6 ms·

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

CamperBob2 2mo ago
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.
- incrudible 2mo ago
  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?
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    Identifying is more than just telling me you are something.
  - CamperBob2 2mo ago
    Whatever. It's none of my business what you call yourself. And none of the government's.
    - incrudible 2mo ago
      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.
      - InsideOutSanta 2mo ago
        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?
        CamperBob2 2mo ago
        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.
        Gareth321 2mo ago
otterley 2mo ago
It boggles my mind that people are still dying on this silly hill.
- Gareth321 2mo ago
  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.
  - otterley 2mo ago
    “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?
    - Gareth321 2mo ago
      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.
      - otterley 2mo ago
        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.

CamperBob2 2mo ago

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.

incrudible 2mo ago
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?
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Identifying is more than just telling me you are something.
- CamperBob2 2mo ago
  Whatever. It's none of my business what you call yourself. And none of the government's.
  - incrudible 2mo ago
    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.
    - InsideOutSanta 2mo ago
      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?
      - CamperBob2 2mo ago
        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.
        Gareth321 2mo ago

otterley 2mo ago

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

Gareth321 2mo ago
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.
- otterley 2mo ago
  “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?
  - Gareth321 2mo ago
    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.
    - otterley 2mo ago
      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.