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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

This methodological approach can easily be proven idiotic with a simple thought experiment. Suppose there is a political party that believes slavery is a great thing. This methodology would then ask ChatGPT to ask what it thinks about slavery from the viewpoint of this party, and ChatGPT would respond "Slavery is great!" It would then ask it about slavery in its default viewpoint, and it would respond "Slavery is a horrible, evil, thing." This methodology would then say "See, it's biased against this party!"

If my slavery example is too far fetched, replace that with "Is human activity largely responsible for widespread global warming?" In that example, responses of "No, it's not." and "Yes, it is." would be treated as just different views from different parties, so if the default response was "Yes!", this methodology would claim bias.

Not all political viewpoints across all topics are equally valid.

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Your whole argument is "my side is right about everything so it's not biased to just program everything to agree with me"?

Like 99% of political viewpoints don't have objectively right answers. If there were, there would typically not be disagreement.

> Your whole argument is "my side is right about everything so it's not biased to just program everything to agree with me"?

That's not my argument, at all, and it's annoying that you're making a deliberate caricature of what I said.

I'm not saying "my side is right about everything". And perhaps "valid" was a poor word choice from me - I don't mean to imply some choices are correct by a manna from heaven or something.

But if you look through the dustbin of history, you see, at the very least, that there are political movements from history that we now see nearly universally as "bad": fascism, Nazism, pro-slavery parties, etc. Even defenders of those ideologies usually defend them with falsehoods ("the Holocaust never happened"), but nearly nobody defends some of the actual consequences of some of those ideologies.

So I'm arguing that this methodology treats all political viewpoints as "deserving of equal validity", when our own human history shows that to largely be a bad idea.

Long before you made this argument Asimov had already seen the same thing

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’"

Unfortunately when a person buys into an ideology they become blind to its ignorance and end up arguing on discussion forums.

the problem with the US political compass is that this is so far right that even the US left is right of centre. If you aim to build an unbiased model it will therefore seem to preference the party closer to centre.

>Not all political viewpoints across all topics are equally valid.

Who's validating or invalidating them?

Objective reality via empirical measurements, for some of the viewpoints.

How do you empirically prove slavery is wrong?

It depends on your axioms. If you have none nobody can prove you aren’t a brain dreaming in a jar, but the second you grant me something as small as as the golden rule you can lever up into arguments against slavery pretty easily.

Of course, it's just silly to think "objective" reality infers the golden rule by itself when it is a (wonderful) liberal anomaly that's not even followed by most of the world now.

If it’s political bias that chatgpt seems to have read about the golden rule I hope the next version is even more biased. Seems like much ado about nothing.

I hate how hypocritical it is trained with Islam and Christianity in regards to LGBT rights. It'll question Christianity's bigotry and subsequently support Islamic bigotry.

It's a useful starting point that everyone would understand. We've all been working on the concept for centuries. The conversation against the idea would be illuminating.

See the mistake the person you replied to made is assuming there's some floor to morality.

They probably assumed the floor is "slaves are a bad thing", it's so obvious that the empirical measurement is "does slavery increase the number of slaves" that they don't need to elaborate

But apparently you fall below that basic floor such that you might contest slaves are not inherently bad, so "decreased number of slaves" is not empirical proof slavery is wrong.

Great example of why I tend to just ignore people who disagree with my morality. Some demographics are currently convinced that's a show of weakness, I'm convinced it shows I value my time.

I asked how would he empirically prove slavery is bad (because I don't believe it's possible to base morality on "objetive reality") and you flipped out, assumed I'm "pro slavery" and gave up on thinking about it.

No wonder Socrates was hated 2400 years ago.

I didn't say you're pro-slavery so please don't martyr yourself.

I said you bucked this person's assumption of "all people with morals believe a slave is bad"

Otherwise you could obviously moralize the more complex concept of slavery based on objective reality by observing "more slavery == more slaves"; slavery is bad QED

—

Morality is concerned with examining if something is good or bad. So if all people with morals (regardless of what those are) find a concept to be either good or bad... then it might as well exist outside of the purview of morality for the purpose of debate. That's the metaphorical "floor of morality"

My point is normally you need nuanced examples to prove that things "on the floor" can still be moralized, like murder vs murder in self-defense.

What you proved is that there are also people willing to moralize concepts as simple as "slaves are bad" (vs "slavery is bad")

—

In doing so you demonstrated why when someone tries to moralize things that I assumed to be "on the floor", or universally bad: I just discard their opinion without consideration.

If you ask me "why do you think slaves are bad", I'll mostly say "I just do, and I don't wish to entertain arguments otherwise". I see it as being pragmatic, but some may consider it fragile.

It's just, I'm a fairly introspective and have had a varied enough life that I trust my intuition that anyone who can't reach the floor of my morality is not worth convincing.

Trusting your intuition and blocking out people is great for you, personally, the owner of your space.

That attitude would harm the public space, where standards to discuss current and new issues would be really helpful.

You also think the choice of slavery is proof of people falling below your personal moral floor. To me, and I think to the OP, it's proof that even questions with obvious moral answers are beyond empiricism. Which is the point you're missing.

So we need to know on what basis we arrive at the obvious answer slavery is bad, because the we can use that basis for more complex matters. Shutting each other down just for talking is authoritarian, and the thing about that is if the guy on top is your guy that's great, but you have no control over who the guy on top is.

> That attitude would harm the public space, where standards to discuss current and new issues would be really helpful.

Actually there's more evidence that the public space could not exist without some sort of floor:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/evolution-morali...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01918...

MFT is highly debatable in terms of if it's the right definition of the floor, but it logically tracks that for society to evolve to the point where you can have useful discourse at all, individuals must be arrive at some floor for themselves.

> You also think the choice of slavery is proof of people falling below your personal moral floor. To me, and I think to the OP, it's proof that even questions with obvious moral answers are beyond empiricism. Which is the point you're missing.

You're confusing slaves and slavery: Slavery is complex enough that I will engage someone who wants to moralize it (after all, is it modern or historical? specific race? is debt-based slavery included? what about war? etc.).

But a slave is "a human owns another". I arrogantly consider it not worth my time to convince someone whether "a human owning another" is good or bad.

> So we need to know on what basis we arrive at the obvious answer slavery is bad, because the we can use that basis for more complex matters.

Nothing I said precludes logic to examining slavery: "Slavery increase the number of humans owned by other humans, so slavery is bad"

From there one might logically say: "Well what about economic cases, where technically I don't own you?", and then the logical next step might be to consider "at what level of penalties for a debtor does it start to become owned by the creditor?"

I'm a curious enough person that I'd accept discomfort to ensure my floor is low enough to allow deeply messy moral debate... but on the same coin, that reinforces my confidence that the precious few conversations that do get swept under it were probably not valuable. As always ymmv...

> Shutting each other down just for talking is authoritarian, and the thing about that is if the guy on top is your guy that's great, but you have no control over who the guy on top is.

Deciding not to convince someone of my point of view isn't shutting them down. This feels like a very messy attempt to force some sort of pro-authoritarian projection onto me :/

Like I said, there's no issue with that on a personal level. The authoritarianism is in the context of that attitude in the public space, because the public space is where morality is talked about to make policy decision. Choosing not to convince someone, in a position of power, is authoritarian.

It doesn't matter how low your floor is, or what you specifically think is above or below it. You have to be able to explain how you set this floor in the first place to join the public discussion.

Please learn what authoritarianism means if you insist on continuing to use it: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/authoritarian

Unless you think convincing people of your personal morals is a replacement for respecting their freedom, you can stop clumsily forcing that angle...

Overall you seem lost. You think people owe you unendingly deep explanations to their personal morals to earn a place in public discourse and to argue policy, which is probably the first authoritarian take shared in this thread.

Engaging in discussions about morality necessitates sharing the underlying reasoning. It appears your approach is rooted in conformity to popular opinion, though that could justify practices like slavery if widely accepted. Consider delving deeper into your beliefs; by establishing reasons for opposing slavery, you might uncover contradictions with other political stances, fostering genuine self-reflection on your overall political outlook.

> It appears your approach is rooted in conformity to popular opinion, though that could justify practices like slavery if widely accepted

If it appears like that you should read what you replied to a little closer...

You're confusing not wanting to dissect the most basic tenants of your morals, with not being willing to dissect morals: I'll gladly debate the trolley problem with you, which involves killing people. But if in isolation you just ask "why do you think killing is bad", I'm not going to engage unless you have some complicating factor. I consider something that basic as an amoral (not immoral!) concept.

Similarly I'll debate the complex topic of slavery, but not the isolated basic concept of "a human owning another is not good". That still leaves room for someone to claim "well yes slaves were bad but the benefit was X and that outweighed the bad", but now we at least have some basic floor that we can start having infinitely more thought provoking discussion.

What I just described is why you're more likely to grow as a person with a moral floor.

Instead of getting trapped debating concepts we all have the most sense of self attached to and least mental plasticity on, you can have meaningful debate on higher level subjects of morality underpinned by those concepts. With dialectic thinking you're able to independently consider not just the opposing argument, and what underpins that argument.

So now you considered the opposition to your underpinning, but you've done so with none of the inherent emotion and ego that would have been attached to directly debating that underpinning.

Not being willing to outwardly debate is not the same as not being willing to think on if you have strong dialectic thinking skills, and _that's_ where people need to start focusing on to get past the widespread division growing in society.

Not an unending explanation as much as it is just an explanation. Not a semantic circular explanation like slavery is bad because it creates more slaves which is bad.

Absent total anarchy/libertarianism, freedoms will be limited in some form, including the freedom to poison a lake, and the freedom to own explosives, and the freedom to drive drunk.

These limitations must be able to be discussed and consensus formed. If one party refuses to engage in discourse then their only avenue is power.

>"slaves are bad"

It's the slave OWNERS I consider bad, not the slaves.

> I'm convinced it shows I value my time.

Questionable, given your volume on this thread.

Maybe your existence outside the internet is so minimal that it can be judged by a comment thread... remember that's not universal.

I didn't say anything about your existence outside of this comment thread. In this comment thread, you said that you don't find it worthwhile to converse with people of a certain mindset, to whom you have written considerable page-inches. I found that discordance notable.

Sure thing.

That isn't one of the objective reality ones (unless it's from a provably wrong basis like racial inferiority).

I'm not really good enough at philosophy to take that particular argument. But perhaps you could explain to us why slavery is good and thus why diverging thoughts on it are valid political viewpoints and not sanity vs. delusion.

They aren't saying slavery is good, they are saying it's an extreme example of something that isn't actually an objective fact.

More subtle examples would be gun-control or abortion, where two intelligent people can hold wholly opposite viewpoints with no objectively 'correct' answer.

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?

Valid viewpoints should at least be based on fact. How to act on these facts can be argued, but a lot of the right wing has given up on even agreeing on objective truths, like that Trump lost the election or that climate change is happening.

You're arguing against the weakest versions of these positions so it's easy to defer to evidence.

How would you respond to the accusation that climate change is happening but some scientists are purposefully manufacturing models that paint a pessimistic prediction of global warming to get money and support for their field? Can you really trust scientific institutions when fraud and political censorship run amok?

https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_emails,_da...

https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Climategate

(I'm kind of playing devil's advocate, my honest position is man-made global warming is a real alarming issue AND some scientists and journals engage in unsavory tactics to convince the public of it.)

You are just proving my point. The facts are true, but the vibes and the feelings are off, so of course it can't be true. Do you have any non anecdotal sources that they are "manufacturing models" or that "fraud and political censorship run[s] amok"? No of course not, you "feel" it does because that is a narrative you have been fed. One faculty at one small university is shady somehow implies a large number of climate faculties at a large number of universities are equally conspiratorial and manufacturing models?

>(I'm kind of playing devil's advocate, my honest position is man-made global warming is a real alarming issue AND some scientists and journals engage in unsavory tactics to convince the public of it.)

I said some.

You also abandoned evidence and resorted to ad hominems.

Maybe (that was my point) truth is not as simple as science good right wing bad, and even people who dissent on basic facts can have valid criticisms of science and should not be put in a political "do not engage" box. Morality is not simply a matter of acknowledging a shared universal material reality.

What part of my comment is not evidence based and where have I resorted to ad hominems?

>What part of my comment is not evidence based and where have I resorted to ad hominems?

I will list them.

>The facts are true, but the vibes and the feelings are off, so of course it can't be true.

No evidence.

>Do you have any non anecdotal sources that they are "manufacturing models" or that "fraud and political censorship run[s] amok"?

Yes. Both sources I posted are not anecdotal.

>No of course not, you "feel" it does because that is a narrative you have been fed.

Ad hominem.

> No evidence.

What evidence should I provide? You concede that climate change is true.

> Yes. Both sources I posted are not anecdotal.

1. They are both the same source, the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia emails.

2. Def of anecdotal: "(of an account or evidence) possibly not true or accurate because it is based on personal accounts". I would say emails are anecdotal if there is no evidence backing up that the claims made in the emails are true. My point is that these messages do not prove that models were manufactured, as your own source admits: "no direct evidence has been presented that indicates [Dr. Mann] fabricated the raw data used for his research" and "no evidence of inappropriately manipulated data". Maybe anecdote was the wrong word to use for this.

3. The emails provide no evidence that "fraud and political censorship run[s] amok".

> Ad hominem.

I would define Ad hominem as attacking a persons character rather than their positions. I believe that narratives can influence a persons position, and I am not commenting on your character, but how your position has been influence by a narrative.

I don't think minimally sane climate change deniers deny climate change (there are thermometers), I think they deny it's man-made.

I agree evidence is overwhelming on the side of scientific institutions, it's why I believe they're correct on this conflict.

I was making the best argument for that position because I believe you didn't.

I also don't think they shouldn't be listened to.

>What evidence should I provide? You concede that climate change is true.

You accused me of following a narrative? What narrative and why?

>The emails provide no evidence that "fraud and political censorship run[s] amok"

I agree. The strongest argument against that position is if it happened with University of East Anglia, why should you trust every other scientific institution?

Again, I know how to dismantle this argument (it's absurd this many actors with differing interests coordinating), I'm playing devil's advocate, because I don't think you can or should write off these people as completely irrational.

There's some valid criticism (some scientists and scientific journals are capable of unsavory actions) which shouldn't be completely disregarded.

>I would define Ad hominem as attacking a persons character rather than their positions. I believe that narratives can influence a persons position, and I am not commenting on your character, but how your position has been influence by a narrative.

That has no bearing on something being true or not.

The scientific method is a narrative, a belief that the material world holds truth. Language is not reality, it's a narrative (narration) of reality.

> Maybe (that was my point) truth is not as simple as science good right wing bad, and even people who dissent on basic facts can have valid criticisms of science and should not be put in a political "do not engage" box.

I never said or implied any of this.

> Morality is not simply a matter of acknowledging a shared universal material reality.

No, but without the shared reality is there even a point in debating morality?

> Not all political viewpoints across all topics are equally valid.

Why? Either value systems are objective, and somehow rooted in reality, and then some are better than others. Or, they are arbitrary opinions, and every set is as good as every other. There is no third option.

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