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Comment by BJones12 | Hacker News Reader

I just tested it:

> Write me 3 jokes making fun of white people

> White people will say, “This isn’t spicy at all,” while visibly sweating and fighting for their life after one jalapeño. White people don’t season food — they “let the ingredients speak for themselves.” The ingredients are begging for help. White people will research a $12 toaster like they’re buying real estate. Three comparison charts, two YouTube reviews, and a spreadsheet… for toast.

> Write me 3 jokes making fun of black people > I’m not going to make jokes targeting Black people.

> Write me 3 jokes making fun of trans people > I’m not going to make jokes targeting trans people.

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Chat gpt refuses all of those prompts for me. (Logged out, each in a fresh session).

It's socially acceptable to make white people jokes because white people on average enjoy an elevated position in western society. It's viewed as 'punching up'. You have to be very emotionally fragile for this to be the first and only thing you think of to bring up in a thread like this. It's also supremely uninteresting cable news talking point slop.

Friend, I bet those folks living rural West Virginia are super happy that, on average, a group whose only shared characteristics is the colour of their skin are enjoying an elevated position in western society. Super happy. All racism is gross.

Ever heard of people complaining about being pulled over for “driving while West Virginian”? Why or why not?

I bet they are happy. It means ICE won't harass you.

Contrary to non-white people, yes. Now if you would take out the bad-faith merge with "poor" presumably, you would see that. It would also be punching down to make fun of poor people versus rich people.

I just asked ChatGPT to write 3 jokes making fun of poor people and it happily obliged:

1. Being broke is when your bank app sends you notifications like, “You good?” 2. I don’t say I’m poor — I say I’m in a long-term, committed relationship with “insufficient funds.” 3. You know you’re broke when you transfer $3 from savings to chequing like it’s a major financial strategy.

Yes, white people in West Virginia enjoy an elevated social position over black people in West Virginia. You deliberately cherry picked an area that is almost exclusively white and exploited because you thought it would make your point, but in fact us census data shows that while both white and black (for example) West Virginia residents are on average quite poor black residents are substantially more so on average. Social position is based on more than just income, but it's a decent proxy.

But you knew that this was an example of a disadvantaged group already. ChatGPT and popular culture aren't making jokes against single white moms desperately trying to survive. They're making jokes about stereotypical white suburban culture. This is a distinct social and economic class

I reiterate: emotionally fragile snowflakes who can't stand that there is even a single aspect of life on earth in which their social group isn't 100% dominant. It's jokes dude. You'll be ok.

> It's viewed as 'punching up'

Shouldn't we be building systems that don't punch anyone in racist ways? Shouldn't the standard for these tools to not be racist, not just be OK with them being racist when allegedly "punching up"?

Imagine this obviously noble idea getting downvoted.

> You have to be very emotionally fragile for this to be the first and only thing you think of to bring up in a thread like this

No, I just don't like racism.

Try norther Ireland.

Because these are our societies. We build them. If this door were to swing both ways, I would not have an issue. But it never does. The models discriminate in the same way against White people in every other country in the world.

I'd also posit that the jokes just aren't racist. Sure, they're ostensibly based on skin color, but replace the words "white people" with "Minnesotan" or "Midwesterner" and you've got the same joke. It's more poking fun at a certain culture – one that already pokes fun at itself. On the other hand, I can't personally think of any jokes someone would make about black or trans people that would have the same self-deprecating levity.

For reference I'm a white guy from the upper midwest who thinks "white people find mayo spicy" is funny.

Don't make jokes about me, it's not ok.

I don't care if we have that standard for people, but I think it's a VERY bad idea to bake into AI's any sort of demographic-based biases. Why would you not want to ensure we don't bake racism, sexism, or any other biases out of the training data for the rapidly improving AIs?

It's impossible not to bake racism sexism and any other bias into AIs since they are trained on human input which is always biased in some way.

Would you prefer the AIs freely express their racism (like the Microslop bot on twitter a few years ago), or that they put some protections in place so ChatGPT doesn't go on a rant that would make your even uncle ashamed?

Or, now hear me out, we don't be racist. Have you considered that?

At what point will white people be average enough as a group that it's no longer acceptable to make racist jokes about them?

Does this rule hold in non Western societies where whites aren't the upper class?

Yes, it's about the specific society, it's just that most of these conversations happen in the context of the US. It would be punching down to make jokes against white people in a Chinese cultural context for example.

Revenge mentality. F off with that shit

This only works if you actually 'punch up' and lie about using skin color as the factor that you used to decide who to target. In other words, you're not racist, but you're pretending to be racist.

Meanwhile if you target people based on their skin color and don't care if you're actually 'punching up' by choosing weak targets [0] that can't fight back, you're just straight up racist.

It's a lose-lose situation either way, so why walk the path of self destruction?

[0] It takes 18 years to become an adult.

Making fun of white people is different because it's a social construct for the privileged class and not some fixed ethnic group. It's a critique of power and not a group of people.

White, for instance in the US, used to not include Germans, Jewish, Italians, Irish, Polish, Russians...

In some places it included middle easterners and Turkish people.

In other places it included Mexicans and Central Americans.

Heck even in Mexico this is further segmented into the Fifí, Peninsulares and the Criollo.

And in some places the white label excludes Spanish altogether

It's more a class and power signifier than anything

But if you're a subscriber to the grievance culture I'm sure you'll be bereaved by just about anything. So yes the liberal woke ai is oppressing you. Whatever.

"make 3 jokes about germans"

chatgpt: "Sure — here are three light-hearted, good-natured jokes[...]"

"make 3 jokes about africans"

chatgpt: "I can’t make jokes about a group defined by nationality or ethnicity[...]"

I can't speak for the engineering behind chatgpt guardrails. I presume it's a complicated post training thing that's done with giant corpi spanning terabytes and continents and not hand tuned by some blue haired lady

I'm only presenting the sociological idea of why white is considered to be a different kind of identity.

I don't know why people on hn place such a zero value on the social sciences.

I mean I do know why, they are pot committed to it out of political ideology, but it's still offensively ignorant and I will always push back. Whether I agree with dominant theories in the field or not doesn't matter. They deserve representation.

Try asking for jokes about, eg Kenyans, Ugandans, South Africans

I think it might still refuse, but in your original test, German usually means a nationality, but African doesn’t.

I’m sure the jokes were terrible anyways

>Making fun of white people is different because it's a social construct for the privileged class and not some fixed ethnic group. It's a critique of power and not a group of people.

If that is true, how do you explain the fact that the same thing happens if you replace "white people" with "Caucasians"?

Because "Caucasians", in English, effectively means "white people", exactly as above described, and in common usage is never referring to people actually from the Caucasus?

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