[roenxi]

> It makes the culture warriors happy but it will only make things worse.

Needs an argument. One of our political problems at the moment is we can't accurately assess how people will respond to new hypothetical, we can't grade personalities by effectiveness because people keep changing their minds and we can't run controlled experiments where a single personality is put in charge of multiple different things at once.

It'd be awesome to have a biased chatbot that we could actually trial and see how it works on political topics. We'll eventually be able to build GovernBot 9000 that has a multi-century history of opinions that don't screw a country up. Being able to version and replicate personalities, even extreme ones, might be a huge positive. The great classical liberals of yesteryear that are responsible for so much of our culture were not moderates.

[konfusinomicon]

such a chatbot would be very interesting to experiment with, but one bots screw up is another bots success. so who is the e-arbiter of truth for GovernBot9000? hopefully it is not GlobalSuperCorp10k. or maybe said super corp would be OK. interesting times we live in

[roenxi]

(1) In what sense is that a step back from current state?

(2) Why would it be bad?

There is something of a hysteria at the moment where people are piling on to Boeing because the management has been reverting to the mean. We're looking at a world where that doesn't need to happen because once management reaches a peak we can just stop fiddling with the algorithm. Culture won't change because the management culture can be encoded in a chatbot. Management is mostly talk, this is one of the easiest targets for the tech. That doesn't sound like politics ... until you look at what the current political firestorms are, it hits a lot of them.

It is hard to cast opinionated chatbots as a step back. The scary political implication is we're also looking at a point where maybe 1 man can control an army and that would be terrifying because the control on armies going rogue in a democracy is all the soldiers are voters. But consistent opinions are generally a good thing - we use the word principled for that sort of thing.

[janalsncm]

Forgive me for my brief quotes, I’m typing what you wrote because I can’t copy and paste. But I promise I read the whole thing even if it seems I am quoting out of context.

> Needs an argument.

Fair enough. The essence of my argument is, filter bubbles are bad for democracy because they people’s understanding of consensus and prevent them from encountering any opinions contrary to their own. A personalized chatbot to the extent that it is an extension of filter bubbles, is bad for the same reason.

> It’d be awesome to have a biased chatbot

For the scenario you outlined, sure. If it’s circumscribed and labeled as such, it would be an interesting exercise at least. For the general case, it’s probably not a product people will want.

> The great classical liberals of yesteryear

The issue I see with this is that by gradually Balkanizing our shared body of understanding, it will prevent the exact type of debate you (and I) think was so great from that time.

[metricsdatanumz]

80%+ live where they grew up. So few moved about as democracy had its best days.

Only 14% have earned more than a bachelors, while polls suggest the public believe it’s closer to 50%.

We’re incredibly naive and ignorant of ourselves, including how to concretely define democracy.

That “type of debate” existed before you and isn’t going anywhere.

The problem is you’re thinking too specifically when reality is a handful of general patterns. Democracy doesn’t hinge on your fears because you’re a specific person not a body of people. Democracy was born in and triumphed over worse. You’re concerned about your specific understanding of how the world works embedded in your memory, deference to which is not the aggregate’s obligation.

Consider how religion has declined despite protests of the prior generation reality would end, yet it hasn’t. Consider Seduction of the Innocent and its authors fears about comic books fracturing society and it didn’t. Consider parental outrage at DND and rock music, which also did not end the world.

Just another generation bleating like a goat atop a car in a flood at the awareness of its own impermanence and importance, that it has less time ahead than behind. Just vanity leading people to believe their childhood memes are essential.

It’s been interesting watching Silent Gen, Boomers, and now GenX post on social media existential dread as each of those groups majority push into 50 years old and beyond.