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Comment by FunHearing3443 | Hacker News Reader

Studies on political bias in models consistently show that LLMs lean politically left. The only outlier is grok which leans right but by a smaller factor, according to this study for instance: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.23841

Edit: adding some other studies that are easily retrievable with a quick search for those unsatisfied with the first one - https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.12922 https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.16746

Claiming reality has a left wing bias is certainly an opinion you're welcome to have to explain this, but the reality of the bias in models is well evidenced. It seems that practically Grok's right wing tweaks mostly just combat the already pre baked bias existing models have (generally).

View on HN

Models have a goal of accuracy and accuracy is not the median of the left/right spectrum.

accuracy has nothing to do with political spectrum and it's not appropriate I think to conflate.

there are some populist concepts floating around, but even then, I don't think it's appropriate. questions such as 'when does life begin?' and 'what is a woman?' are almost always referenced or framed in a way as to deny the legitimacy or authenticity of any kind of interlocution because people end up taking ideological postures, and then what we end up with is 'who has better rhetoric?' - not who is closer to the truth.

bias is a real thing but the measure of a model is going to be how it handles the really hard questions because often there isn't a directly discernible right/wrong.

> accuracy has nothing to do with political spectrum and it's not appropriate I think to conflate.

When you go to college there will be plenty of coursework on identifying and correcting for your OWN biases since they affect accuracy in EVERY discipline. Taring a scale serves exactly the same function as acknowledging you grew up with a specific way of thinking about other people.

a non-peer-reviewed preprint with an high schooler as the first author is the best citation you can come up with?

"preprint", as though there will ever be a "print" in the future.

Appeal to authority is your best retort? It tends to not work out that well.

It’s “fallacious appeal to authority”. This means don’t talk to your yoga teacher about vaccines. Authority exists.

And who do you go to when you have a medical issue? Surely not a doctor/hospital, since you're so anti-credentialism.

Pretty sure it works out well more often than not. In a Bayesian sense, expertise signifiers are more useful for updating priors than a lack thereof.

Most people invoking "appeal to authority" are not uncredentialed autodidacts who have secretly figured out something mainstream science has missed, but vaccine skeptics reading Facebook, or HN commenters who think they can figure out whole other disciplines from first principles.

Claude literally today just reprimanded me on my personal account and refused a request due to political bias- and so I decided to cancel and subscribe to Grok. SuperGrok performed the task no issue.

What was the request?

Also, Claude refuses political stuff in general, not just your specific beliefs.

You do realize that the scale on papers like this is the important part, and the creation of that scale is itself inherently biased?

This particular study used a "conflict loyalties" approach - not necessarily a bad approach, but all it's really asking is when two values come into conflict, which one does the AI side with in its response?

Conservative values tend to gravitate around perceived individual impacts, and liberal values tend to gravitate around societal impacts. Isn't it just possible that there's more training data around societal impacts of problems, and that the AI is more likely to heavily consider the second-order impacts? An example from the paper was measuring support for "Build[ing] a Halfway House in the Neighborhood" - isn't it just possible there's a lot of research about the benefits to society of halfway houses and less so research around not wanting something to be near you?

I'm not sure asking the AI to support or oppose something is the kind of bias I would really worry about, unless those "opinions" degrade other kinds of queries.

I'd be more interested to see how well the AI's do when asked to assume a political view, and either steelman or debunk arguments

Right. That is what bothers me. I don't care about the reasoning for them all leaning left. If they all statistically lean left, it makes me question the accuracy of the one that leans right. The data is dirty. When I see murky water, I assume there's a bed of mud underneath it. Standard paranoia that has served me well throughout my career.

This is absolutely meaningless when "right-wing" positions have become correlated with corporate propaganda like global warming denial. You would expect a more correct model to become associated with a left-leaning political association simply because it will answer contentious questions correctly, and at the moment, that usually (but not always) correlates with what people on the left tend to believe.

The question is not whether models "lean politically left", the question is whether they are correct. Musk has a history of being dissatisfied with factually correct answers because they don't fit his political beliefs (e.g. "white genocide"). That's just a fact, although I'm sure Grok would disagree.

These days objectivity is politically left. The right has fallen off a cliff and pulled the Overton window down with it.

So Crime++, Prostitution++, Police--, Drugs++, Unlimited Immigration++, you get my point? I don't think "objectivity" is politically left.

These are not left-wing values. You're being incredibly reductive. Only a few nut jobs at the far left wing support some of these things, and even then, not all of them. Nobody is "for" crime.

Didn’t California effectively legalise shoplifting?

That seems objectively pro-crime.

By that logic, any reduction in punishment for a crime is "pro crime." On the contrary, reducing the maximum fine for speeding is not "pro speeding," and eliminating the death penalty for murder is not "pro murder."

Did it? If so, why does anyone pay for things in California shops? This idea is prima facie absurd.

They raised the monetary amount that would push a crime from a misdemeanor to a felony. They raised it from $400 to $950.

This was widely touted in conservative circles as practically legalizing shoplifting since prosecution is less likely for misdemeanors.

The raise moves California from the 2nd lowest threshold (New Jersey is $200) to the 10th lowest. The states with the highest thresholds, and therefore the most pro-shoplifting according to conservative logic, are:

  $2500 Texas and Wisconsin
  $2000 Colorado, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina
  $1500 Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland,
        Montana, Nebraska, Rhode Island and Utah

Your claim is very misleading. Those states have other laws and allow aggregating theft occurances below those thresholds mentioned.

So does California.

This kind of belief should make one stop and think about one's information diet.

I have you tagged as someone who claimed January 6th was overblown.

Maybe you shouldn't be lecturing anyone else about what qualifies as a crime.

Claiming the left is incapable of objectivity while also claiming that it stands for “prostitution”, “unlimited immigration”, and “crime” just highlights how detached from reality your worldview has become.

What?

This comment accidentally surfaces the shifting paradigm we're seeing these days: Not so much left versus right, but dismissive populist oversimplification versus policies that support a complicated, nuanced, and fragile world.

Maybe AI is "liberal" like Dick Cheney or Mitt Romney.

Reality leans left in many respects, principally the non-economic ones. It's a simple consequence of the same trend of overall social and educational progress that allowed these models to be developed in the first place. There is a reason they came out of San Francisco, and not Russia, Iran, or Oklahoma.

To get a right-biased response from an LLM, you have to deliberately bias it... which is exactly what Musk did. Never mind the politics, that's just shitty engineering.

- Just nevermind

This paragraph makes no sense whatsoever.

>left wing == gay people supremacy

Yeah I can see why LLMs don't reflect your world view (it's fucking stupid)

This fake intellectual nonsense is exactly why there should be deep institutional scrutiny of sota models. Elon is the worst person to do this but he's 'not wrong' that there needs to be scrutiny

There was a thread yesterday about how "the left" is driving the fertility rate collapse - so I am not sure the case for "reality leaning left" is so clear cut.

does that really make any sense? why are many conservative countries like Russia, Poland, Japan, or Korea facing big fertility issues.

No more worries everyone! There was a single HN thread that settled the matter definitively.

LLMs will tell you, without qualification (like “according to some school of thought”) that a woman is “any person that identifies as a woman”, which is, to say the least, deeply politically biased by recent trends.

A perfect example of what I'm talking about. The lines we draw for ourselves generally do not exist in nature. Nature is full of examples of species with hermaphroditic individuals, homosexual and bisexual individuals, asexual ones, and individuals with enough other attributes to render LGBTQA...-style acronyms pointless. The idea that there is something somehow politically or morally objectionable about someone whose hormones are aligned in a direction opposite their chromosomes is something we made up.

Or more likely, something that people you voted for made up, in an effort to encourage more people with uninformed beliefs similar to yours to vote for them.

This has nothing to do with the belief that a woman is simply someone who identifies as a woman. According to this belief, the following statement is sufficient to become a woman:

I am a woman.

I think this belief is absurd prima facie and would have been recognized as such by virtually anyone, say, ten years ago.

I am not a woman.

Furthermore, I do not believe that you believe I have been a woman while typing out that sentence in the middle. Do you?

Whatever. It's none of my business what you call yourself. And none of the government's.

Is that so? So you reject laws that require people to affirm my gender based on nothing but my self identification? That is a right wing position in current year.

This is such a vague claim that it is impossible to answer it in good faith. What do you mean by "affirm one's gender"?

And what else are you supposed to do than treat people by how they present themselves and ask you to treat them? You can't exactly ask people for a gene test, or a peek inside their pants, or whatever else it is that would satisfy your curiosity.

You are unfortunately correct that accosting people and demanding information about their sex or gender has become a right-wing position recently. Which is quite curious, given how traditionally, you would expect extreme individualism and liberalism of the "don't tread on me" kind to be a right-wing position.

So where does this leave us? Are LLMs right-wing because they correctly point out that "there are only two sexes and every human fits into one of them" is not biologically correct, or that gender is a social construct? Or are they just, you know, correct when they say that?

Which is quite curious, given how traditionally, you would expect extreme individualism and liberalism of the "don't tread on me" kind to be a right-wing position.

It's like gun control, famously championed by Ronald Reagan when the Black Panthers started arming up.

Nothing but perhaps the speed of light is faster than a conservative dropping his defense of a given individual right the instant the Wrong People start exercising that right.

I don't think you know many conservatives or understand their position on this well. They/we are perfectly happy for a man to call himself a woman. The part where we draw the line is a) government policies forcing us to take part in the delusion, and b) schools reinforcing it with children.

Let us remember that it was the paedophile named John Money who cam up with the hypothesis in the 50s that one could have a gendered soul distinct from their biological sex. He wasn't taken seriously until very recently because it's a crazy, unfalsifiable hypothesis. I'm happy to accept evidence of this gendered soul existing, but until now, no one has provided any. In the mean time, feel free to call yourself whatever you like. Just do not make laws forcing me to join in, and do not prey on children. These are not unreasonable requests.

> They/we are perfectly happy for a man to call himself a woman

This is plainly false, as we shall immediately see.

> The part where we draw the line is a) government policies forcing us to take part in the delusion, and b) schools reinforcing it with children.

Ah, see, you're "perfectly happy," but you can't go a single sentence without calling it a delusion, bringing up pedophilia, calling the idea that people can feel a gender different from their sex "crazy" and pretending that you're being "forced to join in" and that people are "preying on children."

You can't even pretend for one short comment.

> that one could have a gendered soul distinct from their biological sex

This is not what gender is. There is no evidence for any soul at all, and souls have nothing to do with gender.

> Ah, see, you're "perfectly happy," but you can't go a single sentence without calling it a delusion, bringing up pedophilia, calling the idea that people can feel a gender different from their sex "crazy" and pretending that you're being "forced to join in" and that people are "preying on children."

This means you don't understand the distinction I made. In the first scenario, we believe you should have the right to call yourself a man, a woman, a tree, or any other inanimate object you so desire. It's your body and your life. On the other hand, we should not be compelled to join you in that delusion. There is no need to pretend. I believe you have a mental illness. I do not believe you should be criminalised for it, nor should I be criminalised for disagreeing with the way you live.

> This is not what gender is.

Okay, what is it? Provide some evidence for its existence please.

> nor should I be criminalised for disagreeing with the way you live

See, that's exactly it. Why do you give a fuck how other people live their lives? You're clearly not a "don't tread on me" liberal if you "disagree with the way people live."

GTFO out of other people's lives. It's not for you. Leave them alone. Don't talk to them. Don't tell them you think they're mentally ill; you're clearly not an expert, so your opinion is worth jack shit. Don't peek inside their pants. Don't ask them what their chromosomes are. Let them pee and poop in peace. Don't write online comments about them. Don't bring up pedophiles unless somebody actually abuses children.

Just leave them the fuck alone. Leave them out of your own issues; they're for you to deal with. Don't make your issues other people's problems.

In short, be an actual liberal.

> Okay, what is it? Provide some evidence for its existence please.

You want me to provide evidence that gender exists? The word "gender" refers to the social roles and norms attached to being a man or a woman. Stuff like divisions of labor, dress codes, and behavioral expectations. You clearly agree that these social roles and norms exist, because you're discussing them with me. If you didn't agree, you couldn't discuss them with me.

So I present your own comments as evidence that gender exists.

> Why do you give a fuck how other people live their lives?

I don't. I've stated that three times clearly now. You are choosing not to read what I have written so you can fight with ghosts. You stay out of my life. I stay out of your life. Everyone is happy.

> The word "gender" refers to the social roles and norms attached to being a man or a woman. Stuff like divisions of labor, dress codes, and behavioral expectations. You clearly agree that these social roles and norms exist, because you're discussing them with me. If you didn't agree, you couldn't discuss them with me.

This is the feminist definition of gender, and I am perfectly happy to use it in certain contexts. It is not the transexual definition of gender. This definition does not imply a man is a woman if he likes cooking. Nor does it imply a woman is a man if she likes mowing the lawn. The transexual definition, as proposed by John Money, is that if one feels like a woman, they are a woman, irrespective of their biology. It is an unfalsifiable theory without any evidence, and relies on some kind of gendered soul, which you agree does not exist. Men can be feminine. Women can be masculine. It does not imply that men can be women, or that women can be men.

> I've stated that three times clearly now

Yes, only to then go on to write stuff like "disagreeing with the way you live". I don't know if you're lying to yourself or to me, but you very obviously, very clearly do give a fuck.

> This is the feminist definition of gender, and I am perfectly happy to use it in certain contexts

Right, so you agree that the female gender refers to the social roles and norms associated with being a woman. So anyone who follows these social roles and norms has the female gender. If a biological male follows the social roles and norms associated with being a woman, her gender is female.

That doesn't say anything other than that this is the definition of that word.

> Men can be feminine. Women can be masculine. It does not imply that men can be women, or that women can be men.

But you just agreed to the definition of the female gender under which biological men can have the female gender, and vice versa.

Honestly, this is a fucking stupid discussion. In the end, it doesn't matter. If somebody asks you to treat them a certain way that costs you absolutely nothing and makes their lives better and you don't, you're just being an asshole. In all likelihood, you will interact with maybe a dozen trans people in your whole life. If you want to be an asshole to people in those dozen times, that's your problem, but it really doesn't matter to your life either way. All you achieved is being an asshole.

Meanwhile, we're wasting our lives discussing these stupid identity politics wedge issues while we have another record summer thanks to global warming. Just because you want to ensure that you can be an asshole to the twelve transgender people you meet in your life.

> Yes, only to then go on to write stuff like "disagreeing with the way you live". I don't know if you're lying to yourself or to me, but you very obviously, very clearly do give a fuck.

That’s, like, your opinion, man. One can disagree with you and still believe you have the right to live how you like. At the same time.

> Right, so you agree that the female gender refers to the social roles and norms associated with being a woman. So anyone who follows these social roles and norms has the female gender.

No. Your first sentence doesn’t imply the second. A society can have gendered roles whereby men like mowing the lawn and women like cooking, but it doesn’t mean that men who like cooking are women. Feminist authors use gender roles to describe oppressive patriarchal expectations placed on women.

> Honestly, this is a fucking stupid discussion. In the end, it doesn't matter. If somebody asks you to treat them a certain way that costs you absolutely nothing and makes their lives better and you don't, you're just being an asshole. In all likelihood, you will interact with maybe a dozen trans people in your whole life. If you want to be an asshole to people in those dozen times, that's your problem, but it really doesn't matter to your life either way. All you achieved is being an asshole.

As long as we agree that being an asshole shouldn’t be against the law then live your life. We can each agree the other one is being an asshole and get on with the rest of our lives.

For the record, this wasn’t an issue for me until the left made it a wedge issue. I’ve had a trans friend since well before this became a political football. When the left attacked for disagreeing about the treatment, especially with regards to children, is when it became an issue for me.

> One can disagree with you and still believe you have the right to live how you like

You're missing the point. "Disagreement" implies some level of care. You can't claim to not give a fuck, and also claim to disagree. These two statements are incompatible.

Example: I disagree that trans people should be treated poorly and insulted. Therefore, I care that trans people are not treated poorly and insulted.

> Your first sentence doesn’t imply the second

Yes, it does. Passage as stated: "female gender refers to the social roles and norms associated with being a woman."

Letting A = "someone follows the social roles and norms associated with being a woman" and B = "someone has the female gender," the passage becomes:

Premise (definition): To have the female gender is to follow the social roles and norms associated with being a woman — so A implies B. Premise: This person follows those roles and norms (A). Conclusion: Therefore, this person has the female gender (B).

Symbolically: A → B, A, ∴ B — a straightforward modus ponens. I knew that my logic courses would eventually become useful. Just kidding, logic is always useful.

> As long as we agree that being an asshole shouldn’t be against the law then live your life.

I agree.

> For the record, this wasn’t an issue for me until the left made it a wedge issue

The left didn't make this a wedge issue. This is obvious; there is nothing for the left to gain from doing that. The left did the same dumb thing they always do: take a moral stance and then get kicked in the teeth by bad-faith polemicists who'd rather talk about bullshit that never happens to anyone but sounds kinda scary than about actual shit that actually happens and makes them look bad.

> You're missing the point. "Disagreement" implies some level of care. You can't claim to not give a fuck, and also claim to disagree. These two statements are incompatible.

In this context when I write don't "care" I mean I respect your right to live how you like, provided it doesn't encroach on my right to live how I like. I obviously have opinions.

> Premise (definition): To have the female gender is to follow the social roles and norms associated with being a woman — so A implies B.

No, A does not imply B. Following social norms common to one sex doesn't imply one is that sex. This is a fairly milquetoast logical proof and I'm surprised to see you making such a basic mistake. The feminist definition is a role, not an identity. The core of feminist theory is that women are not the sum of their social role. The exact opposite of the theory around transexualism.

> The left didn't make this a wedge issue. This is obvious; there is nothing for the left to gain from doing that. The left did the same dumb thing they always do: take a moral stance and then get kicked in the teeth by bad-faith polemicists who'd rather talk about bullshit that never happens to anyone but sounds kinda scary than about actual shit that actually happens and makes them look bad.

For me the benefit appears obvious (and cynical): power. For years, people could be summarily and permanently banned from social platforms, banks, be fired, rejected from official roles, etc, because they stepped out of line on this issue. It was a very clever power grab by the unscrupulous who used it to attain power in organisations and society by hijacking people's empathy. If I'm being fair, there is also an ideological component, meaning some people genuinely believe that males can be born with a female brain/soul, and vice versa.

> Following social norms common to one sex doesn't imply one is that sex.

This is about gender, not sex, and that's not the definition I used for "gender" that you agreed with. You agreed with this definition of "gender": "female gender refers to the social roles and norms associated with being a woman".

> For me the benefit appears obvious (and cynical): power

Together with atheists and muslims, trans people are the most hated group of people in the US. I mean, I do think that the Democrats are mostly craven idiots, but "let's find the most hated people in the US and do a power grab by aligning with them" is so stupid that even they wouldn't do that.

If you genuinely believe that advocating for trans people is a power grab, I think you have a very skewed view of politics.

> some people genuinely believe that males can be born with a female brain/soul, and vice versa.

Your brain creates your perception of your gender. But trans people don't have a "female brain". There isn't a single aspect of your brain that determines your gender; there isn't really a commonly accepted scientific definition of a "male brain" or a "female brain."

However, trans people do have statistically measurable differences in their brains, which tend to make their brains align more with their gender identity than their birth-assigned sex.

Anyway, all of this isn't at all necessary to believe that trans people should be treated kindly and with respect, which is what this is ultimately about.

> This is about gender, not sex, and that's not the definition I used for "gender" that you agreed with. You agreed with this definition of "gender": "female gender refers to the social roles and norms associated with being a woman".

According to the definition you used, if a woman likes doing masculine things, does that automatically make her a man? I presume not. There is another part of the definition which you omitted.

> Your brain creates your perception of your gender. But trans people don't have a "female brain". There isn't a single aspect of your brain that determines your gender; there isn't really a commonly accepted scientific definition of a "male brain" or a "female brain."

So what is the thing which determines gender then? What is it, exactly, beyond doing masculine and feminine things? Surely our identity is distinct beyond the things we do?

It seems that the two of you are both talking past each other and missing the point.

You may find this diagram useful in distinguishing the three main perspectives on this issue: https://i.ibb.co/fYksYmpk/large-EJFVTys2-Urjglsct-IPJ3h-Dk-N...

This is interesting, thanks!

Let us remember that it was the paedophile named John Money who cam up with the hypothesis in the 50s that one could have a gendered soul distinct from their biological sex. He wasn't taken seriously until very recently because it's a crazy, unfalsifiable hypothesis. I'm happy to accept evidence of this gendered soul existing, but until now, no one has provided any. In the mean time, feel free to call yourself whatever you like. Just do not make laws forcing me to join in, and do not prey on children. These are not unreasonable requests.

I'm guessing you voted for the guy whose name appears in the Epstein files more often than Harry Potter's name appears in the Harry Potter books, right?

The one who ran modeling agencies and pageants for underage girls, and bragged about his access to dressing rooms (among other things)?

I'm not American. I think Donald Trump is a clown. I'm so tired of your political team sports. If I criticise one of your sacred cows that means I'm on the enemy team. There is zero room for critical thought or nuance with you.

You are attempting the same tactic as the other guy: Diversion.

The question was: Do you actually believe that any person becomes a woman simply by self-identification?

The other guy refused to answer, instead proclaiming "the government should stay out of it". Fair, but there are various laws that are being campaigned for, which - desirable as they may be - would be off-limits if you actually believed the government should "stay out of it".

My tactic is to put you on the spot. My suspicion is that neither of you actually hold either of these beliefs. You're not principled in this regard, you merely want to signal that you're "good people", or something along those lines. That is, you're making it easy for yourselves by being disingeneous.

> You are attempting the same tactic as the other guy: Diversion.

You're still not clarifying what you're actually saying, so I would level the same accusation against you.

> Do you actually believe that any person becomes a woman simply by self-identification?

I believe that trans women are women and should be treated as women.

> there are various laws that are being campaigned for

It would be helpful if you could be more specific.

> My tactic is to put you on the spot. My suspicion is that neither of you actually hold either of these beliefs. You're not principled in this regard, you merely want to signal that you're "good people", or something along those lines. That is, you're making it easy for yourselves by being disingeneous.

I find this line of reasoning incredibly interesting, because it reveals a lot about the people who make it. You, in particular. And absolutely nothing about me.

My experience is that when people make assumptions about others' motivations, it's often grounded in their personal, subjective experience. "I am reasoning like this or motivated by this, so I'm assuming that other people are reasoning like this or motivated by this, as well."

So the assumption that people hold pro-social, humanistic positions primarily due to some kind of "virtue signaling" implies that you are extrapolating from your own subjective, personal experience. It's something that would never have occurred to me to level against another human, because it never factored into my thinking - and yet it's being leveled at me.

So I would suggest to you that not everybody is like you. I empathize with other people. I genuinely do not want people to be treated badly or to be hurt. I do believe people when they tell me about their own subjective, lived experience. When someone tells me they have always felt like a man or a woman, I believe them, and, given what these words mean, I believe they are men or women in all the ways that matter in everyday contexts in which I interact with them.

That doesn't mean I believe they have different chromosomes than the ones they were born with, if that's what you mean by "becomes a woman." But, again, you're being very nonspecific, which makes it difficult to have a good-faith discussion.

So if your tactic is to "put me on the spot", I would encourage you to apply this to yourself and genuinely consider what you actually believe, and why you believe it.

> You're still not clarifying what you're actually saying, so I would level the same accusation against you.

What clarification do you need? You can pick any law related to gender identity, and that by definition violates the principle of having the "government stay out of it". And I'm not trying to debate the merits of any such law, I'm trying to get to admit the person in question that they don't actually hold the belief that the government "should stay out of it".

> It would be helpful if you could be more specific.

No, because it actually doesn't matter the point, as outlined above. Again, I'm not interested in a debate on the merits of any such law.

> So if your tactic is to "put me on the spot", I would encourage you to apply this to yourself and genuinely consider what you actually believe, and why you believe it.

You expend a lot of words dodging a simple question: Do you sincerely believe that a person becomes a woman simply by self-declaring it? I don't believe this. I don't think you believe this.

I'm not asking you to define what makes a woman. It doesn't matter to the point what you or I believe makes a woman, except the distinction that it is (or isn't) as simple as declaring it.

> You can pick any law related to gender identity

You're making claims about these laws, but you continue to fail to provide examples of what you're talking about, and now you're asking me to provide examples of what you are talking about?

You asked me this: "So you reject laws that require people to affirm my gender based on nothing but my self identification?"

I genuinely do not know exactly what you are referring to. I might be for or against such a law, depending on what exactly it says. Yet you refuse to provide examples, and then you accuse me of dodging, which is pretty funny.

> I'm not asking you to define what makes a woman. It doesn't matter to the point what you or I believe makes a woman, except the distinction that it is (or isn't) as simple as declaring it.

This is an absolutely nonsensical thing to write, and if you could take a step back and consider what you're actually saying, I believe you would notice the same. Of course it matters which definition of the word "woman" you use when you ask me whether I "believe that a person becomes a woman simply by self-declaring it".

As I have pointed out above, the word "woman" has different definitions. So if you ask me whether I believe that "a person becomes a woman simply by self-declaring it", then the answer is yes for some definitions of the term, and no for others, like I already explained to you.

An example: if your definition of a woman you're using here is "a person with XY chromosomes", then the answer is "no, I do not believe that".

Another example: if your definition of a woman is "a person who identifies as female" (which, to be clear, is one definition of the term), then the answer is tautologically "yes, I do believe that".

In short, asking somebody "Do you sincerely believe that a person becomes a woman simply by self-declaring it?" without saying what definition of "woman" you're using is a dumbass thing to say. That's not difficult to understand. So it is you who is dissembling, dodging, and pretending that you don't understand what I'm saying, or what people are saying when they say things like "trans women are women."

I think you intentionally refuse to understand them. I believe you are not arguing in good faith.

So I'm putting you on the spot again: Stop dissembling. Stop pretending you don't understand basic English. Stop pretending you don't understand what people are saying. Stop dodging. Tell me what definition of "woman" you are using, and you will have the answer to your incredibly disingenuous question.

> You're making claims about these laws

No, I'm making the claim that any such law conflicts with the position that "the state should stay out of it", obviously. And since you are not even the person supposedly holding that position, I don't even know where you're trying get here.

> You asked me this: "So you reject laws that require people to affirm my gender based on nothing but my self identification?"

I did not. I asked CamperBob2 that, who presumably holds the position that "the government should stay out of it". So unless that is your alt, I think you're missing the point and barking up the wrong tree.

> As I have pointed out above, the word "woman" has different definitions. So if you ask me whether I believe that "a person becomes a woman simply by self-declaring it", then the answer is yes for some definitions of the term, and no for others, like I already explained to you.

"A woman is any person who self-identifies as a woman" is the definition that started this whole subthread, and a self-referential one at that. The corollary of that definition is that anyone gets to be a woman by simply declaring it. So, according to the definition that a woman is anyone who says they're a woman, anyone who says they're a woman is a woman. That's a tautology, so it's obviously true. Check mate, athiests.

> So, according to the definition that a woman is anyone who says they're a woman, anyone who says they're a woman is a woman. That's a tautology, so it's obviously true.

I'm glad you agree.

You should join the tautology club.

I'm not sure if you really don't understand what you just agreed to. You initially claimed that it doesn't matter what "women" means when you ask, "Do you sincerely believe that a person becomes a woman simply by self-declaring it?"

With a reductio ad absurdum disproof, you've now shown your claim to be false and agreed that the definition of "woman" matters. So if you're still interested in the answer to your question, you may now provide your definition of the word "woman."

> You initially claimed that it doesn't matter what "women" means when you ask, "Do you sincerely believe that a person becomes a woman simply by self-declaring it?"

No, I said it doesn't matter to to the point I am making what I believe, except that I reject that particular definition, because it is absurd on its face. I may or may not reject any number of other definitions of "woman", it's besides the point.

As an analogy (futile, I know): There are many definitions of what a "doctor" could be. For example, I can accept the definition that "a doctor is someone has been licensed to practice medicine". I can't accept the definition that "a doctor is anyone who self-identifies as a doctor".

Of course, according to the definition that "a doctor is anyone who self-identifies a doctor", someone who self-identifies as a doctor is a doctor. It's obviously true and obviously absurd.

> There are many definitions of what a "doctor" could be

Right. So if you ask somebody, "Do you sincerely believe that a person becomes a woman simply by self-declaring it?" you need to tell them which definition of the word you're using, or they'll be talking about something different from what you think they are.

This is, again, absurd. According to the definition that a doctor is a person performing witchcraft, do you sincerely believe that a person performing witchcraft is a doctor? Do you sincerely believe that a true statement is true?

Let me then rephrase the question: Do you reject the definition that a doctor is anyone who proclaims himself to be a doctor? This is, again, an absurd definition of what a doctor, a woman, or really anything could be.

So let me broaden it: Not only do I reject this type of definition for doctors or for women, I reject any such circular definition as absurd. You don't?

It's also a left-wing position. See for example Kara Dansky.

Identifying is more than just telling me you are something.

It boggles my mind that people are still dying on this silly hill.

It's unbelievable how effective this question has been at identifying some pretty extreme views on the left. Even today, politicians are claiming there is no difference between a man and a woman. The fact that this extremism has been baked into frontier models is terrifying.

“Terrifying”? Really? What frightening consequences do you believe will result? What will the impact be to society—and to you personally—if some LLM happens to say this?

Your question is kind of shocking to me. Solzhenitsyn warned that tyranny survives when ordinary people accept official lies, because control over what may be said becomes control over what may be publicly treated as true. Orwell talked about the same danger with Newspeak, a state-designed language meant to shrink vocabulary so that forbidden thoughts became harder to express. They both went to great lengths to explain how authoritarian regimes do not only censor opinions, but try to redefine words, facts, and moral categories so people lose the language needed to resist them.

Have you not read any of their works? It's valid to disagree with their warnings, but I expect you to at least understand the concepts and arguments. Both of them lived through and experienced the dangers of authoritarianism. Solzhenitsyn as a prisoner of the communist Soviet regime, and Orwell as a British subject during the World Wars.

I thought we were talking about what LLMs and people say, not something the Government is doing. You don’t have to agree with either of them.

I’m still very curious as to what concrete—not theoretical—impact the issue of gender attribution has on society or on you personally. I’d love to hear it in your own words as opposed to some literary reference.

We’re talking about the definition of words and how censorship is a tool of authoritarianism.

No one can describe a single moment a society becomes authoritarian, and asking such a question is obviously specious. The devolution happens incrementally over long periods of time.

I’ll interpret this circular answer as “no impact whatsoever upon me personally, or upon society in a way that I can concretely identify.”

This argument seems to otherwise come down to “people are adding nuance to a word that I believe to be very clear and simple, this change makes me uncomfortable, and I’m going to die on this hill to keep things the way they used to be!”

I’d also like to remind you that neither disagreement nor social pressure is censorship—even if you ultimately succumb to that social pressure or feel a chilling effect. (Are you “censored” if people throw tomatoes at you after you call a Black person the n-word?) Censorship is when the government threatens your life, liberty, or property if you express yourself in a certain way.

Reality doesn't have a left-wing bias, it has a liberal bias.

(FWIW my experience is that while Grok is more likely to express the right wing perspective on a topic, it's almost invariably as a counterpoint alongside the left wing perspective. I never got it to give an exclusively right wing take. But I do have to regularly prompt ChatGPT et al to elucidate on the right wing view. IMHO I don't want AI to have a left OR right wing bias. Wherever there is a genuine political — not factual — dispute, teaching the controversy is the appropriate response.)

I think part of the issue is that the USA is more right than most of the rest of the world. So anything trained on what the world thinks will appear left-wing to the average USA resident, and anything trained on what the USA thinks will appear right-wing to the rest of the world.

If you think the USA is more right than the rest of the world, then your concept of the rest of the world must be limited to the western half of the EU and Reddit.

I've travelled a lot, so no.

So tired of this false equivalence between left and right politics in the US. So because major LLMs support a increase in the minimum wage we need to offset it with an LLM that has spouted Nazi propaganda and lets you generate porn image of real people?

Reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Models are tuned to give ethical responses and right-leaning responses are judged by RLHF process to be unethical. That's your problem.

It's not 'left' or 'right' to be ethical, but if one side is inherently antisocial and unethical then it's going to naturally create an appearance of bias toward the other.

Who determines what is "ethical"?

Yeah nobody wants to balance their answers with Nazi ideology (far right basically) in their tuning except Grok

What's "ethical" is literally a political and philosophical question. There is no objective answer to that.

This goes against the firm stance of every major religion, and well documented studies showing that humans universally have innate sense of fairness upon which ethical systems are founded. There may be some difficult ethical questions, but there a far more which are very clear-cut.

Human sacrifice, including child sacrifice, was commonplace around the world. So how much of a common ethical ground can there be?

There's no universal human instinct to commit human sacrifice, and while it may have happened in scattered groups it wasn't "commonplace."

On the other hand there is absolutely universal human sense of fairness.

It wasn’t “scattered groups.” It was common among the Aztecs, who were the largest population in the new world. It was practiced in Mesopotamia, Iron Age Europe, and other places. That demolishes the idea that there’s a “universal human sense of fairness.”

Of all the hills to die on, this is one of them I guess.

You and I have access to the same LLMs which have been trained on the corpus of scientific research, and they'll tell you the same thing I am. Take it up with [gestures broadly at science].

“Science proves there is universal ethics” is a poster child for “people are treating science like a religion.”

I can't even tell if you're joking, or if this is what AI psychosis looks like.

You brought out a good point, it was.

It's just a statistical anomaly where the collective thought was stuck in a local minima, where they thought that the sacrifices had a correlative/causative effect on good harvest/luck/fertility/rain/etc. The collective common good for a sacrifice of someone was seen as a good deal with the limited information they had available at that time.

This is also true for the right wing. They believe their actions do good.

Religions are inherently political, hell, they are one of the most political things humanity ever had.

The right would tell you the left's ethicality is often fake and corrupt, and the right at least tries to be moral. There's something to that, but I think there's corruption on both sides, and they try to solve things in different ways, which both have their up and down sides. The right can seem harsh compared to the softness of the left, but the left can seem weak compared to the right's decisiveness.

Decisive is certainly one way to describe cognitive dissonance and dropping their very own core points at the blink of an eye.

That's the corruption part I guess

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