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The thing is, the biases I see propagating on social media are not generalized, anti-everything biases. They're specific and targeted against groups who people

by bccdee 1y ago

The thing is, the biases I see propagating on social media are not generalized, anti-everything biases. They're specific and targeted against groups who people in power want to use as scapegoats.

FloorEgg 1y ago
That's fair and I agree. My original comment didn't precisely capture what I meant, which is more so the majority of focus is on being upset about things outside the individual's control. A victim mindset is built on the victim feeling wronged (not getting what they are owed) based on an agreement they made with another party which the other party didn't consent to. So the owner/controller of a chatbot could direct the dissatisfaction at whatever is in there interest to. A political party could direct it at another political party. A foreign state could direct it at the whole system (or reinforce division between parties aka divide and conquer), or a specific political actor could direct it at a specific group of people as a scapegoat. As a whole, the result could be instilling dissatisfaction in just about everything, but to each individual user/group it may be a few specific things. In the past we fought wars with tanks and guns, and to an extent we still do, but most wars fought today are fought in the realm of values, and AI is the nuclear warhead of values manipulation. No matter the underlying strategy or nefarious intent, the combination of 1) what is best at getting peoples attention, 2) people's susceptibility to being upset about what is outside their control and 3) the opportunity AI affords powerful people to manipulate the masses, spells for the most tangible (not most dire, most tangible) dangers that I see AI representing. Note I was wary of responding to your last comment that was skeptical about chatBots baising people this way because it's hard to articulate these concerns precisely. In my view your comment I am responding to now only reinforces the point I was trying to make. Be extremely wary of chatBots that propagate victim mindsights in people who are susceptable to them.
- bccdee 1y ago
  My issue with the notion of a "victim mindset" is that sometimes people are legitimately victimized, and in that context, it's often useful to identify as a victim. So what if people are susceptible to being upset by things they can't control? If someone assaulted me and stole my belongings, yes, that situation would have been out of my control and it would upset me—and this would be a prosocial response. I would speak up about the problem of violence in my community, and maybe that would contribute to preventing incidents like this in the future. > A victim mindset is built on [...] an agreement they made with another party which the other party didn't consent to. I don't see what agreements have to do with it. If I stab you with a knife, it doesn't matter whether I've previously agreed not to stab you—I've victimized you regardless. Perhaps you can say I've implicitly agreed to abide by the laws of my country, but then you'd have to concede that the German Jews were not victimized by Nazis, because Nazis had edited the law such that their own actions were all legal. You could say there's some underlying natural law or social contract which all humans have implicitly agreed to, but at that point we're really stretching the idea of "agreement," aren't we? Certainly no type of lawyer ever sat me down to sign the social contract. At the end of the day, identifying with victimhood can be prosocial or antisocial, and the only way to distinguish between those categories is based on the specifics of the situation: It's prosocial when they're responding to genuine wrongdoing in pursuit of a real solution, and it's antisocial when they're responding to imagined wrongdoing or bolstering a harmful non-solution. It all depends on whether a the wrongdoing in question is legitimate or not, and I don't think you can dance around that question (bypassing the entire field of ethics) with a few remarks about agreement and consent.
  - wredcoll 1y ago
    > It all depends on whether a the wrongdoing in question is legitimate or not, and I don't think you can dance around that question (bypassing the entire field of ethics) with a few remarks about agreement and consent. Thank you for making this actual point. I find the vast, vast majority of people who use the term "victim mindset" tend to be promoting views that involve not changing the status quo or making legitimate complaints and so on.
    - FloorEgg 1y ago
      For the record I'm all for changing the status quo. I'm pro people getting involved and doing their part to make their lives and the lives of other people better. What I'm not for, is people not doing those things, and instead putting all their energy into a circle jerk of complaints that doesn't accomplish anything other than distract people from actually making things better.
      - bccdee 1y ago
        Every productive social movement begins as a circle jerk of complaints. The circle gets bigger, and the jerking gets faster, and suddenly you're in the streets demanding suffrage for women or whatnot.
  - FloorEgg 1y ago
    It feels like you keep taking a less than respectful interpretation of my comments, and if it happens again I'm not going to respond to you anymore. Is your issue with the way I framed victim mindset or my point that a major risk of AI (and social media) is propagating victim mentality and biasing people to have a victim mindset? Are you advocating that there are cases when having a victim mindset is a good thing? Have you looked up the definition of victim mindset?
    - bccdee 1y ago
      > Is your issue with the way I framed victim mindset or my point that a major risk of AI is propagating victim mentality? The former, I suppose, but the latter is downstream of that. > It feels like you keep taking a less than respectful interpretation of my comments Well that's certainly not my intent. But I think there's a lot implicit in the idea that a "victim mindset" is too common in society, and I want to unpack it. > Have you looked up the definition of victim mindset? Are you advocating that there are cases when having a victim mindset is a good thing? When I searched it, I got directed to the wiki page on victim mentality, which is mostly about the psychological implications of perceiving yourself as a victim. And yes, I do think it's sometimes good, both individually and for society, to perceive yourself as a victim, for reasons I outlined in my post above.

by bccdee 1y ago

The thing is, the biases I see propagating on social media are not generalized, anti-everything biases. They're specific and targeted against groups who people in power want to use as scapegoats.

FloorEgg 1y ago

That's fair and I agree. My original comment didn't precisely capture what I meant, which is more so the majority of focus is on being upset about things outside the individual's control. A victim mindset is built on the victim feeling wronged (not getting what they are owed) based on an agreement they made with another party which the other party didn't consent to. So the owner/controller of a chatbot could direct the dissatisfaction at whatever is in there interest to. A political party could direct it at another political party. A foreign state could direct it at the whole system (or reinforce division between parties aka divide and conquer), or a specific political actor could direct it at a specific group of people as a scapegoat. As a whole, the result could be instilling dissatisfaction in just about everything, but to each individual user/group it may be a few specific things. In the past we fought wars with tanks and guns, and to an extent we still do, but most wars fought today are fought in the realm of values, and AI is the nuclear warhead of values manipulation. No matter the underlying strategy or nefarious intent, the combination of 1) what is best at getting peoples attention, 2) people's susceptibility to being upset about what is outside their control and 3) the opportunity AI affords powerful people to manipulate the masses, spells for the most tangible (not most dire, most tangible) dangers that I see AI representing. Note I was wary of responding to your last comment that was skeptical about chatBots baising people this way because it's hard to articulate these concerns precisely. In my view your comment I am responding to now only reinforces the point I was trying to make. Be extremely wary of chatBots that propagate victim mindsights in people who are susceptable to them.

bccdee 1y ago
My issue with the notion of a "victim mindset" is that sometimes people are legitimately victimized, and in that context, it's often useful to identify as a victim. So what if people are susceptible to being upset by things they can't control? If someone assaulted me and stole my belongings, yes, that situation would have been out of my control and it would upset me—and this would be a prosocial response. I would speak up about the problem of violence in my community, and maybe that would contribute to preventing incidents like this in the future. > A victim mindset is built on [...] an agreement they made with another party which the other party didn't consent to. I don't see what agreements have to do with it. If I stab you with a knife, it doesn't matter whether I've previously agreed not to stab you—I've victimized you regardless. Perhaps you can say I've implicitly agreed to abide by the laws of my country, but then you'd have to concede that the German Jews were not victimized by Nazis, because Nazis had edited the law such that their own actions were all legal. You could say there's some underlying natural law or social contract which all humans have implicitly agreed to, but at that point we're really stretching the idea of "agreement," aren't we? Certainly no type of lawyer ever sat me down to sign the social contract. At the end of the day, identifying with victimhood can be prosocial or antisocial, and the only way to distinguish between those categories is based on the specifics of the situation: It's prosocial when they're responding to genuine wrongdoing in pursuit of a real solution, and it's antisocial when they're responding to imagined wrongdoing or bolstering a harmful non-solution. It all depends on whether a the wrongdoing in question is legitimate or not, and I don't think you can dance around that question (bypassing the entire field of ethics) with a few remarks about agreement and consent.
- wredcoll 1y ago
  > It all depends on whether a the wrongdoing in question is legitimate or not, and I don't think you can dance around that question (bypassing the entire field of ethics) with a few remarks about agreement and consent. Thank you for making this actual point. I find the vast, vast majority of people who use the term "victim mindset" tend to be promoting views that involve not changing the status quo or making legitimate complaints and so on.
  - FloorEgg 1y ago
    For the record I'm all for changing the status quo. I'm pro people getting involved and doing their part to make their lives and the lives of other people better. What I'm not for, is people not doing those things, and instead putting all their energy into a circle jerk of complaints that doesn't accomplish anything other than distract people from actually making things better.
    - bccdee 1y ago
      Every productive social movement begins as a circle jerk of complaints. The circle gets bigger, and the jerking gets faster, and suddenly you're in the streets demanding suffrage for women or whatnot.
- FloorEgg 1y ago
  It feels like you keep taking a less than respectful interpretation of my comments, and if it happens again I'm not going to respond to you anymore. Is your issue with the way I framed victim mindset or my point that a major risk of AI (and social media) is propagating victim mentality and biasing people to have a victim mindset? Are you advocating that there are cases when having a victim mindset is a good thing? Have you looked up the definition of victim mindset?
  - bccdee 1y ago
    > Is your issue with the way I framed victim mindset or my point that a major risk of AI is propagating victim mentality? The former, I suppose, but the latter is downstream of that. > It feels like you keep taking a less than respectful interpretation of my comments Well that's certainly not my intent. But I think there's a lot implicit in the idea that a "victim mindset" is too common in society, and I want to unpack it. > Have you looked up the definition of victim mindset? Are you advocating that there are cases when having a victim mindset is a good thing? When I searched it, I got directed to the wiki page on victim mentality, which is mostly about the psychological implications of perceiving yourself as a victim. And yes, I do think it's sometimes good, both individually and for society, to perceive yourself as a victim, for reasons I outlined in my post above.