SkepticalButOpenMinded

You seem to think my objection has something to do with whether it’s obvious that this particular piece is an opinion piece? I have no idea why you think this. Completely bizarre, and what an unnecessarily aggressive tone.

I am against opinion pieces because most consumers do not know that they have lower editorial standards, making them a big source of misinformation. If opinion pieces had the same journalistic standards, I would not be opposed to them.

That sounds plausible. “Untruth” sounds gentler.

Seems simple enough to guard against to me. Fact is, if a human can easily detect a pattern, a machine can very likely be made to detect the same pattern. Pattern matching is precisely what NNs are good at. Once the pattern is detected (I.e. being asked to repeat something forever), safeguards can be initiated (like not passing the prompt to the language model or increasing the probability of predicting a stop token early).

Calling it “silly” and “incredibly stupid” is not an argument. I’m not even sure how to respond to this.

The fact that it’s “traditional” is not a good reason to keep something around despite the negative consequences. The fact is, most news consumers do not know about the lower editorial standards of opinion articles, so opinion pieces have been a significant source of misinformation. This is how we get Jim Carey writing about climate skepticism in a major newspaper.

What’s so impossible about a fact-checked journalistic article entitled: “Should opinion pieces be eliminated?” Seems possible to me!

I am someone who is against opinion pieces in general, regardless of the content. Nate Silver also has an argument against them: the main difference with an opinion piece and normal journalism is that opinions don’t need to be fact checked. In which case there’s no reason for them to exist. If the argument cannot survive fact checking, it shouldn’t be published.

There is a semantic difference between “untruth” (or “falsity”), and “lie”. Lies are intentional, so untruths are the bigger category. Obviously, in the case of Trump, most of the untrue things he says are intentional, but I’m sure a lot are also just garden variety ignorance.

Nowhere in your first comment do you make anything like the argument in your second comment. You say that my summary is reductive and that I built an “over complicated argument” by talking about broken promises. But then you essentially argue that this will be a broken promise!

Your second argument is more reasonable, and not at all over complicated, which is why I anticipated it. The problem with your fatalist take is that “mere talk” precedes, not only broken promises, but also fulfilled promises. Honestly, if your cynical take is right, then there’s no reason to expect anything from any party ever. Cynicism is depressingly fashionable on the left.

Well said. This feels like an existential election for Taiwan.

Is it “mere talk” when Biden says US support for Israel is unconditional? No, we can and should criticize him for that because those words encourage Israel to act without restraint. But, conversely, when the US signals that they will not support actions like forced relocation, we should also see that as a corrective, not “mere talk”.

To your point, in IR theory, there also exists phenomena such as the paradox of empty promises, where making unfulfilled promises can worsen human rights. But that claim is more nuanced: the problem occurs when promises are empty. That doesn’t mean all promises are empty or promising doesn’t matter. Public declarations are a necessary step (but insufficient on their own) to justify further action.

Why is Consumer Reports considered a rag?

Another evidence based policy endorsed by housing experts. I hope this gets expanded with federal support.