It’s come to my attention that you’re someone who genuinely believes Russia is not an imperialist nation (where you ironically also attempt to hand-wave the definition of imperialism as forceful authority over another nation and imply that the only right one is that it’s a direct and unique result of capitalism—as if a word can’t have more than one definition), so I doubt you’re someone I can have a rational discussion about authoritarianism with regardless.

And again, you’re fixing the term based on your own perception to make it support your point, which doesn’t really have any merit when it comes to using these words as they are by academics essentially ubiquitously. Until we can both accept that authoritarianism has a set definition independent of many ideologies and therefore cannot be universally applied to them, this will remain a purely rhetorical argument.

Poe’s law binds us all

This is such a funny thing to say lmao, if it’s bait then it needs to be in a museum. Bravo Vince

“You’re ridiculous for participating in the society you were raised in, how dare you. You need to run out into the woods like Ted Kaczynski, never pay taxes again, and survive like the kid from Hatchet. Oh? You have people that you care about? Just forget about them, duh. Oh? I’m a hypocrite because I’m typing this on a device that was obtained through said ‘ridiculous lifestyle’? Nah, false equivalence. Just trust me, I’m basically Siddhartha Gautama. All I need is Lemmy.”

Geez, someone’s upset. Have fun in fantasyland.

you chose to make a comment. a hostile, argumentative comment.

I’m sure you’ll try to turn this against me, but I really don’t understand how what I wrote could be construed as ‘hostile’. I made a fair point. Someone replied to you sincerely, you disagreed with something they said, and you took offence to that and decided to respond in contempt (for some reason). If pointing that out is hostile, then I’ve got some bad news about reality. Unless you’re mistaking me for the other commenter. Point still stands tho.

This whole thing started because you chose to use such an antagonistic tone, you know. Civility costs infinitely less than this morality contest.

When is being mislead not a bad thing? In a perfect world, there would be none of that. Of course we don’t live in a utopia, but I’d prefer if we avoid spreading skewed understandings of anything at all as much as possible. It’s a matter of principle.

This is assuming that the average person has a solid grasp of the inner workings of an LLM, which unfortunately isn’t the case. Regardless, it would only be a semantic argument if they were shifting the meanings of the relevant words to support their argument, which they evidently weren’t doing here.

LLMs don’t think, they predict patterns in language mathematically, making them functionally incapable of human capacities like compassion and intelligence, both of which require a conscious mind to be displayed. To use words that go against that without being precise is to imply the opposite. It’s simply a matter of describing it accurately.

If anything, considering it ‘AI’ is a semantic argument because it implies there’s some form of higher thinking occurring under the surface, which there clearly isn’t. It would be like if I said my PC was intelligent because it has a CPU. Obviously we’ve passed the point of using a better term, but it’s still unfortunate we’ve decided on that because it’s inherently misleading.

It’d be very cumbersome and add no value to any conversation.

I think you’re using cumbersome in an unnecessarily negative way since it’s very much an inevitable feature of the concept at hand. Yes, it’s cumbersome, like all controversial fields of study. Things like that work themselves out over time. Until then we’ll just have to deal with it without misleading anyone.

How is it a semantic argument? They’re talking about how LLMs work on a functional level, not arguing the meaning of compassion itself. It’s not hard to say that they emulate compassion and intelligence relatively well, applying human adjectives without any nuance just opens it up to being misinterpreted by people who don’t know any better.

The PS2 one is better anyway imo, and you can just emulate that for free. Speaking as someone who played the Insomniac Spider-Man games first too btw

This is a semantic argument so it’s pretty much a nothingburger. I’m just gonna go ahead and apply Alder’s razor and call it here

Notice I wrote ‘as you’ve described it’. I shouldn’t have to explain that the criticism the term tankie is calling attention to in theory is authoritarianism, not communism or socialism as a whole (as the term was literally created by communists). Unless you’re arguing that authoritarianism is a good thing. I guess I wouldn’t be all that surprised.

Agreed! Sorry for giving you that “nuance” you craved, in any case.

I can already tell this isn’t a good faith response based on the first paragraph lol, you clearly didn’t read the article nor do you know the history of the term Tankie. Again, Wikipedia:

The term “tankie” was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

As you can see (if you care to be sincere here) it’s a pejorative term created by leftists to describe other leftists. Neither are acts of oppression defined by any of the groups you listed in this context. Be serious, please.

It’s ignorant and combative because it hand waves away all successful socialist states (China, Cuba, etc) without any nuance.

Inherently biased counter-point. You can’t just pose a government as having a successful ideology, at that point we might as well say there exists such a thing as utopia. It’s entirely rhetorical and has nothing solid to stand on.

Socialism and Communism are one in the in the same according to Marx. As we use the terms today, from actual Socialists, is that Socialism is a beginning, transitory state before full Communism.

Sure, but hopefully we can agree that contemporary socialists as a whole certainly do not agree on that definition. The ideology is far too diversified at this point for that to be the case. You can’t say “they aren’t socialists then” because again, that’s entirely rhetorical. In that case Protestants aren’t Christians, and Shia Muslims aren’t Islamic. Sure that’s religion, and you can say that’s different, but at the end of the day both religion and politics encompass ideological systems. They cover different niches, but what they fundamentally are stays the same.

This is the general agreed upon consensus at a high level.

This part really gets me. What are we defining as high level? Lemmy.ml mods? Even experts on the matter wouldn’t unanimously agree, they’re not a hivemind.

the term “tankie” insults Socialists and Communists alike, as we’re all working towards the same goal.

See my third point. Generalizations out the wazoo in this statement.

Where was I supposed to find a succinct rebuttal to this other than the people against whom the term is used? Wikipedia? Fox News?

Oh, I dunno… Academic sources would be a good place to start. I wouldn’t say a lemmy community is very close to that.

False equivalence and you know it.

Fair, though I edited it right after from Jew to National Socialism as I realized the error right away. You can’t say that’s a false equivalence, so ha!

This is framing the term “tankie” disingenuously if not intentionally. According to the Wikipedia article:

Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support or defend acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof.

It’s only ‘ignorant and combative’ in the same way that people call right-wing authoritarianism fascism, which is perfectly reasonable if not sympathetically misguided. Not to mention socialism isn’t apart of the meaning at all as you’ve described it.

I also find it funny that your source for the meaning of tankie is from lemmy.ml, as if that isn’t the exact instance this post is criticizing. It would be like if I corrected someone on the meaning of the term “National Socialism” by sourcing Mein Kampf.

We literally have no recourse (outside of the ammo box or absurd amounts of money) against a politician taking office and doing exactly the opposite of what they campaigned on, besides waiting for their term to be over.

Fair enough, this problem is prevalent in a lot of other countries too. But again, a government is nothing without the people. There’s nothing (in theory) stopping the sensible majority from making their gripes known and felt at the very least. It might feel like speaking into a vacuum, but political systems do respond to pressure, even if it’s negatively. Furthermore, these problems don’t come about purely through malicious politicians, constituents are either complicit or they don’t take the time to understand the implications. It’s harsh, I know, but it’s true. This is a universal human problem, and it doesn’t necessarily make anyone a bad person.

Due to tons of laws built up over many years, the only way to get a seat at the table is money, and all the community fundraising in the world isn’t going to outspend corporate interests.

Again, constituents have a part in this. We’re associating a lack of direct participation in the build-up of these laws with innocence, which isn’t necessarily true. Across US history, people with the means to do so had every opportunity to push back against this.

You clearly have a strong opinion that the collective population of the US isn’t doing enough for whatever metric you have…

Not true, at least not entirely. It would be unfair to indict the US population as a whole for not taking enough action, as I said it’s human to be hesitant in that regard. The point I’m trying to make is that many people, especially US citizens, seem to victimize Americans and thereby deny that they have any agency. Which, unless we’re trying to get philosophical, simply isn’t true, or is at least a little disingenuous. I’d be far more accepting of the lack of action if this group were to own Americans’ implicit part in their country and its actions.

I just think it’s absolutely rich to try and assign blame to the proletariat for hesitating to throw their bodies on the corpse pile from thousands of miles away, or even from right here but sitting on your ass taking no action yourself.

Again, not I’m not “blaming the proletariat”. They have a part in current events. That much is undeniable. To say otherwise would be to separate the mitochondria from its responsibility to the cell, which as anyone who understands a little biology would know that doesn’t tend to work out.

If you’re so invested in this, grab a cheap plane ticket and get to work on it yourself instead of trying to guilt others into shedding blood.

Did you actually read my comment? I’m not trying to goad anyone into a revolution.

Basing your take on the will of a country’s people on the multiple times distilled and removed news broadcasts that make it out is just silly.

Well this is just outright strawmanning my point. My argument comes from my understanding of how the government and people work in tandem across all nations, not what I’m observing from the US specifically. The government is an extension of its people and how they’ve come to react to their environment, it’s no different with the US. Governments aren’t this separate organism that guides and/or terrorizes the populous. They’re (typically) made up of members of the populous itself. They are quite literally dependent on each other.

Look, I get you’re frustrated, and I’m sure that you see a lot of unjust hatred and blame directed towards Americans and you’re understandably retaliating against that. But this isn’t just because of a general lack of understanding for American politics. It’s because (essentially for the first time) Americans are taking the heat from foreign countries’ citizens that they’ve been (though not universally) throwing toward other countries with shitty governments in an equally ignorant and misplaced manner. This is world politics, baby. People can be pretty stupid with it. Though it certainly doesn’t help that the US is a global hegemony, so there’s a proportionally higher amount of pressure placed on the country to not screw anything up. And the past 1.5 years or so have been the biggest American screw-up in a long, long time, if not ever. So there’s really no question that there’ll be even more of it to come, especially if/when it gets even worse. I do wish you luck though, you seem to be a reasonable American. I hope the people who deserve it get what’s coming to them so you and others can pick up from there.

It’s some of the most absurd shit. “I don’t see you actively hunting down child abusers, so you must be a pedophile” ass opinions.

Maybe so, but it’s also absurd to think that because the members of the population aren’t the ones actively making decisions, they don’t assume a proportionate amount of the guilt. Governments are nothing without their constituents, in fact they are shaped by them. It’s understandable to be hesitant toward action, that’s human. But to do all these mental gymnastics to avoid accepting part of the responsibility for what the US is like right now is disingenuous if not being blind to reality.

Grass lawns started off as a way for pretentious rich people to flaunt how much of their land they could waste on nothing important, so it’s really not worse at all. Just another dumb trend that caught on.