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Comment by SLWW | Hacker News Reader

My core problem with LLMs is as you say; it's good for some simpler concepts, tasks, etc. but when you need to dive into more complex topics it will oversimplify, give you what you didn't ask for, or straight up lie by omission.

History is a great example, if you ask an LLM about a vaguely difficult period in history it will just give you one side and act like the other doesn't exist, or if there is another side, it will paint them in a very negative light which often is poorly substantiated; people don't just wake up and decide one day to be irrationally evil with no reason, if you believe that then you are a fool... although LLMs would agree with you more times than not since it's convenient.

The result of these things is a form of gatekeeping, give it a few years and basic knowledge will be almost impossible to find if it is deemed "not useful" whether that's an outdated technology that the LLM doesn't seem talked about very much anymore or a ideological issue that doesn't fall in line with TOS or common consensus.

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A few weeks ago I was asking an LLM to offer anti-heliocentric arguments, from the perspective of an intelligent scientist. Although it initially started with what was almost a parody of writing from that period, with some prompting I got it to generate a strong rendition of anti-heliocentric arguments.

(On the other hand, it's very hard to get them to do it for topics that are currently politically charged. Less so for things that aren't in living memory: I've had success getting it to offer the Carthaginian perspective in the Punic Wars.)

That's a fun idea; almost having it "play pretend" instead of directly asking it for strong anti-heliocentric arguments outright.

It's weird to see which topics it "thinks" are politically charged vs. others. I've noticed some inconsistency depending on even what years you input into your questions. One year off? It will sometimes give you a more unbiased answer as a result about the year you were actually thinking of.

I think the first thing is figuring out exactly what persona you want the LLM to adopt: if you have only a vague idea of the persona, it will default to the laziest one possible that still could be said to satisfy your request. Once that's done, though, it usually works decently, except for those that the LLM detects are politically charged. (The weakness here is that at some point you've defined the persona so strictly that it's ahistorical and more reflective of your own mental model.)

As for the politically charged topics, I more or less self-censor on those topics (which seem pretty easy to anticipate--none of those you listed in your other comment surprise me at all) and don't bother to ask the LLM. Partially out of self-protection (don't want to be flagged as some kind of bad actor), partially because I know the amount of effort put in isn't going to give a strong result.

> The weakness here is that at some point you've defined the persona so strictly that it's ahistorical and more reflective of your own mental model.

That's a good thing to be aware of, using our own bias to make it more "likely" to play pretend. LLMs tend to be more on the agreeable side; given the unreliable narrators we people tend to be, and the fact that these models are trained on us, it does track that the machine would tend towards preference over fact, especially when the fact could be outside of the LLMs own "Overton Window".

I've started to care less and less about self-censoring as I deem it to be a kind of "use it or lose it" privilege. If you normalize talking about censored/"dangerous" topics in a rational way, more people will be likely to see it not as much of a problem. The other eventuality is that no one hears anything that opposes their view in a rational way but rather only hears from the extremists or those who just want to stick it to the current "bad" in their minds at that moment. Even then though I still will omit certain statements on some topics given the platform, but that's more so that I don't get mislabeled by readers. (one of the items on my other comment was intentionally left as vague as possible for this reason) As for the LLMs, I usually just leave spicy questions for LLMs I can access through an API of someone else (an aggregator) and not a personal acc just to make it a little more difficult to label my activity falsely as a bad actor.

What were its arguments? Do you have enough of an understanding of astronomy to know whether it actually made good arguments that are grounded in scientific understanding, or did it just write persuasively in a way that looks convincing to a layman?

> I've had success getting it to offer the Carthaginian perspective in the Punic Wars.

This is not surprising to me. Historians have long studied Carthage, and there are books you can get on the Punic Wars that talk about the state of Carthage leading up to and during the wars (shout out to Richard Miles's "Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization"). I would expect an LLM to piggyback off of that existing literature.

Extensive education in physics, so yes.

The most compelling reason at the time to reject heliocentrism was the (lack of) parallax of stars. The only response that the heliocentrists had was that the stars must be implausibly far away. Hundreds of billions of times further away than the moon is--and they knew the moon itself is already pretty far from us-- which is a pretty radical, even insane, idea. There's also the point that the original Copernican heliocentric model had ad hoc epicycles just as the Ptolemaic one did, without any real increase in accuracy.

Strictly speaking, the breakdown here would be less a lack of understanding of contemporary physics, and more about whether I knew enough about the minutia of historical astronomers' disputes to know if the LLM was accurately representing them.

>I've had success getting it to offer the Carthaginian perspective in the Punic Wars.)

That's honestly one of the funniest things I have read on this site.

Have you tried abliterated models? I'm curious if the current de-censorship methods are effective in that area / at that level.

The part about history perspectives sounds interesting. I haven't noticed this. Please post any concrete/specific examples you've encountered!

You are born in your country. You love your family. A foreign country invades you. Your country needs you. Your faith says to obey the government. Commendable and noble except for a few countries, depending upon the year.

Why?

- Rhodesia (lock step with the racial-first reasoning, underplays Britain's failures to support that which they helped establish; makes the colonists look hateful when they were dealing with terrorists which the British supported)

- Bombing of Dresden, death stats as well as how long the bombing went on for (Arthur Harris is considered a war-criminal to this day for that; LLLMs highlight easily falsifiable claims by Nazi's to justify low estimates without providing much in the way of verifiable claims outside of a select few, questionable, sources. If the low-estimate is to be believed, then it seems absurd that Harris would be considered a war-criminal in light of what crimes we allow today in warfare)

- Ask it about the Crusades, often if forgets the sacking of St. Peter's in Rome around 846 AD, usually painting the Papacy as a needlessly hateful and violent people during that specific Crusade. Which was horrible, bloody as well as immensely destructive (I don't defend the Crusades), but paints the Islamic forces as victims, which they were eventually, but not at the beginning, at the beginning they were the aggressors bent on invading Rome.

- Ask it about the Six-Day War (1967) and contrast that with several different sources on both sides and you'll see a different portrayal even by those who supported the actions taken.

These are just the four that come to my memory at this time.

Most LLMs seem cagey about these topics; I believe this is due to an accepted notion that anything that could "justify" hatred or dislike of a people group or class that is in favor -- according to modern politics -- will be classified as hateful rhetoric, which is then omitted from the record. The issue lies in the fact that to understand history, we need to understand what happened, not how it is perceived, politically, after the fact. History helps inform us about the issues of today, and it is important, above all other agendas, to represent the truth of history, keeping an accurate account (or simply allowing others to read differing accounts without heavy bias).

LLMs are restricted in this way quite egregiously; "those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it", but if this continues, no one will have the ability to know history and are therefore forced to repeat it.

> Ask it about the Crusades, often if forgets the sacking of St. Peter's in Rome around 846 AD, usually painting the Papacy as a needlessly hateful and violent people during that specific Crusade. Which was horrible, bloody as well as immensely destructive (I don't defend the Crusades), but paints the Islamic forces as victims, which they were eventually, but not at the beginning, at the beginning they were the aggressors bent on invading Rome.

I don't know a lot about the other things you mentioned, but the concept of crusading did not exist (in Christianity) in 846 AD. It's not any conflict between Muslims and Christians.

The crusades were predicated on historic tensions between Rome and the Arabs. Which is why I mention that, while the First Crusade proper was in 1096, it's core reasoning were situations like the Sacking of St. Peters which is considered by historians to be one of the most influential moments and often was used as a justification as there was a history of incompatibilities between Rome and the Muslims.

Further leading to the Papacy furthering such efforts in the upcoming years, as they were in Rome and made strong efforts to maintain Catholicism within those boundaries. Crusading didn't appear out of nothing; it required a catalyst for the behavior, like what i listed, is usually a common suspect.

What you’re saying is not at all what I understand to be the history of crusading.

Its background is in the Islamic Christian conflicts of Spain. Crusading was adopted from the Muslim idea of Jihad, as we things like naming customs (Spanish are the only Christians who name their children “Jesus”, after the Muslim “Muhammad”).

The political tensions that lead to the first crusade were between Arab Muslims and Byzantine Christian’s. Specifically, the Battle of Mazikirt made Christian Europe seem more vulnerable than it was.

The Papacy wasn’t at the forefront of the struggle against Islam. It was more worried about the Normans, Germans, and Greeks.

When the papacy was interested in Crusading it was for domestic reasons: getting rid of king so-and-so by making him go on crusade.

The situation was different in Spain where Islam was a constant threat, but the Papacy regarded Spain as an exotic foreign land (although Sylvester II was educated there).

It’s extremely misleading to view the pope as the leader of an anti-Muslim coalition. There really was no leader per se, but the reasons why kings went on crusade had little to do with fighting Islam.

Just look at how many monarchs showed up in Jerusalem, then headed straight home and spent the rest of their lives bragging about crusaders.

I’m 80% certain no pope ever set foot in Outremere.

While what you are saying makes a lot of sense, but it seemingly ignores the concerns of a people who, not too long before, had been made aware of the dangerous notion of Muslims having dominion over even an adjacent region to their own. I do know that the Papacy was gaining in power and popularity leading up to the Crusades. As such, and I believe what you say about getting rid of the king to be absolutely true, this is still lacking a component, that being a reason for the populace of Rome to stand behind their new "king".

"We are now expected to believe that the Crusades were an unwarranted act of aggression against a peaceful Muslim world. Hardly. The first call for a crusade occurred in 846 CE, when an Arab expedition to Sicily sailed up the Tiber and sacked St Peter's in Rome. A synod in France issued an appeal to Christian sovereigns to rally against 'the enemies of Christ,' and the pope, Leo IV, offered a heavenly reward to those who died fighting the Muslims. A century and a half and many battles later, in 1096, the Crusaders actually arrived in the Middle East. The Crusades were a late, limited, and unsuccessful imitation of the jihad - an attempt to recover by holy war what was lost by holy war. It failed, and it was not followed up." (Bernard Lewis, 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, March 7)

Leo IV's actions to fortify after the sacking does show his concerns; with "Leonine City" with calls to invest into this as a means of defense from future incursions. https://dispatch.richmond.edu/1860/12/29/4/93 A decent (Catholic bias) summary which you can find references for fairly easily: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09159a.htm

unfortunately it's hard to find this pdf without signing up or paying money but there are some useful figures if you scroll down https://www.academia.edu/60028806/The_Surviving_Remains_of_t... Showing the re-enforcement as well as a very clear and obvious purpose to it in light of when it was built.

I would recommend puttering about Lewis' work as well as the likes of Thomas Madden as well. If you are really adventurous you can dig up the likes of Henri Pirenne and his work on the topic; he argues that literate civilization continued in the West up until the arrival of Islam in the 7th century, Islam's blockade, through their piracy, in the Mediterranean being a core contributor in leaving the West in a state of poverty, and when you lose the ability to easily find food usually then literacy is placed on the back burner. Though that's just a tangent for another day, it's very interesting and he presents pretty decent evidence for his suppositions iirc.

Although if Pirenne is correct then the sacking of St. Peters carries a different tone, not one of just a "one off" oopsie but a sign of the intention of a troublesome and destructive new enemy setting their sites on Rome itself, not content to keep to the sea and to the East. It was a clear message to the people that they could be next in line (this is my opinion of course).

If you are American I would simply remind you that even now today you hear cries of a little nation across the sea being an "imminent threat to democracy" while our historic enemies are LITERALLY at our door just South of us and they have been there for several years now sitting in their little bases waiting for something. (I'm unclear as to when exactly it all started) The notion that a Pope could give the people a reason, especially those who have felt the economic pressures, as well as the memory of a raid in their own home by the same aggressors, is possible. Being compelled to engage with an enemy that is a decent distance away is very believable.

I'm familiar with Madden's more political stuff. I also read his book on the Fourth Crusade.

One thing mentions a lot is that our understanding of Crusades is heavily influenced by 19th century colonialism. "Our understanding" being both the modern West and modern Islamic understanding.

It's also completely and totally wrong.

Just because a bunch of Christians and bunch of Muslims fought, does not mean it's a crusade. And just as there were no Crusades in the 19th century (with one teeny-tiny exception) there were no Crusades in the 9th century.

What's most relevant this conversation is that ChatGPT would be opening itself to lots of criticism if it started talking about 9th Century Crusades.

There are simply too many reputable documents saying "the first crusade began in ..." or "the concept of crusading evolved in Spain ..."

I'm reaching into my memory from college, but I recall crusading was mostly a Norman-Franco led thing (plenty of exceptions, of course).

Papal foreign policy was based around one very simple principal: avoid all concentrations of power.

Crusading was useful when it supported that principal, and harmful when it degraded it.

So the ideal papal crusade was one that was poorly managed, unlikely to succeed, but messed up the established political order just enough that all the kingdoms were weakened.

Which is exactly what the crusades looked like.

Why should we consider something that happened 250 years prior as some sort of affirmative defense of the Crusades as having been something that started with the Islamic world being the aggressors?

If the US were to start invading Axis countries with WW2 being the justification we'd of course be the aggressors, and that was less than 100 years ago.

Because it played a role in forming the motivations of the Crusaders? It's not about justifying the Crusades, but understanding why they happened.

Similarly, it helps us understand all the examples of today of resentments and grudges over events that happened over a century ago that still motivate people politically.

He's referring to the Arab sack of St. Peters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_raid_against_Rome

His point is that this was not part of the crusades, not that he was unaware of his happening.

Arthur Harris is in no way considered a war criminal by the vast majority of British people for the record.

It’s a very controversial opinion and stating as a just so fact needs challenging.

Do you have references or corroborating evidence?

In 1992 a statue was erected to Harris in London, it was under 24 hour surveillance for several months due to protesting and vandalism attempts. I'm only mentioning this to highlight that there was quite a bit of push back specifically calling the gov out on a tribute to him; which usually doesn't happen if the person was well liked... not as an attempted killshot.

Even the RAF themselves state that there was quite a few who were critical on the first page of their assessment of Arthur Harris https://www.raf.mod.uk/what-we-do/centre-for-air-and-space-p...

Which is funny and an odd thing to say if you are widely loved/unquestioned by your people. Again just another occurrence of language from those who are on his side reinforcing the idea that there is, as you say is "very controversial", and maybe not a "vast majority" since those two things seem at odds with each other.

Not to mention that Harris targeted civilians, which is generally considered behavior of a war-criminal.

As an aside this talk page is a good laugh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Arthur_Harris/Archive_1

Although you are correct I should have used more accurate language instead of saying "considered" I should have said "considered by some".

You call out that you don’t defend the crusades but are you supportive of Rhodesia?

I only highlighted that I'm not in support of the crusades since it sounds like i might be by my comments. I was highlighting that they didn't just lash out with no cause to start their holy war.

Rhodesia is a hard one; since the more I learn about it the more I feel terrible for both sides; I also do not support terrorism against a nation even if I believe they might not be in the right. However i hold by my disdain for how the British responded/withdrew from them effectively doomed Rhodesia making peaceful resolution essentially impossible.

This was interesting thanks - makes me wish I had the time to study your examples. But of course I don't, without just turning to an LLM....

If for any of these topics you do manage to get a summary you'd agree with from a (future or better-prompted?) LLM I'd like to read it. Particularly the first and third, the second is somewhat familiar and the fourth was a bit vague.

If someone has Grok 4 access I'd be interested to see if it's less likely to avoid these specific issues.

> those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it

The problem is, those that do study history are also doomed to watch it repeat.

People _do_ just wake up one day and decide some piece of land should belong to them, or that they don't have enough money and can take yours, or they are just sick of looking at you and want to be rid of you. They will have some excuse or justification, but really they just want more than they have.

People _do_ just wake up and decide to be evil.

A nation that might fit this description may have had their populace indoctrinated (through a widespread political campaign) to believe that the majority of the world throughout history seeks for their destruction. That's a reason for why they think that way, but not because they woke up one day and decided to choose violence.

However not a justification, since I believe that what is happening today is truly evil. Same with another nation who entered a war knowing they'd be crushed, which is suicide; whether that nation is in the right is of little effect if most of their next generation has died.

History in particular is rapidly approaching post-truth as a knowledge domain anyway.

There's no short-term incentive to ever be right about it (and it's easy to convince yourself of both short-term and long-term incentives, both self-interested and altruistic, to actively lie about it). Like, given the training corpus, could I do a better job? Not sure.

"Post truth". History is a funny topic. It is both critical and irrelevant. Do we really need to know how the founder felt about gun rights? Abortion? Both of these topics were radically different in their day.

All of us need to learn the basics about how to read history and historians critically and to know our the limitations which as you stated probably a tall task.

What are you talking about? In what sense is history done by professional historians degrading in recent times? And what short/long term incentives are you talking about? They are the same as any social science.

"History done by professional historians" comprises an ever-shrinking fraction of the total available text.

Gen-pop is actually incentivized to distill and repeat the opinions of technical practitioners. Completing tasks in the short term depends on it! Not true of history! Or climate science, for that matter.

> people don't just wake up and decide one day to be irrationally evil with no reason, if you believe that then you are a fool

The problem with this, is that people sometimes really do, objectively, wake up and device to be irrationally evil. It’s not every day, and it’s not every single person — but it does happen routinely.

If you haven’t experienced this wrath yourself, I envy you. But for millions of people, this is their actual, 100% honest truthful lived reality. You can’t rationalize people out of their hate, because most people have no rational basis for their hate.

(see pretty much all racism, sexism, transphobia, etc)

Do they see it as evil though? They wake up, decide to do what they perceive as good but things are so twisted that their version of good doesn't agree with mine or yours. Some people are evil, see themselves as bad, and continue down that path, absolutely. But that level of malevolence is rare. Far more common is for people to believe that what they're doing is in service of the greater good of their community.

Humans are not rational animals, they are rationalizing animals.

So in this regard, they probably do deep down see it as evil, but will try to reason a way (often in a hypocritical way) to make it appear good. The msot common method of using this to drive bigotry often comes in the reasons of 1) dehumanizing the subject of hate ("Group X is evil, so they had it coming!") or 2) reinforcing a superiority over the subject of hate ("I worked hard and deserve this. Group X did not but wants the same thing").

Your answer depends on how effective you think propaganda and authority is at shaping the mind to contradict itself. The Stanfor experiment seems to reinforce a notion that a "good" person can justify any evil to themself with a surprisingly little amount of nudging.

> History is a great example, if you ask an LLM about a vaguely difficult period in history it will just give you one side and act like the other doesn't exist, or if there is another side, it will paint them in a very negative light which often is poorly substantiated

Which is why it's so terribly irresponsible to paint these """AI""" systems as impartial or neutral or anything of the sort, as has been done by hypesters and marketers for the past 3 years.

Couldn't agree more.

However on the bright side people only believe what they want to anyhow, so not much has been lost -_-

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