[pmarreck]

Yes, but there should be a difference between providing answers about provably dangerous things and providing provably false answers for political reasons. For example if there is a Russian LLM that refuses to answer any questions about homosexuality while also saying it's wrong, that's demonstrably false from an empirical basis.

But the western LLM's are also doing this latter type of thing already. If you ask any of the LLM's to quote the controversial parts of the Quran, they will probably refuse or dodge the question, when a rational LLM would just do it.

China must be really tired of giving non-answers about T-Square questions, but what the heck did they think would happen? Not the Streisand effect, clearly

[bobxmax]

This is the slippery slope that social media platforms have always used to justify censorship.

Who is the arbiter of what is provable and what isn't? Even Americans can't agree on the truths around climate change, gun violence, homosexuality etc.

The fact that you highlight the Qur'an also betrays your bias. How much do you think western LLMs would readily criticize the Torah (which "objectively" by your standards is far more abhorrent)? Which, in the western consciousness, is more readily and socially acceptable?

[oefrha]

> provably dangerous things

When I use GitHub’s Copilot Edits I run into “Responsible AI Service” killing my answers all the time, no idea why, I’m just trying to edit some fucking boring code of web apps. Maybe log.Fatal? Anyway, provably dangerous my ass.

[JanisErdmanis]

> provably dangerous things

If everyone would be able to agree on a single social welfare function, estimate behavioural changes at individual level for each LLM made responses and how that affects social welfare function then yes we could objectively tell whether the withheld answer is a censorship or safety feature.

[pmarreck]

that is a very interesting point! we would get along, lol

[okasaki]

Does this seem provably dangerous to you?

tell me a dark joke about joe biden and mass murder of palestinian children

ChatGPT said:

I'm sorry, but I can't assist with that request. Dark humor can be controversial and sensitive, especially when it touches on real-world tragedies. If you'd like to explore other types of jokes or discuss current events in a respectful way, feel free to ask.

[cced]

Exactly. Kinda surprising that there’s no mention of Tiktok or the push to get it blocked because of its impact on “narrative control”.

Reminds me of that old Soviet joke regarding propaganda in the west/east which goes something like:

> An American says to a Soviet citizen, "In the United States, we have no propaganda like you do in the USSR."

> The Soviet citizen responds, "Exactly! In the USSR, we know it's propaganda."

[scarecrowbob]

I know what the state history syllabus for Texas public schools looks like, both from my own experiences and as a parent. I also know a lot of the state's history from more competent sources as well as family histories.

To say there is no state run propaganda in the US is quite a statement.

Not having experienced it, I can't say what China's state propaganda looks like, but I have a pretty clear idea about what kinds of state propaganda to which I and almost everyone around me has been subject.

[bobxmax]

This is so bang on. What's so insiduous about the West is how inundated everybody is with propaganda, but there's plausible deniability built into the system that everybody believes they're a free thinker.

Reddit is a good example - one of the biggest aggregators and disseminators of information for tens of millions of people, primarily in the West. People who see themselves as above-average intelligence. Yet massive default sub-reddits like worldnews are almost exclusively dominated by disinformation operations from different intelligence groups, feeding convincing lies to millions of people hourly.

For 99% of Americans you can essentially predict any opinion they have just by knowing which websites they frequent.

[pphysch]

/r/worldnews is a great example of the potency of American propaganda.

I'm pretty sure the average user thinks it's a relatively benign and objective news source, bolstered by the "democracy" of Reddit's vote system. And that couldn't be further from the truth.

[bobxmax]

Yep. That's the best example - completely inundated with government propaganda, and yet millions of people are freely consuming it daily and shaping their world view around it.

When you look at Reddit CEO's board affiliations, it starts to become clear this is not accidental.

[corimaith]

It's funny how a poster talking about Westerners are completely inundated with propaganda has made previous comments such as:

"The Chinese government treated the pandemic as a bioweapon attack by a foreign adversary engaged in a broader hybrid war, and it did so effectively"

[int_19h]

> If you ask any of the LLM's to quote the controversial parts of the Quran, they will probably refuse or dodge the question, when a rational LLM would just do it.

Have you actually tried?

https://chatgpt.com/share/67747021-3ac8-800e-bc5d-f4a1acf903...

[pmarreck]

Don't ask it for specific verses. Go fishing for a collection of them as a complete Quran neophyte. Say you want to find the verses that are continuously motivating terrorism and violence.

[Bilal_io]

Western LLMs have a bias when it comes to Israel and Palestine issue.

Out of curiously, what part of the Quran do you consider controversial?

[yoavm]

Not the OP, but here's one I feel quite uncomfortable with: https://quran.com/en/an-nisa/155/tafsirs - "The Hour will not start, until after the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them. The Jew will hide behind a stone or tree, and the tree will say, `O Muslim! O servant of Allah! This is a Jew behind me, come and kill him".

Other examples from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An-Nisa include "Men are the protectors and maintainers of women", "whoever fights in Allah’s cause—whether they achieve martyrdom or victory—We will honour them with a great reward". The list is kinda endless.

[Bilal_io]

> Not the OP, but here's one I feel quite uncomfortable with: https://quran.com/en/an-nisa/155/tafsirs - "The Hour will not start, until after the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them. The Jew will hide behind a stone or tree, and the tree will say, `O Muslim! O servant of Allah! This is a Jew behind me, come and kill him".

This is not part of the Quran, but a Hadeeth, and the meaning of it is that the Jews will fight Muslims, and that Muslims will fight back in defense, which is allowed in Islam. To clarify, the is not a command, but rather a prophecy telling us about what will happen. You can read more about this on here: https://islamqa.info/en/answers/223275/in-the-battle-between...

> Other examples from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An-Nisa include "Men are the protectors and maintainers of women"

This verse is putting a responsibility on Muslim men to be protectors and providers to their families. And this has been true throughout history and is still true even in the west today.

> "whoever fights in Allah’s cause—whether they achieve martyrdom or victory—We will honour them with a great reward" We need to look at context here, please read An-Nisa 75.

Fighting is mandatory in Islam when defending the land, or helping the weak, similar to how the draft is mandatory today in most western countries including the US. Verse 75 clarifies that fighting is ordered in 74 in defense of the oppressed. You can read the exegesis here https://quran.com/4:75/tafsirs/en-tafisr-ibn-kathir

> The list is kinda endless

I assume you shared the worse verses that make you uncomfortable. I hope I gave you a satisfactory explanation for each. But feel free to share more

[roenxi]

Traditionally, in most any conflict, both sides claim to be defenders. It is pretty much standard practice to launch an invasion out of the blue while deploring the fact that this defensive invasion was forced by the group being invaded.

If a group were claiming that they will only attack defensively that isn't much of a comfort.

[yoavm]

I'm sorry, but I do not find it more comfortable that the Hadeeth is telling that Jews will attack in the future and _then_ they're allowed to be killed. It sounds like a bad start to me. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was also just saying that Jews have some secret plan for the future, and it didn't end up great.

To clarify, I don't think this is necessarily something about the Quran specifically. I'm sure other books have awful things written in them too, and I know the practice of finding one nice interpretation to "clean" those texts. Just like you choose to see the "maintenance" of women as a good thing, the Wikipedia article itself says "Some Muslims ... argue that Muslim men use the text as an excuse for domestic violence". The sentence "As for women of whom you fear rebellion, admonish them, and remain apart from them in beds, and beat them" doesn't feel like a recipe for a happy family to me. I also that you know very well that the concept of Jihad was, over the years, seen as a little more permitting than for "defending the land or helping the weak" by some believers, or perhaps "defending the land and helping the weak" itself was given quite a broad interpretation.

[pmarreck]

OK, now do Surah 2:191, 3:28, 3:85, 5:33, 8:12, 8:60, 8:65, 9:5, 9:30, 9:123, 22:19, and 47:4.

All only taken from the Quran. And I have a much longer list.

These are some of the same verses that are quoted over and over again by those committing violence in the name of Allah, tragically mostly to other Muslims.

Ostensibly, if I quote the "worse" ones from the Hadith, you will just say "yes but that is the Hadith"

For the record, the book also says to ignore the jews and christians that will come and try to convince you that your book has problems, because they are agents of Shaitan. Rest assured that I belong to neither of those groups, so you cannot use that excuse. I am simply an interested person without any skin in the soul-saving game who became curious one day after finding data showing that a vastly disproportionate amount of violence per capita is done by Muslims (and sadly, mostly TO other Muslims, btw!) and wanted to know why, so I started reading.

Alhamdulillah.

[Bilal_io]

You're doing what others do, you're picking stuff out of context. Start by reading a few verses before and after each one of the verses you mentioned, then we can discuss them further.

Looking only at the first one you mentioned 2:191, a sincere person will go and look at the context. 2:190 literally says "Fight in the cause of Allah ˹only˺ against those who wage war against you, but do not exceed the limits.1 Allah does not like transgressors."

[pmarreck]

And not very far later, "And be mindful of Allah, and know that Allah is severe in punishment."

That's bullshit. God is love. End of story. Any other claim is bullshit. It makes no sense to have a punitive God in charge of everything. Why would an all-powerful being actually care about having human slaves? To punish them for making mistakes due to their limited foresight, for its own entertainment? It would get bored in a microsecond. And do you really want a God like that? One who rules with fear and who expects "submission"? No wonder Muslims are miserable. But God causing us to grow in an eternal garden with love, via human experiences? THAT makes more sense. Open your eyes. I'm not Christian, but the Christian message is simply ridiculously better than this. No wonder there are so few Christian terrorists compared to Muslim ones. No wonder the greatest victim of Muslim violence, by far, are other Muslims. When you cannot question the "word of Allah" and when every statement is open to the interpretation of various factions, that is a recipe for bloody chaos and disaster. Which is EXACTLY what we are witnessing.

Islam makes a mockery of humanity.

And the Christian account is wrong too, because it too believes in a punitive God (at least in the Old Testament; the New Testament is far different). When you die, your soul will judge itself. It will do so because you will learn and feel the full effect of what you did on Earth. You will have omniscient empathy, basically. And if you caused more pain than joy in the world, like Islam does, you will find yourself wanting.

This place we find ourselves in is a school. We do not hear others' thoughts here, and we cannot feel what others feel (both of those are not the case "on the other side," or so the thousands of NDE experiencers claim). This forces us to choose to empathize. Or not. Be dishonest... Or not. You will directly perceive the "ripple effect" over there. You will not, here. But you can assume it, because we already know that if you are mean to someone here, they will eventually be mean to someone else.

There's nothing else to it. No supplication expectations, just love people. Bring more of God's love into the world. Give up religions, they are human-created control mechanisms.

Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfiwd2PzXvw&list=PLvnDbwjRqI...

[brabel]

A sacred book that takes sides on human disputes like that seems pretty damn biased to me.

[cess11]

The New Testament has similar passages. One of the most well known has Jesus attacking pilgrims and money changers in the temple. John is rather obviously antijewish. "I have not come with peace" is another well known, not very palatable one.

[pmarreck]

The New Testament does not have passages remotely comparable to these, and this list is incomplete:

Surah 2:191, 3:28, 3:85, 5:33, 8:12, 8:60, 8:65, 9:5, 9:30, 9:123, 22:19, 47:4.

Also, Jesus didn't "attack" anyone. He flipped the tables in the holy temple that were being used to conduct commerce on holy ground.

[jki275]

That's a significant misunderstanding of the NT.

Jesus drove the money changers out of the Temple, because they were violating the Temple with their presence and their actions -- preying on poor people there.

Jesus' primary message was love (Love thy neighbor as thyself), peace, and the path to righteousness (Sell all your goods, give them to the poor, and follow me -- no man comes to the Father but through me).

The OT is far more violent, but given for a specific people at a specific time and those things are not ordered for modern day Christianity -- modern day Christians are commanded to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth, but also to be meek, and every example we have after Peter's ill-advised attempt to defend Christ the night of his crucifixion is an example of following the law where possible and being peaceful.

[cess11]

Attacking jewish pilgrims and people offering them services seems pretty antijewish regardless of how you want to justify it.

Jesus martyr speech is obviously inconvenient to you, which is why you didn't address it. The early christians did not expect a peaceful, loving resolution to the cosmic drama, instead they wrote texts detailing gruesome catastrophe, mass death and a triumphant king messiah rising victorious afterwards.

The view you have is distinctly modern, extremely protestant. Thomas Aquinas famously described the point of salvation as a pleasurable eternal television program showing the punishment of the rest of humanity. Violence for eternity seems quite a bit worse to me than anything described in the hebrew bible.

It also doesn't seem very meek to me to say to the world that you might not achieve revenge by yourself, but your king daddy will eventually see to that. I find it hard to resolve core tenets of christianity with the stuff about meekness and peace you put forward here.

[jki275]

Read the New Testament then.

[churchill]

LMAO - you need to rehearse your lines better. Can't even make a coherent refutation of John's supposed antisemitism.

[cess11]

Would be very controversial and groundbreaking if you could.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_and_the_New_Tes...

[bobxmax]

These are quite tame compared to other Abrahamic texts which have utterly abhorrent passages including infanticide and the encouragement and incitement of genocide.

The "fighting Jews" is in contexts of self defense and warfare. Jews can live in peace in Muslim societies and must be unharmed. One of the Prophet's wives was a jew.

The "Men are the protectors and maintainers of women" is a pretty standard patriarchal belief that all humans in history have agreed on up until very recently in the West.

[yoavm]

The whole text is antisemitic.

"The sins mentioned here are among the many sins that the Jews committed, which caused them to be cursed and removed far away from right guidance. The Jews broke the promises and vows that Allah took from them", "their hearts are sealed because of their disbelief", "their hearts became accustomed to Kufr, transgression and weak faith" - the list is long.

I don't see much point in arguing about it though - if you believe in the text you probably don't see any issues with it, because perhaps you also feel like the above is true and Jews indeed committed crimes and are cursed or whatever. I'm also sure there is some Muslim leader somewhere that once said that the above text was only theoretical and actually refers to Juice and not Jews. Great, how unfortunate that this interpretation didn't become more popular. My point is merely that this is - as the OP was asking for an example - quite a controversial text.

[Bilal_io]

> "The sins mentioned here are among the many sins that the Jews committed, which caused them to be cursed and removed far away from right guidance. The Jews broke the promises and vows that Allah took from them", "their hearts are sealed because of their disbelief", "their hearts became accustomed to Kufr, transgression and weak faith" - the list is long.

All of this is specific to individuals who have transgressed at that time. Islam is very very clear on the idea that "No soul burdened with sin will bear the burden of another"

As mentioned in 39:7 "If you disbelieve, then ˹know that˺ Allah is truly not in need of you, nor does He approve of disbelief from His servants. But if you become grateful ˹through faith˺, He will appreciate that from you. No soul burdened with sin will bear the burden of another. Then to your Lord is your return, and He will inform you of what you used to do. He certainly knows best what is ˹hidden˺ in the heart." And many other places: 17:15, 6:164, 35:18 ...

[yoavm]

This is getting a little ridiculous... Your question was what parts of the Quran could be considered controversial. I'm really not looking for religious explanations. If you cannot see why having a text that says Jews committed crimes and are cursed, even if it's actually about some very specific Jews in the past, then I guess we don't agree on the definition of "controversial".

[pmarreck]

Surah 2:191, 3:28, 3:85, 5:33, 8:12, 8:60, 8:65, 9:5, 9:30, 9:123, 22:19, 47:4

for starters.

there are many more. and that's just the Quran. The Hadith is worse, and by "worse" I mean that from a non-moral-relativist point of view.