Still waiting for the ultimate all-in edition of this one

As one European to another, thank you for giving an honest outside-in perspective, downvotes be damned :)

You know I really can’t tell, and as a non-American outsider see that both sides are being extremely alarmist at this moment. Although the main criticism of Harris is that she is more of the same, there are plenty who try to paint her as a radical and dangerous left-winger, when she is nothing of the sort of course. Makes one wonder where the real Donald Trump ends and the caricature begins on the other end of the spectrum.

This is simply what we call polarization in politics, and is very hurtful to any semblance of unity that nationhood requires. America will likely not heal from this for a while, no matter who wins. Unless, whoever wins, delivers on something that matters to everyone, regardless of politics, that is usually something having to do with the cost and quality of life. That tends to placate people, even while their freedoms are being curtailed.

But I do feel that Trump is more symptom than cause. And the article suggests as much as well:

“…rising political antagonism in America is a perennial outgrowth of its defining conflict over race and national identity — with the current round of conflict sparked largely (albeit not entirely) by backlash to Barack Obama’s 2008 victory.”

Unfortunately unless you are a tiny niche community that isn’t ever targeted by spam or idiots (and how common is that really), moderators are a necessary evil. You probably don’t hate moderators. You probably hate bad/aggressive/biased/etc moderators. Or maybe sometimes you are the problem, I don’t know. It is not a problem with an easy solution. Usually large forums with no moderation become quickly unbearable to most people. And then moderators become in turn unbearable to some people.

Maybe a trusted AI can do a better job at this - like give it the community rules and ask it to enforce them objectively, transparently, and dispassionately, unless a certain number of participants complain, in which case it can reverse its decision and learn from that.

Well looks like the great Reddit exodus wasn’t so great after all and Reddit more than made up for it. Financially at least, things are looking up for them. I kinda really wish it weren’t so… but at least some of us got to know Lemmy as a consequence.

Do you use the integrated AI in new versions of Excel or do you ask ChatGPT or some other AI to write it out for you?

Really? The Telegraph? All the while downvoting the poor bot that’s trying to signal that this is a website know for rather poor quality journalism? (to put it mildly)

BG3 vibes anyone?

This is a prime example of how big business can cozy up to authoritarianism. Of course in the name of offering a service to the nation or saving something precious to all, I guess it’s “democracy” in this instance. Deep down I think it’s about asking a simple question: which regime will be most accommodating to fulfilling my ambitions, i.e. sustaining and growing my business empire with the least amount of oversight or regulation? Who is more likely to be anti-union? Who is more likely to employ migrants without granting them political rights? Who is less likely to tax the rich? Who is more likely to give me more power to influence public opinion and public policy? Elon is, in some respects, correctly betting on Trump. Of course it is a risky bet, and a marriage of convenience; one will sooner or later lose favor with the other. It would probably be wiser of Musk to stay out of the limelight and play Democrats against Republicans whenever and however it suits him. But I guess he can’t help himself. To be honest I don’t even know whether it’s possible for a major business figure to remain neutral in a country where perhaps the best predictor of a presidential candidate’s success is the amount of donations their campaign receives.

This looks more like a scythe that doubles as a weapon to me

I think you have expressed my fear quite well. Maybe it is as I feared. I don’t know much about Sweden, but I do have the feeling that the far right everywhere gets brownie points for just naming things the left will leave untouched (with a huge amount of hyperbole, racial hatred and scapegoating to be sure). I’m not in any way trying to force an “immigrants bad” argument, just fearing that a surge in crime involving migrant populations benefits the far right disproportionately, especially if the rest of the political spectrum seem unable to effectively address the issue in a more socially productive and progressive manner.

So, if i got this right, you seem to be implying that immigrants, or at least non-native Swedes as some may have citizenship, don’t know, are implicated in this violence, right? But that the situation today is a result of several policy failures by different governments and it’s not necessarily something to be tied to more recent waves of immigration. It wasn’t clear from the article. I just wanted to understand whether this plays right into the far right playbook once more. Of course poverty is a common factor in crime, but (unfortunately) the topic currently dominating European politics is immigration, and a surge in crime is an almost certain win for the extreme right in this climate.

That is not what I said, but ok, let’s leave it at this :)

Ok I’m going to ask the question that the article doesn’t address and also the question that will make all the progressive people on here uncomfortable: how does immigration play into this? Does it? Sweden is known for having a high percentage of foreign-born residents, most of them from outside the EU. It is the frequent punching bag of the extreme right for that reason and for its historically progressive policies. A far right that has been making gains there, as elsewhere. Is this an issue? Has Sweden failed to integrate foreigners who are now increasingly involved in the illegal drug trade and ensuing crime or are these unrelated?

Ooph, there the same issue again, about what we consider “propaganda”. I have yet to meet someone with objective standards on this, who is able to hold people he agrees with politically to the same standard. Many on here also seem to hate the MBFC ratings that were added to at least create some baseline. So, at the end of the day the value judgements people make on these matters are more often biased than not. Anyway, I am actually interested in even “mouthpieces”, as I am always curious how the other side actually defends what they do, and they could be just marked as such for the avoidance of doubt.

…and that is the problem with banning people for their views… sooner or later an echo chamber becomes boring. And they too will probably go elsewhere, where their views will go unchallenged as well. Fast forward a few years and everyone becomes ever more convinced of their own sectarian “truths”.

Unless he was particularly obnoxious about it, don’t know the story 🤷🏻‍♂️

Nothing is surprising about nations allying to advance common geopolitical and economic interests. Perhaps you are perturbed by the fact that these are not the US and its allies, who have indeed defined the world order in recent years, after the end of WW2 and especially after the fall of the USSR. I don’t think anyone is surprised - let alone failing to recognize - that the current world order is being challenged. Of course that does unfortunately mean a more uncertain and likely conflict-ridden future for all of us. But there are also those who look forward to a multipolar world, or at least the decline of “the West”, because it didn’t exactly serve everyone in the world equally well.

Granted, our tendency towards anthropomorphism is near ubiquitous. But it would be disingenuous to claim that it does not play out in very specific and very important ways in how we speak and think about LLMs, given that they are capable of producing very convincing imitations of human behavior. And as such also produce a very convincing impression of agency. As if they actually do decide things. Very much unlike dice.

The AI did not “decide” anything. It has no will. And no understanding of the consequences of any particular “decision”. But I guess “probabilistic model produces erroneous output” wouldn’t get as many views. The same point could still be made about not placing too much trust on the output of such models. Let’s stop supporting this weird anthropomorphizing of LLMs. In fact we should probably become much more discerning in using the term “AI”, because it alludes to a general intelligence akin to human intelligence with all the paraphernalia of humanity: consciousness, will, emotions, morality, sociality, duplicity, etc.

Interest trumps principles usually.