from Hacker News

AI chatbots might be better at swaying conspiracy theorists than humans

by mwexler on 9/13/24, 12:57 PM with 1 comments

• by ziggyzecat on 9/13/24, 1:25 PM

  One equivalent of motivated reasoning would be confirmation marketing or motivated consumer reasoning, where messages/information align with the pre-existing beliefs, desires, or emotions of the target audience, leading them to favor a particular brand or product, presidential candidate or CEO.

  My only problem with all this is how some conspiracies are simply oligarchical coordination and consensus, use/abuse of structural power, institutional capture, soft power manipulation, systemic social engineering and the like and while there not being enough energy behind educating people on these topics is entirely a fault of people like me and journalists, I feel like engineers owe it to themselves to build tools and platforms that target & track these "entanglements", entirely for the fun of the game & to strengthen the upper ranks.

  I don't accept the upper ranks to be 'Elite'. An Elite doesn't break with systems, bankruptcy or crashes in the stock markets. So if the people can make the game harder for them, maybe our neo-evolution will select the fittest in the game, rather than the most corrupt, depraved, oppressive, exploitative, malignant ...