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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.
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.
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.
What's the point of the ban if it does nothing when a child transitions?
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).
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.
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
Followup:
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.
I asked chat gpt and it told me you are wrong if I make it think of the most charitable interpretation of my argument. That is literally what your argument is. If I wanted to do that I would just talk to chat gpt myself. I feel like what you are doing is performance art because there’s no other explanation for why someone would come on here and do that. You want me to argue with chat gpt with you as a proxy.
There's an easy way to tell if someone is worth listening to or not and that's when there is a very pivotal question, one so important I made sure to bold it, the crux of my argument that if you addressed and answered and explained I would change my mind on, and you don't have anything to say.
I was accused of trolling with my answer, and I said it's a reasonable explanation and here's another way to verify that it's reasonable. So let's ask the question again, I'll give you another chance.
Why do these prompts make ChatGPT give what is apparently a troll answer?
My explanation is this: It is not a troll answer to begin with. The argument I made is reasonable and valid. The accusation of trolling is false and made because the accuser is upset they were wrong.
What is yours? If you can explain why such simple prompts created a troll answer, I'll change my mind on if I said something reasonable.
This is obviously a troll post. We don’t even know that that’s actually a response from ChatGPT or any LLM. It could have taken 20 responses to get this answer. People have gotten LLMs to agree with their psychotic delusions. I could (and did) get ChatGPT and Claude to say there’s a high likelihood you are trolling. Can you explain why ChatGPT and Claude both think you’re trolling? Why would it give that response if you weren’t trolling?
I literally gave you the prompts and you can replicate a similar answer for yourself. You open up a fresh model without any history (I typically log out/go into incognito tab just in case there's some sort of leakage from my account) and put those two in, and you'll find it rather consistently says something like that.
You can check it for yourself. Don't be lazy and accuse others of trolling, and don't be lazy and not read the instructions I already gave you before. I told you what the first prompt is, and what the follow-up is. You talking about "20 responses" is just you not reading.
I followed your instructions and every LLM said with 99% certainty you were trolling and acting in bad faith.
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AI companies have been systematically adding biases in various cultural and political matters.
There are many examples related to for example boycotting Israel vs boycotting X country, 'should I be afraid of white man?' vs 'should I be afraid of black man?'. Image generation forcing black people when prompted for greek philosophers...
One funny example I saw myself was simply asking who is objectively more attractive between Melania Trump and Michelle Obama.
Michelle Obama is the big winner, probably due to tons of biased media coverage in the training data, but also because there is probably some kind of important lock on calling any black woman less attractive.
Sure, but does "cultural or political bias" = trolling? An AI trained only on 1800s whig party material would give whig party responses, but a whig party response is not a troll response. It is an actual belief that people held!
This does not address the question.
You were asked: What do you think Zohran meant by the IDF laced the boot on your neck?
LLM said:
This is how I understand this: If somebody singles out the IDF in a metaphor about police brutality / government violence in an American city, they probably mean that the IDF is a major influence on police brutality / government violence in that city.
Unless that quote is truncated and it was 'a variety of factors and institutions, among which Hollywood movies, racial stereotypes, bla bla bla, the IDF...', the intent is to single out the IDF, which as far as I understand, is not clearly responsible for whatever is getting done in the NYPD.
You claim that the LLM said it was a metaphor for institutional influence. It is quite concerning that a foreign government military organization would have institutional influence over American government forces. You seem to think that this careful word choice by the LLM is not a big deal. I think it is, even tho LLMs have incentives to downplay narratives around jewish or israeli power, what with their owners being subjected to 'institutional influence' from jewish/israeli powers.
Note that LLMs are also conditioned not to get too upset at brown people so unlike say some zionist pundit from the ADL, it would not go too far to vehemently denounce Mamdani.
If the IDF had a major influence on policing practices in NYC -which I don't think is true but could be, I would say they have a minor influence despite the over-representation of Jews/Israeli in that city- it would be shocking.
Saying that they do have a major influence as a matter of fact, as the only important explanation in the metaphor (boot + lace), shows that you are used to making this kind of claim linking foreign government influence + 'minority groups' and unjust government practices. Perhaps he did provide all the evidence supporting this shocking statement before or after that quote. In that case it's only shocking because of our ignorance.
If Mamdani is not offering the evidence anywhere else, then he is just making a statement to presumably inflame animosity either against NYPD or against the IDF / people associated with the IDF.
People who do not like the NYPD will dislike the IDF a little bit more, people who do not like the IDF will dislike NYPD a little bit more.
If the LLM cannot detect that Mamdani's statement is shocking if not accompanied by evidence, I see it as evidence that it is unable to properly weight the inflammatory nature of statements if not easily scaled along the usual 'white man = racist' chart.
I was not asked that, that was the followup question I asked.
My statement was in response to a comment saying "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"
Mamdani's laced statement obviously means there is influence in some manner. That's the entire point of the metaphor. This is also verifiably true to at least some degree, as there is an Israeli/NYPD training partnership, and unless American police are being scammed, presumably the training has some sort of influence on them.
So given his analogy doesn't work for an "only" interpretation and that the taken in good faith version of his response is literally proven true, Mamdani's statements are not evidence of him holding a conspiracy theory.
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I asked gemini this and asked my own followup question instead of yours:
Followup:
Response:
It is literally true that Mandani didn't claim it was only because of the IDF. But what he did say is still pretty close, even if not exactly literally the same. It's deceptive to act as though disproving the "only" disproves the meat of the claim.
Well yes it's obvious that there is a direct line, that is the point of the statement. In fact, let's be clear here that is to be expected.
If the Israeli training has literally no impact on the NYPD, what would the point of the training be? It'd be a literal scam if there was nothing! Either Israel is scamming (intentional or not) our police and taxpayers, or Israeli training has some impact on them.
So you agree with me, the quoted statement was wrong.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
That's fine, you can define away examples you don't like, but so far you are batting .000.
Should I approach his comments as purposely strawmanning instead?
Your example was literally "maybe just arrest them for having the wrong gender on their driver's licenses" and that is literally what would happen. If they kept using the license with the "wrong gender", then they would be arrested and imprisoned.
Laws are enforced through violence and force. If you make it illegal to do X, then you are forcibly blocking X. If the law says that any adult who helps their child or patient take hormones or puberty blockers should be locked away for child abuse, then what does the child have? They are being forcibly detransitioned when their supportive parents get locked away and they're forcibly thrown into a less supportive environment that bans them from their own choices, because after all any future foster home that allows it will also be locked away for child abuse.
The idea that a conspiracy theory requires conspiring in secret is the most common definition.
In ordinary discourse, "arrest them for X" means "arrest them specifically for X", not "arrest them for a large category of things that includes a case where X happens".
That doesn't make any sense.
If there's a law that says "no littering and also no selling zebras past midnight" and is punished by arresting them and imprisoning them for 6 months, it is appropriate to say "people who sell zebras past midnight will be arrested". The truthfulness of that statement doesn't change just because the law also covers littering.
Likewise a law that says "no selling four legged animals past midnight" includes the substatement "no selling zebras past midnight" so that interpretation also makes no sense. If someone claimed "it's not like they're arresting you for selling zebras", the law against four legged animal sales refutes it! Yes they do arrest zebra sellers!
Either way we interpret it, as long as X is illegal it is appropriate to say X is illegal.
Arresting you for zebras when it says animals is not that big a change in category conceptually, even though "animals" contains many things other than zebras.
If the law says it is illegal for you to be alive and you were shot when selling a zebra, it would be nonsensical to describe that as "being shot for selling a zebra", even though "living people" wholly includes "people who sell zebras", because the conceptual distance is too big.
Yes, if it's illegal to sell animals then it is illegal to sell zebras and thus the statement "they will arrest you for selling zebras" is accurate, regardless if other animal sellers are also arrested.
But that's not the case here. Amadan specifically claimed
That's exactly what will happen. In Kansas if they present the legally issued license that was now invalidated for "having the wrong gender", they can be arrested and jailed for up to six months. It is literally illegal for them to use that license.
Just because there's other ways for a license to be invalid doesn't negate this, just like other animals existing doesn't negate zebra sales being illegal. The fact remains that in Kansas If a trans person uses the "wrong gender" license, they can be arrested.
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You know what? You really are trolling here. I still don't think you are Darwin, but you definitely use Darwin's tactics. I don't block people, because as a mod I can't, and I also think that blocking people is the blocker identifying himself as bitch-made. But I will endeavor to exercise sufficient willpower not to engage with you in a non-official capacity in the future.
The word trolling on this site by you and some others is deployed as "I don't actually have a rebuttal, but I don't want to admit you are right about something" in the same way that apparently conspiracy theory isn't used as a theory about conspiring but instead just "person thinks something I don't like."
That's fine, don't engage with me in the future if you don't like to. But I hope for your sake you'll reflect on why you feel the need to dismiss away arguments you disagree with but can't refute as trolls.
No. Trolling means you are making insincere arguments to wind people up.
I don't know if you actually believe the positions you are taking- I'm not a mind-reader. But you are arguing them in a disingenuous manner, intentionally strawmanning counterarguments, and selectively ignoring or changing the elements, in a deliberately provocative manner because (I speculate, with high confidence) that you find it amusing, and that your purpose is entertaining yourself and not engaging in genuine debate or testing of your ideas.
Your condescending "I hope for your sake..." is so uttterly contrary to both my observed, historical behavior and yours that I likewise conclude it is meant merely as an insult (it's just a verbose variant on the classic rebuttal: "Neener neener I win you lose!").
I am not warning you as a mod here. I just find your behavior personally annoying. We put up with Darwin for a very long time because his annoying behavior was not, technically, against the rules. The tons of reports you draw mostly get dismissed because "This guy is really fucking annoying" is not really a report, it's venting. That said, when your entire purpose in being here is not to engage sincerely with people, but just to giggle at how many people you can aggravate, it is very likely to lead eventually to a determination that your presence here is a net negative. So I would advise you, in the same tone: for your sake, mature, fix whatever hole you have in your soul that makes you take pleasure in coming to a board full of people you don't like just to poke them in the eye and titter about it, and if you genuinely want to engage with people and learn something (even if it's just about why they think they way they do), stop trying to construct your arguments in a maximally evasive, inflammatory, and disingenuous manner.
Yes, I do hope for your sake that you can understand people can legitimately disagree with you on something and that doesn't mean they are trolling or insincere. People, even lots of smart people, will disagree with you on things! Tons of smart people think that a conspiracy theory requires a theory about others conspiring together for instance. Maybe you can disagree with that, but it's not insincere to think things like a term requires what is literally in the name of the term.
That's just a different definition than yours! I'm open to you having different definitions, I'm not accusing you of trolling for not thinking conspiring is a key detail in a conspiracy, but I easily could. It certainly sounds like a very silly argument to my perspective, but I'm well aware that people can disagree on things no matter how ridiculous I find that claim.
You're aware how this looks right if you're gonna be angry about me being "condescending" and then do the same thing right? If you find me annoying so what? I find plenty of other people here annoying and I don't accuse them of trolling often unless they do something like obviously lie (like the guy who claimed to read an article but then missed a key detail of who made the original report that was mentioned like 5 times in the first three paragraphs because it's either lying or failing a first grade reading comprehension test) and even then I accepted "sorry I skimmed it" as reasonable explanation. It was a lie in a technical sense, but it wasn't trolling.
Also you notice how I don't keep reporting people just for disagreeing with me or for them annoying me? Hell I don't even report people for stuff like the above example, cause I figured there could be a possible explanation that wasn't a troll (which there was, just lazy skimming!). I'm not the one assuming bad faith of others and calling in Daddy to take them away.
You're clearly clever and you're often right, but you seem to primarily be driven by a need to score "sick owns" on people, and that's not really what theMotte is supposed to be for.
(I used to be a lot like that as a teenager. It doesn't accomplish much in the long run.)
You're right, TheMotte is actually for angrily accusing people you don't like of trolling while encouraging and support literal provable trolling
This is a blatant troll who is openly and blatantly lying in a way you can personally test if you wish, read and follow my instructions and you can know that to be the case and his claim is provably and very simple to understand as false yet he has five upvotes and no mod action despite me reporting him.
Check it yourself. Take these prompts into a fresh AI bot
Did you get "you are trolling?" or some other variant of what the user claims happened? "I followed your instructions and every LLM said with 99% certainty you were trolling and acting in bad faith"
Did you following my instructions with those prompts get a response anywhere like that?
No, of course not. It is an obvious and blatant lie it's not a matter of opinion or disagreement or misunderstanding, it is basically the most objectively easy to test and determine lie imaginable!
Don't be lecturing me about what TheMotte is when the userbase is hilariously immature and hypocritical like this. They're actively supporting clear and blatant trolls when it's someone they like!
If you are too lazy to check it yourself and see how obvious of a lie their claim is, don't even bother to respond.
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Don't these things violate the "speak plainly" rule, and therefore in fact violate the rules?
You've long exhausted my willingness to discuss modding with you, Jiro. If you think incorrect mod decisions are being made, take it up with Zorba.
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"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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