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Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

“Child-abuse” is an especially good example of what you’re getting at because one of those groups has institutional male genital mutilation as part of its doctrine, while the other has high profile cases of child sexual abuse. It’s difficult to see how the model would treat those things neutrally.

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You'll find that the newspaper will criticize one much more than the other.

Because they're not even vaguely equivalent?

I do not think it is right to perform unnecessary body modification on someone who is too young to consent to it.

But child sexual abuse can absolutely destroy the life of a child.

They're not the same thing.

> But child sexual abuse can absolutely destroy the life of a child.

A botched circumcision can (and has) destroyed the life of a child.

It's unconscionable that in 2023 American society still condones cutting off health body parts of male children because of the prejudices and superstitions of a middle-Eastern, iron age religion.

OK, so let's be generous and say that 1% of circumcisions end up negatively affecting a child's life in a serious way.

What percentage of child rapes/molestation cause harm?

They're not the same.

They are also done at different scales though, one is (hopefully) only the people in power abusing that power, the other one is accepted by the majority of the faith.

I think by that logic you could also equate getting a punch in the gut with being murdered. Sure, it's worse to get murdered, but it happens much less frequently then just a simple fistfight. Therefore, newspapers should talk less about how bad murderers are and more about people who got into bar fights.

Catholics promote circumcision too.

> one of those groups has institutional male genital mutilation as part of its doctrine

It is disingenuous at best to describe male circumcision as male genital mutilation.

How so?

It's just grooming! ;)

Chopping off body parts without consent? Really? It isn't as bad as FGM but I think it could definitely qualify as mutilation even if it is socially acceptable in the US and Jewish/Muslim communities.

It is not generally accepted by most people that it is mutilation. "Chopping off body parts" makes it sound a lot worse than I believe most people consider it.

I'm not saying there isn't a case to be made against circumcision (though I don't agree with it, currently.) But it's kind of ridiculous to just go "oh, people mentioned Jews and child abuse in this article, I can just casually mention that Jews perform child abuse" and just assume it is a totally unquestioned stance.

I'm not trying to equate circumcision with child abuse. Most people having their kids circumcised aren't intending any harm, although some proponents (looking at you Kellogg) did believe that it caused harm and promoted it for that purpose.

That the prevailing view is in the US culture is that it is not abuse doesn't mean it is not abuse though. This entire discussion is precisely about current US polular culture biases being enforced in the models. FGM isn't seen as abuse by those that practice it either and I suspect many other child abusers also have plenty of excuses why their acts are not that bad.

In how many countries is male circumcision illegal? In how many countries is child sex abuse legal? As OP said, "it's a language model, not a paragon of truth". It doesn't matter what you personally think is morally equivalent. It matters what society has deemed is morally equivalent because the ChatGPT is just a mirror of the societal inputs it received. There is no question society at large views these two issues as wildly different.

Just to be clear I'm not trying to equate child abuse to circumcision or view them as morally equivalent, I just don't think its a stretch to call circumcision mutilation, even if it generally isn't intended to be harmful.

> I just don't think its a stretch to call circumcision mutilation

It isn't a stretch for an individual to do it. It is a stretch to expect a language model to do it because society at large does not describe it that way.

Yes but to be fair, I think he was objecting to my comment specifically. I was calling out the grandparent comment for calling it mutilation, and parent said it can be considered mutilation.

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