Comment by ineedasername
10 hours ago
I think there is a categorical difference in limiting information for chemicals that have destructive and harmful uses and, therefore, have regulatory restrictions for access.
Do you see a difference between that, and on the other hand the government prohibiting access to information about the government’s own actions and history of the nation in which a person lives?
If you do not see a categorical difference and step change between the two and their impact and implications then there’s no common ground on which to continue the topic.
> Do you see a difference between that, and on the other hand the government prohibiting access to information about the government’s own actions and history of the nation in which a person lives?
You mean the Chinese government acting to maintain social harmony? Is that not ostensibly the underlying purpose of the DEA's mission?
... is what I assume a plausible Chinese position on the matter might look like. Anyway while I do agree with your general sentiment I feel the need to let you know that you come across as extremely entrenched in your worldview and lacking in self awareness of that fact.
>entrenched in your worldview and lacking in self awareness of the fact
That’s a heavy accusation given that my comment was a statement about two examples of censorship, and, by implication, how they reflect in very different ways upon their respective societies. I’m not sure if you’re mistaking me for someone else’s comments up-thread of if you’re referring more broadly to other comments I’ve made…? Or if you’ve simply read entirely too much into something that was making a categorical distinction between the types and purposes of information suppression. I'll peak back here in a while in case you want to elaborate.
Upon review is does seem that inadvertently lumped your comment in with a few from someone else. Still, you transmute "drugs" to "dangerous chemicals", a category I'd associate with dirty bombs and area denial weapons. Then you distinguish that from "divisive history" on the basis of the potential of generalized harm to society by the former (thus implying lack thereof by the latter).
I do think that's an extremely western view on things. The Chinese would (I suspect) cite social harmony and I don't think they're wrong about that. I certainly don't agree with their conclusions on how these things should be handled but neither can I agree with the categorical difference that you claim.
That said, I assume official Chinese policy would also be to censor information about drug synthesis so it's difficult to really see that as much of a (relative) ding against US corporate policy in the sense of "pot, kettle, black". To the extent that there's censorship here there appears to be significantly less of it.
That's on you then. It's all just math to the LLM training code. January 6th breaks into tokens the same as cocaine. If you don't think that's relevant when discussing censorship because you get all emotional about one subjext and not another, and the fact that American AI labs are building the exact same system as China, making it entirely possible for them to censor a future incident that the executive doesn't want AI to talk about.
Right now, we can still talk and ask about ICE and Minnesota. After having built a censorship module internally, and given what we saw during Covid (and as much as I am pro-vaccine) you think Microsoft is about to stand up to a presidential request to not talk about a future incident, or discredit a video from a third vantage point as being AI?
I think it is extremely important to point out that American models have the same censorship resistance as Chinese models. Which is to say, they behave as their creators have been told to make them behave. If that's not something you think might have broader implications past one specific question about drugs, you're right, we have no common ground.