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Comment by idiotsecant | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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?

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.

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

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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

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?

> 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.

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

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.

Try norther Ireland.

Revenge mentality. F off with that shit

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