Comment by spacechild1
1 day ago
> If an extremely charismatic human was going around telling people to jump off roofs, and they did, would we shrug it off and say "well, they were obviously insane already"?
Your example might sound ridiculuous, but this is actually happening all the time. People might not literally jump off a roof, but they do blow themselves up with bombs, go on killing sprees or commit suicide because someone told them so.
And in those cases, most people condemn it. But when it’s an algorithm (which was created by humans) we say “these people were already insane, and the creators of the algorithm should not be held liable”, apparently.
I don’t think this analogy is fully apt. Instead, consider people going to a church or mosque. Some listen to the sermons and come out just fine, a few are radicalised over time and go find these bad people convincing them to act out on that. But drawing the line between legitimate religious teachers and ideological deceivers is hard, and condemning the entire religion would be the wrong conclusion.
> drawing the line between legitimate religious teachers and ideological deceivers is hard, and condemning the entire religion would be the wrong conclusion.
Sure, but saying that every religious teacher is fine would be equally wrong. We have a sense that charismatic figures have a corresponding responsibility to their followers (even if they never asked for those followers!) and that broader society should be concerned about what's going on at religious gatherings, especially novel ones, that there's a real risk they can shade into dangerous cults.