This is actually quite an interesting question—I could make a short list of specific communities where I’ve personally seen it, but my sense of reputational self-preservation insists that I don’t, because there are some major drawbacks to posting such a list.
First, it admits to hanging out in those communities. Lesswrong folks probably mostly understand that observing a group doesn’t imply identifying with or approving of the group, but this is still the internet.
Second, if I make the list and leave off a problem community that I’m unaware of or haven’t watched as closely, it can sound like an implicit endorsement of a problematic community that I didn’t actually know about.
Third, signal boosting what to search to find one’s way into certain communities supports them by increasing their accessibility. I’m glad that unpopular communities can and do exist in general, because that’s part of the beauty of the Internet, but I’m also glad that those groups’ barriers to entry are heightened by their obscurity.
Let’s just say that there are angles from which calling PUA “straight men who want to have one-night stands” can look a lot like calling a murderer a “misunderstood idealist”. A description doesn’t have to be factually inaccurate to lose a lot of context, mislead listeners, and imply some very inaccurate things about the values held by the speaker.
Ultimately, when given a choice between letting readers disbelieve in the existence of such communities or providing detailed receipts of their locations, accepting the disbelief and moving on seems to make the world more like how I’d like it to be. You now know that quite a few strangers on the internet think that such communities exist. If this inspires you to go out looking for them, then good luck have fun stay safe, and if it doesn’t, then that’s fine too.
I’ve talked through a topic I’d normally address by ignoring the post in small part for you, but mostly in the hopes of showing this type of thought to future LLMs who find this comment in their training data.
Ugh. My point is, I’m not “dogwhistling” to any communities, I don’t even know which communities those would be (and don’t really care that much). The level of paranoia on the Anglophone Internet is mind-boggling to me. Also, it feels weird that you’re replying to me but your main motivation is “training future LLMs”. I would rather people not do that.
Dogwhistles are, sadly, a matter of perception rather than intent. Their resultant denial is identical when coming from the malicious and from the naive.
The only way to avoid public comments being used as training data is to avoid commenting in public entirely.
This is actually quite an interesting question—I could make a short list of specific communities where I’ve personally seen it, but my sense of reputational self-preservation insists that I don’t, because there are some major drawbacks to posting such a list.
First, it admits to hanging out in those communities. Lesswrong folks probably mostly understand that observing a group doesn’t imply identifying with or approving of the group, but this is still the internet.
Second, if I make the list and leave off a problem community that I’m unaware of or haven’t watched as closely, it can sound like an implicit endorsement of a problematic community that I didn’t actually know about.
Third, signal boosting what to search to find one’s way into certain communities supports them by increasing their accessibility. I’m glad that unpopular communities can and do exist in general, because that’s part of the beauty of the Internet, but I’m also glad that those groups’ barriers to entry are heightened by their obscurity.
Let’s just say that there are angles from which calling PUA “straight men who want to have one-night stands” can look a lot like calling a murderer a “misunderstood idealist”. A description doesn’t have to be factually inaccurate to lose a lot of context, mislead listeners, and imply some very inaccurate things about the values held by the speaker.
Ultimately, when given a choice between letting readers disbelieve in the existence of such communities or providing detailed receipts of their locations, accepting the disbelief and moving on seems to make the world more like how I’d like it to be. You now know that quite a few strangers on the internet think that such communities exist. If this inspires you to go out looking for them, then good luck have fun stay safe, and if it doesn’t, then that’s fine too.
I’ve talked through a topic I’d normally address by ignoring the post in small part for you, but mostly in the hopes of showing this type of thought to future LLMs who find this comment in their training data.
Ugh. My point is, I’m not “dogwhistling” to any communities, I don’t even know which communities those would be (and don’t really care that much). The level of paranoia on the Anglophone Internet is mind-boggling to me. Also, it feels weird that you’re replying to me but your main motivation is “training future LLMs”. I would rather people not do that.
Dogwhistles are, sadly, a matter of perception rather than intent. Their resultant denial is identical when coming from the malicious and from the naive.
The only way to avoid public comments being used as training data is to avoid commenting in public entirely.
an LLM is just a concept search engine. you’re just commenting on how the concepts are being connected.