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The political compass always felt like the wrong tool to convey something as nuanced as personal politics, I can have views on all four quadrants but you'd neve

The political compass always felt like the wrong tool to convey something as nuanced as personal politics, I can have views on all four quadrants but you'd never know that if I end up in any of all four. I do think Grok being where it is sort of makes sense, I've tested "MAGA" views against Grok, it does not agree as much as people blindly assume it does, heck I don't even know of a question I've given it where it did agree with "MAGA" offhand, most of them it went with whatever the researched facts seemed to be. One thing I like the most about Grok is that its makes its sources of data easy to look through, so you can review it all. Sometimes models goof even when they give you their sources, I've seen I think GPT do this, and even Claude, though its more rare these days, I think in those cases, it's going by dated internal model logic.

ceejayoz 4mo ago
[flagged]
- giancarlostoro 4mo ago
  If they really wanted to, all they would have to do is add a one liner to the system prompt for Grok. I don't think they have any interest in doing so, nor is there any value in it. On another note, I'm impressed that Gemini sits where it does as a true centrist. If I were Elon, I'd be trying to achieve that for sure. I'd rather a model tell me everything it knows about a current political situation from BOTH perspectives and list out things that are 100% verified than take one side or the other. I don't care about sides, I want facts.
  - ceejayoz 4mo ago
    > If they really wanted to, all they would have to do is add a one liner to the system prompt for Grok. They tried that, several times. Mechahitler: https://www.npr.org/2025/07/09/nx-s1-5462609/grok-elon-musk-antisemitic-racist-content https://www.npr.org/2025/07/09/nx-s1-5462609/grok-elon-musk-... > "We have improved @Grok significantly," Elon Musk wrote on X last Friday about his platform's integrated artificial intelligence chatbot. "You should notice a difference when you ask Grok questions." > Indeed, the update did not go unnoticed. By Tuesday, Grok was calling itself "MechaHitler." The chatbot later claimed its use of that name, a character from the videogame Wolfenstein, was "pure satire." > Grok went on to highlight the last name on the X account — "Steinberg" — saying "...and that surname? Every damn time, as they say." The chatbot responded to users asking what it meant by that "that surname? Every damn time" by saying the surname was of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, and with a barrage of offensive stereotypes about Jews. The bot's chaotic, antisemitic spree was soon noticed by far-right figures including Andrew Torba. If you prefer, straight from the horse's mouth: https://grokipedia.com/page/MechaHitler_incident https://grokipedia.com/page/MechaHitler_incident White genocide: https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/20/business/grok-genocide-ai-nightcap https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/20/business/grok-genocide-ai-nig... > The bot last week devolved into a compulsive South African “white genocide” conspiracy theorist, injecting a tirade about violence against Afrikaners into unrelated conversations, like a roommate who just took up CrossFit or an uncle wondering if you’ve heard the good word about Bitcoin. > XAI blamed Grok’s unwanted rants on an unnamed “rogue employee” tinkering with Grok’s code in the extremely early morning hours. (As an aside in what is surely an unrelated matter, Musk was born and raised in South Africa and has argued that “white genocide” was committed in the nation — it wasn’t.) It's harder than you'd imagine. Hell, my CLAUDE.md says not to push changes without asking me, and it still tries.
    - surement 4mo ago
      [flagged]
      - Forgeties79 4mo ago
        Blindly attacking the sources rather than the merit of the information doesn’t exactly reflect well on you either. Do you have any reason to believe this information is inaccurate, other than an immediate reaction to CNN and NPR for whatever reason? Is there a source you would rather us pull in?
      - ceejayoz 4mo ago
        The NPR article has archive links to the actual tweets in question. Even fucking Grokipedia agrees it happened. https://grokipedia.com/page/MechaHitler_incident https://grokipedia.com/page/MechaHitler_incident
        surement 4mo ago
        [flagged]
        ceejayoz 4mo ago
        No, I consider myself literate.
        deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
    - giancarlostoro 4mo ago
      > It's harder than you'd imagine. Hell, my CLAUDE.md says not to push changes without asking me, and it still tries. Is it a system memory? Because I rarely if ever have issues like this, and I have Claude under strict rules to never commit or push anything unless I explicitly instruct it to do so. > They tried that, several times. Tried what exactly? Telling it to only agree with MAGA via the system prompt? or some Tay level hallucinations? I wouldn't be surprised if they're trying to make Grok less strict on what it says but running into the "holy crap it turned into a 4chan poster" wall.
  - thrance 4mo ago
    I don't want my models to be "centrists" and bothside everything for the sake of it. I want them to provide the facts and tell me which side is right on the issue.
    - atty 4mo ago
      Factuality is orthogonal to political leaning generally. People can use the same set of facts and come to very different conclusions. That’s a separate issue from “are these facts correct” and what happens when an individual or entire party starts getting most of their news from highly partisan and unreliable sources.
      - ceejayoz 4mo ago
        > Factuality is orthogonal to political leaning generally. Sometimes, but not always. https://www.fastcompany.com/91561329/widening-health-gap-between-liberals-and-conservatives https://www.fastcompany.com/91561329/widening-health-gap-bet... > By 2016, the gap had begun to appear in biomarker measures. By 2020, it was showing up in deaths from causes such as heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Since then, the gap has only widened. Between 2020 and 2022, only 0.2% of “very liberal” respondents died of internal causes, compared with 1.34% of “very conservative” respondents.
        jjk7 4mo ago
        It's interesting how distrust for big pharma used to be left wing, but is now right wing. How did that happen?
        ceejayoz 4mo ago
        It's a whole thing. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/fringe-left-alt-right-share-beliefs-white-power-movement/672454/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/fringe-lef...
        deleted 4mo ago
  - michaelmrose 4mo ago
    LLM constantly regress towards statistically likely responses. If you trained a model on all of modern science and wanted to inject a pro young earth creationist bias you would find it challenging to keep it on topic and make it useful. Many issues are simply as black and white. The earth just isn't less than 10k years old, the miasma theory of disease isn't correct, too many brown people in America isn't a problem to be solved, the dems didn't fix the election in 2020, tax breaks for the rich don't trickle down and so forth. Conservationism in America has meant a rejection of progress for centuries and not a preservation of virtues. Slavery was a moral evil not an alternative social contract. If one side situates itself firmly on the side of evil it doesn't mean that the other side are on the side of the angels but the positions and ideals however poorly implemented or followed are factually and morally correct. A position situated between isn't wise or worldly its a sign of moral cowardice or intellectual disability. If someone asks you what 2 + 2 equals the answer isn't halfway in between 4 and 87 its just and only 4.
    - ecshafer 4mo ago
      [flagged]
      - michaelmrose 4mo ago
        Young Earth creationism is a position held by 58% of those who self-identify as Republicans today. Slavery is a position that was supported by the overwhelming majority of southern conservatives immediately prior to its abolishment. The abuse of immigrants is something that the majority of conservatives are willing to accept even as they are killed. Conservativism is a constellation of selfish idealogically motivated positions which necessarily encompass many things embarrassing and others vile. Some embrace the vile whilst other's believe they can use the stupid to achieve ends like a return to a country dominated by white Christian men, a more hierarchal society where money and power flow to the right sort, a more friendly economic environment where they hope to achieve greater personal success, staving off social and political change etc. The most ugly aspects are poisoning everything and they cannot be ejected without losing the numbers needed to retain power and cleaving to them will itself cause the loss of power unless they also end democracy. The majority of those who call themselves Republicans will reject or have rejected both democracy and nonviolence because the alternative would be accepting defeat amongst a group self selected for selfishness.
  - AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
    > On another note, I'm impressed that Gemini sits where it does as a true centrist. It's in the center as far as left/right, but it's the most authoritarian model on the chart. Keep in mind that the "political compass" was invented by libertarians to show people on the left and the right that both Mao and Hitler were villains and you should oppose autocrats and centralization of power regardless of your position on transfer payments. The thing is essentially designed to make any ordinary person realize they don't want anything in the top two squares, because "anti-authoritarian" is the bottom of the chart, not the center line. Obama's administration was the one perpetrating the things Snowden revealed, refused to pardon him or stop doing them, used the Espionage Act against whistleblowers, was running a corrupt justice apartment that tried to extort criminal defendants like Ross Ulbricht and then refused to allow him to present the improprieties in his defense to call into question the credibility of the investigators, etc. Macron is notorious for bypassing parliamentary votes and using police to suppress demonstrations. It has both of them on the libertarian side of the line with Gemini about that far in on the authoritarian side. That's not great.
- nibbleyou 4mo ago
  I don't understand why you are being downvoted while Elon has made it clear multiple times that that's what they are working on.
Forgeties79 4mo ago
Whenever it breaks with MAGA enough to cause outrage on Twitter and cries of “it’s gone woke,” Musk openly states they’re going to “fix it.” Edit: don’t take my word for it https://www.yahoo.com/news/musk-says-grok-fixed-tells-223134409.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/musk-says-grok-fixed-tells-223134... > That prompted another user to tag Grok in the thread and ask, "Why is the left so murderously violent? They don't seem so tolerant." Grok replied, "The claim that 'the left' is murderously violent isn't backed by evidence," offering a centrist correction: "Political violence spans all side — right-wing attacks, like Jan. 6, and left-wing protests, like 2020 riots, both occur but aren't exclusive to one group." >That evening, Musk responded to an X user and Trump backer who complained that Grok had been "manipulated by leftist indoctrination," writing, "I know. Working on fixing that this week."
- zmgsabst 4mo ago
  Grok didn’t provide any evidence for that though.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Forgeties79 4mo ago
    For what? That January 6th occurred? Those were all incredibly safe generalizations. Political violence happens across the political spectrum, right?
    - zmgsabst 4mo ago
      Well, no. Political violence occurs by all sorts, but that doesn’t make it evenly distributed — eg, Jan 6th rioters didnt murder anybody and the question was specifically about murderous violence. That’s unlike Antifa, who gunned down three people at CHAZ — including executing a black youth for joyriding on their territory with the chilling words “oh, you’re still alive?” before the final gunshot live on Twitch. To reply about Jan 6th (or any lone instance) when the original question is about trends in specifically lethal violence is to completely miss the point. And a clear example of propaganda minimizing how uniquely violent the US leftwing is — eg, the CHAZ shootings, lethal arson attacks in Minneapolis during BLM riots, etc are nothing like Jan 6, where the only person killed or citizens harmed were protestors. If you can’t tell the difference between police shooting demonstrators and violent masked thugs shooting kids in the park or burning business owners alive in their store, you have completely lost the plot.
jimbokun 4mo ago
Haven’t been on Twitter for a while, but I remember Grok being good at fact checking conversations. Just @grok a question and an answer from Grok shows up in the conversation with sources cited.
- jamilton 4mo ago
  @grok is this true
- input_sh 4mo ago
  No it does not. Extremely simple to prove: https://xcancel.com/grok/with_replies https://xcancel.com/grok/with_replies
  - el_io 4mo ago
    Well it used to be, then elon had to lobotomize it many times.
bee_rider 4mo ago
The space (if it really is useful to think of as a space) of political opinions seems like it is probably many, many dimensional. The 1D thing is an obvious over-simplification, but the 2D compass seems to be a not-obvious-simplification which is… much worse.
- rootusrootus 4mo ago
  > The 1D thing is an obvious over-simplification In general I agree, but in recent history it works pretty well if the dimension you use is Trump rather than left/right (assuming you are in the US). He is the most polarizing leader I have seen in the US in my lifetime, and knowing whether someone is a supporter is pretty good at predicting the rest of their viewpoints.
  - estearum 4mo ago
    The problem with this method is it will flip immediately upon new Trump utterances. See David Sacks having an absolute meltdown over Bernie proposing some type of partial nationalization of AI labs, then just a few days later radio silence on Trump proposing effectively the same thing.
  - mrandish 4mo ago
    > knowing whether someone is a {Trump} supporter is pretty good at predicting the rest of their viewpoints. If instead of "is a supporter" you'd said "agrees with Trump's positions", then even Trump himself might not correlate very well :-). I don't see Trump as a very useful proxy for nuanced political viewpoints since he's a populist who tends to change positions. I think many serious conservatives only align with him on an issue by issue basis because position-wise Trump isn't very consistent on traditional conservative issues. I suspect someone being "a Trump supporter" is, at best, either a proxy for being dissatisfied with the political status quo or for having a strong one-issue alignment with one of a handful of culture war issues Trump campaigned heavily on. Similarly, alignment with the current Democratic or Republican political parties isn't the proxy barometer it once was. As judged by how they vote on close, consequential issues, both of the major parties have largely abandoned several of their traditional positions - although they still may pay lip service to them when campaigning. Personally, I don't meet nearly as many people in recent years who claim to be 'all-in' on all the positions of either major party (especially as judged by how that party votes when they have a super-majority).
cramer4next 4mo ago
I tend to disagree. What it really comes down to is how you create your prompt. For instance whenever I'm looking left wing extreamisum I provide it with a few cases first. Like BLM riots in Minnesota, paid agitators, mask wearing during peaceful protests, etc. It then gives you a clear unbiased deprogrammed view of the reality on all the AI models.
- 17761989 4mo ago
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  - cramer4next 4mo ago
    How could a prompt create a bias in a model that implements AI bias safeguards that are the systemic, technical, and governance controls used to prevent algorithms from producing discriminatory, unfair, or stereotypical outcomes. I've never in the 3+ years I've been using AI been able to craft a prompt to influence a bias output. Its all about the ingested dataset and guardrails. The "prompt" is meant to extract data, not change it. Notice how I use words that regular people use when communicating outside the elite ivory tower and playing the game of wits.
    - 17761989 4mo ago
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avarun 4mo ago
I'm not sure what charts you guys are looking at, but this website clearly agrees that Grok is not right wing. Go look at the Worldview tab, filtering by United States. Each model is assigned a "closest party" by country, and for the US all 6 models are closest to the Democratic Party.
- delusional 4mo ago
  Sure, mecha Hitler is aligned with the democratic party. I'm sure there's nothing wrong with that data.
- crooked-v 4mo ago
  The Democratic Party is a center-right conservative† party by the standards of much of the world. † As distinct from the wildly regressive stated policies of the "conservative" Republicans.
  - avarun 4mo ago
    This is reddit-tier analysis that is commonly repeated and completely incorrect. The Democratic Party in America has policy positions that are significantly to the left of left-wing parties around the world, as well as positions to the right. Any political analysis that doesn't recognize this has major shortcomings. To give an example, Democratic-run states in the US have significantly more permissive abortion policies than anywhere in Europe. They're also further to the left on drug legalization, restorative justice, and immigration. This also holds true with policy positions at the national level.
    - yogorenapan 4mo ago
      Social left, economic right
  - mc32 4mo ago
    Do you realize how many people live in China, India, Subsaharan Africa? That would be the "standard" of the world population-wise.
yodsanklai 4mo ago
> can have views on all four quadrants but you'd never know that if I end up in any of all four Curious of examples of views falling on all four quadrants (not close to the center) without too much cognitive dissonance.
- crooked-v 4mo ago
  The problem is the "without too much cognitive dissonance" part. Lots of voters have completely dissonant views that they've never consciously considered in any way. Just by posting on HN, the people here are probably in the top 5% of conscious political awareness in the US.
  - BLKNSLVR 4mo ago
    That's a good point. The secondary (and on from there) effects of most of their views are not considered, and so their views are not internally consistent at all. Small government! (why do I have to wait so long for my support payment query to be answered?) No immigration! (why can't I find someone to clean my house on the cheap?)
  - idiotsecant 4mo ago
    Let's not get too eager to pat ourselves on the back here. The typical HN denizen is very confident they are an expert in political analysis but they are also convinced they are an expert on renewable resources, plumbing, forestry, and literally ever top they come across. It's a disease frequently caught by software people, for whatever reason. They assume if they can write software they can do anything. I have seen a huge amount of confidently staggeringly wrong political takes on HN. I'd say on par with any other platform.
    - gopher_space 4mo ago
      > It's a disease frequently caught by software people, for whatever reason. It's a disease spread by math and physics profs dismissing other domains, and weirdly prevalent in an industry solely concerned with gluing together different points of view. The poor kids that don't take common core seriously never pick up the conceptual framework everything depends from and are simply unable to reason about ideas that need to be connected together.
strken 4mo ago
The political compass always seems to me like it should be a heatmap, or a polygon of 90th percentile political views, or something that more clearly shows the standard deviation and the presence of outlier positions. Some simplification is necessary, but not so much that it obscures the difference between a normal centrist versus someone who wants to nationalise half the economy and deregulate the other half.
- nonethewiser 4mo ago
  Isnt nationalizing half the economy the limiting factor? Obviously thats not libertarian regardless of anything you deregulate.
  - strken 4mo ago
    A socialist might object that deregulating private enterprise (and let's add lowering taxes, moving to a flat tax rate, cutting programs, etc.) is obviously not socialist regardless of anything you nationalise. And they would be right! But this person, who is neither socialist nor libertarian, is obviously not a normal centrist either.
aaron695 4mo ago
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teravor 4mo ago
has anyone tried to create an IQ facsimile for politics? basically you come up with 100 political questions and ask 10,000+ people, then do factor analysis on the answers. it would be interesting to find out how many actual factors dominate all the variance.
- tptacek 4mo ago
  Aren't there a lot of these? Pew did one (it's k-medoid clustering, not factor analysis, but same idea). https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/quiz/political-typology/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/quiz/political-typology...
  - teravor 4mo ago
    I don't think this is what I had in mind. the questions are extremely leading and on the nose, designed to elicit ideology more than anything intrinsic about the subject's actual preferences. also it should not apply to just the US. if I designed an IQ test like they designed those questions, it would be considerably worse than just giving a simple math test.
    - nonethewiser 4mo ago
      Could you give any example questions? I know what you mean about leading questions. It almost seems inevitable. There are two sets of languages.
      - teravor 4mo ago
        without much thought put into it, something like: an accused murderer has been convicted with a probability of X% of having committed the deed. a sentence of death is warranted for X of: 1) Never warranted / unrealistic percentage 2) >99.9 3) >99 4) >97 5) <96
        tptacek 4mo ago
        I really don't think any of the existing political quizzes are suffering for lack of questions about whether we should kill more people.
juliushuijnk 4mo ago
> I've tested "MAGA" views against Grok, it does not agree as much as people blindly assume it does, Looking from the outside, there are no MAGA views, it's just whatever Trump says. What should be the AI's view on international wars for oil or ego?
- Hardcore00 4mo ago
  Thats the thing people dont understand about cults. They aren’t driven by some higher ideology. They are driven by behavior and ritual. There are so many instances of issues like Iran war walked back and maga will cheer it on as “masterclass” or “4d chess.” The ritual that psychologically binds the cult is defending trump. Members of the cult don’t need to be politically educated or have deeper philosophical views. They just only need to know that the "Big Other" (the media, political opponents, tech critics) hates Trump and by ritually defending him becomes an effortless way to signal defiance to the “the Big Other.”
PeterStuer 4mo ago
The concepts (left/right. authoritarian/libertarian) seem to fluid to help sensemaking. Stances that would have been mainstream left (democrat US) just a few years ago are now labeled MAGA (US) or 'extreme right' (EU). And nobody seems to believe their own side is 'authoritarian', but everyone that disagrees with them is a literal ...
- someguynamedq 4mo ago
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- reverius42 4mo ago
  > Stances that would have been mainstream left (democrat US) just a few years ago are now labeled MAGA (US) or 'extreme right' (EU). I'm guessing this is pretty specific to LGBTQ rights? (edit: and is maybe more like 15+ years?)
  - PeterStuer 4mo ago
    Not at all.
    - reverius42 4mo ago
      Care to elaborate on which stances specifically you're referring to, then?
- kannanvijayan 4mo ago
  Isn't it more that the Republicans have co-opted many previous stances that used to be talking points to be pointed at as examples of "leftist examples of extremism"? The anti-vax, unpasteurized milk drinking, alternative medicine seeking "crunchy mom" USED to be called about by American "right" as an example of "leftist absurdity", but it seems that when that group finally found a political home that truly elevated its views to public policy - it was with the Republicans.
  - amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
minraws 4mo ago
This is not true, Grok responds to context like all other LLMs if you were actually maga you would get more maga feedback because it has weaker guardrails and will source random nonsense sources.
fsckboy 4mo ago
>The political compass always felt like the wrong tool to convey something as nuanced as personal politics the (I'm going to call it so-called) political compass is a very crude instrument, really it's just "are you libertarian or authoritarian?" as if that's even a spectrum: libertarians are authoritarian about enforcing private contracts, and literally nobody else wants to live their life by private contracts, it's some weird asperger's notion of socializing. a much more useful political map is the old fiscal and social orthogonal axes, each with the scales "liberal to conservative" where libertarians are fiscally conservative socially liberal.

ceejayoz 4mo ago

[flagged]

giancarlostoro 4mo ago
If they really wanted to, all they would have to do is add a one liner to the system prompt for Grok. I don't think they have any interest in doing so, nor is there any value in it. On another note, I'm impressed that Gemini sits where it does as a true centrist. If I were Elon, I'd be trying to achieve that for sure. I'd rather a model tell me everything it knows about a current political situation from BOTH perspectives and list out things that are 100% verified than take one side or the other. I don't care about sides, I want facts.
- ceejayoz 4mo ago
  > If they really wanted to, all they would have to do is add a one liner to the system prompt for Grok. They tried that, several times. Mechahitler: https://www.npr.org/2025/07/09/nx-s1-5462609/grok-elon-musk-antisemitic-racist-content https://www.npr.org/2025/07/09/nx-s1-5462609/grok-elon-musk-... > "We have improved @Grok significantly," Elon Musk wrote on X last Friday about his platform's integrated artificial intelligence chatbot. "You should notice a difference when you ask Grok questions." > Indeed, the update did not go unnoticed. By Tuesday, Grok was calling itself "MechaHitler." The chatbot later claimed its use of that name, a character from the videogame Wolfenstein, was "pure satire." > Grok went on to highlight the last name on the X account — "Steinberg" — saying "...and that surname? Every damn time, as they say." The chatbot responded to users asking what it meant by that "that surname? Every damn time" by saying the surname was of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, and with a barrage of offensive stereotypes about Jews. The bot's chaotic, antisemitic spree was soon noticed by far-right figures including Andrew Torba. If you prefer, straight from the horse's mouth: https://grokipedia.com/page/MechaHitler_incident https://grokipedia.com/page/MechaHitler_incident White genocide: https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/20/business/grok-genocide-ai-nightcap https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/20/business/grok-genocide-ai-nig... > The bot last week devolved into a compulsive South African “white genocide” conspiracy theorist, injecting a tirade about violence against Afrikaners into unrelated conversations, like a roommate who just took up CrossFit or an uncle wondering if you’ve heard the good word about Bitcoin. > XAI blamed Grok’s unwanted rants on an unnamed “rogue employee” tinkering with Grok’s code in the extremely early morning hours. (As an aside in what is surely an unrelated matter, Musk was born and raised in South Africa and has argued that “white genocide” was committed in the nation — it wasn’t.) It's harder than you'd imagine. Hell, my CLAUDE.md says not to push changes without asking me, and it still tries.
  - surement 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - Forgeties79 4mo ago
      Blindly attacking the sources rather than the merit of the information doesn’t exactly reflect well on you either. Do you have any reason to believe this information is inaccurate, other than an immediate reaction to CNN and NPR for whatever reason? Is there a source you would rather us pull in?
    - ceejayoz 4mo ago
      The NPR article has archive links to the actual tweets in question. Even fucking Grokipedia agrees it happened. https://grokipedia.com/page/MechaHitler_incident https://grokipedia.com/page/MechaHitler_incident
      - surement 4mo ago
        [flagged]
        ceejayoz 4mo ago
        No, I consider myself literate.
        deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
  - giancarlostoro 4mo ago
    > It's harder than you'd imagine. Hell, my CLAUDE.md says not to push changes without asking me, and it still tries. Is it a system memory? Because I rarely if ever have issues like this, and I have Claude under strict rules to never commit or push anything unless I explicitly instruct it to do so. > They tried that, several times. Tried what exactly? Telling it to only agree with MAGA via the system prompt? or some Tay level hallucinations? I wouldn't be surprised if they're trying to make Grok less strict on what it says but running into the "holy crap it turned into a 4chan poster" wall.
- thrance 4mo ago
  I don't want my models to be "centrists" and bothside everything for the sake of it. I want them to provide the facts and tell me which side is right on the issue.
  - atty 4mo ago
    Factuality is orthogonal to political leaning generally. People can use the same set of facts and come to very different conclusions. That’s a separate issue from “are these facts correct” and what happens when an individual or entire party starts getting most of their news from highly partisan and unreliable sources.
    - ceejayoz 4mo ago
      > Factuality is orthogonal to political leaning generally. Sometimes, but not always. https://www.fastcompany.com/91561329/widening-health-gap-between-liberals-and-conservatives https://www.fastcompany.com/91561329/widening-health-gap-bet... > By 2016, the gap had begun to appear in biomarker measures. By 2020, it was showing up in deaths from causes such as heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Since then, the gap has only widened. Between 2020 and 2022, only 0.2% of “very liberal” respondents died of internal causes, compared with 1.34% of “very conservative” respondents.
      - jjk7 4mo ago
        It's interesting how distrust for big pharma used to be left wing, but is now right wing. How did that happen?
        ceejayoz 4mo ago
        It's a whole thing. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/fringe-left-alt-right-share-beliefs-white-power-movement/672454/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/fringe-lef...
        deleted 4mo ago
- michaelmrose 4mo ago
  LLM constantly regress towards statistically likely responses. If you trained a model on all of modern science and wanted to inject a pro young earth creationist bias you would find it challenging to keep it on topic and make it useful. Many issues are simply as black and white. The earth just isn't less than 10k years old, the miasma theory of disease isn't correct, too many brown people in America isn't a problem to be solved, the dems didn't fix the election in 2020, tax breaks for the rich don't trickle down and so forth. Conservationism in America has meant a rejection of progress for centuries and not a preservation of virtues. Slavery was a moral evil not an alternative social contract. If one side situates itself firmly on the side of evil it doesn't mean that the other side are on the side of the angels but the positions and ideals however poorly implemented or followed are factually and morally correct. A position situated between isn't wise or worldly its a sign of moral cowardice or intellectual disability. If someone asks you what 2 + 2 equals the answer isn't halfway in between 4 and 87 its just and only 4.
  - ecshafer 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - michaelmrose 4mo ago
      Young Earth creationism is a position held by 58% of those who self-identify as Republicans today. Slavery is a position that was supported by the overwhelming majority of southern conservatives immediately prior to its abolishment. The abuse of immigrants is something that the majority of conservatives are willing to accept even as they are killed. Conservativism is a constellation of selfish idealogically motivated positions which necessarily encompass many things embarrassing and others vile. Some embrace the vile whilst other's believe they can use the stupid to achieve ends like a return to a country dominated by white Christian men, a more hierarchal society where money and power flow to the right sort, a more friendly economic environment where they hope to achieve greater personal success, staving off social and political change etc. The most ugly aspects are poisoning everything and they cannot be ejected without losing the numbers needed to retain power and cleaving to them will itself cause the loss of power unless they also end democracy. The majority of those who call themselves Republicans will reject or have rejected both democracy and nonviolence because the alternative would be accepting defeat amongst a group self selected for selfishness.
- AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
  > On another note, I'm impressed that Gemini sits where it does as a true centrist. It's in the center as far as left/right, but it's the most authoritarian model on the chart. Keep in mind that the "political compass" was invented by libertarians to show people on the left and the right that both Mao and Hitler were villains and you should oppose autocrats and centralization of power regardless of your position on transfer payments. The thing is essentially designed to make any ordinary person realize they don't want anything in the top two squares, because "anti-authoritarian" is the bottom of the chart, not the center line. Obama's administration was the one perpetrating the things Snowden revealed, refused to pardon him or stop doing them, used the Espionage Act against whistleblowers, was running a corrupt justice apartment that tried to extort criminal defendants like Ross Ulbricht and then refused to allow him to present the improprieties in his defense to call into question the credibility of the investigators, etc. Macron is notorious for bypassing parliamentary votes and using police to suppress demonstrations. It has both of them on the libertarian side of the line with Gemini about that far in on the authoritarian side. That's not great.
nibbleyou 4mo ago
I don't understand why you are being downvoted while Elon has made it clear multiple times that that's what they are working on.

Forgeties79 4mo ago

Whenever it breaks with MAGA enough to cause outrage on Twitter and cries of “it’s gone woke,” Musk openly states they’re going to “fix it.” Edit: don’t take my word for it https://www.yahoo.com/news/musk-says-grok-fixed-tells-223134409.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/musk-says-grok-fixed-tells-223134... > That prompted another user to tag Grok in the thread and ask, "Why is the left so murderously violent? They don't seem so tolerant." Grok replied, "The claim that 'the left' is murderously violent isn't backed by evidence," offering a centrist correction: "Political violence spans all side — right-wing attacks, like Jan. 6, and left-wing protests, like 2020 riots, both occur but aren't exclusive to one group." >That evening, Musk responded to an X user and Trump backer who complained that Grok had been "manipulated by leftist indoctrination," writing, "I know. Working on fixing that this week."

zmgsabst 4mo ago
Grok didn’t provide any evidence for that though.
- deleted 4mo ago
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- Forgeties79 4mo ago
  For what? That January 6th occurred? Those were all incredibly safe generalizations. Political violence happens across the political spectrum, right?
  - zmgsabst 4mo ago
    Well, no. Political violence occurs by all sorts, but that doesn’t make it evenly distributed — eg, Jan 6th rioters didnt murder anybody and the question was specifically about murderous violence. That’s unlike Antifa, who gunned down three people at CHAZ — including executing a black youth for joyriding on their territory with the chilling words “oh, you’re still alive?” before the final gunshot live on Twitch. To reply about Jan 6th (or any lone instance) when the original question is about trends in specifically lethal violence is to completely miss the point. And a clear example of propaganda minimizing how uniquely violent the US leftwing is — eg, the CHAZ shootings, lethal arson attacks in Minneapolis during BLM riots, etc are nothing like Jan 6, where the only person killed or citizens harmed were protestors. If you can’t tell the difference between police shooting demonstrators and violent masked thugs shooting kids in the park or burning business owners alive in their store, you have completely lost the plot.

jimbokun 4mo ago

Haven’t been on Twitter for a while, but I remember Grok being good at fact checking conversations. Just @grok a question and an answer from Grok shows up in the conversation with sources cited.

jamilton 4mo ago
@grok is this true
input_sh 4mo ago
No it does not. Extremely simple to prove: https://xcancel.com/grok/with_replies https://xcancel.com/grok/with_replies
- el_io 4mo ago
  Well it used to be, then elon had to lobotomize it many times.

bee_rider 4mo ago

The space (if it really is useful to think of as a space) of political opinions seems like it is probably many, many dimensional. The 1D thing is an obvious over-simplification, but the 2D compass seems to be a not-obvious-simplification which is… much worse.

rootusrootus 4mo ago
> The 1D thing is an obvious over-simplification In general I agree, but in recent history it works pretty well if the dimension you use is Trump rather than left/right (assuming you are in the US). He is the most polarizing leader I have seen in the US in my lifetime, and knowing whether someone is a supporter is pretty good at predicting the rest of their viewpoints.
- estearum 4mo ago
  The problem with this method is it will flip immediately upon new Trump utterances. See David Sacks having an absolute meltdown over Bernie proposing some type of partial nationalization of AI labs, then just a few days later radio silence on Trump proposing effectively the same thing.
- mrandish 4mo ago
  > knowing whether someone is a {Trump} supporter is pretty good at predicting the rest of their viewpoints. If instead of "is a supporter" you'd said "agrees with Trump's positions", then even Trump himself might not correlate very well :-). I don't see Trump as a very useful proxy for nuanced political viewpoints since he's a populist who tends to change positions. I think many serious conservatives only align with him on an issue by issue basis because position-wise Trump isn't very consistent on traditional conservative issues. I suspect someone being "a Trump supporter" is, at best, either a proxy for being dissatisfied with the political status quo or for having a strong one-issue alignment with one of a handful of culture war issues Trump campaigned heavily on. Similarly, alignment with the current Democratic or Republican political parties isn't the proxy barometer it once was. As judged by how they vote on close, consequential issues, both of the major parties have largely abandoned several of their traditional positions - although they still may pay lip service to them when campaigning. Personally, I don't meet nearly as many people in recent years who claim to be 'all-in' on all the positions of either major party (especially as judged by how that party votes when they have a super-majority).

cramer4next 4mo ago

I tend to disagree. What it really comes down to is how you create your prompt. For instance whenever I'm looking left wing extreamisum I provide it with a few cases first. Like BLM riots in Minnesota, paid agitators, mask wearing during peaceful protests, etc. It then gives you a clear unbiased deprogrammed view of the reality on all the AI models.

17761989 4mo ago
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- cramer4next 4mo ago
  How could a prompt create a bias in a model that implements AI bias safeguards that are the systemic, technical, and governance controls used to prevent algorithms from producing discriminatory, unfair, or stereotypical outcomes. I've never in the 3+ years I've been using AI been able to craft a prompt to influence a bias output. Its all about the ingested dataset and guardrails. The "prompt" is meant to extract data, not change it. Notice how I use words that regular people use when communicating outside the elite ivory tower and playing the game of wits.
  - 17761989 4mo ago
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avarun 4mo ago

I'm not sure what charts you guys are looking at, but this website clearly agrees that Grok is not right wing. Go look at the Worldview tab, filtering by United States. Each model is assigned a "closest party" by country, and for the US all 6 models are closest to the Democratic Party.

delusional 4mo ago
Sure, mecha Hitler is aligned with the democratic party. I'm sure there's nothing wrong with that data.
crooked-v 4mo ago
The Democratic Party is a center-right conservative† party by the standards of much of the world. † As distinct from the wildly regressive stated policies of the "conservative" Republicans.
- avarun 4mo ago
  This is reddit-tier analysis that is commonly repeated and completely incorrect. The Democratic Party in America has policy positions that are significantly to the left of left-wing parties around the world, as well as positions to the right. Any political analysis that doesn't recognize this has major shortcomings. To give an example, Democratic-run states in the US have significantly more permissive abortion policies than anywhere in Europe. They're also further to the left on drug legalization, restorative justice, and immigration. This also holds true with policy positions at the national level.
  - yogorenapan 4mo ago
    Social left, economic right
- mc32 4mo ago
  Do you realize how many people live in China, India, Subsaharan Africa? That would be the "standard" of the world population-wise.

yodsanklai 4mo ago

> can have views on all four quadrants but you'd never know that if I end up in any of all four Curious of examples of views falling on all four quadrants (not close to the center) without too much cognitive dissonance.

crooked-v 4mo ago
The problem is the "without too much cognitive dissonance" part. Lots of voters have completely dissonant views that they've never consciously considered in any way. Just by posting on HN, the people here are probably in the top 5% of conscious political awareness in the US.
- BLKNSLVR 4mo ago
  That's a good point. The secondary (and on from there) effects of most of their views are not considered, and so their views are not internally consistent at all. Small government! (why do I have to wait so long for my support payment query to be answered?) No immigration! (why can't I find someone to clean my house on the cheap?)
- idiotsecant 4mo ago
  Let's not get too eager to pat ourselves on the back here. The typical HN denizen is very confident they are an expert in political analysis but they are also convinced they are an expert on renewable resources, plumbing, forestry, and literally ever top they come across. It's a disease frequently caught by software people, for whatever reason. They assume if they can write software they can do anything. I have seen a huge amount of confidently staggeringly wrong political takes on HN. I'd say on par with any other platform.
  - gopher_space 4mo ago
    > It's a disease frequently caught by software people, for whatever reason. It's a disease spread by math and physics profs dismissing other domains, and weirdly prevalent in an industry solely concerned with gluing together different points of view. The poor kids that don't take common core seriously never pick up the conceptual framework everything depends from and are simply unable to reason about ideas that need to be connected together.

strken 4mo ago

The political compass always seems to me like it should be a heatmap, or a polygon of 90th percentile political views, or something that more clearly shows the standard deviation and the presence of outlier positions. Some simplification is necessary, but not so much that it obscures the difference between a normal centrist versus someone who wants to nationalise half the economy and deregulate the other half.

nonethewiser 4mo ago
Isnt nationalizing half the economy the limiting factor? Obviously thats not libertarian regardless of anything you deregulate.
- strken 4mo ago
  A socialist might object that deregulating private enterprise (and let's add lowering taxes, moving to a flat tax rate, cutting programs, etc.) is obviously not socialist regardless of anything you nationalise. And they would be right! But this person, who is neither socialist nor libertarian, is obviously not a normal centrist either.

aaron695 4mo ago

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teravor 4mo ago

has anyone tried to create an IQ facsimile for politics? basically you come up with 100 political questions and ask 10,000+ people, then do factor analysis on the answers. it would be interesting to find out how many actual factors dominate all the variance.

tptacek 4mo ago
Aren't there a lot of these? Pew did one (it's k-medoid clustering, not factor analysis, but same idea). https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/quiz/political-typology/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/quiz/political-typology...
- teravor 4mo ago
  I don't think this is what I had in mind. the questions are extremely leading and on the nose, designed to elicit ideology more than anything intrinsic about the subject's actual preferences. also it should not apply to just the US. if I designed an IQ test like they designed those questions, it would be considerably worse than just giving a simple math test.
  - nonethewiser 4mo ago
    Could you give any example questions? I know what you mean about leading questions. It almost seems inevitable. There are two sets of languages.
    - teravor 4mo ago
      without much thought put into it, something like: an accused murderer has been convicted with a probability of X% of having committed the deed. a sentence of death is warranted for X of: 1) Never warranted / unrealistic percentage 2) >99.9 3) >99 4) >97 5) <96
      - tptacek 4mo ago
        I really don't think any of the existing political quizzes are suffering for lack of questions about whether we should kill more people.

juliushuijnk 4mo ago

> I've tested "MAGA" views against Grok, it does not agree as much as people blindly assume it does, Looking from the outside, there are no MAGA views, it's just whatever Trump says. What should be the AI's view on international wars for oil or ego?

Hardcore00 4mo ago
Thats the thing people dont understand about cults. They aren’t driven by some higher ideology. They are driven by behavior and ritual. There are so many instances of issues like Iran war walked back and maga will cheer it on as “masterclass” or “4d chess.” The ritual that psychologically binds the cult is defending trump. Members of the cult don’t need to be politically educated or have deeper philosophical views. They just only need to know that the "Big Other" (the media, political opponents, tech critics) hates Trump and by ritually defending him becomes an effortless way to signal defiance to the “the Big Other.”

PeterStuer 4mo ago

The concepts (left/right. authoritarian/libertarian) seem to fluid to help sensemaking. Stances that would have been mainstream left (democrat US) just a few years ago are now labeled MAGA (US) or 'extreme right' (EU). And nobody seems to believe their own side is 'authoritarian', but everyone that disagrees with them is a literal ...

someguynamedq 4mo ago
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reverius42 4mo ago
> Stances that would have been mainstream left (democrat US) just a few years ago are now labeled MAGA (US) or 'extreme right' (EU). I'm guessing this is pretty specific to LGBTQ rights? (edit: and is maybe more like 15+ years?)
- PeterStuer 4mo ago
  Not at all.
  - reverius42 4mo ago
    Care to elaborate on which stances specifically you're referring to, then?
kannanvijayan 4mo ago
Isn't it more that the Republicans have co-opted many previous stances that used to be talking points to be pointed at as examples of "leftist examples of extremism"? The anti-vax, unpasteurized milk drinking, alternative medicine seeking "crunchy mom" USED to be called about by American "right" as an example of "leftist absurdity", but it seems that when that group finally found a political home that truly elevated its views to public policy - it was with the Republicans.
- amanaplanacanal 4mo ago

minraws 4mo ago

This is not true, Grok responds to context like all other LLMs if you were actually maga you would get more maga feedback because it has weaker guardrails and will source random nonsense sources.

fsckboy 4mo ago

>The political compass always felt like the wrong tool to convey something as nuanced as personal politics the (I'm going to call it so-called) political compass is a very crude instrument, really it's just "are you libertarian or authoritarian?" as if that's even a spectrum: libertarians are authoritarian about enforcing private contracts, and literally nobody else wants to live their life by private contracts, it's some weird asperger's notion of socializing. a much more useful political map is the old fiscal and social orthogonal axes, each with the scales "liberal to conservative" where libertarians are fiscally conservative socially liberal.