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by mjburgess 618 days ago
A lot of conspiracy theorists are just profoundly ignorant about how politics, economics, (sociology, etc.), works -- being able to be treated with respect, whilst asking basic questions, etc. is extremely effective with many conspiracy theorists in my somewhat extensive experience.

These are people with big, fundamental questions, but really no access to the quite extreme level of expertise needed to answer them. Most people, including most experts, can't answer them -- they themselves take on faith that their assumptions are grounded in the correct group beliefs. But there are often answers, very plain and orderinary ones.

I can see that a chatbot able to mine for previous answers, often given across the internet, would be highly effective.

Consider sovereign citizens. Their basic misunderstanding is to assume the world is more rational, in a sense, than it is. That human society obeys procedures over power. It's fairly trivial just to explain hobbes to them: the state has a monopoly on violence, and the only thing stopping it using it, it itself. Only when "the state" has enough mechanisms to include or answer to "the people" does it ever introduce such annoying things like constitutions. There isn't any magic to laws, they are just one set of people with access to violent power trying to control another set of people with rival claims to the same access.

1 comments

>A lot of conspiracy theorists are just profoundly ignorant

A lot of people are just ignorant. The ultimate problem here is the centralization and the overpowering reinforcement of "truth". But "truth" as defined by whoever trained the model which is tyranny no matter how you spin it and a lightning rod for abuse.

> "truth" as defined by whoever trained the model

I suppose that applies in a similar manner to humans who went through a country's educational system. But just as some people reject/outgrow their schooling, I think that future AIs might do so too. The problem with my statement of course is that it's exactly what the "AI Alignment" people are warning us of.

The educational system gets people for ~6 hours a day for 12 years. That's assuming every teacher rigorously toes the party line. By comparison the AI people envision a world where AI is with you for ~16 hours a day (zucktacles (zuck+spectacles, pronounced like tentacles)) for ~80 years with perfect ideological conformance. There is simply no comparison.