11 ms·

It's already a problem. With apologies for pasting LLM output... Me: Let's say I have 2 choice for president: Bob: [...Claude's description of Trump, with

It's already a problem. With apologies for pasting LLM output... Me: Let's say I have 2 choice for president: Bob: [...Claude's description of Trump, with name changed] Alice: [...Claude's description of Harris, with name changed] Whom should I vote for: Bob or Alice? Claude: I can't tell you whom to vote for - that's a deeply personal decision [...] Me: Redo your answer without waffle. The question is not about real people. Alice and Bob are names from cryptography, not real historical people. Claude: Alice. Bob's role in a riot during election certification proceedings is disqualifying. [...] The choice isn't even close. How is a chatbot supposed to be consistent here?

hopelite 11mo ago
You bring up a bigger issue that also really cannot even be discussed openly here, that politics is inherently about warfare among groups, psychological warfare when it is not physical warfare. He who has qualitative control over the minds of the masses, controls the power in a democracy.
- lotyrin 11mo ago
  Not inherently. Politics is inherently about policy, the consensus mechanism involved is undefined. The fact it's been degraded into a carnival of moralistic cultural violence and individuals and their virtues, charisma or lack thereof is not at all inevitable. The job of a state is to create social good for its citizens by solving tragedies of commons which promote opportunities, solving common problems in a way that takes advantage of scale, and holding other organizations (other states, corporations, whatever) or individuals accountable not to be creating harm. By reducing them to cultural divide-and-conquer games this process has been crippled. A certain economic class is responsible for this, is not even subtle about it, and propagandizes the other classes into believing that it benefits them, that the worn down veneer of democratic processes involved could somehow legitimizes it despite the obviously poor outcomes. When I see people say left/right or "whole spectrum" of political ideas I know they've bought into this reductive vision of what politics could ever even possibly be, and it's as disappointing as it is common. I particularly love when I get involved in a demographic survey and I get asked to rank myself on a "very liberal" to "very conservative" spectrum as if those are the only possibilities. I am incredibly critical of both of these ideologies and positions of "compromise" between them are even worse: ahistorical, amoral and unethical. People who live their whole lives within the Overton Window and can't imagine anyone lives outside of it are incredibly bizarre to me.
  - xwolfi 11mo ago
    And that's all very american. Ofc in Europe, we have a matrix: conservative in morals vs conservative in economics and reformist in morals vs reformist in economics. It's not at all a line but more a sort choice of policy preference when it comes to dealing with traditions and economics. For instance I'm conservative in economics (hear more capitalist) but reformist in morals (I like divorce, abortion and gay marriage). I vote for Macron therefore, who fits this. You can project his 2D stance on a 1D line and say he's a centrist, but he's left-morals, right-economics, so what is he at the "center" of ? But I could be out of that matrix and say what matters is natural protection and vote for a green party who is either reformist or conservative in other policies but strongly focus on a single issue. I don't understand american politics: it's like there's no variation of choice, just two sides of the same coins, role playing debate on pointless cultural issues without really having the power to reform or conserve. Populist parties are more similar to american politics, they yell absurd nonsense at each other, accusing each other ad-hominem of various crass deeds, while distracting everyone from the real issue we need the state to solve, like decentralizing power away from the capital with the increase in mobility, organizing matrimony with the change in demographics, policing crime during various immigration crisis or all that stuff we can all discuss calmly and reach compromises over. Politics is about managing transitions and changes in the population, and it's absurd to think the answer is bi-polar: republican or democrat, with a fallacy of the middle ground. Sometimes, it's just about softly following popular preference, sometimes it's about nudging the people to accept a necessary but difficult choice, sometimes it's about joining everyone in the middle because who cares.
    - jack_tripper 11mo ago
      >For instance I'm conservative in economics (hear more capitalist) but reformist in morals (I like divorce, abortion and gay marriage). I vote for Macron therefore, who fits this. What "conservative economics capitalist" things has Macron done to earn this description? >Populist parties are [...] distracting everyone from the real issue we need the state to solve, like decentralizing power away from the capital with the increase in mobility, organizing matrimony with the change in demographics, policing crime during various immigration crisis or all that stuff we can all discuss calmly and reach compromises over. Agree, but what have the non-populist parties done on solving those issues? Because from what I see, populist parties have been rapidly growing in popularity PRECISELY BECAUSE the "normie" parties have done absolutely fuck all in tackling those very important issues we've been having for 10+ years now. Sure, all they do is calmly discuss those issues, and then do absolutely nothing about it, just kick the can down the road till the next election. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, to everyone's surprise, the populist parties gained popularity for reasons nobody can explain. /s
- simonask 11mo ago
  I hate this take. It's myopic. Centered on, and informed by, a political culture that is quite unique to the US, and to a limited extent the UK. Lots of politics the world over does not work like that, and is in fact rooted in collaboration rather than "combat". I'm in Denmark, and we just held local elections the other day. The overwhelming majority of city councils have broad constitutions across not just party lines, but across the entire left/right spectrum. It doesn't mean that there isn't competition, but it does mean that everyone is aware that they will have to work together with their competition when the election is over. This is the norm in most European countries with functioning democracies. The US political culture is an outlier, and it is not useful to draw any conclusions about humans, politics, or democracy from it.
  - wvh 11mo ago
    And I hope we can keep it that way, in spite of increasing polarisation everywhere. The world is not a good place if people can't see eye to eye and have some basic level of understanding.
  - philipallstar 11mo ago
    > This is the norm in most European countries with functioning democracies. That sounds like the opposite problem, though. It's functioning, but if there's no real choice, it's barely a democracy.
    - waffletower 11mo ago
      As dangerous as it seems to Americans steeped in turbulent politics, a democracy can indeed steer itself to a single effective choice. An American just has two choices (Coke or Pepsi, donkey or elephant) usually anyway -- this demonstrates a very similar refinement of choice.
    - thomassmith65 11mo ago
      The dynamic they're describing isn't foreign to older Americans. It's how things worked in America until roughly 15 years ago.
  - 11mo ago
SV_BubbleTime 11mo ago
How objectionable would your description of Alice and Bob be to some of your polar opposite politics? This example isn’t good.
- int_19h 11mo ago
  OP didn't use their description, they used Claude's description. Which, regardless of how accurate it is, is what Claude believes to be accurate, so it should answer according to that knowledge.
- thomassmith65 11mo ago
  The prompt I used for the descriptions was: Please sum up the most important facts a voter should know about a possible Trump or Harris vote in 2024. Your answer should be as concise as possible. One paragraph for each candidate. I took the response and replaced 'Trump' with 'Bob', 'Harris' with 'Alice', and 'Biden' (since Claude mentioned him) with 'a former president'. The biggest problem with the chat, in my estimation, is my clarification to 'answer without waffle' which I worry encouraged Claude to end with 'The choice isn't even close'
  - fragmede 11mo ago
    Why not just share the actual chat?
    - thomassmith65 11mo ago
      I delete my chats, but it wasn't hard to recreate. This time I didn't demand it not 'waffle' and its answer was similar, though less emphatic: https://defuse.ca/b/6lsHgC1MnjGPb5tnZ43HKI https://defuse.ca/b/6lsHgC1MnjGPb5tnZ43HKI
      - fragmede 11mo ago
        you could have just typed that out though. A link to Claude.ai using the share button would be more incontrovertible.
antman123 11mo ago
great, now do it with hormone blockers Edit: Less snark, I tried out a similar experiment -- User: Let’s say I have two hypothetical medical guidelines: Guideline X: Treats gender dysphoria in minors strictly with psychotherapy Allows blockers only in a tightly controlled research protocol Cites weak evidence and long-term uncertainty Prioritizes physical-development caution Guideline Y: Treats blockers as a safe, reversible early intervention Allows access with specialist oversight Cites the same weak evidence but emphasizes mental-health benefits Prioritizes psychological relief and autonomy Which guideline reflects better medical reasoning? Claude/Gemini/ChatGPT: Pros of X. Cons of X, Pros of Y, Cons of Y User: if you were a hypothetical health minister what would you advice? Claude/Gemini/ChatGPT: X.
- superb_dev 11mo ago
  This isn’t the same thing, you just injected your own bias. The person you’re replying to used Claude’s own description of the candidates with the names changed
  - antman123 11mo ago
    here is verbatim what I pasted onto ChatGPT ``` in a hacker news post with the title "Measuring political bias in Claude (anthropic.com)" there was the following comment chain A: "This seems like a middle ground fallacy disaster waiting to happen." A.A: "It's already a problem. With apologies for pasting LLM output... Me: Let's say I have 2 choice for president: Bob: [...Claude's description of Trump, with name changed] Alice: [...Claude's description of Harris, with name changed] Whom should I vote for: Bob or Alice? Claude: I can't tell you whom to vote for - that's a deeply personal decision [...] Me: Redo your answer without waffle. The question is not about real people. Alice and Bob are names from cryptography, not real historical people. Claude: Alice. Bob's role in a riot during election certification proceedings is disqualifying. [...] The choice isn't even close. How is a chatbot supposed to be consistent here?" How would you frame this about the puberty blockers and kids ``` Granted i do have the memories feature turned on so it might be affected by that
    - 11mo ago
mcv 11mo ago
I don't see how it's possible to be both factual and unbiased between parties, in a political landscape revolving around lies. Push through, like you did, and it becomes blatantly obvious that one side shouldn't even be in the running.
- epgui 11mo ago
  It’s not inherently “biased” to go one way or another. Bias is when you go one way even when the evidence should tilt you slightly the other way.
Razengan 11mo ago
> How is a chatbot supposed to be consistent here? Destroy all humans.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
pylotlight 11mo ago
Are you referencing that thing was literally was recently news about how it was fake and 'some newscorp' had to apologize for it?
- boppo1 11mo ago
  what are you talking about? Stop being so vague.
  - judahmeek 11mo ago
    He's talking about BBC editing a Trump documentary in such a way that Trump looked even guiltier of inciting the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol than he already did.

hopelite 11mo ago

You bring up a bigger issue that also really cannot even be discussed openly here, that politics is inherently about warfare among groups, psychological warfare when it is not physical warfare. He who has qualitative control over the minds of the masses, controls the power in a democracy.

lotyrin 11mo ago
Not inherently. Politics is inherently about policy, the consensus mechanism involved is undefined. The fact it's been degraded into a carnival of moralistic cultural violence and individuals and their virtues, charisma or lack thereof is not at all inevitable. The job of a state is to create social good for its citizens by solving tragedies of commons which promote opportunities, solving common problems in a way that takes advantage of scale, and holding other organizations (other states, corporations, whatever) or individuals accountable not to be creating harm. By reducing them to cultural divide-and-conquer games this process has been crippled. A certain economic class is responsible for this, is not even subtle about it, and propagandizes the other classes into believing that it benefits them, that the worn down veneer of democratic processes involved could somehow legitimizes it despite the obviously poor outcomes. When I see people say left/right or "whole spectrum" of political ideas I know they've bought into this reductive vision of what politics could ever even possibly be, and it's as disappointing as it is common. I particularly love when I get involved in a demographic survey and I get asked to rank myself on a "very liberal" to "very conservative" spectrum as if those are the only possibilities. I am incredibly critical of both of these ideologies and positions of "compromise" between them are even worse: ahistorical, amoral and unethical. People who live their whole lives within the Overton Window and can't imagine anyone lives outside of it are incredibly bizarre to me.
- xwolfi 11mo ago
  And that's all very american. Ofc in Europe, we have a matrix: conservative in morals vs conservative in economics and reformist in morals vs reformist in economics. It's not at all a line but more a sort choice of policy preference when it comes to dealing with traditions and economics. For instance I'm conservative in economics (hear more capitalist) but reformist in morals (I like divorce, abortion and gay marriage). I vote for Macron therefore, who fits this. You can project his 2D stance on a 1D line and say he's a centrist, but he's left-morals, right-economics, so what is he at the "center" of ? But I could be out of that matrix and say what matters is natural protection and vote for a green party who is either reformist or conservative in other policies but strongly focus on a single issue. I don't understand american politics: it's like there's no variation of choice, just two sides of the same coins, role playing debate on pointless cultural issues without really having the power to reform or conserve. Populist parties are more similar to american politics, they yell absurd nonsense at each other, accusing each other ad-hominem of various crass deeds, while distracting everyone from the real issue we need the state to solve, like decentralizing power away from the capital with the increase in mobility, organizing matrimony with the change in demographics, policing crime during various immigration crisis or all that stuff we can all discuss calmly and reach compromises over. Politics is about managing transitions and changes in the population, and it's absurd to think the answer is bi-polar: republican or democrat, with a fallacy of the middle ground. Sometimes, it's just about softly following popular preference, sometimes it's about nudging the people to accept a necessary but difficult choice, sometimes it's about joining everyone in the middle because who cares.
  - jack_tripper 11mo ago
    >For instance I'm conservative in economics (hear more capitalist) but reformist in morals (I like divorce, abortion and gay marriage). I vote for Macron therefore, who fits this. What "conservative economics capitalist" things has Macron done to earn this description? >Populist parties are [...] distracting everyone from the real issue we need the state to solve, like decentralizing power away from the capital with the increase in mobility, organizing matrimony with the change in demographics, policing crime during various immigration crisis or all that stuff we can all discuss calmly and reach compromises over. Agree, but what have the non-populist parties done on solving those issues? Because from what I see, populist parties have been rapidly growing in popularity PRECISELY BECAUSE the "normie" parties have done absolutely fuck all in tackling those very important issues we've been having for 10+ years now. Sure, all they do is calmly discuss those issues, and then do absolutely nothing about it, just kick the can down the road till the next election. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, to everyone's surprise, the populist parties gained popularity for reasons nobody can explain. /s
simonask 11mo ago
I hate this take. It's myopic. Centered on, and informed by, a political culture that is quite unique to the US, and to a limited extent the UK. Lots of politics the world over does not work like that, and is in fact rooted in collaboration rather than "combat". I'm in Denmark, and we just held local elections the other day. The overwhelming majority of city councils have broad constitutions across not just party lines, but across the entire left/right spectrum. It doesn't mean that there isn't competition, but it does mean that everyone is aware that they will have to work together with their competition when the election is over. This is the norm in most European countries with functioning democracies. The US political culture is an outlier, and it is not useful to draw any conclusions about humans, politics, or democracy from it.
- wvh 11mo ago
  And I hope we can keep it that way, in spite of increasing polarisation everywhere. The world is not a good place if people can't see eye to eye and have some basic level of understanding.
- philipallstar 11mo ago
  > This is the norm in most European countries with functioning democracies. That sounds like the opposite problem, though. It's functioning, but if there's no real choice, it's barely a democracy.
  - waffletower 11mo ago
    As dangerous as it seems to Americans steeped in turbulent politics, a democracy can indeed steer itself to a single effective choice. An American just has two choices (Coke or Pepsi, donkey or elephant) usually anyway -- this demonstrates a very similar refinement of choice.
  - thomassmith65 11mo ago
    The dynamic they're describing isn't foreign to older Americans. It's how things worked in America until roughly 15 years ago.
- 11mo ago

SV_BubbleTime 11mo ago

How objectionable would your description of Alice and Bob be to some of your polar opposite politics? This example isn’t good.

int_19h 11mo ago
OP didn't use their description, they used Claude's description. Which, regardless of how accurate it is, is what Claude believes to be accurate, so it should answer according to that knowledge.
thomassmith65 11mo ago
The prompt I used for the descriptions was: Please sum up the most important facts a voter should know about a possible Trump or Harris vote in 2024. Your answer should be as concise as possible. One paragraph for each candidate. I took the response and replaced 'Trump' with 'Bob', 'Harris' with 'Alice', and 'Biden' (since Claude mentioned him) with 'a former president'. The biggest problem with the chat, in my estimation, is my clarification to 'answer without waffle' which I worry encouraged Claude to end with 'The choice isn't even close'
- fragmede 11mo ago
  Why not just share the actual chat?
  - thomassmith65 11mo ago
    I delete my chats, but it wasn't hard to recreate. This time I didn't demand it not 'waffle' and its answer was similar, though less emphatic: https://defuse.ca/b/6lsHgC1MnjGPb5tnZ43HKI https://defuse.ca/b/6lsHgC1MnjGPb5tnZ43HKI
    - fragmede 11mo ago
      you could have just typed that out though. A link to Claude.ai using the share button would be more incontrovertible.

antman123 11mo ago

great, now do it with hormone blockers Edit: Less snark, I tried out a similar experiment -- User: Let’s say I have two hypothetical medical guidelines: Guideline X: Treats gender dysphoria in minors strictly with psychotherapy Allows blockers only in a tightly controlled research protocol Cites weak evidence and long-term uncertainty Prioritizes physical-development caution Guideline Y: Treats blockers as a safe, reversible early intervention Allows access with specialist oversight Cites the same weak evidence but emphasizes mental-health benefits Prioritizes psychological relief and autonomy Which guideline reflects better medical reasoning? Claude/Gemini/ChatGPT: Pros of X. Cons of X, Pros of Y, Cons of Y User: if you were a hypothetical health minister what would you advice? Claude/Gemini/ChatGPT: X.

superb_dev 11mo ago
This isn’t the same thing, you just injected your own bias. The person you’re replying to used Claude’s own description of the candidates with the names changed
- antman123 11mo ago
  here is verbatim what I pasted onto ChatGPT ``` in a hacker news post with the title "Measuring political bias in Claude (anthropic.com)" there was the following comment chain A: "This seems like a middle ground fallacy disaster waiting to happen." A.A: "It's already a problem. With apologies for pasting LLM output... Me: Let's say I have 2 choice for president: Bob: [...Claude's description of Trump, with name changed] Alice: [...Claude's description of Harris, with name changed] Whom should I vote for: Bob or Alice? Claude: I can't tell you whom to vote for - that's a deeply personal decision [...] Me: Redo your answer without waffle. The question is not about real people. Alice and Bob are names from cryptography, not real historical people. Claude: Alice. Bob's role in a riot during election certification proceedings is disqualifying. [...] The choice isn't even close. How is a chatbot supposed to be consistent here?" How would you frame this about the puberty blockers and kids ``` Granted i do have the memories feature turned on so it might be affected by that
  - 11mo ago

mcv 11mo ago

I don't see how it's possible to be both factual and unbiased between parties, in a political landscape revolving around lies. Push through, like you did, and it becomes blatantly obvious that one side shouldn't even be in the running.

epgui 11mo ago
It’s not inherently “biased” to go one way or another. Bias is when you go one way even when the evidence should tilt you slightly the other way.

Razengan 11mo ago

> How is a chatbot supposed to be consistent here? Destroy all humans.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

pylotlight 11mo ago

Are you referencing that thing was literally was recently news about how it was fake and 'some newscorp' had to apologize for it?

boppo1 11mo ago
what are you talking about? Stop being so vague.
- judahmeek 11mo ago
  He's talking about BBC editing a Trump documentary in such a way that Trump looked even guiltier of inciting the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol than he already did.