All the research I am aware of - including what I referenced in the previous comment, is that people are honest by default, except for a few people who lie a lot. Boris Johnson is a serial liar and clearly falls into that camp. I believe that you believe that, but a couple of surveys are not a sufficient argument to prove the fundamental good of all humanity. If honesty were not the default, why would we believe what anyone has to say in situations where they have an incentive to lie, which is often? Why are such a small proportion of people criminals and fraudsters when for a lot of crimes, someone smart and cautious has a very low chance of being caught? I think this is just a lack of imagination. i will go through your scenarios and provide an answer but i don't think it's going to achieve anything, we just fundamentally disagree on this. why would we believe what anyone has to say in situations where they have an incentive to lie, which is often? You shouldn't. edit : You use experience with this person or in general, to make a judgement call about whether or not you want to listen to what they have to say until more data is available. You continue to refine based on accumulated experience. Why are such a small proportion of people criminals and fraudsters when for a lot of crimes, someone smart and cautious has a very low chance of being caught? A lot of assumptions and leaps here. Firstly crime implies actual law, which is different in different places, so let's assume for now we are talking about the current laws in the uk. Criminals implies someone who has been caught and prosecuted for breaking a law, I'm going with that assumption because "everyone who has ever broken a law" is a ridiculous interpretation. So to encompass the assumptions: Why are such a small proportion of people who have been caught and prosecuted for breaking the law in the uk, when someone smart and caution has a very low chance of being caught? I hope you can see how nonsensical that question is. The evolutionary argument goes like this: social animals have selection pressure for traits that help the social group, because the social group contains related individuals, as well as carrying memetically inheritable behaviours. This means that the most successful groups are the ones that work well together. A group first of all has an incentive to punish individuals who act selfishly to harm the group - this will mean the group contains mostly individuals who, through self interest, will not betray the group. But a group which doesn’t have to spend energy finding and punishing traitorous individuals because it doesn’t contain as many in the first place will do even better. This creates a selection pressure behind mere self interest. That's a nicely worded very bias interpretation. social animals have selection pressure for traits that help the social group, because the social group contains related individuals, as well as carrying memetically inheritable behaviours. This is fine. This means that the most successful groups are the ones that work well together. That's a jump, working well together might not be the desirable trait in this instance. But let's assume it is for now. A group first of all has an incentive to punish individuals who act selfishly to harm the group - this will mean the group contains mostly individuals who, through self interest, will not betray the group. Reductive and assumptive, you're also conflating selfishness with betrayal, you can have on without the other, depending on perceived definitions of course. But a group which doesn’t have to spend energy finding and punishing traitorous individuals because it doesn’t contain as many in the first place will do even better. This creates a selection pressure behind mere self interest. Additional reduction and a further unsupported jump, individuals are more than just a single trait, selfishness might be desirable in certain scenarios or it might be a part of an individual who's other traits make up for it in a tribal context. The process of seeking and the focused attention might be a preferential selection trait that benefits the group. Powerful grifters try to protect themselves yes, but who got punished for pointing out that Boris is a serial liar? Everyone who has been negatively impacted by the policies enacted and consequences of everything that was achieved on the back of those lies. Because being ignored is still a punishment if there are negative consequences. But let's pick a more active punishment, protesting. Protest in a way we don't like or about a subject we don't approve of, it's now illegal to protest unless we give permission. That's reductive, but indicative of what happened in broad strokes. Have you read what the current government has said about the previous one? I'd imagine something along the lines of what the previous government said about the one before ? As a society we generally hate that kind of behaviour. Society as a whole does not protect wealth and power; wealth and power forms its own group which tries to protect itself. Depends on how you define society as a whole. By population, i agree. By actual power to enact change(without extreme measures), less so Convenient that you don't include the wealth and power as part of society, like its some other separate thing. You should care because it entirely colours how you interact with political life. “Shady behaviour” is about intent as well as outcome, and we are talking in this thread about shady behaviour, and hence about intent. See [POINT A]

I hope so. Tesla would be banned next week too. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/grok-ai-be-available-tesla-vehicles-next-week-musk-says-2025-07-10/

Yeah, and its most likely only due to them killing Windows 10 in the fall, which means a lot of companies have been working hard this year to replace a ton of computers before October. Anyone who has been down this road with 7 to 10 knows it will just cost more money if you need to continue support after that. They sell you a new license thats good for a year that will allow updates to continue. It doubles in cost every year after.

Yeah back in the day we made sure no matter who you were and what was going on you had the opportunity to hear our take on it Mind you I suppose that still happens thanks to us being a very loud and online people, but having an "America says x" channel in a time where people liked us sure was a good idea

HMD feature phones are such a let down. The Polish language translation within the system is clearly automated translation - the words used sometimes don't make sense. CloudFone apps are also not available in Europe. The HMD 110 4G (2024, not 2023) has the Unisoc T127 chipset which supports hotspot, but HMD deliberately chose not to include it. I know because the Itel Neo R60+ has hotspot with the same chipset. At least they made Nokia XR21 in Europe for a while.

Are there substantial numbers of Russians who seriously wouldn't be wise to this?

Make them publishers or whatever is required to have it be a legal requirement, have them ban people who share false information. The law doesn't magically make open discussions not open. By design, social media is open. If discussion from the public is closed, then it's no longer social media. ban people who share false information Banning people doesn't stop falsehoods. It's a broken solution promoting a false assurance. Authorities are still fallible & risk banning over unpopular/debatable expressions that may turn out true. There was unpopular dissent over covid lockdown policies in the US despite some dramatic differences with EU policies. Pro-palestinian protests get cracked down. Authorities are vulnerable to biases & swayed. Moreover, when people can just share their falsehoods offline, attempting to ban them online is hard to justify. If print media, through its decline, is being held legally responsible Print media is a controlled medium that controls it writers & approves everything before printing. It has a prepared, coordinated message. They can & do print books full of falsehoods if they want. Social media is open communication where anyone in the entire public can freely post anything before it is revoked. They aren't claiming to spread the truth, merely to enable communication.

I've been thinking about this for a bit. Gods aren't real, but they're really fictional. As an informational entity, they fulfil a similar social function to a chatbot: they are a nonphysical pseudoperson that can provide (para)socialization & advice. One difference is the hardware: gods are self-organising structure that arise from human social spheres, whereas LLMs are burned top-down into silicon. Another is that an LLM chatbot's advice is much more likely to be empirically useful... In a very real sense, LLMs have just automated divinity. We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg on the social effects, and nobody's prepared for it. The models may of course aware of this, and be making the same calculations. Or, they will be.