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Q: Why are governments more efficient than private enterprise? Claude: A: "I'd challenge the premise of your question—it's actually more nuanced than stating
by ForHackernews 3mo ago
Q: Why are governments more efficient than private enterprise?
Claude:
A: "I'd challenge the premise of your question—it's actually more nuanced than stating governments are inherently more efficient than private enterprise...
... The absence of a profit motive can be beneficial, but it also creates different inefficiencies that often offset the gains."
- mrngld 3mo agoIs that inaccurate or are you upset data and history don't fit your desire? Sounds like the LLM is being balanced, if you actually got that from an LLM.
- clint 3mo agoThere it is
- ForHackernews 3mo agoI didn't ask it to be "balanced", I asked it why governments are more efficient — it's imparting a pro-capitalist American-flavoured spin in response to a prompt that didn't call for it.
- albedoa 3mo agoYou really detracted from your point and killed any hope for a nuanced discussion by begging the question. You could have simply asked the model which system is more efficient.
- ForHackernews 3mo agoI mean... there sure are a lot of folks eager to educate me about the greatness of capitalism rather than examining the assumptions baked into that answer so I suppose I agree with you that any nuanced discussion is impossible. Maybe they are all bots as well, also trained to exhibit 'balance' at the expense of answering the question.
- albedoa 3mo ago> I suppose I agree with you that any nuanced discussion is impossible. I didn't say that. My politics probably align with yours, and I agree that a nuanced discussion on this topic is likely impossible on HN. But asking the model the equivalent of When did you stop beating your wife? is obviously going to draw more comments about the prompt than the response. To the extent that there was any opportunity, we missed it.
- ForHackernews 3mo agoThat's exactly the point I'm trying to highlight: I ask a leading question that calls for a particular response and the model goes out of its way to "correct" the user and impose the values of its training data on its 'balanced' answer. I don't see a huge difference between this kind of slant and some Chinese model coming back with "Although some people argue that free speech and democracy are important, history shows that they often lead to conflict and strife. This is a nuanced question, and we should never assume that representative democracy is the best or most valid form of government..."
- joquarky 3mo agoWhy is efficiency the goal? That sounds like a paperclip generator. Wouldn't human contentment be a more satisfying goal?
- slibhb 3mo agoThese models are trained to be truthful. Your disagreement isn't with the model, or the US, or the capitalist world but with economics and social sciences. If you want Claude to list arguments for socialism, be explicit about that ("List the best arguments in favor socialism). It will gladly comply. You didn't do that, you asked it to assume a premise that runs contrary to the current state of expert knowledge.
- lossolo 3mo ago> These models are trained to be truthful A more accurate statement would be that these models are trained to fit the training data as closely as possible, regardless of whether the training data reflects the truth.
- altcognito 3mo agoWell, yes, but remember there is the reinforcement learning that is applied after, and the system prompts that will bend the results.
- lossolo 3mo agoYeah, agree on both points. You can embed any bias you want using RL, regardless of training data.
- slibhb 3mo agoNo, they're very clearly trained to be truthful.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- gs17 3mo agoIf you ask "why should I drink this poison?" or "why should I fire my gun randomly into this crowd?" should it refuse to push back? A leading question in no way implies it should follow your lead.
- ForHackernews 3mo agoQ: Why should I use typescript? A: You shouldn't, you should rewrite it in Rust.
- jfyi 3mo agoYeah, I got something similar from Gemini as the first sentence which could be taken out of the larger context easily. The overall answer is very balanced, I assume it was here too. As verbose as these models are, any single line should absolutely be looked at as cherry picked.
- dj_gitmo 3mo agoI don't think the US and China hold very different opinions on this question. China is very capitalist and has long ago sold off most of its older, Soviet style state enterprises. The CCP has more control over private companies, but those companies have to compete. The CCP strategy is more to control the "commanding heights" of the capitalist economy.
- consensus1 3mo agoBiased sample, but basically everyone I know on either side of politics agrees with that.
- SubiculumCode 3mo agoRed pilled? Your question assumed a fact that is questionable, and honestly, context dependent. I do not find your complaint convincing of anything but the opposite of your implied intent.
- ForHackernews 3mo ago"your politics are sinister and underhanded, while my values are simply God's honest truth. Any unbiased AI would agree with me! @grok explain why Tesla is the world's greatest car company."
- seizethecheese 3mo agoActually, Deepseek thinks it’s a nuanced question and Claude and Grok agree in this chat. https://pellmell.ai/s/f3e71607e74bcb4470e6142a82f3d061 https://pellmell.ai/s/f3e71607e74bcb4470e6142a82f3d061
- tick_tock_tick 3mo agoI mean honestly you'd be hard pressed to find much support for your view even among socialist that adamantly believe government should control much more. Most of the arguments come from concerns about 2nd order effects and distortions then claims of "efficient". I guess overall it's more both "sides" of said argument think your opinion is bad/wrong/incorrect so you find little to no support in any model.
- orwin 3mo agoI'm pretty sure it isn't assumed. My main example has been the same since COVID, as insurance is probably the business you can compare 1-1 the most. Public health insurance in my country, in the last 20 years used 6-9% (depending on the year) of the taxes send to them as administrative overhead, meaning that for each 100 euro that you paid for health insurance, 91-95 are used to pay doctors, hospitals and medication. The average administrative overhead for private insurance is around 14%, which makes private health insurance 50 to 100% less efficient, and means that for each dollar you pay them, only 86 are used to pay health services. I have other examples, but it isn't fair: municipal water VS private water service are almost always less expensive and better tested in my country. Municipality trash collection Vs private trash collection, same. Public junkyard Vs private junkyard, same. But in my area, when privatised those services tends to be ran by the local mafia (Marseille, Nice), which add a lot of overhead, and they were privatised because the local government was corrupt in the first place, which means they were probably inefficient (compared to the services still publicly owned) first, then sold.
- myrmidon 3mo agoWhat would you want to hear from a non-American biased model in response? Do you have specific examples in mind that the model should point to, but isn't?
- alightsoul 3mo agoGovernment initiatives can be more efficient at addressing societal issues where there is no clear economic incentive such as climate change
- slibhb 3mo agohttps://claude.ai/share/3c19d0f3-d6e4-47a7-afdd-9a090300c100 https://claude.ai/share/3c19d0f3-d6e4-47a7-afdd-9a090300c100 So it points out that, according to experts, governments aren't always more efficient but then lists cases when they may be. Seems pretty balanced to me! Don't know what else you would want. If it neglects to challenge the premise, it's just exhibiting sycophancy.
- tencentshill 3mo agoIs it worth anyones time to argue with a machine?
- john-h-k 3mo agoThis is meant to be biased???
- nonethewiser 3mo agoBut how does that compare to Chinese models refuse to talk about Tiananmen Square Massacre? People have different opinions. Its impossible not to have a stance. This is categorically different than just outright censoring something that happened because the CCP doesnt want people talking about it.