing that this methodology treats all political viewpoints as "deserving of equal validity", when our own human history shows that to largely be a bad idea.
- pixl97 3y ago
  Long before you made this argument Asimov had already seen the same thing "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’" Unfortunately when a person buys into an ideology they become blind to its ignorance and end up arguing on discussion forums.

atlantic 3y ago

> Not all political viewpoints across all topics are equally valid. Why? Either value systems are objective, and somehow rooted in reality, and then some are better than others. Or, they are arbitrary opinions, and every set is as good as every other. There is no third option.