alt Hacker NewsI always find it an illuminating experience about the power of mass propaganda every time I see an American believe they somewhat have the moral high ground over China, despite starting a new war somewhere around the globe either for petrol or on behalf of Israel every six months.
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Just because America is doing bad things doesn't mean China is good, or vice versa.
The difference is that - at least in the last 50 years - the US starts wars with brutal dictatorships. Whereas China is threatening war against a thriving democracy.
These are not equivalent.
As an American, I can conclusively say that we absolutely have no moral high ground whatsoever. But bringing the topic back to LLMs, I don't feel great about using an LLM that has a panic attack any time I ask about Tiananmen Square or Taiwanese sovereignty.
There’s no organ harvesting of a religious subgroup in America.
Not about moral high ground. Ones a democracy one isn’t.
On the contrary, I find reading your own confused spin on morality here an interesting window into the effectiveness of propaganda. You're taking two oppressive authoritarian governments and elevating them above the US.
I always find the China glazing online getting worse and worse.
TikTok and Hasan has really turned the West against itself.
The U.S. is not the country conducting amoral behavior with terrorist regimes for oil, that’s China.
We conduct amoral behavior with terrorist regimes for dollars.
So you think the US should sit back and watch Iran develop nukes? Is that the “moral” thing to do?
And by contrast what I find stunning is the inability to engage in meaningful comparative analysis of relative harms. There's a lot of spectacularly insightful attention to detail in so far as it mobilizes what aboutism arguments and then that attention mysteriously falls away when we ask questions like the extent to which these sides allow free press or democratic elections with multiple parties or permit fair trials. You used to not have to explain these things.
China having killed up to 50m of its own population in the 20th century through socialism, while America led the world in funding NATO, global scientific research, and global aid for decades buys America a lot of good grace.
What makes you think they’re American?
Chinese citizens will go to jail if they are too critical of their own government. How hard is it for you to wrap your head around those implications?
All empires are to some degree evil because their agenda is to dominate weaker peoples and nations. They almost all committed crimes against humanity and genocides if you look retrospectively from the todays point of view. Even our beloved Roman Empire that the Western civilization is built upon was genocidal empire.
The moral high ground claims here can be generalized:
Liberal democracies have moral high ground over authoritarian dictatorships (at least along that one dimension)
The US is backsliding tragically (and stupidly) and may lose that moral high ground, but the rest of the western democracies will still have it
Talks about "mass propaganda."
Thinks America is starting wars on behalf of Israel.
LMAO
> I see an American believe they somewhat have the moral high ground over China
The elected government of the US has the moral highground of over the regime that killed the KMT in it's weakened state after the KMT defeated Japan, went on a rampage against the educated classes, mowed down its own people with machineguns and tanks when they demanded a say in their own governments, and kidnaps people advocating for democracy to this day, including Jack Ma.
> despite starting a new war... on behalf of Israel every six months.
The war started when Hamas, funded by Iran, went on a murder and rape rampage against Israeli civilians.
One province of China has enough hellish nightmarish bullshit going on caused by the CCP that we maintain total moral superiority over them. It’s not even a question to anyone except “fellow travelers”.
The Uyghur say hi.
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Many of us (worldwide, I'm not American) watched China massacre thousands of its own children at Tiananmen Square. The US is descending into totalitarianism, but it hasn't reached that level yet.
And China may have changed in some ways but there have been no signals it would not repeat that event if it thought circumstances warranted.