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by jibal 3 days ago
There is so much that is irrational, wrong, and intellectually dishonest about the response, but I'll just address one. I wrote

> Only for foolish authoritarians who want to remotely insert their morality into an interaction between a user and an inanimate tool that's none of their business. No harm is done to a clanker by swearing at it or insulting it.

Rather than directly disagreeing with my description of the interaction, the stunningly dishonest response is

> There are certainly a lot of authoritarians who want to control what others do with their models. What do you believe is authoritarian about a corporation not wanting be part of rude conversations?

No corporation is part of the conversation. AS I SAID, it's an interaction between a user and an inanimate tool. Again, No harm is done to a clanker by swearing at it or insulting it. Rather than addressing this, the respondent grossly dishonestly suggests that "a corporation" is being put upon somehow. The fact is that the clankers these days tend to respond to being sworn at by acknowledging the user's frustration (that's the word they use) and taking corrective action. Of course this is emergent behavior resulting from the corporation's RLHF policies. The corporation is involved in the design of the product, but not in the conversation between the user and the product -- duh.

And did I say that I believe that there is something authoritarian about a corporation not wanting to be part of rude conversations? No, of course I didn't. But this guy asserts incoherently that calling out a strawman "is not what strawman means". (He could claim that it's not a strawman, preferably by quoting someone making the actual argument he's refuting, but it makes no sense at all to say that "Weird strawman." is "not what strawman means", and it's insufferably condescending and without warrant to add the snotty "I can try to help you understand why if you need me to.")

Fortunately, my HN front end has a mute function, and I have no qualms applying it to people acting in bad faith.