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Bro, Mamdani has certainly toned down his rhetoric since he became mayor, but how else do you interpret that line about the IDF lacing the NYPD's boots? He was, at the very least, gesturing towards Da Joos and implying Israeli training was responsible for police brutality, and he's too smart not to know what he was implying.
I personally know trans people who genuinely believe that federal agencies are gearing up to start going after trans people, either to put them in camps or forcibly detransition them or maybe just arrest them for having the wrong gender on their driver's licenses.
And we've discussed many times here how many unarmed black people the average leftist believes are gunned down by police every month.
You can quibble over what the precise definition of "conspiracy theory" is, which strikes me as being about as useful as arguing about the legal definition of "genocide" wrt Gaza. But irrationality is definitely not limited to the right.
The same way I said, about the NYPD/Israeli partnership! I even checked the chatbots with the other guy who asked me to see if I'm out of line.
And what did I get?
Unless the chatbots are also trolling or something, this seems to be a fair way to interpret the comment.
The first one is obviously a conspiracy, these other ones are not.
https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/denton-county-rep-wants-to-institutionalize-transgender-people-23307423/
https://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2021-2022/billintroduced/House/htm/2022-HIB-6454.htm
https://www.npr.org/2026/02/28/nx-s1-5728969/kansas-revokes-drivers-licenses-of-hundreds-of-trans-people-prompted-by-new-law
Being wrong about that number does not allege a shadowy cabal behind such shootings.
First of all, I am really not a fan of "Ask ChatGPT to settle a debate." There are lots of reasons for that, and it's not because I don't think AI is useful for a lot of purposes. 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."
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"?
Come. On. Apply some actual critical thinking. Don't offload it to ChatGPT and say "Neener neener an LLM says I'm right and you're wrong!"
Yes they are. I am well aware that some states are passing laws requiring birth sex on driver's licenses. I figured you would bring it up. But that does not mean that federal agencies are preparing to conduct mass arrests of trans people who have the wrong sex on their driver's licenses. Yes, their current licenses were invalidated in Kansas and they have to get new licenses, and that sucks, but it's a leap, a stretch, a ballistic missile launch from "federal troops rounding up trans people."
A ban against transitioning children is not forcibly detransitioning people.
Congressman Ronny Jackson sounds like a crackpot. Let me know when he gets any traction outside of Newsmax.
I mean, come the fuck on. You are willing to give maximum charity to Mamdan's crack about the IDF lacing the NYPD's boots, accepting any interpretation other than the obvious one, while you want us to give full weight and seriousness to a Republican popping off on a radio show as if he's speaking for the federal government.
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.
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.
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.
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