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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

This has the inherent danger of becoming a programing tool to push forward the desired agenda of a given government. So, while it may be a cure, it's also a poison -a greater poison than having a relatively few conspiracy theorists.

I'd add, to some extent conspiracy theorists keep government and industry honest. Or at least is skeptical about their honesty --with good reason. Quite a few so called conspiracy theories turned out to be actual conspiracies. And some conspiracy theories turned out to not be conspiracies (like moving away from trolleys when cars became the main mode of transportation)

Turned out to be true:

MKUltra

Biden mental decline

Reagan mental decline

Epstein blackmail

Iraq WMDs

Carnivore (syphoning internet comms)

Lots of the programs Snowden revealed

Steele document

Lab theory for Covid

etc.

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Hackernews MSNBC types like concentrating power when it suits them. They never think ahead--that they're making little Christmas presents for the "bad guys" when that power changes hands.

Yes, a chatbot that asks questions in a friendly manner using the Socratic method is surely going to be how the establishment concentrates power. It's not like promoting skepticism and healthy rational discussion could be beneficial for everyone in society, it has to be yet another way the enemy is screwing you.

a chatbot that can barely go a paragraph without hitting an ideological tripwire—like gemini’s “greek philosophers”. for people who grew up in the before times, it’s just a nuisance, but for the kids, this is dark and insidious. so go ahead with your centralizing and your reddit bitch sarcasm, then reeeeee to us there when it all falls into the wrong hands, again.

I find it funny that you're so threatened by and worried about a chatbot falling "into the wrong hands." Whatever you're implying would happen if it fell into the wrong hands would be no worse than the present state of things.

> so go ahead with your centralizing and your reddit bitch sarcasm, then reeeeee to us there when it all falls into the wrong hands, again.

Lol. Your comment is hard to take seriously. If I'm a Reddit bitch, maybe you should go back to 4chan.

> threatened by and worried

No, disgusted by the hubris and the stupidity. "De-programmed" is, in actuality, programming for a different agenda. Shouldn't be programming or de-programming anybody. If one group is de-programming with OpenAI, in time, another group will be de-programming with Tay. It is all abomination.

A lot of people are already being "programmed" to be Nazis via existing media. I doubt a hypothetical chatbot that does the opposite of this one could do any better than existing celebrities and influencers peddling such lies and propaganda. On the other hand, no one who's a Nazi is being deprogrammed of it by anyone, unless their media consumption is simply cut off for a long time. It's not a symmetric situation. If that's really your only concern, I wouldn't worry about it.

> I'd add, to some extent conspiracy theorists keep government and industry honest

No one claims conspiracies never happen, but what conspiracy theorists bang on about is mostly just noise. If anything, conspiracy theories make easier for people to hide actual conspiracies, because there's just so much nonsense to filter out. This is true across the board: e.g. Q-Anon makes tracking down ACTUAL child sex trafficking harder.

Or: if I wanted to keep children in a sex dungeon then I'd do it in a pizza restaurant. And if I wanted to keep something secret but is on the verge of being found out, then I'd leak it to a known bullshitter (Alex Jones, David Icke, Trump-adjacent people, etc.) first and they'll mix in all sorts of bollocks and just confuse everything.

This tech exists already, and would you rather this not be done publicly?

It is also not confirmed that this works the opposite way - ie taking people not predisposed to misinformation and making them believe in it.

The crux of the misinformation epidemic is a pipeline where major media enterprises report conspiracies as fact, and then don’t cover counter reports.

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