I don't want my models to be "centrists" and bothside everything for the sake of it. I want them to provide the facts and tell me which side is right on the issue.
Factuality is orthogonal to political leaning generally. People can use the same set of facts and come to very different conclusions. That’s a separate issue from “are these facts correct” and what happens when an individual or entire party starts getting most of their news from highly partisan and unreliable sources.
> By 2016, the gap had begun to appear in biomarker measures. By 2020, it was showing up in deaths from causes such as heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Since then, the gap has only widened. Between 2020 and 2022, only 0.2% of “very liberal” respondents died of internal causes, compared with 1.34% of “very conservative” respondents.
I guess centrist is a placeholder for "I don't want you to pick a side, I want facts, not BS" I'll go further, I don't care which side is right, I want to know what claims are factually accurate, and what claims are omitted from the issue / news / conversation.
Yeah, I know, and I totally should have clarified what I meant by centrist. I mean what one would ASSUME a centrist take to actually mean, or rather a "no sides, only facts" type of take. This reminds me of those "what they think it means" "what it means" type memes or the "how I see myself" vs "how I actually look?" type of memes.
Centrist is a placeholder for “I think myself above partisanship but really I’m just masking that I’ve done little to no research on the subject(s) at hand and can’t actually state what I believe.”
99% of time it’s presented as some stoic, virtuous “above the fray” approach to issues. Really it’s just that they don’t care and want to seem like they’ve given it thought because admitting they don’t care is somehow not an option. Frankly I have far more respect for folks who go “I don’t know enough about that to say either way.” We don’t need to have a prepared opinion on literally everything.