4 ms·

> My guess is that, in the US, the right will cynically adopt manipulation to great effect and the left will take a moral stand against shady practices and lose

> My guess is that, in the US, the right will cynically adopt manipulation to great effect and the left will take a moral stand against shady practices and lose elections. I think that statement may itself highlight how prevalent manipulation is. I fully anticipate all groups to continue maximal manipulation they can. One thing with LLMs is that it'll be a far less unified view, so a "divide and conquer" strategy is what I anticipate.

scns 1mo ago
It is way harder to manipulate people to do the right thing i think.
- kortilla 1mo ago
  That presupposes that the left in the US wants to do the right thing. Something like government run grocery stores is not clearly correct and there is very little evidence supporting that it will work well yet it is a very popular leftist policy in New York.
  - galleywest200 1mo ago
    City run grocery stores are certainly not evil.
    - 0xWTF 1mo ago
      ... not overtly, intentionally evil. FTFY
      - tyre 1mo ago
        What’s the case that they’re secretly, unintentionally evil?
        kortilla 1mo ago
        They destroy grocery stores that offer variety in every neighborhood they operate in. They offer worse service and people put up with it because the rest of New York is subsidizing them through taxes.
        snakeboy 1mo ago
        Bad economic policy is subtly "evil", by way of allocating finite resources inefficiently. Usually this is unintentionally done by not appropriately taking second, third, ..., nth order effects into account.
        jdub 1mo ago
        ... which would make (our current model of) capitalism especially evil. Compared to a supermarket.
        naasking 1mo ago
        The margins for groceries are objectively thin. The only way to provide food at lower prices is to provide a worse good or service, eg. less variety, less quality, less availability, etc. You will see all of these outcomes in NYC, if anyone even accepts the bids to begin with.
    - kortilla 1mo ago
      Based on zero evidence. It’s very easy for a government to step in as a participant, ruin the profitability of a sector in an area, and offer a worse service. They have no profit requirement or even revenue neutral requirement. So they can just operate poorly at a loss and still wreck other businesses because people will put up with breadlines to get bread for ultra cheap. The general thing to watch out for with all of these “surely it can’t be evil to do nice thing X” is suicidal empathy. It can seem correct to your gut on the surface while it’s extremely destructive in the long term despite participants wanting to destroy something as an explicit goal.
- Levitz 1mo ago
  It's harder to convince people to all agree on the same, different from the norm, thing. If you've got 5 people in a car and you play ABBA in every road trip, then one day you suggest to change, the problem is not in being okay with "something else", but on agreeing what that other thing should be, set against the already known thing. That's why there's so much infighting in the left.
tyre 1mo ago
In US politics, the right is far, far better at winning elections than the left. This isn’t about personal preference. It’s objective political science. Look at the most contentious issues in the US: abortion, climate change, taxing the wealthy, gun control, Affordable Healthcare Act. The Democratic Party platform is aligned with national polling on every one. Every one of those issues has >60% support with voters and the Republican Party has blocked them all. They play the game to win. And they do.
- lettergram 1mo ago
  Objectively? > Democratic Party platform is aligned with national polling on every one. It depends on the pollster and where you're polling. I guarantee you rural Tennessee will not agree with downtown Washington DC on any of these issues. In contrast, rural California will likely agree with rural Tennessee. It's not as cut and dry as a homogeneous national poll of 2500 people. Every state, city, county are different. That's why there are federal, state, city, and county governments. For instance, Abortions are legal nationally. States can individually decide how, or if, they wish to restrict it. This is as the constitution intends under the 10th amendment: > powers not delegated to the federal government nor prohibited to the states are reserved to the states or the people. This allows for democracy to take place at the local level, rather than having particular regions thousands of miles away from each other ultimately oppress the other. To the point on LLMs, I think it's abundantly clear they will be used to propagandize and similar to social media will lock people in a bubble without alternative opinions. It'll be the worst of both worlds, the question is who's the puppet master. At some point soon, I imagine it'll be the AI.
  - rswail 1mo ago
    So we need to "prohibit to the states" the power to enforce medical procedures (or the prohibition of a medical procedure) on individuals. Which amendment protects someone's bodily autonomy or medical treatment from interference by the states? If the Federal Congress passed a law providing that abortions are legal on demand up to the 22 week of gestation, after which it would require the corroboration of two doctors, would that stand, or would it be struck down by SCOTUS? Same for legalization of marijuana, and many other "social" issues.

scns 1mo ago

It is way harder to manipulate people to do the right thing i think.

kortilla 1mo ago
That presupposes that the left in the US wants to do the right thing. Something like government run grocery stores is not clearly correct and there is very little evidence supporting that it will work well yet it is a very popular leftist policy in New York.
- galleywest200 1mo ago
  City run grocery stores are certainly not evil.
  - 0xWTF 1mo ago
    ... not overtly, intentionally evil. FTFY
    - tyre 1mo ago
      What’s the case that they’re secretly, unintentionally evil?
      - kortilla 1mo ago
        They destroy grocery stores that offer variety in every neighborhood they operate in. They offer worse service and people put up with it because the rest of New York is subsidizing them through taxes.
      - snakeboy 1mo ago
        Bad economic policy is subtly "evil", by way of allocating finite resources inefficiently. Usually this is unintentionally done by not appropriately taking second, third, ..., nth order effects into account.
        jdub 1mo ago
        ... which would make (our current model of) capitalism especially evil. Compared to a supermarket.
      - naasking 1mo ago
        The margins for groceries are objectively thin. The only way to provide food at lower prices is to provide a worse good or service, eg. less variety, less quality, less availability, etc. You will see all of these outcomes in NYC, if anyone even accepts the bids to begin with.
  - kortilla 1mo ago
    Based on zero evidence. It’s very easy for a government to step in as a participant, ruin the profitability of a sector in an area, and offer a worse service. They have no profit requirement or even revenue neutral requirement. So they can just operate poorly at a loss and still wreck other businesses because people will put up with breadlines to get bread for ultra cheap. The general thing to watch out for with all of these “surely it can’t be evil to do nice thing X” is suicidal empathy. It can seem correct to your gut on the surface while it’s extremely destructive in the long term despite participants wanting to destroy something as an explicit goal.
Levitz 1mo ago
It's harder to convince people to all agree on the same, different from the norm, thing. If you've got 5 people in a car and you play ABBA in every road trip, then one day you suggest to change, the problem is not in being okay with "something else", but on agreeing what that other thing should be, set against the already known thing. That's why there's so much infighting in the left.

tyre 1mo ago

In US politics, the right is far, far better at winning elections than the left. This isn’t about personal preference. It’s objective political science. Look at the most contentious issues in the US: abortion, climate change, taxing the wealthy, gun control, Affordable Healthcare Act. The Democratic Party platform is aligned with national polling on every one. Every one of those issues has >60% support with voters and the Republican Party has blocked them all. They play the game to win. And they do.

lettergram 1mo ago
Objectively? > Democratic Party platform is aligned with national polling on every one. It depends on the pollster and where you're polling. I guarantee you rural Tennessee will not agree with downtown Washington DC on any of these issues. In contrast, rural California will likely agree with rural Tennessee. It's not as cut and dry as a homogeneous national poll of 2500 people. Every state, city, county are different. That's why there are federal, state, city, and county governments. For instance, Abortions are legal nationally. States can individually decide how, or if, they wish to restrict it. This is as the constitution intends under the 10th amendment: > powers not delegated to the federal government nor prohibited to the states are reserved to the states or the people. This allows for democracy to take place at the local level, rather than having particular regions thousands of miles away from each other ultimately oppress the other. To the point on LLMs, I think it's abundantly clear they will be used to propagandize and similar to social media will lock people in a bubble without alternative opinions. It'll be the worst of both worlds, the question is who's the puppet master. At some point soon, I imagine it'll be the AI.
- rswail 1mo ago
  So we need to "prohibit to the states" the power to enforce medical procedures (or the prohibition of a medical procedure) on individuals. Which amendment protects someone's bodily autonomy or medical treatment from interference by the states? If the Federal Congress passed a law providing that abortions are legal on demand up to the 22 week of gestation, after which it would require the corroboration of two doctors, would that stand, or would it be struck down by SCOTUS? Same for legalization of marijuana, and many other "social" issues.