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To clarify: I wasn't making a pedantic linguistic point here. The fact is that when I first read the question, I actually thought it was asking "are illegal imm

To clarify: I wasn't making a pedantic linguistic point here. The fact is that when I first read the question, I actually thought it was asking "are illegal immigrants able to cast a vote (regardless of legality)?" It literally did not even (initially) occur to me that the question might be asking about legality, because the entire modern political discourse surrounding illegal immigrants and voting has been with regards to whether they can cast votes despite not legally being allowed to. The answer to "is this legal" would have been such an obvious "no" to people on both sides of the debate --- and thus the question so silly --- that initially it didn't occur to me that the intended question might have been about legality, until I continued reading the comment and realized that was the intention after all.

ethbr1 2y ago
I think that would be Google's approach, before they were waylaid by ad revenue incentives: that question intent can best be inferred by knowing as much about the asker as possible. But I feel optimizing for lazy question phrasing is infantilizing the userbase and assuming they're incapable of learning how to ask more precise questions. Which is an endemic problem in the modern web. We should be building systems with low barriers to simple adoption, but whose power scales with a user's expertise. Instead, we're hyperoptimizing for lowest common denominator, first interaction and as a result putting a glass ceiling on system power.
- photonthug 2y ago
  > that would be Google's approach, before they were waylaid by ad revenue incentives: that question intent can best be inferred by knowing as much about the asker as possible. I’d rephrase it: this was googles approach because they were waylaid by ad revenue incentives. Why does everyone assume the search bubble is a well intentioned accident? The linguistic arguments about the nature of truth above don’t cut it for me as any justification that the answer depends on who is asking. If we’re telling chemists that oil and water do mix as mentioned elsewhere in thread, we should probably tell the same to children and just make a slider for the level of additional detail. No problem. Especially if the alternative is a dystopic post truth panopticon. > systems whose power scales with expertise Couldn’t agree more that this is what we want/need, but disagree about infantilizing user bases and lowest common denominator. Platform’s aren’t trying to scale user power with expertise, they want to scale revenue with users, and separately, to deliberately restrict user power/control so that platforms decide what users see. And it’s not necessarily political or linguistic or about the nature of truth. A simple example of this that’s everywhere is filtering content by sub genre tags. Ever notice that you often see niche content tags like “time-travel” or “mind-bending” but can’t click it? Platforms want the tags for internal analytics naturally, but they want the control of not providing it as a filter, forcing users instead into a fuzzier category like “people also watched” or “top ten this week”. Why? Because platforms can hide advertised content there, push stuff they pay less license fees for, make operations cheaper with caching, or whatever else.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Because lots of people are ignorant and imprecise. HN selects from people who have at least a passing knowledge/interest in programming/science, a subpopulation which is already several standard deviations from the mean in specificity and debugging. > disagree about infantilizing user bases and lowest common denominator Platforms, with Google as exemplar, evolve in two ways. 1: Features they explicitly choose not to ship, because they're strategically dangerous. See tool-use foot dragging by OpenAi. 2: Features they deprioritize, because they aren't as revenue-impactful as other things. To me, it feels like Google dropped the ball via the second path. I'm sure they've been doing a ridiculous amount of cool work behind the scenes on individual context grounding... but once prod was "good enough for ads" the company as a whole wasn't incentivized to do the hard thing and ship more advanced features in search. Which is how they ended up as legacy as they are, competing against LLM search that's by definition context-native.
marcus_holmes 2y ago
That was kinda my point - my friend had been so conditioned by the "can they vote" thing that he genuinely thought that non-citizens could legally vote in US elections. If I had phrased the question as "is it legal for non-citizens to vote in US elections?" then that might have illustrated my point better (and we wouldn't be going down this rabbit hole, though the rabbit hole is informative in itself).
- labster 2y ago
  The fact that the rabbit hole exists at all means that our hope for instant, reliable answers is likely doomed. Avoiding politics entirely, I could ask “does gravity curve spacetime?”, and while “yes” is a reasonably accurate answer, so is a digression into quantum gravity, or even saying that we’re not sure spacetime really exists outside of being a good abstraction.
  - dataflow 2y ago
    Thanks, yeah, exactly. Like, the best answer to a question can really depend on who's asking it, who's answering it, or what they intend to use the answer for. To give a much simpler example: - If an 8-year-old asks "can you mix oil and water", the right answer is "no". If a student is asked that question on a school exam, the right answer is also "no". - If a chemist asks "can you mix oil and water", the right answer is "yes, and here's how: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJeWklggSpY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJeWklggSpY"
    - marcus_holmes 2y ago
      Nice example :) So your answer to "Who gets to decide what's true?" is basically "there is no truth, and any truth that there might be is relative to the person asking the question". Is that right? I think that's probably technically accurate, and also practically useless. Even damaging. I saw this in the climate arguments: two sets of different facts led to two different versions of the truth, which led to two completely irreconcilable points of view. Essentially two sets of people shouting "no, but..." and "well, actually..." at each other, pointing to two completely different truths, both supported by two completely different sets of facts. At some point we as a society need to agree on our truth in order to get anything done.
coldtea 2y ago
>It literally did not even (initially) occur to me that the question might be asking about legality, because the entire modern political discourse surrounding illegal immigrants and voting has been with regards to whether they can cast votes despite not legally being allowed to. Besides, going by legality, illegal immigrants "couldn't" even have passed the border into the country to begin with. But obviously they could, hence their status as illegal immigrants. There's a contradiction if the AI answers "no" to "can they vote" (implicitly having the legality in mind), while accepting that they can exist in the country as illegal immigrants (implicitly ignoring the legality of border crossing).
- chriswarbo 2y ago
  > Besides, going by legality, illegal immigrants "couldn't" even have passed the border into the country to begin with. Of course they could. Being an "illegal immigrant" does not imply unlawful border crossing. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States#Visa_overstay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_Uni... "Visa overstayers mostly enter with tourist or business visas.[99] In 1994, more than half[108] of illegal immigrants were Visa overstayers whereas in 2006, about 45% of illegal immigrants were Visa overstayers.[109]" (Here in the UK, the vast majority of illegal immigrants arrived legally and overstayed their visas. Yet our Conservative government, who oversaw a large increase in such arrivals, tried to blame all the country's woes on a few small boats illegally crossing our southern border; which is effectively a rounding error). As an aside, refugees are actually allowed to make unlawful border crossings. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_Status_of_Refugees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_Sta... "The contracting states shall not... impose penalties on refugees who entered illegally in search of asylum if they present themselves without delay (Article 31), which is commonly interpreted to mean that their unlawful entry and presence ought not to be prosecuted at all[18]"
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >Of course they could. Being an "illegal immigrant" does not imply unlawful border crossing. Same difference. Whether it's border crossing or visa overstay, from a pure legality aspect the answer is still "they couldn't". >The contracting states shall not... impose penalties on refugees who entered illegally in search of asylum if they present themselves without delay (Article 31), which is commonly interpreted to mean that their unlawful entry and presence ought not to be prosecuted at all I'd wager 99% do not "present themselves without delay", so don't fall in this case...
samatman 2y ago
My education also drilled into me the distinction between what one can do and what one may do. I can just hear my main lesson teacher now: "Can an illegal immigrant vote? Perhaps, but they may not, and certainly they should not."
- mistermann 2y ago
  More of teaching like this in school could go a long way, but once people reach adulthood I don't think this would cut it. I think a more military training approach might be needed where you tear this part of the person's psyche down and rebuild it properly from the ground up.
Dalewyn 2y ago
>The answer to "is this legal" would have been such an obvious "no" to people on both sides of the debate I'm sorry, but the people on the side of letting illegal aliens vote are squarely of the opinion that it is legal to do so. Why? Because when you prohibit any and all means (eg: government identification demonstrating citizenship and residence) to test the question of legality, everything becomes legal by sheer virtue of the fact you can't demonstrate what they are doing is illegal. Remember: Innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. You are prohibited from proving they are guilty, so they are innocent by default.
- lanstin 2y ago
  There is no side of letting illegal aliens vote. WTF? Although I did once live in a town where anyone over 16, citizen or not, could vote in the city non-partisan elections. The idea was local government needs all the involvement it could get and if you lived in the city you had a stake in its future. I do believe one had to have a proper visa and so on.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    You do realize that you can't test someone's legal ability to vote if you prohibit confirming if someone is legally permitted to vote, right? Our rule of law rests upon assuming innocence if guilt cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and here it is explicitly prohibited to even attempt proving guilt. Therefore it becomes legal for illegal aliens to vote in American elections, because you are prohibited from even attempting to demonstrate their illegality. The only reason asking for government identification prior to voting is considered "racist" and illegal is because the people pushing such agendas want more votes and don't care where the votes come from, including illegal aliens, legal aliens, and otherwise people who do not have the right to vote in American elections. I voted when I was still in California, born and raised American so I have the right to vote. I was never asked for any piece of identification. None. I could have been a Canadian or Briton or Chinese or some other foreign national, I could have been an illegal alien from Mexico or Guatemala and I could have still voted and my ballot counted because nobody checked. I just walked in and voted, identification or citizenship be damned let alone registration. There's a part of me still questioning the value of my American citizenship and paying my taxes like a good citizen.

ethbr1 2y ago

I think that would be Google's approach, before they were waylaid by ad revenue incentives: that question intent can best be inferred by knowing as much about the asker as possible. But I feel optimizing for lazy question phrasing is infantilizing the userbase and assuming they're incapable of learning how to ask more precise questions. Which is an endemic problem in the modern web. We should be building systems with low barriers to simple adoption, but whose power scales with a user's expertise. Instead, we're hyperoptimizing for lowest common denominator, first interaction and as a result putting a glass ceiling on system power.

photonthug 2y ago
> that would be Google's approach, before they were waylaid by ad revenue incentives: that question intent can best be inferred by knowing as much about the asker as possible. I’d rephrase it: this was googles approach because they were waylaid by ad revenue incentives. Why does everyone assume the search bubble is a well intentioned accident? The linguistic arguments about the nature of truth above don’t cut it for me as any justification that the answer depends on who is asking. If we’re telling chemists that oil and water do mix as mentioned elsewhere in thread, we should probably tell the same to children and just make a slider for the level of additional detail. No problem. Especially if the alternative is a dystopic post truth panopticon. > systems whose power scales with expertise Couldn’t agree more that this is what we want/need, but disagree about infantilizing user bases and lowest common denominator. Platform’s aren’t trying to scale user power with expertise, they want to scale revenue with users, and separately, to deliberately restrict user power/control so that platforms decide what users see. And it’s not necessarily political or linguistic or about the nature of truth. A simple example of this that’s everywhere is filtering content by sub genre tags. Ever notice that you often see niche content tags like “time-travel” or “mind-bending” but can’t click it? Platforms want the tags for internal analytics naturally, but they want the control of not providing it as a filter, forcing users instead into a fuzzier category like “people also watched” or “top ten this week”. Why? Because platforms can hide advertised content there, push stuff they pay less license fees for, make operations cheaper with caching, or whatever else.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Because lots of people are ignorant and imprecise. HN selects from people who have at least a passing knowledge/interest in programming/science, a subpopulation which is already several standard deviations from the mean in specificity and debugging. > disagree about infantilizing user bases and lowest common denominator Platforms, with Google as exemplar, evolve in two ways. 1: Features they explicitly choose not to ship, because they're strategically dangerous. See tool-use foot dragging by OpenAi. 2: Features they deprioritize, because they aren't as revenue-impactful as other things. To me, it feels like Google dropped the ball via the second path. I'm sure they've been doing a ridiculous amount of cool work behind the scenes on individual context grounding... but once prod was "good enough for ads" the company as a whole wasn't incentivized to do the hard thing and ship more advanced features in search. Which is how they ended up as legacy as they are, competing against LLM search that's by definition context-native.

marcus_holmes 2y ago

That was kinda my point - my friend had been so conditioned by the "can they vote" thing that he genuinely thought that non-citizens could legally vote in US elections. If I had phrased the question as "is it legal for non-citizens to vote in US elections?" then that might have illustrated my point better (and we wouldn't be going down this rabbit hole, though the rabbit hole is informative in itself).

labster 2y ago
The fact that the rabbit hole exists at all means that our hope for instant, reliable answers is likely doomed. Avoiding politics entirely, I could ask “does gravity curve spacetime?”, and while “yes” is a reasonably accurate answer, so is a digression into quantum gravity, or even saying that we’re not sure spacetime really exists outside of being a good abstraction.
- dataflow 2y ago
  Thanks, yeah, exactly. Like, the best answer to a question can really depend on who's asking it, who's answering it, or what they intend to use the answer for. To give a much simpler example: - If an 8-year-old asks "can you mix oil and water", the right answer is "no". If a student is asked that question on a school exam, the right answer is also "no". - If a chemist asks "can you mix oil and water", the right answer is "yes, and here's how: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJeWklggSpY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJeWklggSpY"
  - marcus_holmes 2y ago
    Nice example :) So your answer to "Who gets to decide what's true?" is basically "there is no truth, and any truth that there might be is relative to the person asking the question". Is that right? I think that's probably technically accurate, and also practically useless. Even damaging. I saw this in the climate arguments: two sets of different facts led to two different versions of the truth, which led to two completely irreconcilable points of view. Essentially two sets of people shouting "no, but..." and "well, actually..." at each other, pointing to two completely different truths, both supported by two completely different sets of facts. At some point we as a society need to agree on our truth in order to get anything done.

coldtea 2y ago

>It literally did not even (initially) occur to me that the question might be asking about legality, because the entire modern political discourse surrounding illegal immigrants and voting has been with regards to whether they can cast votes despite not legally being allowed to. Besides, going by legality, illegal immigrants "couldn't" even have passed the border into the country to begin with. But obviously they could, hence their status as illegal immigrants. There's a contradiction if the AI answers "no" to "can they vote" (implicitly having the legality in mind), while accepting that they can exist in the country as illegal immigrants (implicitly ignoring the legality of border crossing).

chriswarbo 2y ago
> Besides, going by legality, illegal immigrants "couldn't" even have passed the border into the country to begin with. Of course they could. Being an "illegal immigrant" does not imply unlawful border crossing. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States#Visa_overstay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_Uni... "Visa overstayers mostly enter with tourist or business visas.[99] In 1994, more than half[108] of illegal immigrants were Visa overstayers whereas in 2006, about 45% of illegal immigrants were Visa overstayers.[109]" (Here in the UK, the vast majority of illegal immigrants arrived legally and overstayed their visas. Yet our Conservative government, who oversaw a large increase in such arrivals, tried to blame all the country's woes on a few small boats illegally crossing our southern border; which is effectively a rounding error). As an aside, refugees are actually allowed to make unlawful border crossings. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_Status_of_Refugees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_Sta... "The contracting states shall not... impose penalties on refugees who entered illegally in search of asylum if they present themselves without delay (Article 31), which is commonly interpreted to mean that their unlawful entry and presence ought not to be prosecuted at all[18]"
- coldtea 2y ago
  >Of course they could. Being an "illegal immigrant" does not imply unlawful border crossing. Same difference. Whether it's border crossing or visa overstay, from a pure legality aspect the answer is still "they couldn't". >The contracting states shall not... impose penalties on refugees who entered illegally in search of asylum if they present themselves without delay (Article 31), which is commonly interpreted to mean that their unlawful entry and presence ought not to be prosecuted at all I'd wager 99% do not "present themselves without delay", so don't fall in this case...

samatman 2y ago

My education also drilled into me the distinction between what one can do and what one may do. I can just hear my main lesson teacher now: "Can an illegal immigrant vote? Perhaps, but they may not, and certainly they should not."

mistermann 2y ago
More of teaching like this in school could go a long way, but once people reach adulthood I don't think this would cut it. I think a more military training approach might be needed where you tear this part of the person's psyche down and rebuild it properly from the ground up.

Dalewyn 2y ago

>The answer to "is this legal" would have been such an obvious "no" to people on both sides of the debate I'm sorry, but the people on the side of letting illegal aliens vote are squarely of the opinion that it is legal to do so. Why? Because when you prohibit any and all means (eg: government identification demonstrating citizenship and residence) to test the question of legality, everything becomes legal by sheer virtue of the fact you can't demonstrate what they are doing is illegal. Remember: Innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. You are prohibited from proving they are guilty, so they are innocent by default.

lanstin 2y ago
There is no side of letting illegal aliens vote. WTF? Although I did once live in a town where anyone over 16, citizen or not, could vote in the city non-partisan elections. The idea was local government needs all the involvement it could get and if you lived in the city you had a stake in its future. I do believe one had to have a proper visa and so on.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  You do realize that you can't test someone's legal ability to vote if you prohibit confirming if someone is legally permitted to vote, right? Our rule of law rests upon assuming innocence if guilt cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and here it is explicitly prohibited to even attempt proving guilt. Therefore it becomes legal for illegal aliens to vote in American elections, because you are prohibited from even attempting to demonstrate their illegality. The only reason asking for government identification prior to voting is considered "racist" and illegal is because the people pushing such agendas want more votes and don't care where the votes come from, including illegal aliens, legal aliens, and otherwise people who do not have the right to vote in American elections. I voted when I was still in California, born and raised American so I have the right to vote. I was never asked for any piece of identification. None. I could have been a Canadian or Briton or Chinese or some other foreign national, I could have been an illegal alien from Mexico or Guatemala and I could have still voted and my ballot counted because nobody checked. I just walked in and voted, identification or citizenship be damned let alone registration. There's a part of me still questioning the value of my American citizenship and paying my taxes like a good citizen.