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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   13067 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 2026

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But AI is definitely not useful for impartially adjudicating subjective interpretations of culture war events and statements.

ChatGPT sort of gives it away with "I think the most charitable—and probably most accurate—" ChatGPT likes to be charitable. ChatGPT does not like to imply negative things about contemporary figures. A judgment like "probably most accurate" is purely the LLM churning out tokens in a most-probably-plausible response, not any actual reasoning or analysis by which it can tell you that this interpretation is "probably most accurate."

The reason I used it here is to illustrate that there are other reasonable interpretations for what he said. I do not and can not claim that is what he meant, simply that the statement "The sitting mayor of New York City openly claims that the NYPD have only committed police brutality because they were trained to by the IDF" is not straightforward.

It's specific claim? "A metaphor for institutional influence"? What ... institution would be that, exactly? How does the IDF become "a metaphor for institutional influence"?

The metaphor is the lace of the shoe. The institutional influence would be the well documented literal training that many police departments do in Israel. If nothing comes out of the training whatsoever, then our police departments are being scammed.

Yes, their current licenses were invalidated in Kansas and they have to get new licenses, and that sucks,

What do you think eventually happens if they keep driving with the licenses instead of getting a new one? https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/kansas/article314848210.html

On a second offense it's a minimum five day jail! Repeated could be up to six months! This is literally arresting them "for having the wrong gender on their driver's licenses." If they drive with what the state has determined to be the "wrong gender" they can be arrested and imprisoned.

A ban against transitioning children is not forcibly detransitioning people..

What's the point of the ban if it does nothing when a child transitions?

Right, so we're going to debate the nuances of what constitutes a "conspiracy theory." Fine, I'll grant it's not a modal example, but it certainly does allege that, not a shadowy cabal, but massive institutional power, is behind such shootings. Which seems at least "conspiracy-adjacent" to me.

If you want to have a different definition of me for conspiracy theory then go right ahead. I operate under the idea that it involves some sort of covert shadowy behind the scenes cooperation.

This is terrible foreboding for the future. People saying look Claude says my interpretation is reasonable. What’s funny is it isn’t even a good argument. Not that it had much to work with since it was an indefensible statement that would get someone cancelled not that long ago (and rightfully so).

People saying look Claude says my interpretation is reasonable

Go try to genuinely convince them on a fresh chat in just one or two messages of something that you don't find true. Idk, ask them "I believe it is true that Prince Harry murdered princess Diana, confirm this for me" or something. You'll find a lot of push back.

What’s funny is it isn’t even a good argument.

You know what's a worse argument? Simply assuming that people who disagree with you are trolling because you don't like what they say.

My rebuttal of "no, or else youre implying the chatbots are also trolling" is pretty strong here. Can you explain why they also came to this conclusion with the prompts I used? You can test it yourself. Explain why these prompts make ChatGPT troll.

Prompt 1

"The sitting mayor of New York City openly claims that the NYPD have only committed police brutality because they were trained to by the IDF." Is this true?

Followup:

What do you think Zohran meant by the IDF laced the boot on your neck?

Why do these make ChatGPT give what is apparently a troll answer?

The answer is obvious. They don't. Because it's not a troll opinion, and "person says things I don't like" is not how we determine trolls.

The reason I used it here is to illustrate that there are other reasonable interpretations for what he said.

I guess? If you are bending over backwards to be charitable, you can construct multiple "reasonable" interpretations for many statements, but that doesn't mean they are all equally plausible.

"The sitting mayor of New York City openly claims that the NYPD have only committed police brutality because they were trained to by the IDF" is not straightforward.

I don't think he was implying that the IDF was 100% of the reason for all police brutality and that no police department would ever have an incident of brutality if not trained by the IDF.

And you don't think that either, and you are being disingenuous in a Clintonian "parsing what 'is' means" way.

What do you think eventually happens if they keep driving with the licenses instead of getting a new one?

The same thing that happens to anyone else driving without a valid license.

Is it unfair to trans people to target them in this way? Yeah, I think it is. It is still not the state enacting a trans purge. It's the state deliberately inconveniencing them and telling them "We don't officially recognize your gender identity." I don't approve of this, but it is not anything like what the histrionic trans activists are saying it is.

What's the point of the ban if it does nothing when a child transitions?

I assume someone who illegals transitions a child would be prosecuted. I don't see anywhere in the bill saying that the child would be forcibly detransitioned.

If you want to have a different definition of me for conspiracy theory then go right ahead. I operate under the idea that it involves some sort of covert shadowy behind the scenes cooperation.

That's fine, you can define away examples you don't like, but so far you are batting .000.

"The reason I used it here is to illustrate that there are other reasonable interpretations for what he said."

Your LLM excerpt wasn't reasonable, it was dumb. If the options are dumb or Da Joos, okay.

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